“She’s right, isn’t she?” I say, raising my voice beyond her soft whisper. “Radiation is going to kill all of us.”
Pretzel swallows the lump in his throat and I wonder if he’s about to lie. He looks me in the eye, clenches his lips tight and struggles to speak. “Josh—I don’t know. We were below the brow of the hill. There was a helluva lot of dirt and rock between us and the initial blast. We should be okay.”
“Should be?” I ask.
He raises his hands in defense, searching for something else to say.
“Ah, the cloud drifted away from us. We should escape the worst of the fallout.”
There’s that word again. Should. This time, though, I let it slide. Like Pretzel, I want to believe we’re going to make it, even if it seems impossible. Garcia, though, was on the ridge. He took the full force of the radiation from the blast. He hangs his head, speaking with slow deliberation.
“If I’m going to hell, I’m taking these fuckers with me.”
“But… but…”
“But what?” Garcia gestures toward his eyes. “I’m blind? Ah, don’t let that fool you, kid. I’m a Navy SEAL. I’m trained to operate in complete darkness. I can field strip a SAW blindfolded in under ten seconds to clear a jam.”
He pulls a pistol from his holster, resting it on his open palm, feeling the weight as he tosses it lightly.
“They taught us to clear pitch-black rooms. Three tangos in each one—three bad guys along with three hotels—hostages. The door gets blown off its hinges with a breaching charge and we run in. We were wearing noise-cancelling headphones, so to us the explosion sounded like a pop. Everything below 70 decibels was amplified, though. Everything above that was muted.
“With no vision, we could hear the difference between sand shoes and boots, the rustle of clothing as a firearm is raised, the click of a magazine being pushed in place, the slide on a Glock being pulled back.”
His head moves as he speaks, darting slightly as he remembers his training.
“Sometimes, it was what you didn’t hear that told you where they were. Hostages would cringe, ducking or dropping to the floor, but in one corner, no echo, no noise at all. Someone standing there deathly still. Bam, Bam. Double tap. Tango down.”
He smiles, staring past me with bandaged eyes, not able to see me but knowing precisely where I am. “Don’t worry about me, Josh.” But I do. I don’t want Petty Officer Garcia to die.
All his bravado is a lie, allowing him to hide from the only enemy he can’t defeat—death itself. I don’t want to lose anyone else. Not him. Not my dad. Not Pretzel or Jana or Mordecai. Deep down, I know I’m being naive. We all saw the nuclear explosion. If we weren’t protected by the hill, if we hadn’t fallen into the water, we’d be dead. It’s a chilling realization and one I quickly move on from.
Tears roll down Jana’s cheeks. She must feel it too—the helplessness. I guess we’re all dealing with this in our own way. Pretzel doubles down on stuff, pushing harder. Mordecai retreats into the scriptures. Garcia hardens. But Jana and I? They’re right. We’re just kids. We like to think of ourselves as adults. Physically, we’re in our teens, but mentally neither of us are ready for this. I wonder if any of them really are? Is it all just a pretense? Are they putting on a front? Could it be that Jana and I are the only ones dealing with this honestly? Pretzel’s silence following what Garcia said makes me suspect he’s struggling far more than he lets on. Finally, he speaks his mind, speaking with unfounded resolve.
“We’re going to get you out of here.”
Garcia doesn’t reply. He doesn’t agree.
There’s no moon tonight. With no artificial light for over a hundred miles, the night is dark. The stars are radiant. One in particular has our attention. A pencil-thin line leads from beyond the cliff, reaching up into space, slowly disappearing from sight, but clearly leading to the alien star. I guess, technically, it’s not a star, as NASA has confirmed it’s an asteroid, which is just a rock, and it’s nowhere near as distant as the actual stars. It’s not even as far away as the Moon, but it looks like a star to me.
Jana nestles in beside me, wanting to keep warm, so I put my arm around her. Without saying anything, she rests her hand on my chest. Trust. Comfort. These are the things we need, but will they be enough for us to make it through the night?
Mordecai asks, “What are they doing?”
Rather than appearing stationary like a laser beam, the thin strand of light reaching into the sky seems to crackle with energy. It’s as though lightning is racing back and forth along the cable.
“This isn’t entirely unexpected.”
That gets our attention. Pretzel thinks for a moment. He’s trying to distill years of research and various scientific discussions into a few brief points.
“Earth is like a battery—only instead of one end being positive and the other negative, our molten interior is positive, which means…”
He gestures with his hands for someone else to complete his sentence, so I say, “The surface is negative.”
“Exactly. Overall, the entire system is neutral, but isolate just one part and it carries charge.”
“So the aliens?” I ask.
“When they lowered the elevator, it was like connecting a wire to a battery. Current starts to flow, wanting to equalize.”
“So that’s what we’re seeing?” I ask, somewhat relieved the crackling flicker of light isn’t the makings of some alien death ray.
“Pretty much. It gets a little more complex—static electricity in the atmosphere, the Van Allen belts, there are a few other factors, but that’s the essence of what’s happening.”
“What do they want?” Garcia asks. From the intensity of Mordecai’s gaze, I suspect this is the question burning in his mind as well. Pretzel has a calming effect on us. The temptation is to panic, but there’s something almost hypnotic about listening to the elderly Indian scientist with his soft, distinct accent. His words are measured. Like the surface of the ocean, there’s depth behind each sentence. All we see are the ripples, the waves rolling toward the beach, but there’s so much more beneath each comment.
“This is out of character. The explosion, I mean.” Typical Pretzel, ignoring Garcia’s question and talking about what interests him. “We’re an island among the stars. Imagine Darwin sailing to the Galapagos, roughly a thousand kilometers off the coast of South America. The HMS Beagle anchors off-shore and Darwin rows into a rocky bay. Is there anything out there that can threaten his ship—the Beagle?”
Garcia looks angry, pursing his blistered lips. He shakes his head in disbelief as Pretzel continues, disagreeing with the analogy. Pretzel either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He says, “We don’t know what they want, but we do know they’ve come a helluva long way to get it. That requires planning, patience, dedication, a goal.”
“A goal?” Garcia says. “In case you weren’t paying attention, they just dropped a goddamn nuke on us. This is war. We’re under attack.”
Garcia’s repeating Mordecai’s point, which seems strange to me. I guess they finally agree on something.
“Are we?” Pretzel asks. “Where are their alien war machines? Where are their tripods with their heat rays or whatever? Where’s the invasion force?”
“They bombed us!”
“They bombed the jungle. They came down in the single most inaccessible, sparsely inhabited region along the equator. Apart from touching down over the ocean, there’s no other place they could have selected that was less populated.”
“You’re defending them?” Garcia points at his own face, gesturing toward his eyes but not touching the bandages. “After all this, you’re on their side?”
“I’m not on anyone’s side.”
I feel torn. On one hand, I want to side with Pretzel, but Garcia’s got a point. They leveled the jungle. Dr. O’Brien is dead. Petty Officer Garcia is dying. As for the rest of us, we could be moments away from death and not know it. We had no warning about
the attack. There could be a second at any moment. Seems Garcia is thinking along the same lines, as he says, “Who’s to say they’re not going to drop something bigger? Or start bombing cities?”
“All life is goal oriented.”
“For a scientist,” Brother Mordecai says, “You sure are dumb.”
Pretzel is frustrated. “So, you tell me—what do they want?”
Brother Mordecai is confused.
Pretzel clarifies. “In the Bible. You told us about Ezekiel. What did they want thousands of years ago? Why did they come here back then?”
Mordecai says, “I thought you didn’t believe in the Bible?”
“I don’t, but my beliefs don’t matter. Beliefs are irrelevant. It makes no difference what you or I believe, but if there’s a chance, however slim, that they have been here before then perhaps there’s something we can learn from that.
“We know they exist, right? Before now, we thought we were alone. We looked at the sky and wondered about Fermi’s Paradox—The Great Silence. Well, there’s no question about the existence of life beyond Earth—not any more. The only question is, why are they here?
“Could they have visited us before? It’s not out of the question, so you tell me, why did they come in the days of Ezekiel?”
Mordecai thinks for a moment before answering with a mere two words.
“To talk.”
That gets Pretzel’s attention. He raises an eyebrow in surprise. Mordecai elaborates.
“Ah… there was plenty of revelation in the Old Testament. God talking from a burning bush, angels in the form of men, stuff like that, but there had never been a visitation on this scale, nothing like the device described in Ezekiel—a machine.”
Pretzel leans forward with his elbows on his knees and one hand cupped around his chin. He’s listening intently, searching for clues.
“This was the first time—the only time—there had been something mechanical. Something physical. Something that didn’t originate on this world.”
Pretzel nods, speaking slowly. “What exactly did Ezekiel see?”
“An intricate, complex machine with multiple moving parts. Cogs. Wheels. Fire. And a creature with four heads.”
“Polycephaly?” Pretzel asks, genuinely surprised.
“What’s that?” Jana asks.
“Monozygotic twin embryos fused in utero.”
“You’re not helping,” I say, feeling I need to keep Pretzel on task.
“Ah, conjoined twins. One body. Two heads. Polycephaly occurs across the animal kingdom in humans, cats, cattle, pigs, goats, snakes, turtles. It’s a common theme in mythology. Cerberus was the multi-headed dog guarding the gates of hell, stuff like that.”
Mordecai says, “The seven-headed dragon in the Book of Revelation.”
“Yes.”
“Only this was different,” Mordecai says. “The heads weren’t the same.”
“Oh.” Pretzel replies. I can see he’s bursting with ideas but he keeps quiet, allowing Mordecai to explain further.
“In Ezekiel, the creature that talks has the head of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle.”
Garcia says, “I don’t see the point in any of this.”
“On the contrary,” Pretzel says, “I find it fascinating”
“Why?” I ask.
“Three mammals and a bird is unusual, but these creatures are all quite common, They’re easily recognizable in that they’re used by humans to represent strength. And they’re terrestrial—not alien.”
“And you think that’s significant?” Mordecai asks.
“I don’t know. We’re yet to see if there’s any correlation between what Ezekiel saw and what’s happening now, but if there is, it suggests they’re not a threat—that they want to communicate in terms we can understand.”
Garcia isn’t convinced. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“I don’t know it,” Pretzel replies, getting defensive. “At the moment, there’s not enough data to know anything with any real confidence, but I’m not ruling out any possibilities.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m ruling out,” Garcia says, raising his voice. “Peace. You don’t send a nuclear weapon as a greeting card. The two of you are full of shit.”
“What?” Brother Mordecai says, offended by the notion. “Why would you—”
Without being able to see, Garcia addresses each of them individually, turning slightly to face them as he speaks.
“You think religion has all the answers, while you think science has them. Has it occurred to either of you two geniuses that there might not be an answer? Not one we would accept. Asking why they’re here or why they bombed us could have no more meaning than why you stepped on an ant. There’s no reason. You just did.”
Jana looks at me, but I’m staying out of this. I’m curious about the reasoning of these three adults from entirely different walks of life, but I don’t know what I think. As far as I can tell, there’s no right or wrong, just different perspectives, each with limited value.
Pretzel falls silent, which seems like quite an accomplishment for Petty Officer Garcia. Brother Mordecai clenches his lips, on the verge of saying something but he thinks better of it.
Garcia points at the bandaging wrapped around his head. “This isn’t theoretical. We don’t have the luxury of holding onto pious platitudes. This is real. They’re out there. They’ve signaled their intent.”
“So what do we do?” I ask.
“We get the hell out of Dodge,” Garcia replies. “This is being fought on a scale far larger than a bunch of us wandering around lost in the jungle. Tomorrow, we follow the river down into the valley and hook up with US forces. The army will have set up a cordon, a perimeter surrounding the area. Their priority is going to be containment and then eradication.
“Sorry, Pretzel. Your much lauded First Contact is now the First Interstellar War.”
Pretzel hangs his head in shame, unable to reply.
Romeo/Charlie
My eyes flicker.
Tiny pebbles stick to the outside of my cheek, embedding themselves in my soft skin. I’m not sure how I slept so soundly, as my body aches and just the slightest movement on waking has me grimace in pain, but last night it was as though someone pulled the plug.
The jacket I was using as a pillow lies scrunched up beside me on the beach. I was so exhausted physically and mentally that everything shut down. I roll to one side, with Jana leaning on me, groaning as I shift.
Trying to get comfortable while lying on rocks has to be the stupidest thing ever, but nevertheless, I squirm, wanting to sink into a mattress that’s not there. I brush the pebbles from my cheek, looking up at the sky.
A fighter jet roars in low over the ruins of the jungle. Jana pushes off me, rushing to get to her feet as the plane races in toward us. The engine screams as the fighter curls through the sky, banking as it follows the jagged edge of the plateau, passing right over the cliff. The aircraft is so low I can make out the helmet of the pilot beneath the curved Perspex cockpit. The plane begins to climb, rolling and twisting, turning as it follows some invisible trail in the sky.
“Who is it? Is it one of ours?” Garcia yells over the noise of the engines echoing off the cliff.
“I don’t know.”
We stand on the shore of the rock pool. Water laps at our feet. What started as exuberance quickly turns to horror as it becomes clear the plane is falling apart. There’s no missile strike, no violent explosion, no laser beams that I can see, but over several seconds the fighter breaks up, crumbling into pieces that slowly peel behind it, flipping in the air and tumbling toward the jungle—tail fins, wings, landing gear, fuel pods. Even the canopy breaks away, fluttering behind the fuselage as it continues roaring forward until even it comes apart. I’m expecting to see the pilot eject. I watch for a parachute, but none comes.
Debris falls from the sky, crashing to the jungle. The wreckage lies strewn along the slopes of the plateau. When the fuselag
e hits, there’s a flash of light. A fireball rolls into the clear blue sky. A few seconds later the boom of the explosion washes over us. The silence that follows is painful. None of us are sure what we just witnessed.
Pretzel is the first one to speak, but he’s thinking the same thing I am, wondering about Petty Officer Garcia’s comment. “What did you mean by—one of ours?”
More than simply being perplexed, Pretzel sounds uncomfortable, disturbed by the implications.
“Who else were you expecting up there?” he asks.
With all the talk yesterday about the AWACS aircraft Overlord and the US combat patrol of fighter planes, I never considered anything other than an American plane roaring overhead and was more concerned about what happened to the fighter than its nationality, but Garcia has cast doubt on that.
Petty Officer Garcia’s the only one that would recognize the type of plane that broke up before us, but he’s blind. He ignores Pretzel, asking, “One tail fin or two?”
“Two.”
Pretzel doesn’t look impressed by his question being ignored. Garcia stares as the sky with blind eyes. Sunlight warms his cheeks. He’s imagining a sight that has long since ceased to be.
“Were there intakes beneath the craft. Large, dark air vents running from midway down the fuselage, forming the engines?”
“Yes.”
“And the wingtips? Was there anything on the wingtips?”
“I think so,” Pretzel says. Like me, he was more focused on what happened to the aircraft than the subtleties of its design, but I think he’s right. “There were sticks, I think? I dunno, missiles?”
“And the wings, did they seem to start too far back, almost as if they were set too close to the tail?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s a Sukhoi Su-27, not the later 57.”
I don’t know what type of aircraft that is, but the look on Pretzel’s face is enough to convey that it’s not good.
“What the hell is going on?” Pretzel asks, marching up to Garcia on the rocky beach. Pebbles crunch beneath his boots, reinforcing his anger. “Romeo/Charlie, right? You were talking about that over the radio yesterday. What does it mean?”
3zekiel (First Contact) Page 11