by R. D. Brady
As Maeve, Norah, and Chris stepped on board, Tilda nodded to her. “This is Tara McCallum. She is in charge of transportation to and from the base. Her brother, Ethan, is captaining the other ship. This is Dr. Maeve Leander, Dr. Greg Schorn, Captain Chris Garrigan, and Agent Norah Tidwell.”
Tara smiled, an Irish lilt in her voice when she spoke. “It’s nice to meet you all. No title for me. Just call me Tara. It would be best if you all took refuge below. The winds can get pretty rough up here.”
Tilda strode into the little cabin. “I’ll show you the way.”
Maeve followed behind her, with Snap in her arms. There was a set of stairs inside the cabin, leading down. Tilda moved down them quickly, and after a moment’s hesitation, Maeve followed.
Now this was more of what she was expecting. The ship under the waterline was about three times the size of the ship above the waterline. And it was decked out with comfortable couches bolted to the wall. There were even some cots in the back. A small kitchenette had been set up on the other side.
Greg stepped down, holding Crackle. He looked up with a nod. “Now this is more like it.”
Maeve smiled at him. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Tilda waited until everyone was secured and they were on their way before she spoke. “We found it best to give the appearance of unimportance. The façade of this vessel doesn’t attract attention. And that is exactly what we want.”
“But still, wouldn’t it make more sense to fly people out to the base?” Norah asked.
“Occasionally we do. But currently the base is on lockdown. Also a necessary precaution. And until we are sure that we have not been followed, we will stay in lockdown. When we are in lockdown mode, nothing computerized can reach the island. All electrical signals are blocked.”
“You’ve made it a Faraday cage,” Greg said.
Tilda nodded. “Yes. It extends almost five miles outside of the island.”
Maeve was stunned. She’d heard of what a Faraday cage was, of course—it was essentially a shield to protect against electromagnetic fields. But she had never heard of one that large. “How are you able to do that?”
Tilda gave a small smile. “Our technology is more advanced than what you have seen pretty much anywhere. There’s a lot we are capable of that you would not expect. Now, why don’t you all get a little sleep? It will be two hours until we reach the island. I’ll be on the other boat. Tara will be able to contact me if you need anything.” With that, she headed back up the stairs.
Alvie had already taken the triplets to the back of the room and got them all settled into a cot. Snap let out a big yawn as Grace curled at their feet. Maeve followed with her own yawn almost immediately. Apparently she was more tired than she thought.
Chris rubbed her arm. “Go ahead. Get some sleep. I’ll stay up.”
He knew she wasn’t comfortable falling asleep and was just hoping that everything turned out well. He’d keep an eye out for all of them. She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Thank you.”
She made her way to the back of the room. “Any space for me?”
The triplets grinned widely, scooting over to make space for Maeve.
Maeve smiled as she slipped off her shoes and curled up with them. Crackle crawled onto her chest, and Snap curled to one side while Pop crawled over her and curled into the other side. Maeve turned her head, looking at Alvie, and reached out a hand. He held on to it as his eyes closed.
With tired eyes, Maeve looked out over the room. In the corner, Chris was sitting with Greg. Norah lay on one of the couches with Iggy curled up in her arms, both of them looking like they were about to fall asleep.
Dear God, please let this be the right choice.
Chapter Nine
Rock Springs, Wyoming
The motel parking lot was quiet. Sandra sat at the small table by the window, the curtain slightly pulled back so she had a view of the whole parking lot and part of the street.
She was getting worried. Actually, no, she was quickly becoming terrified. After seeing the black SUVs at her home, she had gone into town and taken all the money from her ATM that she could manage: 272 dollars. It was a risk. She knew that. But she also knew they were not going to get anywhere with the seven dollars she had in her wallet.
Then she had driven. No destination, no plan, just going. She’d stayed off the highways and stuck to long back roads. If she saw a sign for something she was familiar with, she went in the opposite direction. She didn’t want to go anywhere near something that might lead the government to her.
The government is after us. Her mind still struggled to accept that. Part of her hoped it was some rebel branch of the government and not the government she, as a staff sergeant, had been willing to die for. But even if it was a rebel branch, they certainly had a lot more power than a single mom on the run with her autistic son with about two hundred dollars to her name.
She struggled to come up with a plan. She couldn’t cross any borders that required ID, or she’d send up flags. Planes were out for the same reason, although she didn’t have enough money for flights anyway. She couldn’t draw the attention of any police. They really needed to stay away from cameras as well. She had a little leeway there. She’d had an extra pair of license plates in her trunk that she had switched out. She’d meant to give them to Noah. They read LUVB3R. She thought he’d get a kick out of them.
And then he’d died. She hadn’t been able to get rid of them, but she couldn’t look at them either, so she’d left them in the trunk.
She couldn’t go to anyone they knew because the government would no doubt be looking for them there. She had a vague idea about maybe trying one of her friends from high school who’d moved to Pennsylvania. But that was a really long trip, and she wasn’t sure she’d have the money for gas to get there.
Luke stirred on the bed behind her. She turned around, ready to intercede if the nightmares returned, but he rolled onto his side and settled back down. The first night, they’d slept in the car. Well, stayed in the car overnight. Luke had been unable to keep his eyes closed. He’d jumped at every sound, every movement outside the vehicle.
She’d had to dip into their limited funds to risk a motel room for tonight. He needed to sleep. Yesterday, he’d been so tired he’d barely been coherent. But as soon as he woke, they needed to get on the move again.
And yet she still didn’t have much of a plan. Right now it consisted entirely of not staying in one place too long.
She ran a hand through her hair, trying to ignore the terror crawling up her throat. She could not keep running forever. The government would find them eventually. But what did they even want?
Luke mumbled in his sleep, his arm reaching for something before it fell back on the bed. In her gut, she knew it had to do with Luke and his friend “Sammy.” When he’d first told her about his new friend, she’d worried about him being too old for imaginary friends. But that imaginary friend had saved Luke from those blue creatures.
And saved both of us from the government. She still didn’t know how Sammy had told Luke they were in trouble. Luke insisted he hadn’t seen Sammy. Sandra didn’t like to think about what other means the strange creature might have used to contact her son.
She reached into the pocket of her sweatpants and fingered the business card. It was a fluke that she had it in her pocket when they left the house. She had debated whether or not to reach out to the agent. She didn’t know if she could trust the woman, but she hadn’t seemed like the other feds who’d shown up. But she wasn’t quite ready to take that step yet.
She had to make a decision soon, however. The room had cost them sixty dollars, which meant if she was lucky, she could manage three more nights in similar ones, but that also meant they didn’t have much money for food.
She could call her parents and ask them to wire money, but that would automatically tip off anyone who was looking for her. And besides, she hadn’t spoken with her parents in years.
She buried the anger warring with terror inside of her. She didn’t have time for that either. Keeping Luke safe was all she had time for.
But how do I do that? She pulled out the business card and stared at it. It was a gamble. But she was at the end of her rope. Truth was, if it was just her and Luke versus the U.S. government, the government was going to win. She stared down at the card.
At least maybe this way I’ll have an idea of why this is all happening.
Luke sat up in bed, rubbing at his eyes. “Mom?”
She placed the card back in her pocket. She turned from the window and smiled at him. “Hey, honey. I was just about to wake you.”
Chapter Ten
The North Channel
Between Ireland and Scotland
An hour later, Maeve was wide awake. Alvie and the triplets were breathing softly in their sleep. Grace yipped softly, her feet moving as she dreamed. Across from them, Norah was curled up with Iggy. Chris also slept nearby, his head back. Only Greg was missing.
Maeve moved up to the deck, needing some fresh air. The sun approached the horizon, leaving the sky a brilliant mix of greens and pinks. Ahead, she could make out the island. It was covered in fog, but she could make out a few peaks and a very rocky shoreline.
Greg smiled down at her as she stepped next to him at the railing. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
“Guess not.”
“You two are very lucky. Very few people get to see this island,” Tara said as she joined them.
“You mean because you keep them away?” Greg asked.
Tara shook her head, some of her red curls coming undone and blowing in the wind. She tucked them behind her ear. “No. Hy-Brasil has always been picky about who it allows to see its form.”
Hy-Brasil. The name triggered a memory somewhere in the back of Maeve’s mind, but she couldn’t tease it out.
Next to her, Greg’s jaw dropped, forcing him to push his glasses back up his nose. “Hy-Brasil? The Hy-Brasil?”
Tara smiled. “I see you’ve heard of our little isle.”
“I’m afraid I’m drawing a blank, though,” Maeve said.
Tara nodded toward the fog-enclosed coast. “According to legend, Hy-Brasil is only seen every seven years. It’s a vanishing island. It would sometimes appear for sailors, and then the next year they would come back to the same spot, and it would be gone.”
Maeve looked between Tara and Greg. “That’s not possible.”
Tara let out a little laugh. “I find that amusing coming from someone with the family you have.”
Maeve conceded the point with a smile of her own.
Tara continued. “It appeared on maps between 1325 and the 1800s. Even when it was visible, it was incredibly difficult to reach. Some say that it was the home of an ancient advanced civilization. Others say that it was a paradise created by priests to lure sinners to the Church.”
Maeve knew that over the centuries there had been numerous arguments for the existence of previous advanced civilizations, from Atlantis to Shangri-La, so she supposed it only made sense that Ireland had their own legend of an advanced civilization.
“There’s only one recorded account of a visit to the island. A Scottish sea captain on his way from France to Ireland is said to have spotted it and sent four of his people on board. The searchers were said to have found a castle with a lone magician living there. But the island itself was uninhabited. Except for, of course, the giant black rabbits.”
“Giant black rabbits?” Maeve knew that there were giant rabbits. Flemish Giant rabbits grew to two and half feet long, about the length of a good-sized Labrador. They originated in Belgium but in reality it wasn’t very far from Ireland, and it was possible an offshoot of the breed was found on the mysterious island. Although she’d never seen a black one. Not that the fur shades of Flemish Giant rabbits had been a research subject she had delved into.
Greg, who had been shifting from foot to foot during Tara’s explanation, burst out with, “But there’s also a UFO connection. The Rendlesham Forest incident.”
That one, at least, Maeve was familiar with—Britain’s Roswell. The incident actually was a series of sightings that occurred over three days in England between two NATO Air Force bases RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. Both bases were being leased to the United States Air Force. Strange lights were reported over both bases from December 26 to 28 in 1980. The strange lights were even pinged by radar.
But the most scintillating part of the report happened on December 26, when lights were seen through the trees adjacent to the base. A patrol was sent out to investigate. U.S. Air Force Sgt. James Penniston was one of the individuals in the patrol group. He reported a metallic object about two to three meters with pulsing lights of red and blue underneath.
Penniston observed the craft for forty-five minutes, mentioning in his descriptions what looked like hieroglyphs along the craft’s side. At one point, Penniston even touched the craft. From that contact, he said he pictured a series of zeros and ones, a binary code.
Years later, the binary code was translated into longitude and latitude. The location indicated was Hy-Brasil.
Tara nodded. “We had a lot of lookie-loos out here after his code was translated. But none of them made landfall. None of them even saw the island. The weather helped. It blew pretty fierce for a few months, until all of the traffic died down.”
“Are you suggesting the island was protecting itself?” Maeve asked.
Tara shrugged. “There are stranger things that have happened.”
A shiver rolled through Maeve as the wind tugged at her jacket. An island that was alive. Tara was right. It wasn’t the strangest thing she’d heard lately.
Chapter Eleven
Hogansfield, Montana
The car was acting up. The Subaru was thirteen years old. The mechanic had warned her that the transmission would need to be replaced soon. But Sandra had really hoped she had at least another year before she had to splurge on that kind of fix.
She gently eased the car over to the side of the road. They’d been on the highway. She’d taken the first ramp off when the engine started chugging. She had no intention of leaving them relying on the kindness of strangers or the attention of the highway patrol.
They were in a little town called Hogansfield. It looked like dozens of other towns that they had driven through. There was a McDonald’s, a Home Depot, and a Target farther down the road, but here there were some older mom-and-pop stores that had seen better days and a diner that had definitely needed a fresh coat of paint.
Luke dozed in the passenger seat. Sandra turned off the engine and rested her head on the steering wheel. Oh, come on. I just need a little break.
No magical winged being appeared to restore her car to its showroom condition. She blew out a breath and looked up, trying to figure out what the new game plan was. She was almost out of money. The car was on its last legs. And she didn’t even really know where she was. She knew she was in Montana, but that was all.
She pulled out the cell phone she had bought at a convenience store two states ago. She still wasn’t sure who to call, but she felt better having one on her. Once again, she fingered the business card from the D.E.A.D. agent. She knew she was at the end of her rope, but she hated the idea of making a call when she was in dire straits. There had to be another option.
She scanned the road, terror shimmering at the edge of her thoughts. I need money. I need a place for us to stay. I need to stay off the grid. Those were the three priorities right now.
At the same time, she’d been second-guessing herself for the last twenty-four hours. Maybe she had misread the situation at the farmhouse. Maybe those agents thought they were in danger an
d were actually coming to help them.
But she knew she was grasping at straws. If by some stretch of the imagination they thought there was a hostage situation in the farmhouse, they certainly wouldn’t have begun the process of extracting the hostages with flash bangs. No, the government had come for her and Luke. Which meant until she could figure out what exactly was going on, she couldn’t trust the government.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit something. But she did none of that because it would upset Luke. She blew out a breath and counted to ten. I can handle this. Whatever happens, I can handle this.
Her stomach growled. She’d barely eaten in the last few days. She would order food for Luke and take a bite or two, but that was about it. She knew she couldn’t keep going that way. She needed to keep her energy up. Already her thinking felt slow.
She was down to her last 150 dollars. The golden arches of McDonald’s beckoned in the distance. The idea of some fries stirred up the first sense of excitement she’d felt in the last couple of days. She reached over and tugged on Luke’s shirt. “Hey, sleepyhead. Let’s go get something to eat.”
Luke’s eyes shot open quickly, and he jolted up.
Sandra put up her hands. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. Everything’s fine. There’s a McDonald’s up there. Let’s go get something to eat.”
“A chocolate shake?”
Sandra ruffled his hair. “Yes, but a small one.”
Luke smiled at her, the first smile she’d seen since they’d left the farmhouse.
Thirty minutes later, they were walking back to the car, and Sandra’s stomach felt, if not full, at least not completely empty. Luke was happily slurping on his shake next to her. He tilted it toward her. “Want some?”
She shook her head, even though she really, really wanted some. “No, I’m full. You enjoy it.”