She quickly pried the disgusting steely fingers from her wrist. In a final defiance of the General, she did not toss the hand into the hole as Whelan thought she might. Turning, she gave it a great toss across the floor as far removed from the anti-matter as possible. She said,
“If he’s going to rule in hell than he will have to do it with only one hand.”
Terri did not intent to let out a giggle, it just happened.
Lost in thought, for a silent moment they stood looking at the hole. In desperation, knowing that it was not going to work but needing to try anyway, the Professor again rang the bell. The anti-matter reacted to the stimulus by again flaring up and crackling like a thunderstorm. Lynda reached over and put her hand on the bell. She said,
“Give it a rest Professor, it is over. It is clearly not the secret vibration you are looking for. All it does is irritate the anti-matter.”
Defeated, the dejected Professor slowly put the bell back into his pocket. It was clear that his one dream of escaping to a place that understood him was not going to happen. There was not going to be a Quagmire’s Gate or an escape from Roads End. He was doomed to be forever incarcerated in what he sadly knew was an insane asylum. It was the end of a dream. Lynda understood his look of devastation. What he once said to her echoed in her head, ‘what good is genius if you’re the only one who understands it? That just makes you the crazy one’. She felt sorry for him. Lowering his head, he turned toward the elevator and slowly walked away.
Lynda looked past the Professor and noticed that the alien female was already standing by the elevator cage silently indicating her desire to leave, to get out of here. This prompted Lynda to say,
“Obviously we can’t do anything here. I already know how to get the anti-matter turned off but we have to get back to my apartment to do it. Let’s take this young lady’s hint and get away from this hell hole as fast as possible.”
Terri had no idea what her mother was talking about and did not care. Finally, mother and daughter agreed on something. Get the hell out of here. Terri started for the elevator with Whelan and her mother close behind.
Just as she entered the elevator cage, Lynda turned and saw the smoke. She pointed in that direction and said to Whelan,
“One of the bullets must have impacted the computer banks. If there is going to be a fire then let’s get out of here as fast as we can.”
It was sound advice but for some reason, Whelan stood frozen staring at the bank of damaged computers. This prompted her to ask,
“What’s the matter? It is just a fire right? Come on, let’s go.”
It dawned on her that he was not looking at the smoking computer bank but rather at the flying saucer. Turning in that direction she too spotted the danger. Her Australian heritage leapt to the forefront,
“Holy Kangaroo shit!”
Even the alien girl was staring in astonishment. Lynda frantically pressed the ‘up’ button but because Whelan had not closed the retaining gate nothing happened. In desperation, the alien’s little hand was frantically pointing up toward the exit door.
The smoking computer bank was the control panel for the apparatus supporting the saucer. Somehow, the wayward bullet activated a program that instructed the steel support girders to roll forward, toward the hole. The rolling wheel was only a foot away from falling in. Lynda remembered what the Professor had said, ‘if the saucer falls into the hole, it would be like tossing a match into a bucket of gasoline’.
Realizing that there was no way of stopping it and they would all be dead within seconds if the saucer toppled in, Lynda did what came naturally. She panicked and yelled,
“Press the ‘up’ button. What the hell are you waiting for?”
Whalen quickly pressed the button but nothing happened. Lynda thought it was because there were too many on the ramp. She looked at the group and assessed who was the heaviest. Whelan understood her thought and sadly realized that it was him. Accepting his fate, he wanted to hug Lynda before jumping off but just as he made a move to do that, the cage lurched and started to lift, albeit slowly and reluctantly.
It was a proportionate ride to the top. The closer they got to the door the closer the steel beam supporting the saucer inched toward the deadly anti-matter. The way Lynda saw it there was a real chance they would not make it. The wheel grinding its way closer to atoms pushed chunks of resisting concrete into the depth to join the members of the Lord of the Under.
When the anti-matter started chewing on the wheel of the framework holding up the saucer, everybody panicked. Somehow thinking that it was going to make the elevator move faster, Lynda repeatedly pushed the ‘up’ button. With the support legs weakened, the saucer started to precariously lean over the hole. She wondered what was preventing it from slipping in right now. When one of the main girders holding the saucer snapped, all eyes were frozen to the saucer. As a burst of ante-matter encompassed a small section of the saucer a thunderous roar of crackling static filled the chamber. Lightning bolts sizzled through the cavernous room.
All too quickly, the floor down there started to disappear. There was now a gapping crater down there so deep that it appeared to go through the center of the Earth. With the floor and everything below gone to the predatory anti-matter, the bottom of the chamber walls became the next victim. Although the floor had disappeared in a flash, the erosion up the walls seemed slower, at least by comparison. To all the horrified eyes up in the elevator, the creeping death was inching toward them. Lynda wondered if escape from this immediate danger would be fruitless if the entire world was only going to suffer the same fate anyway. Only a few inches of the saucer had touched the stream and yet all this had happened. She hated to think what was going to happen when the steel girders finally gave way and the whole thing toppled in.
Suddenly the elevator came to a jolting halt and Lynda thought it was because the anti-matter had finally disabled it. She thought they were trapped and next to feel the pain of disintegration. She snapped alert when hearing Terri yell,
“Get your ass in gear mom.”
Confused, she turned around to see that the door had opened and all were in the scrub-down room except her.
The mad dash through the halls and toward yet another elevator seemed to take forever. As Whelan had hoped, the elevator was still down and the doors were open waiting for them. If the doors were closed, or worse, the elevator was gone, there would not have been time to wait for it. With everybody crammed into the elevator, the door closed all too slowly. Through the closing gap, all eyes stared into the great hall collapsing before their very eyes. Just before the doors closed the last thing they saw was the receptionist’s desk sacrificed to the hunger.
Chapter 31
They all hoped that the rude jolt and sudden stop was a sign that they had reached the top. Lynda, like the rest, held her breath waiting for the door to open. That was when Terri screamed. The far wall of the elevator started to crackle with sounds of a mini thunderstorm and flashes of lightening. In an effort to distance her from it, she pushed hard into the others but because it was crowded, there was not much room to escape the inevitable.
Panic filled the elevator. Everybody was pressing as hard as they could against the elevator door attempting to make themselves as compact as possible. Horrified eyes observed as a corner of the floor all too quickly started to drip away and inch toward them. The little alien girl was the closest to the danger but seemed reconciled to her cruel fate. With anti-matter just inches from her feet, Lynda swopped her up and held her tight.
Desperate to get the door open, Whelan and Terri frantically clawed at it. Their desperate task was made near impossible because both the Professor and Lynda were pressing hard into them. Whelan yelled to anybody outside for help. Aside from a creeping death inching toward her, Lynda’s other fear was that nobody was left in the compound to help.
A heavy heave from the crowd pressed Whelan’s face harder to the door. Suddenly, in a crack between the doors, a stee
l rod shot through only missing his face by inches. All he could do was watch as it twisted back and forth prying the door open. When it did and the gap was wide enough, like a thunderous avalanche tearing down a hill, all five burst out to safe ground.
Doctor Raymond Nelson was in the way of the rush and barely managed to jump aside. With a crowbar in hand, he watched as they ran past him. Still holding tight to the alien girl, Lynda was the last out. Seeing a stunned Raymond standing there, with feet still racing, she had the presence of mind to yell, “Run!” Raymond was no fool. The panic was contagious and so he dropped the crowbar and joined in the escape.
At what they thought to be a safe distance, they stopped and Lynda turned around to see the damage. For the first time in her life, Terri heard a burst of sexually explicit words erupt from her stunned mother. The silo was gone. Like an erupting volcano spewing fire and lava, anti-matter burst skyward. It now ate the only thing available to its ravenous appetite, oxygen molecules. As they all gazed into the sky, into the forever of the beam, the Professor broke the silence and said,
“There is no stopping it. It will go on like that forever or at least until it gets to the end of the universe. This planet will soon be nothing more than a floating atom in a new dimension.”
The great wall of cascading anti-matter was ravenous. It was a giant tidal wave roaring toward them and death was riding the crest like an insane surfer.
Lynda put the alien girl down and turned to Raymond. He looked rather proud of his heroic action. She asked,
“Where is everybody? What happened to all the people?”
“I didn’t know what was happening down there but knew it was dangerous so I convinced everybody to run into the desert and wait. Lynda gave him a big hug and praised him for his action.
“You did a good thing Raymond. You probably saved everybody’s life.”
Caught up in the moment, Whelan too hugged Raymond and said,
“You are a hell of a man Doc. You done good.”
Suddenly both became embarrassed over the display of affection. Lynda grinned and said,
“If you two love birds are finished, let’s get the hell out of here.”
They all started running away. Except Lynda.
When Whelan realized she was not among the fleeing group, he stopped and turned around. He saw her standing there frozen to the earth. Scared and confused he blurted out a rather harsh,
“What the hell are you doing woman? Come on.”
She did not mentally formulate the words. They just spewed forth on their own. She was surprised and hopeful that she knew what she was going to do.
“No, I’m going to turn it off. Just make sure everybody is safe. Go! Go!”
Whelan did not want to leave Lynda behind but as he stood there waiting for her to join them he saw something in her he had never seen before. If adrenaline had not been gushing through him, he might have noticed that he liked it. It was the power of command. Her stern eyes filled to the brim with authority and conviction. She was ordering him to go. She again strongly commanded, “Go!” His intuitive military training prevailed and forced him to obey. The Professor said,
“She’s bossy.”
In Raymond’s mind, he and Lynda were colleagues. By that very reasoning he was not about to leave her fending for herself. As the others turned and made a dash for the mountains, Lynda ran in the opposite direction. Raymond watched them get smaller, turned and ran after Lynda. Although he had no idea what his partner was up to and never considered the folly of it, his only thought was that she should not be doing it alone.
When Whelan caught up to Terri, she realized that her mother was not with him. She turned to see her running back to the advancing wave of anti-matter. Just as Terri took quick steps to run after her, Whelan grabbed her by the arm and said,
“We have to go.”
She struggled to break the steel grip and screamed,
“No. My mom will die!”
His defense of Lynda’s apparent irrational action was weak.
“Let her go, she obviously has something in mind.”
Seeing her mother run toward a sure death and despite a desire to stop her, Terri felt defeated. There was nothing she could do to stop her.
With Whelan still tugging at Terri’s arm, she saw her mother disappear behind a building. Fearing that was the last time she would she her mom, in spite of that terrible thought, anger surfaced. Not understanding why her mother had run back, only that she was leaving her daughter, she yelled after her,
“I hate you.”
Whelan pulled her back and said,
“You don’t mean that.”
However, in the heat of the moment, she did. Recognizing their danger, Terri turned away, swooped up the alien girl and joined the Professor and Whelan in what they hoped was an escape from death. As they ran away, Terri understood that Whelan was correct, that she did not mean what her anger had voiced. She was glad her mother did not hear it.
As Lynda reached the entrance of her complex, she turned to judge the speed of the expanding anti-matter. It was clear that she did not have a lot of time but by the same reasoning thought it to be adequate for what she had in mind. It was then she saw faithful Raymond running toward her. Although not pleased that she had somehow encourage another to join her in a high risk move, she was nonetheless pleased to see that she did not have to face it alone. She yelled at him,
“Stay here and warn me when the crater gets to this building.”
Catching his breath, he gasped,
“Okay. What are you going to do?”
“I’m sort of betting that I know how to stop this thing. If it doesn’t work and my apartment falls to the anti-matter you run to the mountains where it’s safe okay.”
Although he was quick to realize that if her apartment became a victim to the anti-matter she would be in the middle of it, he nevertheless caught his breath and nodded.
As Lynda charged up the flight of stairs to her apartment, she knew what she had said to Raymond was a lie. If what she had in mind does not work then there is no safe place in this compound, including the far mountains. The Professor’s calculations of how fast the Earth will succumb to the anti-matter came to mind. As he had so ominously stated, eventually no place on Earth is going to be safe.
A bold move like this requires rational thought and conviction for success. She had neither. Everything she had in mind and hoped to God was the right thing to do hinged on a flimsy hunch. That was her weight, her only hesitation. She was not sure what she was about to do was even going to work. Nevertheless, what else was there to do? Run to the mountains to observe from on high the anti-matter racing toward them. Then where can they run and for how long?
At the top of the stairs she burst into her apartment and came to a grinding halt at the computer. Because it was hooked up to a Sat-link she was not worried about severed cables. Her only thought was, ‘how are the batteries?’ A quick glance confirmed that the battery was just barely within the green zone. After a futile attempt at calming herself she quickly realized the impossibility of that attempt. She was not going to calm down and the hole was getting closer.
It was now or never. “Oh please God make this work.” As she was about to start typing, a tremendous crackling of twisting and exploding wood roared through her living room. She snapped around to investigate and to her horror saw that the far side of her apartment was missing. She did not have the time she was hoping for. Raymond ran through the door and in a panic announced what was already evident,
“The anti-matter has reached your building.”
She screamed at him, “Run!”
The power of her command forced his feet to move and he ran outside.
With the walls gone, she was able to see the mountains in the distance. Under these conditions, they did not look as serene as before. Another reality quickly resurfaced, the anti-matter was gorging ever closer. The realization hit her hard and terribly. She knew she had time to typ
e the message but not to escape should the savior of the world not receive it. Her final prayer was not to God.
“Goodbye Terri, I love you so much.”
Amidst the roar of crashing walls, twisting timber and rolling death, she snapped out of her reflection and turned to more important considerations than her daughter’s safety. Being a martyr did not sit well with her. She did not have the conviction of faith to feel better about sacrificing her life for others let alone the planet. However, that was her cross to bear. Suddenly the kitchen crashed into goodness knows what world. Maybe General Irsthill needed a stove down there. With eyes glued to the screen, that cryptic message was still flashing, ‘Will turn off in trade for pilot.’ With furniture disappearing all around her, she quickly typed ‘deal’ and hit the ‘send’ key
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