With that, she turns and rushes back into their home. Two teenaged boys stand on the porch beside hastily packed suitcases. Seeing their mother pleading with their grandfather is distressing. They quiz her, wanting to know what’s happening with their papa.
Jorge picks up his ax and slams it into the wooden board. He severs one last fish head. His routine is broken. His life is over. There’s no drive. No more relentless rhythm. He turns away from the pier, turning his back on a rack half full of fillets. A dead fish lies on the chopping board. Blood oozes from its severed spine. Thirty or forty fish lie stacked on ice in a crate beside the bench, destined to be snatched by eager gulls.
Each step he takes is like wading through the surf. He’s turning his back on the only stable life he’s ever known. Jorge walks across the sand to his home one last time. As he opens the door, Maria is exiting out the back. She calls out, “I love you. I’ll see you in Cordoba.”
“I love you too,” he replies, picking up the keys for his truck from the kitchen table.
One last look around his home and he leaves. Jorge doesn’t pack any clothes. Deep down, he doesn’t believe this is the end. It can’t be. It feels strange leaving his tiny color television, his worn couch, the beds, the fridge, the kitchen table. They’ll all be there tomorrow, of that he’s sure. Aliens be damned.
It takes almost half an hour to drive to the orphanage as the roads are clogged. What should have been five minutes up the hill is an obstacle course. Jorge drives slowly, winding between people fleeing with their possessions on carts. He rides up on the shoulder of the road, straddling a drainage ditch, only to get caught behind a broken-down tractor.
When he finally gets to the orphanage, he’s greeted by Padre Jesus.
“The alien is coming,” Jorge says. “Everyone is leaving. You and the children must leave.”
“I know. I know. We are waiting on buses.”
“I can help. I can take supplies in my truck for the kids. Food. Clothing.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Together, they load up the truck. Jorge stacks canned food and buckets full of potatoes taken from the cellar. Bedding and suitcases are jammed into the gaps.
As the sun sets, with the roads clearing, there’s still no sign of any buses coming to collect them. The padre says, “You should go.”
“What will you do?”
“We will wait.”
“And if no one comes?” Jorge asks.
“We will shelter in the cellar.”
“Then I will wait too,” Jorge says.
Padre Jesus pats his shoulder, saying, “You’re a good man, Jorge.”
Night falls.
No one comes for them.
Hours pass by slowly.
Jorge helps Padre Jesus drag a bunch of mattresses down to the cellar. They line them up in the far corner, away from the damp patches where mildew grows on the bricks.
A single light bulb glows over the cellar entrance, casting a soft glow over the outside stairs. The door is open. Wooden crates line the side of the stairway. They’re empty. Soon, they’ll hold apples harvested from the orchard. Until then, they block the stairs, narrowing access down the side of the orphanage.
Padre Jesus brings the last of the children downstairs. Thick wooden beams crisscross the ceiling. Condensation drips from the rough-hewn brickwork. Moss grows near the windows up high on the north side.
Most of the children are tired. They curl up beneath blankets in the dark. A few sob quietly. Padre Jesus brings them to the front, keeping them together so he can comfort them.
“What do you think will happen?” Veronica asks. She’s one of the few children that’s not upset by the disruption around her. She decides she wants to squeeze between Jorge and Padre Jesus as they sit on one of the mattresses near the door.
It takes Jorge a second to realize she’s talking to him as Padre Jesus has turned to one side. He pats the back of another child, trying to ease them to sleep. As Jorge’s an adult, he’s supposed to know about these things—apparently. He doesn’t, but he’s not sure he should seem ignorant. It’s important to show children confidence.
“We will be fine,” he says.
“But them?” Veronica asks. “What will they be like?”
He laughs. “You’re a curious one, huh?”
“I want to see them,” she says.
“So do I.”
“What do you think they’ll look like?”
“I don’t know,” Jorge replies, thinking about it for a moment. “They’re probably wondering the same thing about us. We have butterflies and goats, dolphins and squid. We have flowers and trees, bats and birds. I think they’ll look strange, but I think they’re going to look at us and all our animals and think we’re the strange ones.”
Veronica likes that answer as it stimulates her thinking.
“Maybe they’ll look like an elephant with eagle wings.”
Jorge plays along. “Or a furry octopus.”
Veronica giggles, saying, “Or a monkey with a snake for a tail.”
“Or a spiny cat.”
“Or a unicorn with rainbow poo,” Veronica says, laughing at herself.
Jorge ruffles her hair, saying, “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Or a fish with wings.”
“Ah, we already have those,” Jorge says. “I see them when I’m out in my trawler.”
“Really?” she asks.
“Oh, yeah. A big old Tuna starts chasing a school of them and—whoosh—they jump out of the water and fly over the waves.”
“No way.”
“Yes,” he says, nodding. “Sometimes, they fly into my boat.”
“Hah,” she cries aloud. Veronica claps her hands and then falls silent, suddenly realizing she’s supposed to be quiet.
“They are the easiest fish to catch as I don’t even need a net.”
“I’ve never been on a boat,” Veronica says.
“When all this is over, and my grandsons have returned, we’ll go out together and look for the flying fish. Okay?”
Veronica hunches her shoulders, quietly clapping her hands in excitement.
“Shhh,” Jorge says, seeing other kids looking over, unsure what’s going on.
If he goes out to sea on an off-day, without the need to actually catch anything, Jorge could take twenty kids along with Padre Jesus. He smiles. He’s made a rod for his own back with this promise. No orphan is going to want to miss out on a boat ride. He’ll have to take all the kids out over several trips. But, hey, it’ll be fun.
The Bunker
Everyone’s got something to do except Nolan.
Kath’s on her laptop, typing messages to her science team. She’s engrossed in discussing the various measures they have in place to record the encounter. Although most of the observations are Earth-based, there are dozens of satellites observing the approach of An̆duru. There’s even a couple of low-tech observations being undertaken from Houston using the equivalent of a child’s pinhole projector. They’re on wind-up, mechanical timers, exposing photographic plates. In this way, they can avoid any electronic interference.
Andy Anderson’s broadcast is on a loop. It’s racked up over eight hundred million hits, which is far more than anyone anticipated. People are watching it all around the world. It seems everyone’s nervous. Everyone wants some assurance, but it’s too late. An̆duru is here. The alien spacecraft just passed Lunar orbit and is thundering toward Earth. The Apollo astronauts took three days to travel the distance An̆duru will tear through in less than thirty minutes.
Nolan should be at NORAD. At least there, he’d be useful. He suggested it, but the President said she needed him here with her. He peers at Kath’s laptop, watching a discussion unfold within her science team, but he’s redundant. He feels useless.
The President said he could have any resource he wanted at his disposal. As usual, Nolan over-thought things and ended up hating his choice. This is why his wife loathes buying Christmas prese
nts for him. His likes are too goddamn whimsical and obscure. Nolan asked the President for access to IMS, the International Monitoring System. It’s a bunch of satellites looking for the launch of ballistic missiles. Nolan felt sure the Russians would try something stupid, but there’s no activity at their fixed missile sites. Like China and the US, they’ve stood down. As IMS is an international collaboration, Nolan’s got data streaming in for India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. Even the US is included. There’s only so long he can stare at null results.
Nolan’s bored. He’s a general without a command. For anyone he talks to, he’s a distraction. With the best of intentions, he’s meddling, slowing things down. Even his old team at Fort Carson has to backtrack and bring him up to speed on things. Damn it!
When Nolan’s anxious, his mind wanders.
An alien spacecraft is less than half an hour away from tearing through Earth’s upper atmosphere and Nolan would rather be playing Candy Crush. Nerves. Anything to get this over with. Time is a drag.
The bunker is depressing.
Most people know there’s a survival bunker beneath the White House. What they don’t realize is it’s actually three bunkers stacked on top of each other. The upper level is a hundred feet beneath the North Lawn. It contains the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Normally, this is where they’d be as it’s a communication hub, but the Secret Service wanted to go deeper. Unknown threats demand prudence.
The second section is a long-term living area designed for up to fifty people. It spans six subterranean floors, with four month’s worth of supplies. But it’s not deep enough for the President’s security detail.
Even though the encounter will occur over the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of miles from Washington, the Secret Service isn’t taking any chances. They’re following the continuity of government protocol for surviving a nuclear attack. They’ve got everyone in the basement section.
Down here, comfort is not a consideration. The concrete walls and floor are unfinished. Fire suppression pipes crisscross the ceiling. The fluorescent lights are covered in steel mesh. A couple of folding tables have been taken from a stack on a crate and set up in the middle of the room. Like the others, Nolan’s sitting on a folding steel chair. This is not the stuff of movie sets or conspiracy theories. The basement is designed for survival, not luxury.
Water seeps from a crack in the wall. At a depth of 1200 feet, the basement can survive a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. Whereas the other levels within the bunker are the result of covert construction, the basement is part of a natural cavern. The entrance has been carved from bedrock. The floor and ceiling have been lined with reinforced concrete.
There are three points of access. No elevator. Just lots of dusty concrete steps winding ever deeper. Then there are two mysterious doors made from plate steel. They don’t look like they’ve been opened in decades. No doubt they lead to concealed exits miles away from the White House.
The President walks in, having descended the stairs in tennis shoes and a pantsuit.
“Please, don’t get up,” she says. One of her personal assistants jumps on a landline, informing those up top that she’s on station.
Aides distribute wind-up LED lights, vigorously turning the cranks to build up charge. The glow they offer is nothing compared to the overhead lights. If there’s a blackout, though, they’ll be the only lights within a quarter-mile of solid rock.
The President’s surgeon is on hand with a couple of nurses. They’re equipped with EMT first-aid backpacks and oxygen cylinders. Nolan’s not sure quite what they’re expecting. Air circulation is the only thing that worries him about being so deep.
Directly opposite him, at the far end of the table, an aide has two boxes of matches and a box of candles—just in case. Great, if everything goes to hell, we can watch ourselves suffocate.
Nolan finds this level of preparation comical. Kath and her team have run the sums. Nothing is going to happen—not to them in Washington, DC. Unshielded electronics will probably take a hit from what is essentially an EMP burst. Beyond that, this is overkill. If anything, it’s a good dry run. According to the math, An̆duru will reach Venus in a little over a week. Once it’s shed its speed there, it’ll be at least another month before it circles back to Earth.
Nolan wonders about An̆duru. What the hell is going on up there? They must have their own cameras running. They’ve got to be learning more about Earth with each passing moment. What are they thinking? Coming in on the dark side of the planet, they’ve got to be able to see cities lighting up the night. They should have been able to see that for months. Why continue with a plan to buzz the planet? They must know that’s going to be nerve-wracking for us.
Someone’s distributed water bottles to everyone, but no one’s opened them. Like Nolan, they probably realize there’s no bathroom down here and don’t want to pee into the bucket in the corner.
Network cables snake their way over the table toward a router. A fiber optics cable leads into the stairwell, disappearing into a conduit.
After talking with several people in the basement, the President makes her way around toward them.
“Just a couple of minutes out,” Kath says. Her laptop is perched on top of a second laptop that has its battery removed. That’s all the contingency she needs.
“Okay,” Nolan replies. He has only one laptop, so he shuts it down and removes the battery. His preparation for the passage of An̆duru consists of staring at a blank screen.
“How are we going?” the President asks, leaning forward between the two of them.
Nolan gets up, offering her his seat. She sits as an aide brings over an extra chair for him.
“What am I looking at?” the President asks.
Kath points at the various boxes on her segmented screen, explaining each one.
“Ah, here’s the view from Miami, Havana, an oil rig in the Gulf, Houston, Monterrey in Mexico and the Baja peninsula.”
“And these?” the President asks, pointing at a bunch of graphs in separate boxes along the bottom of the screen.
“They’re monitoring radiation levels. The flickering line you see is normal. Just a bunch of cosmic rays, tiny bits of uranium in the surrounding concrete, things like that. This will give us the ability to estimate the energy release.”
“And that one?” the President asks.
“That’s buoy heights in the Gulf, monitoring sea level. It should give us some indication of any wave formation.”
“So now we wait.”
“Yep,” Kath replies. She brings up a timer racing down toward zero. Nolan hates these things. They’re always overkill. This one has milliseconds. The passage of each second screams by in a blur of numbers. For Kath, there’s probably some reason for that level of precision. For Nolan, it’s a point of anxiety. It feels like they’re screaming toward a brick wall.
“One minute,” Kath says. If she’s nervous, it doesn’t show. Her mind is probably so busy trying to process everything, she has no bandwidth for nerves. The President, though, shifts her seat slightly away from the table. She leans forward with her elbows resting on her knees, positioning her eyes level with the screen.
“Thirty seconds.”
Nolan’s right leg begins shaking, bouncing up and down as he sits there waiting. Just get this over with, damn it! A small crowd gathers behind them. Aides peer past the President, looking over Kath’s shoulder at the tiny windows on her screen.
“Ten, nine, eight.”
At that point, Kath stops counting.
No one breathes.
Nolan’s expecting the counter to come to a sudden stop at zero, but it doesn’t. It continues into negative numbers, racing away again. Nothing happens.
“There,” the President says, pointing at one of the boxes on Kath’s screen. A slight blur appears in the darkness. The alien spacecraft is elongated, almost cigar-shaped. Before Nolan realizes what’s happening, it’s a streak tearing across the screen followed
by a wall of static.
It’s the same story on each of the other screens. There’s nothing. Then a streak. Then static. One by one, the cameras die.
Within the bunker, the lights flicker and fade, leaving only the soft illumination of the hand-cranked camping lights. The laptop screen is blank.
“That’s it,” Kath says. She slams the lid on her laptop, swapping it out with the backup. A fresh battery is inserted into the second laptop and she fires it up—all in a single motion. Damn, that was like watching a Marine switch out a magazine on an M4.
“It’s all over,” Kath says. “An̆duru is gone.”
“God, I hope so,” the President replies. Her analysts and officers scramble to get back online and find out what the hell happened up top.
“So it’s safe to go up?” one of the President’s aides asks.
Kath is distracted, willing her laptop to start quicker, but she manages a confident, “Yes.”
“Okay,” the President says. “We’ll convene in the Situation Room.”
Slowly, the bunker empties. One officer remains behind, waiting for the two of them. Kath is determined to check whatever metrics made it through the encounter. Nolan is loath to stray from her. His mind feeds on facts. At the moment, he feels starved of detail. He can’t bring himself to fire up his laptop. He’s still trying to formulate his own internal assessment of what just happened. Damn, it’s hard to be objective when you’re buried under a million tons of rock.
After a few minutes of trying, Kath concedes, saying, “This is not good. Everything got knocked out.”
She’s referring to their carefully shielded high-speed cameras. Nolan’s more worried about US military and civilian infrastructure. Did America just get blown back into the Stone Age? His mind is reeling from the implications of barely fifteen seconds as the alien spacecraft passed through Earth’s atmosphere. What the hell is going to happen when that thing comes back into orbit?
As they pack up their laptops and head for the seemingly endless stairs, Nolan tries to lighten things, saying, “I hope you didn’t skip leg day at the gym.”
Wherever Seeds May Fall (First Contact) Page 20