by Jim Brown
Dean was within four feet of the object now. He could feel the heat rising from it, smell the burned wood and scorched metal. The wind shifted, wafting smoke in the opposite direction. For just a moment he could see . . .
“Dean? Dean, you really shouldn’t go any farther.” Piper’s words were lost to a new sound. A humming in his head. The resonating sound of an idea being born. He pulled out a white handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose, then stepped around the wreckage into the smoke. The stench was powerful, the atmosphere acidic. But he was on to something. His mind was calculating, figuring, reasoning.
He stopped.
Something in the wreckage was moving.
Piper felt her heart climb up her throat. Dean was gone. Swallowed by the white smoke like Jonah by the whale. “Dean, Dean?”
Her appeals went unanswered. The day was quiet. Dead calm. Piper realized she had not seen or heard so much as a bird since they arrived. The only sound was the faint tick, tick, tick of cooling metal. What was it Jerry had said about radiation? What if it was radioactive?
She didn’t know. But she did know that looking at it, being near it, caused her senses to buzz, the fine white hairs on her arms and neck to rise.
Something touched the back of her hand. She jerked as if bitten, swatting at it. Ash. A quarter-size flake of gray-white ash. That’s all. What was she expecting? E.T.? Hadn’t she told Dean she didn’t believe in spaceships?
Well, he doesn’t believe in ghosts, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real.
She was about to dismiss the concept as ridiculous when something in the smoke – in the wreckage – moved.
And it wasn’t Dean.
“John?”
“I see it.” John brought the shotgun up, the butt pressing against his shoulder. “Boys.”
She could hear the crisp snap of holster straps being undone, the scuff of metal on leather as weapons were pulled free. Jerry held his gun in a firm, two-handed grip. Coye held his in the same grip but with less security. The barrel wavered. Maybe the thing in the smoke wasn’t the only threat?
“Dean?” she called again, her voice rife with a new urgency. “Dean, get out of there.”
Bang, bang, ka-chow.
Her first thought was of a gunshot; someone was shooting at them. Then she realized the sound was too metallic. It was the noise of metal pulling free. The wind shifted; the entire front of the machine was revealed.
Ka-chow, ka-chow.
For the first time Piper noticed a small, rectangular door turned on its side like a downward-angled coffin.
Ka-chow.
The sound was coming from that door. Something – something was coming out.
The door popped open with a jerk. A chicken flew out. Then, through the haze, she saw him – Dean was crawling through the opening.
Dean?
He was coughing, his handkerchief covering his mouth. Soot and ash dusted his hair and face. His eyes were red and stinging. He waved away the smoke, then bent at the waist, hands on his knees, and coughed for several seconds.
When he was able to speak, he straightened up. “The whole left side is open. This is just part of it.”
More things moved in the smoke. Chickens, she now realized.
“Part of what?” the sheriff asked.
Dean gestured with his handkerchief. “Look at it.”
“Is it a spaceship?” Coye said. “Lord God, it is, ain’t it?”
“Look at it upside down,” Dean suggested, then succumbed to another coughing jag.
Piper and the two deputies cocked their heads to the right, as Dean had done earlier.
“Yep, it’s a spaceship, all right. An honest-to-goodness flying saucer, ‘cept it ain’t flying no more.”
“Keep looking.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jerry whispered. “Sheriff, do you realize what this is?”
“What?” Piper demanded. “I don’t get it. Is it a spaceship?”
“Not unless it was made in Kansas,” Dean said.
John, who had remained stoic, nodded. “It’s a silo, at least half of one. A common grain silo.”
Dean nodded. “See the smoke? Notice the color? White. That means something humid is burning, hay or feed. That’s why I knew it was safe.”
“A silo? But where did it come from?” Piper asked.
“The same place as the truck.”
“You still think someone is flying around Black Valley setting things on fire and dropping them out of a cargo plane?” John asked.
“Possibly. They could have flown above the storm.”
“But that’s crazy,” Coye said.
“Oh, and a spaceship isn’t?” Jerry countered.
“Go on, Doc. Finish your thought.”
Piper could tell that Dean wasn’t sure that he could. Like someone playing chess in his head, Dean was deep in concentration, but had come across a particularly difficult problem. “You said possibly. You don’t sound convinced.”
“I couldn’t examine the truck wreckage, but if it’s like this -- I don’t know.” Dean chewed on his lower lip. “Even if a plane could have flown high enough not to be caught in the storm, the thing is, both the truck and the silo were burning.”
“And?” Piper prompted.
“There’s no pour pattern. Nothing to indicate an accelerant was used. This is something else. This wasn’t a normal fire.”
John’s radio squawked. He answered, then nodded to the group. “Let’s get back to the station. The chopper’s coming in.”
25
Dean spent the next five minutes making measurements and taking notes. Afterward he asked to be dropped off at the school. Piper rode back to the station with John; her truck was in the hospital parking lot. John studied the short brunette out of the corner of his eye. She was one to watch, a coiled spring that could go off at any minute.
John had decided there was only one way she could have known about the burning truck; she was involved somehow. And for all his logic, Dean couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t see past his penis. John had seen how the two looked at each other, like a couple of hungry dogs at a thick slice of T-bone.
John grimaced.
“You okay?”Piper asked.
He felt color rising in his face, as if he had just been caught playing with himself. “Headache.”
When they arrived at the sheriff’s department, the Sikorsky helicopter was the size of a quarter on the horizon. Jerry and Coye went to alert the hospital staff and to help prep the bodies for transport. John waited beside his squad car, hat in hand so as not to have it knocked off his head by the helicopter’s tornadic wash.
Piper went inside to use the facilities, leaving John temporarily alone in the parking lot with his thoughts and the incoming helicopter. The hospital parking lot was the only place large enough to accommodate the big machine. Luckily it wasn’t very full.
Course not. Most of those inside are dead.
No. That wasn’t true. Nathan was in there, somewhere. Half out of his mind with worry. He had still managed to issue a proclamation apprising the citizenry of Black Valley that “due to an unfortunate accident to the south and inclement weather to the north, the town is temporarily cut off from the rest of the world.” The notice went on to assure residents that there was nothing to be concerned about, this was only a temporary situation, the pass would be open soon. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was feverishly working on a temporary substitute for the destroyed Willamette Bridge.
The last part was an out-and-out lie but a nice touch. A reassuring touch.
The Sikorsky was now the size of a child’s wagon. Its gyrating blades and hearty engine reverberated in the cold, still air. With a backdrop of churning ink-black clouds, the brightly colored machine looked like a special effect, a dab of color inser
ted into an otherwise black-and-white TV commercial.
Listen to me, Sheriff. Listen! You’ve got to tell them to turn around.
The stranger’s words thundered in John’s head. It was the only time the man had seemed rational. John shifted his weight from foot to foot, then sat back on the still-warm hood of the police cruiser.
Tell the state police to turn around. It’s almost here.
What? John wondered, as the massive machine filled a quarter of the sky. What is almost here?
Piper doubled over. Her hands and feet tingled – no, burned – with the sting of 1,001 red-hot straight pins. A woman was beside her. John’s assistant, Maggie Dane.
“You okay, dear?” she asked.
It had hit Piper without warning. She had been returning from the ladies’ room when it happened. That feeling. A billion dead souls dancing on my grave.
Piper forced herself to straighten; her lips were unbelievably dry. Yet her eyes were blurred with tears. She looked around the room with her water-hazed vision.
“Dear?”
“She okay?”another person asked.
Piper blinked away the blur. Her eyes locked on the row of tall windows that covered most of the north side of the building. “It’s coming.”
“What, dear? Are you about to throw up?”
“It’s coming. It’s coming,” she began to shout with increasing volume. “It’s coming. It’s coming. Everybody get down. Now. Everybody on the floor.”
Piper dropped to the carpet. Several others began to squat. “Down!” she screamed.
“What’s she talking about?” a man asked.
Piper grabbed Maggie Dane by the arm and pulled the woman to the floor. “Down. Now –”
The man opened his mouth to ask a question.
The windows exploded.
A thousand daggers of broken glass struck his body, which jerked like a marionette with a knotted string. His mouth was still open. Blood bubbled from his lips.
Chairs toppled. Lamps went flying. Computer monitors exploded, then flipped on their sides. The building shook as a hot, searing wind charged into the room.
It happened without a preamble. No wavering, no fluctuation. It just happened. Somewhere in the back of his mind John was aware of glass shattering, screams, the tortured sound of rampant destruction, but his mind couldn’t get past the helicopter. One moment it was hovering in the air, an impressive machine, a bright-orange-and-white testament to the technology of man – and the next?
The hulking machine slammed into the earth with impossible speed. The ground exploded with dirt and metal and fire. John wobbled on his feet, the building protecting him from whatever force had smashed the Sikorsky and was shattering the north face. Asphalt and machine parts surged into the sky, then tumbled back to earth.
Embers struck John’s shoulders and head. He brushed away burning bits without acknowledgment. His eyes still locked on the crumpled corpse of the once magnificent machine.
The screams came as an afterthought, like thunder trying to catch lightning.
John ran toward the building. He knew without checking that no one could have survived the violent crash.
Entering the sheriff’s department was like entering the ruins of a battlefield. Nothing higher than a desktop remained standing. Glass crunched beneath. Long green-brown pine needles covered much of the surface area.
Pine needles? Where had they come from?
Piper was bleeding from a cut to her forehead. Maggie appeared unscathed. Jerry stood over the bloody body of a copy machine repairman screaming for a doctor. Coye stood beside him, fingers in his mouth, crying.
Before John could bark an order, a doctor and two orderlies entered the room and rushed to the man’s side. He’s dead, John started to say, then realized he couldn’t know that for sure. Yet he did. Why?
Because you’ve seen it before.
The image of Meredith Gamble rose from his subconscious.
“Check the rest of the building,” John barked. Jerry gladly relinquished his charge to the medical professionals. “Cheevers, get your hands out of your mouth and find out what happened. How many buildings are damaged? How many people hurt?”
The deputy nodded and ran out the back door, his footsteps crunching.
“Maggie, you okay?”
“Yeah, thanks to her,” she said, nodding to Piper. “I’ll call in the National Guard and contact OSP. What about you?”
It’s almost here. It’s almost here.
“I’m going downstairs to find out what hit us and how that bastard Elijah knew it was going to happen.”
Shock faded, replaced by anger and unflinching fury. John had been mad before but never like this. He tried to settle his temper. Sometimes, sometimes, when it got going . . . it was like a wildfire, a massive, out-of-control burn that charred and chewed anything and anyone that got in his way. Sometimes, when his blood was hot and he could physically feel it pounding in his veins, he would get “the urge”.
Judy had seen it. It had been impossible to keep it from his younger sister. But she had never felt it, never been a victim of its fury, thank God. His little hissy-fits, as she called them, frightened her – a silly name for a serious problem. But he had been able to hide one thing from her.
The intensity.
She never knew how oppressive and controlling the urge could be. Sometimes . . . he just wanted to pound something – or better still, somebody – to jelly. It was that uncontrollable side, that wild spot, that made John Evans embrace the philosophy of practicality with such zest. Only a practical man could hold the fire at bay.
But as he opened the door and entered the narrow hall between the holding cells, John Evans was not a practical man. His hands were clenched into fists, teeth grinding, face flushed from the fury of the internal burn.
It’s almost here.
The stranger, Elijah had known, somehow he had known, and now he was going to tell John how or he was going to die. John grabbed the bars and shoved the keys to the holding cell into the lock.
But his anger was swatted down as quickly as the Sikorsky from the sky. The holding cell was empty.
Elijah was gone.
26
Something about the burn marks. Dean sprinted down the white and brown tiled hall, fumbled with his keys, then hurriedly let himself into his classroom laboratory. A state-of-the-arts computer with a large thin monitor sat on his desk, courtesy of NxTech, part of their courtship of him. Thank you, NxTech.
He played the keyboard like a concert pianist. Within minutes he had found the program he wanted and began to enter data.
His clothes reeked of smoke, but there was no time to shower or even change. He had to follow this line of thought while it was fresh. Judy had once described Dean as a scientific bird dog chasing down the scent of an idea. But if something happened to break that process, to interrupt the hunt, he would lose his way and often his quarry – until he crossed the scent again.
His notes safely transcribed from paper to machine, he sat back in a plush new Herman Miller swivel chair – thank you, NxTech – and let the idea settle.
The burns, the burns. If only he could get a look at that truck.
Dean steepled his fingers, began humming some tune from a rock opera, and slowly tapped his lips. There was no pour pattern, he knew that much. When a fire was started by an accelerant there were always certain areas that burned hotter than others. In arson fires, for example, the splash patterns of, say, gasoline can be traced by how deeply wood is charred. But there was nothing like that on the silo.
Dean pulled his worn wire notebook from his breast pocket and thumbed rapidly through it until he reached the crude drawing he had made of the wreckage. Cone shape, just the top quarter of the silo cut off diagonally at about a thirty-five-degree angle. He had shaded in the scorching with
a pencil. A dozen or so elongated, almost perfectly straight burn marks radiated out from bottom to top.
Burn marks.
“On the outside,” Dean said, surprising himself. “It wasn’t an internal fire, at least not solely. The metal was scorched from an external source.”
He returned to the keyboard, playing the measurements in different variations. The pattern was simple – straight but of varying lengths. What did that mean?
“Burn marks, burn marks.” He stood and began to pace. It was a trait he shared with Piper. Thinking of the smart young woman almost broke his concentration, but he forced his thoughts back in line. He held his hands behind his back and studied the floor as he walked. There was a visible trail between Dean’s desk and the lab tables where the scientist repeatedly traipsed back and forth, back and forth, lost in a maze of facts, figures, and abstract conception.
Something about the burns. “I’ve seen those patterns before. Somewhere –”
He stopped, mentally thumbing through the thick files of his memory. Patterns. That was the key. He resumed pacing.
“Patterns,” he said aloud. “It’s not burn marks – at least, not just burn marks.”
He laced his hands, leaving the index fingers extended, and tapped his lips, marking time like a metronome. A spark of static electricity shot from his fingertip to his lip, pricking him like a pin. He jerked in surprise, shook it off , locked his hands once again behind his back, and paced.
“It’s a blast pattern,” he said suddenly, his voice nearly shouting. Dean felt his blood surging through his veins. The world around him seemed to fade as his mind seized upon the idea. “Not from a fire but from an explosion. That’s why the metal is scored on the outside. The silo was blown into that yard.”
The brick. That’s where he had seen similar scorch marks before, on the brick that had shot through his classroom.
Something else. Something that had plagued him since first seeing Meredith Gamble’s shredded body. Velocity. The shards of glass that had killed Meredith were traveling at tremendous speed. Speed that, until now, he couldn’t identify. Now.