Inception_The Bern Project

by M James Conway

  “We are now. That’s the work of Boogie’s friends. They set fire to the houses. Everything. We almost died because of it, but thanks to Russell and Sims, we were able to get out,” Morgan said, with an edge to his voice. “We’re heading east on foot. Care to join us?”

  Cindy felt the weight lift off her shoulders. If Morgan was okay with her and bought her act, then she was just fine. “Of course. You’re the only family and friends I have now.”

  They started walking. Morgan got into the driver’s seat of the Charger. He rolled down the window and said, “I’m going to follow back up to the road, then angle this thing to block the entrance.”

  John acknowledged and took up point.

  Cindy looked around and didn’t see Kat. “Where’s Kat, Russell?”

  Russell looked at her and glared, his eyes red, either from rage or from crying. Oh, god, was she killed? thought Cindy. She liked Kat and hoped that wasn’t the case.

  Sims spoke up and said, “She was kidnapped. They flew that way.” He pointed to the east.

  “My god, that’s terrible! Where did they go?” Cindy had an idea, but she had to play the part.

  “East. And that’s where we’re going. I’m going to find them. And then I’m going to kill them,” Russell said.

  They continued east in silence as the gravel road turned to dirt, where their journey would take them over the mountains and into eastern Washington. And on to a new mission of finding Russell’s daughter and the men responsible for kidnapping her.

  As they walked, nobody spoke and nobody smiled, each thinking about the chaos they were leaving behind and the worry about what was in store for them.

  But not Cindy.

  She was just relieved that she had made it back in one piece. The fact that she had managed to successfully shift the blame to Boogie and kill him gave her a fresh start with the group and allowed her to continue on with her mission of providing human intelligence.

  A new mission.

  Cindy, walking at the back of the group, started smiling.

  EPILOGUE

  Kat opened her eyes to darkness, lying on a semi-hard surface. A cot of some sort.

  Had long had she been asleep? She didn’t know, as she had woken up several times over the last few hours. Or was it days? God, could it have been weeks? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was awake right now. For the time being.

  She turned her head to the left.

  Darkness.

  She turned her head to the right.

  Darkness.

  No, wait.

  There was light.

  A faint light.

  She kept her head turned and tried to focus on the dim square. It seemed to hover in the air and dance back and forth. It forced her eyes to twitch from side to side. It brought on a wave of dizziness that quickly turned to nausea. She took a deep breath and held it. She squinted. She felt the burning of bile coming to her throat and quickly swallowed to quell the nausea.

  She tried to bring her hands to her face but they were quickly stopped by the cuffs on her wrists. She slid her shoulders up and down and felt the other end of the cuffs slide along a metal bar. A loud clang told her she didn’t have much room to move her arms, but enough to not be immobile. Keep the circulation going.

  She was thirsty, too. So thirsty. And hungry.

  Where the hell was she? She didn’t feel hurt anywhere except for the nausea. She assumed she’d been drugged. Wait, was she taken? Did she get kidnapped? Or was she in an accident?

  She noticed a quiet hum coming from the ceiling. Like an air conditioner or a vent of some sort. Yes, it was definitely coming from above. Maybe she was underground? Like a tunnel? Or a prison? Except there was no other sound. Nothing. Nobody.

  There was an antiseptic smell to the air, too. But that could be coming from the hood over her head. Was that how she was drugged? She also had a sore neck, so that meant they could have stuck her with a needle.

  They.

  Who were they? Now she remembered. She was taken. The gloved hand. The sour breath. The punch to the head. Was that why she was nauseous? And dizzy? Was that why her neck was sore?

  She remembered flying through the air, the loud mechanical sound of the rotors. A helicopter of some sort.

  She sighed and opened her eyes. The nausea was gone. She felt more alert now.

  She tried to adjust her position on the cot, but again, the cuffs kept her in place. She lifted her knees up and brought her feet flat on the cot, her joints screaming in pain.

  The light to her right dimmed even more. She looked over and saw a figure blocking the light as he or she looked through the window. The square. Like an eclipse. The subject appeared to be bending down to look. A large man. She couldn’t tell who it was, but his silhouette told her he was a powerful man. Or a woman?

  She held her breath as she heard a handle slowly being turned.

  She exhaled. Fear forced air out of her lungs.

  Her heart rate picked up.

  She took another deep breath.

  The door opened all the way and the silhouetted head became a man.

  He stood in the doorway, staring. He didn’t talk. He didn’t move.

  He just stared.

  Somewhere, a loud alarm blared. It echoed. The faint white light now had a touch of red, as lights and sirens did their thing.

  The man spoke. “T minus thirty seconds.” A tinny voice.

  No, wait. It wasn’t a man’s voice. It was a woman. Mechanical sounding. Like an operator.

  “Hello?” Kat spoke, finally. Though it came out hoarse. “Water.”

  The man didn’t move. He had some sort of uniform on, like a suit. She couldn’t tell what color it was, though. It made him have broad shoulders. He also had a hat on his head. But not a baseball hat or a cowboy hat, more like a beret, like from France. Like her dad wore in that picture of his army uniform.

  Her father. She felt tears forming in her eyes.

  The tinny voice chimed in again. “T minus twenty seconds.”

  She wondered if her father were alive.

  The man continued to stare. “General Woods, we’re ready.”

  Not his voice, some other man’s. From the hallway, out of sight. The man in the doorway nodded to no one in particular.

  Was her father looking for her? Was he upset that she was gone? She wondered about her mother. Why did she leave them? Tears streamed down her face now. She was alone.

  “T minus ten seconds.”

  The man moved toward her. He reached into his pocket.

  “Launching. Launching. Launching,” the tinny voice repeated. A loud rumble echoed through the walls.

  “Who are you?” Kat asked in a weak voice.

  “Time to go back to sleep, Kat.”

  He knew her name.

  She thought about her father again. Pictured him crying when he realized she was gone. She felt his pain, knew that it was killing him. His only child. His only family. Gone.

  More tears.

  The man hovered over her. She felt a small stabbing pain in her neck as the syringe was emptied.

  “It’s almost over, Kat,” the man said.

  She felt the nausea coming on again. Her eyes got heavy. She remembered one more thing about her father before all went black.

  “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

  * * *

  They had been walking for several days, not making much progress, due to Helen and Frankie, who weren’t quite in good enough shape to take long treks day after day. But at least they were heading east and making progress.

  “Where did you say it was, Cindy?” John asked.

  Cindy pointed up ahead to the turnoff for Middle Fork Campground. At first she had thought they didn’t believe her, but she realized she had made a mistake when she said she’d forgotten to check him for information or anything he may have had on him that would point them in the right direction. An honest mistake, since she was almost killed and just wanted to
get out of there, but still, she should have been more careful.

  “Where to, Cindy?” Morgan said. He flicked on his LED flashlight and motioned for her to lead the way.

  “I think it’s down that way,” she said, pointing down the same trail she and Boogie had taken. “Maybe a hundred yards? I don’t really remember where, exactly. It all happened so fast.”

  Cindy led the way, taking her time walking down the small trail. She recognized several large rocks and a few pieces of garbage that she remembered seeing prior and knew that they were getting close. Her shadow was projected ahead of her, doing a weird dance from the flashlight beams behind her. The familiarity of the place reminded her that something had bothered her about the incident. She had left in a hurry and had that feeling of forgetting something, though she couldn’t recall what it was. She just hoped it wasn’t something major that would mess up her plans.

  They came to the last turn that Cindy remembered. Only about twenty yards now. Her heartbeat picked up. She kept trying to stop herself from thinking of Boogie sitting there, nursing his gunshot wound. It was stupid to think about that, as she knew he was dead, but…she couldn’t help it. Too many horror movies as a kid, she guessed.

  “What the hell is that?” Frankie said.

  Cindy turned and saw Frankie pointing upwards and to the east in the clear and starry sky. One such star was moving upward and had a tail illuminated with pulsing orange and white light.

  “That a shooting star?” Helen asked.

  Cindy knew what it was.

  “Can’t be. It’s moving too slow for that, I think,” John said. “I’ve never seen a meteor like that, either.”

  “Well, look at that! It’s slowing down,” Sims said.

  And sure enough, it was. It appeared to hover in space, its orange and white light pulsating, but not moving.

  A few seconds later, a large explosion lit up the sky, the object and its tail being replaced by a bright flash that carried itself out like a starburst, waves of energy expanding in all directions, creating a disk. The explosion pulsated, sending various colors through the atmosphere in concentric rings. Just then, the ground at their feet was bathed in darkness, the dark sky around them made even darker, sans the explosion.

  Their flashlights made a popping sound and burnt out.

  EMPs will do that, Cindy thought, but then shook that thought from her mind.

  While everyone was looking up at the sky and spinning in circles trying to figure out why their flashlights didn’t work, Cindy was looking down at the pile of blood and scuff marks. The heavy bleeding from Boogie that had soaked the ground had now become a rusty brown color, mixed in with crimson red from the still wet blood that poured from Boogie’s body.

  Her heart rate picked up, panic set in and she started hyperventilating, turning in her own circles, staring through the trees, her eyes wide in anxious anticipation. Someone behind her stepped on a branch and it reminded her of the twig she heard snapping right after she shot Boogie. Her heart rate got even faster and beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

  She looked back down at where Boogie lay dead, the spot where she had shot him, saw him fall and look at her with death in his eyes. She remembered seeing his chest stop moving and she could have sworn she heard his soul leave his body. It was then she remembered what she had forgotten to do. She had forgotten to check his pulse.

  She had killed him.

  Or so she thought.

  She stared at the blood-soaked earth…

  …Boogie’s body was gone.