The Object: Book One (Object Series)

by Emerson, Winston

  Sherman stopped and raised his arms out to his sides.

  "All over, Mr. Attorney, sir," he said. "Wherever I am--that's where I live."

  "If you're homeless you have no business north of Broadway. This is the one part of Louisville that's managed to remain unblemished--hey, are you listening to me?"

  They stood under a tree next to the Main at 7th Tarc bus shelter, behind which lay a shady little garden area with a trickling fountain. At the intersection on Main, a police cruiser idled in the left lane, waiting on the traffic light to turn green. Sherman looked all around for a way of escape. His eyes stopped at the building across the street and the red statues perched upon its second story ledge--more on the roof.

  "Are those penguins or Virgin Marys?" he said, pointing.

  The man's face contorted into an angry, confused grimace and he turned to look at the Proof on Main building, an upscale restaurant and art gallery, a place people like Sherman never dared to enter. Then the light changed and traffic started moving. Sherman's new lawyer friend waved at the police cruiser, not to flag him down but as though he knew the officer inside.

  Meanwhile Sherman had backed away to the Tarc pavilion. The lawyer glanced back to where Sherman previously stood, then spun around, spotting him.

  Sherman dashed across 7th Street. A car turning right off Main screeched to a halt and the driver slammed his palm on the horn, drowning out the lawyer's exclamations.

  People stepped aside and some even ducked into entryways or jumped off the curb as he ran past. After all, to run is indicative of guilt. Sherman might well have just committed the most heinous crime this town had ever seen, and to catch a waft of his scent was to absorb his evil--or be absorbed by it.

  Before the next intersection he cut between two parked cars and crossed the street, then veered right at South 6th, coming around the corner and tearing through caution tape onto a section of soft concrete. Luckily the city workers who should have been guarding their work were nowhere to be found. Sherman didn't stop to see how deep of an impression his shoes had left. He kept running. Up ahead was a nine-story parking garage--a great place to hide, wait it out, just in case someone came after him.

  He made it to the entrance just as the sky went black.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  The rock struck Mike the stalker just above his left eyebrow. For a brief moment his body stiffened. Then his legs turned to noodles and he collapsed, hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes.

  Then something strange happened.

  It was as though Lillia shared Mike's consciousness. In anticipation of her accuracy--and fear of what might befall her if she missed--she'd hardly noticed, and in the ensuing moments she reeled in confusion.

  When the rock struck Mike in the forehead, everything went dark.

  Not completely dark. She could still see the yellow sky out on the southern horizon, but the houses in the foreground--and her stalker's crumpling body--were nothing but dark silhouettes, and suddenly a strong, erratic wind blew her skirt up and whipped dust in her face. Tin cans rolled around and rattled on the ground and vines scraped against the wooden fence at her back.

  Lillia shielded her eyes, peered up at the sky, and gasped.

  She wandered out from behind the bench, past her stalker, who lay with his arms stretched out to his sides and his knees bent slightly, like a frog pinned to a rubber mat for dissection.

  Lillia paid no mind to her flapping skirt. No one was around anyway, except for Mike, whose condition she hadn't had time to ponder. He wasn't moving, which meant he was unconscious--or worse.

  The object in the sky looked like a moon, only it was close. Really close. Within the atmosphere, even under the clouds. Perfectly round, enormous--probably several miles in diameter--most of it cloaked in its own massive shadow but its edges touched by sunlight. The color of desert sand, the texture of sepia. A great and ancient stone hovering in the Louisville sky, enveloping the city in darkness.

  For a moment she wasn't afraid. She couldn't be. This thing, this object--it was astonishing.

  She was ten paces away when her stalker began to moan and roll around on the ground. Without thinking she went to him, knelt down, and began to shake him.

  "Hey, Mike, wake up. You have to see. It's amazing. It's the craziest thing--"

  Mike opened his eyes--two glints of light in the blackness. He sat up, groaning and mumbling to himself, and touched the bloody wound on his head.

  She could smell the alcohol on his breath, the sourness of his clothes. Body odor and cigarettes. Mrs. Wilkins's husband smelled like that all the time--at least for the two days of the month he spent at home. Mr. Wilkins was a truck driver, and Lillia didn't imagine he smelled any better out on the road.

  The waft of that smell drove her back several steps. It made her nervous, as Mr. Wilkins had always made her nervous, especially when he and Mrs. Wilkins started yelling at each other--or when she'd wake up in the middle of the night and find him standing in the doorway, watching her.

  Suddenly Mike lunged for her.

  She screamed and dodged his advance, staggered, almost fell. Then she ran across the lot and made a wide turn out onto the street just as a police cruiser popped around the corner with its headlights off.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Meredith cut to the left and overcorrected and the back end of the cruiser fishtailed. She slammed on the brakes and the car made a one-eighty spin in the middle of the road, skidding to a stop directly facing the young girl, who stood now with her arms at her sides and her head down, shaking, hair blowing in the wind.

  "Jesus," Meredith said. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and sat there a moment, taking deep breaths. The radio droned with the voice of dispatch calling all cars back to the precinct. Something had darkened the sky. She didn't know what. She was too afraid to look up.

  It happened right as she pulled away from a traffic stop. Some dimwit had run the red light at East Hill Street, almost hitting a cyclist, and a fight nearly ensued before she talked the cyclist down and sent him on his way.

  Three days working at the precinct, each of them filled with adventure. On Day One two kids with semi-automatic pellet guns sprang up from behind a fence and shot her six times. She returned fire. Two bullets she was certain would haunt her for the rest of her career. Luckily she'd missed, but when the boys ran she didn't chase them, and now she would have to explain two empty shell casings to her superiors. She'd cried for an hour in her car that morning.

  On Day Two she was first response to a double homicide. A young white male and female, both striped with track marks, swollen and infested with maggots, holding hands on the floor of some run-down apartment building amidst their own blood and feces. You couldn't walk across the floor without your shoes crunching on needles and crack pipes--small glass tubes, always blackened on one end.

  Today was Day Three, and so far there'd been no gunfire, no forthcoming paperwork, no death. She'd written three tickets to three nervous, irritated drivers. She'd also responded to a request for back-up at a domestic disturbance call, which turned out to be non-violent, only verbal.

  Then in an instance the lights went out. Not like a storm cloud passing over the sun, dragging a shadow across the city. One moment all was normal. Then she blinked, and it was as if she'd suffered a blackout and came to late in the evening.

  Not a minute later she almost mowed down a young girl with her car. What an auspicious beginning to her career that would have been.

  Meredith flipped on the headlights--something she hadn't thought to do in the moments after everything went dark, something that might have prevented this incident.

  She threw the gear shift in park and stepped out of the car, one hand gripping her holstered firearm. Leaving the door open, she took out her flashlight and pointed it at the girl, then slowly approached.

  "Hey," she said, "are you okay?"

  The girl nodded. Meredith couldn't tell if she was crying or not. Her hair was in her face,
along with several strands of red and white fake dreadlocks.

  "What's your name?" Meredith asked.

  "Lillia."

  "Do you live close by, Lillia?"

  "Yeah."

  "How close?"

  "Two blocks."

  "Okay," Meredith said. "Why don't you come get in the car and I'll take you home."

  Lillia pointed into the vacant lot from which she'd sprang.

  Meredith shined her flashlight in that direction and found a young man climbing to his feet, face bloody, grumbling. If not for the wind she would have heard him.

  "He was following me," Lillia said. "I threw a rock at him."

  "Does he have any weapons?" Meredith asked, drawing her gun.

  "I don't think so."

  "Go stand by the car."

  "Okay."

  She waited for the girl to move away. Then she locked the flashlight in line with the gun barrel and stepped up to the sidewalk at the entrance to the vacant lot. The man was spinning around in circles, leaning forward, searching for something.

  "Sir, can you come over here, please?"

  "Lookin' for my phone," the man said.

  "What's your name?"

  "Goddamn bitch."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I said I'm looking for my phone!"

  Meredith stepped into the lot. She approached the man slowly. Behind her, Lillia said something, but her words dissolved into the wind.

  "What's your name, sir?"

  "Mike, and I didn't do anything. I gotta get back to campus before they stop serving dinner."

  "Why were you following that girl?"

  "She's lying," Mike said. "I was just taking a walk and here she comes throwing rocks. What time is it?"

  "It's about quarter after three," Meredith said.

  "Quarter after what?"

  "Three. Sir, I need you to--"

  "Okay then if you're gonna be a lying bitch, too," Mike said, and he came at her, his face crossing through the beam of the flashlight for an instant, snarling, one side of his dirty face glazed with blood, his eyes blackened with rage.

  She fired.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Lillia was crossing under the overpass when she heard the gunshot. Above her, on the interstate, people were honking their horns and the speed of traffic was quickly increasing.

  On Brook Street people had emerged from their houses, some standing in their yards or on the sidewalk, gawking at the sky, others running to their cars or standing in doorways screaming at their family members to hurry. The sound of panic was growing all across the city. Car alarms, honking, screams, crying. When she reached her house she heard the screeching, grating impact of a wreck on the interstate and the squeal of dozens of tires as so many people slammed on their brakes. Then a second impact.

  She leapt up onto the porch and fumbled with her backpack to retrieve her key from a side pocket and then she came through the door and slammed it shut and locked it.

  "Drake!" she called. "Kate!"

  She check the living room, then the kitchen. Cindy and Audrey were rooting around in the refrigerator. They turned and scowled at her.

  Cindy said, "They're upstairs. You don't have to yell."

  "Don't go outside," Lillia said.

  "You can't tell us what to do," said Audrey.

  Lillia ran back to the foyer and up the stairs. Drake was coming out the bedroom door.

  "Why's it so dark?" he asked.

  Lillia ushered him back into the room, where Kate sat on the floor holding her porcelain doll, and closed the door.

  "Is it gonna storm?" Kate asked.

  Drake tugged at her skirt and she turned to him.

  "Lillia, what's wrong?"

  Lillia went to the window and struggled to raise it. When she'd first come home with Mrs. Wilkins this window had been painted shut. It was wood-framed, heavy. She had to prop it open with a sawed-off piece of broom handle.

  Kate hopped up from the floor and took her doll to the bed. Then she stood next to Drake. Together they stared at Lillia.

  Lillia turned to them, a strong breeze gusting in, ruffling their clothes and the hair of dozens of stuffed animals seated on the inset shelves.

  "There's something in the sky," Lillia said. "You guys wanna see it?"

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Roger Lansing stood with three paramedics, four police officers, six firefighters, and a dozen pedestrians who had pulled over to inspect the carnage of Staci McKenzie's car or comfort the girl while she waited for the ambulance. She had a broken arm and a broken collar bone, and after a few minutes of hanging upside down and screaming her head off, she'd passed out.

  It wasn't until the police arrived that Roger got out of his van. He didn't like blood, not even that which seeped from the steaks he had to grill on a daily basis.

  Now she was awake again and back to her screaming, though no one paid her any mind.

  They were all staring off toward the city, where a giant marble hovered in the sky, with some kind of ring wrapped around it.

  Traffic had slowed to a crawl, and among the spectators speculation swelled against the mumblings of prayer.

  "It's a UFO," one firefighter shouted repeatedly while his colleagues blurted every curse word they could think of at the giant object.

  "What the hell is that thing?" said a man whom Roger remembered stepping down from a tractor trailer hauling a backhoe.

  The girl hanging upside down in the car cried for help, and someone else said, "Isn't anybody gonna help her?"

  "It's a meteor!"

  "Oh Lord help us."

  "It's not a meteor, you dumb shit."

  "Hey, piss on you, buddy!"

  "I'm tellin' you that's a UFO," said the firefighter. "Unidentified flying object. I never believed in such a thing but that's what it is."

  Then the wind hit them, and everyone took a step back.

  "You know what I think," one police officer said to another.

  "That we need to get the hell out of the city?" his partner said.

  "Yeah."

  "Let's go."

  They started for their cruiser, and the first officer turned back to the crowd and said, "Everybody get the hell out of here, get home to your families and out of the city. We're all gonna die!"

  Panic erupted and the crowd quickly dissolved as people ran back to their vehicles, leaving Staci McKenzie still trapped.

  The girl who had called upon them to help Staci stood at the driver's side door. "Where are you people going? You have to help her!"

  One by one engines fired up and cars precariously cut into traffic. The police cruisers blared their sirens. One fire truck sideswiped three cars, pushing them into the middle lane.

  Roger felt a hand hook him by the elbow. He turned to the girl.

  "Please don't go," she said.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Danny swallowed a bite of his quesadilla, took a sip of his coffee, and then took a long drag from the hookah. Creamsicle. Refreshing. All around him people were running, screaming, delivering apocalyptic monologues of the highest drama. His rude waitress, who'd surprised him by bringing the hookah, popped out the door moments before with two coworkers, all holding hands and dashing down the back alley to their cars. Just a few feet away, a man lay on the sidewalk crying and holding his broken leg. He had tried to cross the street at the wrong moment and had been struck by a black Trailblazer, flinging him back where he'd started.

  Danny agreed with the hipsters: this was the end of the world.

  He sure as hell wasn't going to die hungry.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  "Wow, that's so cool," Drake said.

  They sat on the small section of slanted rooftop, Lillia hugging Kate, Drake standing against the brick wall, peering up.

  "Come sit down, Drake," Lillia said.

  "I'm not gonna fall, I promise," he said, but without further instruction he reached out for her and inched his way across the roof. Lillia grabbed his hand and held it until he sat down nex
t to her. Then she put her arm around him.

  "Is it aliens?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Lillia said.

  "I bet Timmy is flipping out right now, he's such a wuss."

  "He is, isn't he."

  "Totally," Drake said, laughing.

  Kate, who sat between Lillia's legs, turned her head and looked up at her. "Are they gonna hurt us?"

  "I won't let anyone hurt you," Lillia said.

  "Okay," said Kate, unperturbed. She resumed staring up at the strange dark object.

  Lillia felt a vibration in the roof, which meant the big heavy front door had just slammed shut. Mrs. Wilkins was home early.

  "She's home, guys. Back inside. Hurry."

  As she helped Kate slide through the window, she heard Mrs. Wilkins's high-pitched scream, not uncommon in this household, even without unfathomable anomalies hovering above. She put a hand on Drake's hip as he stood and stepped past her. When he was through the window, she climbed back into the room herself, then closed the window as quietly as she could.

  Kate was gathering her doll and Drake stood waiting for Lillia's next move.

  "Stay in here a minute," she said.

  Drake nodded.

  When she came out to the second floor landing, she saw Mrs. Wilkins standing at the door with her enormous purse, beckoning her daughters, pushing them out onto the porch. Then she rushed outside, closing the door behind her.

  "You gotta be kidding me," Lillia said.

  She hurried down the stairs and came out on the porch just as Mrs. Wilkins was climbing into the driver's seat. She had left the car running despite the unusual number of people on the street.

  "Mrs. Wilkins!" Lillia called. "What about us!"

  Mrs. Wilkins glanced at her briefly. Then she closed the door and sped off.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  From the roof level of the parking structure Sherman could see all across the city--even glimpses of the river between the northernmost buildings. The wind softened the hubbub below, the screech of tires in the levels below him, the weather sirens, the screaming. All things considered, this was a pretty peaceful spot. He sat straddling the ledge, watching the people and cars fleeing like cockroaches when the lights come on--this the antithesis of that.