Class Fives: Origins

by Jon H. Thompson

  He groped around for the radio and his bruised fingers found it close by. He dragged it to himself, and had to use both shivering hands to flip it on.

  “Hello,” he croaked harshly at it. “You there?”

  “Copy,” came the muted, anonymous voice.

  “What time is it?” he managed to gasp back.

  “Twenty three ten,” the voice responded flatly.

  Almost an hour, John realized. I went back almost an hour. But is that enough?

  And then he felt it. The sickness. And he knew it would be bad. The worst. The one that could kill him.

  “Listen to me,” he gasped into the radio. “It happens in fifty minutes. You got that? Everything ends in fifty minutes.”

  “Copy,” the voice said, perhaps a bit more crisply.

  “The coordinates are as follows.”

  He slowly recited the longitude and latitude for the site which, he prayed, had been simply called “X” by the insane wacko who, even at this moment, was somewhere beneath him in the ground about to blow up the world.

  “Did you get that? Want me to repeat it?”

  “Negative,” came the voice, almost sharply, “We’ll take it from here.”

  “Well, come get this wacko fuck while you’re at it. And tell somebody I’m gonna need some aspirin. I feel like shit.”

  The radio slipped from his hand, clattering to the ground once more, and he felt the strength evaporating from his very skin.

  He toppled over, twitched, and lay still.

  A few moments later the headlights of the car appeared, pinpricks in the distance, approaching.

  Roger crouched between the seats, looking out the windshield of the bomber. Somewhere beneath them were flat plains far below. Nothing but seemingly endless miles of desolate wilderness. Off in the distance, at the far end of the cloudless skies, were the shadows of mountains, thickly carpeted with looming green forest, but closer in, the ground leveled off and was covered with only a low, patchy scrub of vegetation struggling to simply survive.

  “Stand by,” the co-pilot’s voice cut in. “Incoming message.”

  There was a long pause before the voice cut in again.

  “We have coordinates. We have forty five minutes before detonation.”

  Roger leaned forward in his seat.

  “Can we get there in time?”

  “We can get there,” the pilot said.

  “Just get me over the place. Fast as you can.”

  Neither pilot responded. They had orders to do exactly as their mysterious passenger ordered, regardless of how crazy it might sound. They were already in a delicate enough situation: an American bomber, albeit the stealthiest one in the inventory, was already wildly in violation of Russian airspace. Shooting along at several hundred miles per hour, some local SAM battery Sergeant might spot them by pure chance, and instinctively fire a missile at them before calling in for instructions.

  “How long before we get there?” Roger called over the headset.

  “ETA, twelve minutes,” the pilot responded.

  Roger turned carefully and bent to open the access hatch to the bomb bay.

  That would leave a half hour, he thought. Maybe. Before what? Well, before whatever was going to happen, happened. Five minutes to get on the ground, and depending on how far away he landed…

  “I’m heading to the back. Let me know when it’s time,” he said over the headset.

  “Copy that,” the pilot said, flatly.

  Roger crawled into the open, yawning container that was the business portion of this engine of destruction, and eased around to close the hatch. He crawled to the crease in the floor that indicated the outline of the doors and eased himself down onto them, crossing his arms under his chin.

  “Sir,” the pilot’s voice crackled over the headset, “They’ve triangulated the location. It’s dead in the middle of some kind of swamp.”

  “I should have brought my inner tube,” Roger muttered back.

  The next several minutes passed without any chatter between the men. Roger simply lay, his gaze directed out at the blank wall of the space. How far up were they, he wondered? Six miles? Seven?

  After a long while, the voice of the pilot cut in over the headset.

  “I see something!” it barked.

  Roger’s head came up and he felt the tension building within him.

  “Step on it,” Roger snapped, “We don’t have much time.”

  “I have to ease back so we can open the bay doors – “ the pilot began.

  “No, goddamnit!” Roger bellowed back, “Just go straight over those coordinates and open this thing up. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  The pilot hesitated.

  “You sure, sir? We’re at thirty-seven thousand feet right now.”

  “Let me know when we’re almost on top of it,” he called at them. “About a mile back or so, okay?”

  “Copy,” the pilot snapped back.

  These guys are icy, Roger thought, and somehow felt comforted.

  “How long now?” Roger said a minute later.

  “Maybe a minute. Better get ready.”

  Roger slowly lowered his chin to his hands again.

  “Almost there,” the pilot snapped. “Thirty seconds.”

  Well, he told himself, a person should try new things from time to time.

  “Stand by,” the pilot said, slowly. “Ten seconds.”

  “Tell whoever comes to get me to bring some extra clothes. I get the feeling I’ll need them.”

  “Five… four… three… two…” the pilot called sharply.

  Roger shot up a hand to flip off the helmet, flinging it away. It shot across the space and shattered against the back wall of the bomb bay.

  Oops, he thought.

  Beneath him the doors opened.

  He fell.

  It was an incredible sensation, plummeting down through the air, hearing it roar through his head. He let his body whirl and tumble, simply savoring the feeling. And it occurred to him that there was nothing here to damage, nothing here to injure. Here, like nowhere else, he was no more than any other man. He definitely had to take up sky diving, he told himself, then turned his attention to the task at hand.

  In a few moments he began to feel a little lightheaded, his attention beginning to fade, but he shook himself and turned his attention below himself.

  Looking down, he saw that he had fallen somewhat short of where a large blister of green welled in the flat earth, casting a long, obvious shadow in the blaring afternoon sun. He had to somehow move toward it, land as close as possible. There was no time to traverse the boggy ground if he landed too far away.

  He twisted and squirmed, then recalled something he’d once seen on television, rolled over and spread himself out, extending his arms and legs. He felt himself almost stabilize, and when he dipped one arm he rotated in the other direction. Awkwardly he maneuvered himself until he was pointed toward the bulge in the ground below. Drawing in his legs, he willed himself toward it, seeing it slowly growing beneath him.

  The ground rushed up, sending its roar of wind before it, and he realized he would impact with tremendous force, perhaps enough to stab deep into the soggy earth.

  Spread out, he told himself, as the rounded lump drew nearer and nearer beneath him. He would hit, he realized, less than a hundred yards from it.

  And then the ground was exploding upwards at him, and he stretched his limbs as far and as tight as possible.

  He plummeted.

  The impact sent a loud crack of shattered water in all directions, followed by the spray of hundreds of gallons of fluid instantly displaced. But even before the swamp water splashed back to the surface, he was scrambling to his feet and moving, as swiftly as the sodden ground would allow, toward the massive bubble before him.

  He stalked rapidly toward it, his eyes scanning for an entrance before he simply decided to walk straight through the side and save himself any wasted time.

  The
first shots came from off to his right. He snapped a look in that direction and saw the figure, standing knee deep in the boggy ground, the automatic rifle pointed toward Roger.

  No time, Roger told himself, and turned back to the hump, dismissing the annoyance.

  Shots zinged around him, throwing up small splashes at his feet, a few pinging off his arm. One bounded off his cheek. Enough, he thought, reaching out a hand and snapping up the charred, bare trunk of a tree as thick as his own thigh without breaking stride. He drew it across his body and flung it toward where the shooter stood. The force of its passage sent it spinning like a lazy saw dagger, cutting through other bare, burned trees, and a chunk of it hit the shooter like a baseball bat striking a rotted melon. The man disappeared in a spray of small red chunks.

  Roger winced at the instinctive realization of what he’d just done, but turned his mind away from the thought and strode the last few yards to the edge of what he could now see was a hastily disguised dome, wearing a thick overcoat of limbs, leaves and muck. He could see it sat atop a quickly assembled platform of some kind, chunks of scaffolding plunging down into the sodden ground with flat plastic sheets laid over them. Of course, he realized, it would have to have an airtight seal from the outside air, and would require an absolutely flat surface on which to obtain it. It was one of those inflatable buildings.

  Off to his left he heard the dull thump and the loud hiss, snapping his head quickly enough to catch sight of the shoulder-launched missile streaking toward him.

  Without breaking stride, he raised his arm and tried to judge the velocity of the projectile, suddenly swinging wildly out to try and slap it away. He managed to catch a small part of the thing, but instead of ricocheting off, it detonated into a sudden ball of fire and needle-fine steel bits.

  So much for that, he thought, feeling the upper portion of his flight suit shredding around his shoulders and chest, and stepped up to plant a foot on the low platform as delicately as he could so as not to collapse the thing.

  He boosted himself up and stormed the dozen feet along the plastic surface to the side of the dome. He didn’t hesitate, stepping straight against the dome’s side, shooting out both hands and chopping at the thick, shimmering fabric peeking out from beneath the vegetation and ooze with the edge of his hand. It split, instantly releasing a gale of cool air, and he stepped through the tear.

  Inside the space was vast, like a temporary aircraft hanger, shrouded in gloom broken only by widely spaced lights from somewhere high overhead. The floor was smooth, white and solid across its interior, except for a clearly bare patch in the very center of the dome.

  The space was utterly empty, like the ice in a hockey arena. But suspended high up toward the distant, curving ceiling, was a lumpish-looking pod of some kind, with no apparent means of reaching it.

  Around him the air hissed, the pumps whose job it was to keep the dome inflated kicked into high, fighting the sudden, unexpected tear in the skin of the inflated space.

  The shots echoed through the air and Roger turned to see the man, an automatic weapon leveled and spitting tiny flicks of flame from its muzzle as the man walked with swift steps toward him. Roger looked around for something to toss at this new annoyance, but nothing presented itself.

  He reached to the cuff of one of his shredded sleeves where the jumpsuit had a small pocket closed with a button. He popped off the small, plastic disk and worked it between his fingers. He raised his hand and flicked. The button cut through Constantine Gvorshin’s body, a fine spray of red mist clouding the air behind him just before he dropped awkwardly.

  Roger turned back to scan the space. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen right here and very, very soon.

  He stepped toward the center of the space, seeing the hanging device high overhead loom further and further upwards but growing larger, more details presenting themselves.

  He stopped and turned his gaze slowly toward the edges of the enclosure. No skeleton, no bracings, nothing intended to hold the thing suspended. Nothing he could pull loose or break or rip from the wall. He would probably have to tear the whole circumference of the skin of the place to make the hanging device drop to the floor. And there was nothing to throw to try and disable –

  A stinging whine of noise cut through the air as a brilliant, incandescent light shot down from the suspended thing, causing Roger to flinch and whirl back, casting his gaze upwards. The suspended machine had suddenly sprung to life. A thick, blinding beam of pure white light was pouring into the center of the floorless patch in the middle of the space.

  The whole building shuddered and Roger could feel the floor beneath his feet tremble.

  Then the strange wave of something boiled over him, filling the huge space. Some imperceptible something that caused the dome to sag, the thin steel skeleton holding up the device moaning in protest. Roger heard the rapid crack, and the flooring beneath his feet gave way. He landed in the soggy ground that spread out a couple of foot under the artificial surface, and instantly began to sink.

  Above him the structure continued to whine and shiver as the gravitational field beneath the device changed, increasing rapidly.

  He felt himself being pulled, sucked down into the sodden ground, and looked around wildly, searching for something to anchor himself. Without thinking, he shot out a hand and closed his fingers around the support structure for the flooring and laid back, spreading his mass as flat as he could. Then he wriggled over onto his chest and delicately began to pull himself free of the capturing ooze. At last he managed to pull his legs free of the sucking mud and carefully reached up to try and hoist himself back onto the flooring above him.

  It gave way with a sharp snap and slapped flat on the swampy mess in which he now lay. But it did not sink. It merely settled. Roger gripped its farthest edge and slid himself slowly onto it, then reached up and slapped down the next section of plastic.

  Whatever was happening was happening right now, he realized. But he was helpless. He had no way to rip the machine down from so high overhead, and nothing to block the searing beam, perhaps interrupt whatever it was intended to accomplish.

  Oh, he suddenly realized. I do have something.

  He reached up to slap down the next piece of flooring, and the next, hauling himself over them like stepping stones in a roiling stream, toward the place where the beam was now drilling into the bare ground below the flooring, causing it to sizzle and glow.

  At the place where the beam was now beginning to cook the soggy mush that was the ground, he could make out through the blazing beam of light a container of some kind, sitting on a low platform at the eye of the light. Deep within it, something dark was just forming a single dot of pure black within the blast of light. The black spot seemed to ripple and quiver, and then seemed to become more solid, more substantial. More real.

  At last he had crawled to the area where the flooring stopped to allow the light clean access to the container.

  He paused to shoot a glance up toward the origin of the light above him and squinted against its blinding brilliance. But it wasn’t hot, he realized. All light, no heat. But was it light? There was something odd about it.

  He pulled his gaze back down, wriggled his body sideways, and rolled sharply off the supporting shard of flooring right into the beam.

  Shooting out his arms, he swept up the container, landing on it, curling it in tight against his chest, shielding it from the illuminated attack from above.

  For the first time in his life, Roger felt pain.

  For the first time in his life, he screamed.

  Something impacted his body, hard, and he felt himself being pressed, driven, into the soggy muck, the container being buried beneath him. But he shot out one arm, wide and tense, willing himself to stay afloat.

  Then the light shattered, its orderly beam splattering off his back in all directions to reflect on every surface, every confining enclosure within the huge dome. In a second the air within the space heated
like a broiling oven and began to expand.

  The temperature shot upwards and in seconds the strong, pliant plastic of the walls began to glow, incandesce, then ignite spontaneously.

  Inside the container on which he lay the weary batteries that had sustained the miraculous magnetic field died away.

  The monstrous nucleus, freed from its confinement, did what it had been straining to do since its creation.

  It detonated.

  Olga Nevski, was walking across the wide yard of her isolated farmhouse with the basket of kernels for the chickens when the light flashed on the distant horizon. She stopped and peered toward it. It was as if bright sunlight was reflecting on some shining object.

  The boom of the blast hit seconds later and the ground shuddered.

  The basket slipped from her grip and hit the dirt, spraying its bounty everywhere.

  Far into space above the site, several satellites received conflicting data. In the isolated deeper regions of Russia, a blast of pure light exploded outwards toward the Heavens. This would normally have been interpreted by the onboard software as the bloom of a missile launch or a detonation. But other sensors picked up no trace of the accompanying energy wave that was a natural byproduct of an explosion. Nor, surprisingly, was there any other sort of radiation. No gamma rays, alpha waves or any of the other emissions one would expect with a nuclear blast. Nothing but this single, sudden, bright light.

  The onboard software of each of the satellites ran a quick diagnostic, and concluded an anomaly had occurred. It bundled the recorded data into digital pulses, encoded them and broadcast them down to the surface, where puzzled technicians would wonder over the strange data until eventually someone came, collected it and they were told to forget ever having seen it.

  The dome and several thousand square yards of the surrounding soggy ground had vanished, leaving a bare hole, several times the height of a man, into which the remaining water around the edges of the crater was beginning to drip. In time most of the surrounding ground would drain its excess water into first this deep pond, finally this new lake, leaving the vegetation rich soil in its wake. But whatever had been here, whatever had caused that first blast those many years ago, had made this a cursed place which no one would approach; that thing was now gone. Something had been slammed shut.