“What kind of gear did you bring?”
“I couldn’t be sure of the conditions I’d find, so I brought everything. Several video cameras and mounts, microphones, extra batteries, weather cases, lenses, all the usual stuff.”
“What did you do when you got there?”
“A lawyer buddy of mine found out who owns the land from where the original video was taken, a very nice rancher named Norman Young. He hadn’t seen the video, but he didn’t seem too surprised. He told me this stretch of Highway 360 has had a long reputation for weird sightings. He also said—and I thought this was interesting—that his cattle avoided the area. He gave me permission to set up on his land.”
“Had he ever seen anything happen on the road?”
“He said he hadn’t, but something in his voice told me that he might have.”
“Okay. When we come back, more from videographer Thomas Worthington and the world-exclusive first look at his incredible images from Brixton, Montana, on wakernation.com and Beyond Insomnia. Tonight’s broadcast is brought to you by…”
“Are you listening to this?” asked Martin. Martin had practically run off the road trying to call Stewart and turn the volume down on the commercial at the same time.
“This video guy on BI?” asked Stewart. The commercial on Stewart’s end was delayed a few seconds over the phone.
“Of course ‘this video guy,’” said Martin. “Did you see him?”
“I never saw anyone with a video camera,” said Stewart. “But I’ve been watching Herbert’s Corner, not the portal.”
“Well, it sounds like he got video of a truck coming through.”
“It might have come while I was asleep or something. I asked Eileen to call if she ever got a feeling about someone,” said Stewart.
“A feeling? Dammit, Stewart, how could you miss one? Where are you now?”
“Parked at the Corner, where I’ve been damn near every waking moment of the last few days.”
“You know we’re running out of time,” said Martin.
Stewart coughed. “If it’s so important, why aren’t you here, too?”
“I have a job,” said Martin. Because it was so critical that Shelby and Great Falls got restocked with FastNCo. hardware before the coming apocalypse. Never fear, Lewistown, I’m coming for you. You’ll have your screws and nails in time to die.
“I had a job to do, too,” said Stewart.
“Don’t spread the hero stuff on too thick. You were pretty much on board with exterminating all humans until you met baby Cheryl.” After a long, wheezing silence, Martin said, “I’m sorry, Stewart. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Show’s coming back on,” said Stewart.
“…easy to find. I can attest that the landscape of the original video is accurate. The highway runs southeast along the north side of a bluff, rising in elevation, and then passes through an excavated cut in the top of the hill—there’s rock on both sides—and then makes a sharp turn to the southwest, descending the other side of the bluff. I found the exact location ‘Martin from Billings’ used to record the original video. The ground had been disturbed recently, and I found a plastic bottle. Mountain Dew, I think.”
“A wake-up call there. Don’t litter while watching for UFOs.”
“Exactly. I set one camera there, and then I set up three more. Two on each side of the cut in the hill. That first evening, I drove through the gap several times to give myself a benchmark for the lighting conditions.”
“Is this a well-traveled road?”
“During the day, I’d say it gets a vehicle passing through there every three to five minutes, but at night it’s more like every ten to fifteen minutes. That location is about seven miles south of Brixton, which is a pretty small town. The only traffic light is a blinking yellow, if that gives you an idea. And from this bluff, you can’t see a single electric light. Not a ranch house, not a farm, nothing. The stars were incredible.”
“You captured video right away?”
“I’d given myself seven days, but I honestly thought that I’d get a recording on the first night. I figured one or two trucks would drive through and their headlights would recreate the effect, proving that the original video wasn’t what it seemed.”
“But that’s not what you found.”
“The first two days and nights, I got plenty of footage of vehicles coming through the cut. The Montana Highway Patrol might be interested to know how many drivers take that curve way too fast. But nothing unusual. When semis come through that section of road, their headlights make a definitive, recognizable sweep across the rock. I can tell you now that it is not the same light as we see on the original video. I ran the footage through processing software and tried to recreate the bloom of light, but it never looked close. I began to believe that something had really happened there.”
“Tell us about the third night.”
“He was there for at least three nights,” said Martin. “When, do you suppose?”
“Couldn’t have been more than a couple of nights ago,” said Stewart.
“Did they say where he’s calling from?”
“Didn’t hear.”
“You’re not watching this on the website, are you?”
“Website? I’m parked at the Corner,” said Stewart.
“I’m trying to get to my motel as quick as possible,” said Martin.
“…got very quiet. Eerie. All the insects went silent. And then I woke up. I’d fallen asleep, slumped over in my back seat. At first, I thought I was exhausted, but then I remembered the insects. I’d been unconscious for only about ten minutes. I gathered all the footage from the cameras, synched all the images together on a split screen, and I couldn’t believe it. The south side of the hill stayed dark. No trucks came or went that way. But on the north side, the Brixton side, a bright pinpoint of light appeared above the road surface in the cut. This point bloomed into what I can only describe as a sideways fountain of blue light. It shot out a few meters down the road, and suddenly a semi popped out of nowhere. But a regular truck like you’d see on any highway in America. It descended the hill and headed north toward Brixton.”
“And now, the world premiere of the video of this event, shot by Thomas Worthington, two nights ago outside of Brixton, Montana.”
“I wish I was seeing this.” Martin tapped his cruise control a whisker faster.
“Maybe it didn’t stop in Brixton,” said Stewart.
“You think it was delivering dishwashers to Helena?” asked Martin.
“You’re right. You’re right,” Stewart replied.
“Did you follow the truck?”
“I didn’t. By the time I had woken and synched the playback, it could have driven to the junction at Brixton and gone any direction. I decided to wait out the night in case it returned.”
“Oh boy, Wakers. You have to stay with us. After this break, we’ll hear more of his story and see more exclusive video of this incredible event. Stay awake with us. Now, when I’m out on a lonely highway, it’s always comforting to know that I’m heading the right way. Our friends at Garmin…”
~ * * * ~
Martin paid lip service to the speed limits in Lewistown, and bounced, tires squealing, into the motel’s parking lot. He ran into the lobby with his laptop. As it booted, Martin checked the ceiling for any indication that he would get Wi-Fi, and saw only a wagon-wheel chandelier. But the twenty-first century came through for him.
Martin logged into his wakernation.com account and watched the videos. First, the truck arriving. Then, in the next clip, the same truck, at least one with the same logo, leaving, about two hours later, according to this videographer guy. Long enough for a restroom visit, a breakfast special, and a little chitchat with Eileen. The clip replayed the four synched images in slow motion, two dark and two of the truck being sucked into the portal. Then Martin clicked to the main event, the shot that Lee had dragged out the first two hours of his show to present. It began with th
e four familiar images of the Gap, but this time a car, not a truck, materialized out of the bloom. “A black car,” Thomas Worthington had called it. “And I never saw it return. That means that whoever, or whatever, it was might still be out there somewhere on Earth. It was possibly a Cadillac or a…”
“A Lincoln Town Car,” said Martin.
“Hello, Martin,” said Jeffrey.
Chapter 20
“You have got to stop doing that,” said Martin. “Scared the crap out of me.”
“I needed to see you,” said Jeffrey.
“You could have called.”
“Watching that video Lee Danvers got? Nice looking Town Car, eh?”
“What do you want?”
“To talk to you,” said Jeffrey.
“You made yourself pretty clear at the Perkins,” Martin said, snapping his laptop shut. “So unless you’re returning Cheryl unharmed and getting the hell off my planet…”
“Spare me the dramatics,” said Jeffrey. “Come on, let’s get some coffee or something.”
Martin wished he’d taken a decoy staple gun out of the back of the truck. Even if Jeffrey realized it wasn’t the real ray gun, Martin bet that a three-quarter-inch staple to the neck might do some damage. “I need to check in first,” said Martin.
Jeffrey scanned the lobby with a raised eyebrow. “You’re checking in here?”
“Shut up,” said Martin, heading to the front desk.
“They don’t even serve breakfast,” Jeffrey called after him.
“Is everything okay, Mr. Wells?” asked the desk clerk.
“Oh, just peachy,” Martin replied.
“Shall we take my car?” asked Jeffrey, when Martin returned with his key.
“How about I follow you?” said Martin.
A few minutes later, Jeffrey parked diagonally in front of a tavern under a banner that said, “Welcome Bikers.”
“I thought you said coffee,” said Martin.
Jeffrey tossed his suit jacket across onto his passenger seat. “They’ll have coffee,” he said and shut his door.
If Lynyrd Skynyrd wasn’t playing on the stereo, Martin knew he wouldn’t have to wait long. The few patrons, surely regulars all, looked their direction before returning to their conversations. For some reason, a women’s tennis match was playing on the TV behind the aged bar. The bartender didn’t blink when Jeffrey ordered and soon enough provided two steaming mugs of black coffee.
Martin followed Jeffrey to a table.
“You came all the way back to Earth just to talk to me?” asked Martin.
“I did,” said Jeffrey. He kicked his legs out straight and leaned back in his chair. “You know, I wanted so much to ask you about Cheryl’s pie before. How she made it, what it tasted like, all that. But I couldn’t. Then Stewart spilled the beans, and you and I kind of got off on the wrong foot.”
“What could possibly be the right foot?”
“I’ve watched her make dozens of pies in the last few weeks—she’s quite the baker—but I don’t see anywhere in the process where she’s leaving anything out. There’s no hesitation at any point. No little quaver where you can see her thinking, ‘Skip that ingredient,’ or ‘Don’t mix it this way.’ I’m beginning to think that she really doesn’t have the secret.”
“That’s what we’ve been telling you,” said Martin.
“But yet she baked you a pie. And I’m thinking that for a special occasion, for the right person, she might have baked it the right way.”
“You think I was watching what she was putting in the dough? All I was thinking about was getting into her pants,” said Martin.
“Oh, knock it off. I know you well enough to know that that’s the first time in your life you’ve even thought the phrase ‘getting into her pants.’”
“So what? Even if I did notice something unusual, what makes you think I would tell you now?”
“I could abduct you, and we can find out.”
“Go ahead,” said Martin.
“Don’t have authorization,” said Jeffrey.
“That shouldn’t stop a go-getter like you,” said Martin. “You don’t want to upset CEO ChipmunkFart.”
Jeffrey laughed, took a belt of coffee, and then pointed at Martin. “They didn’t send me here because I was the last egg hatched. And my intuition tells me that you know something.”
“Jeffrey, I’ve known you for just as long,” said Martin. “This isn’t some kind of friend-to-friend chat. You’re panicked.”
Jeffrey chuckled again. “Now I know that you know something.”
“Think what you want,” said Martin.
“What can I offer you to change your mind?”
“I don’t have anything to tell you. Even if I did, I wouldn’t do it.”
“What if I told you that I could have the operational plan altered?”
“Altered?” asked Martin.
“Changed. Edited. Rewritten. Revamped.”
“How?”
“With the recipe in hand, I’d be able to make recommendations to my CEO.”
“Recommendations aren’t a guarantee,” said Martin.
“We could negotiate with your leaders for part of the planet. Build domes on Mars for the rest.”
“Wow. Sounds like a sweet deal. Where do I sign?” said Martin. “How can you be doing this? Don’t you have any guilt at all? Can’t you see that we deserve the right to exist unmolested on our own planet?”
“I’m not a monster,” said Jeffrey. “But I’ve staked my whole career on this.”
“Your career?”
“Driving your truck of screws around, you might not understand what it means…”
“Oh, we’re going to go there? My job is stupid, Candy Man? Or does the candy company even exist?”
“At first, no, but now we sell candy in forty-eight states. Plus Canada, and we would be expanding into Mexico, but…”
“So you’re willing to sacrifice your candy concern if you get the pie?”
“Chump change. So what if we sell a few million bucks of tooth rot to humans every year? Do you know how much that pie recipe is worth? Trillions of customers buying several a year, or even every month, all at the equivalent of a couple bucks apiece. You do the math. Even if demand flattens or slopes off in a couple of years, it’s still a fortune.”
“Well, when you put it that way, by all means, murder all of us then,” said Martin. “I’m so sorry that we’re even in your way.”
“You know, she thinks you’re part of it,” said Jeffrey.
“What?”
“She thinks you’re one of us. She thinks you sold her out.”
“She’ll know the truth someday,” said Martin.
“Maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“If you don’t tell me what I want to know right now, I’m going back up there to start the next stage of interrogation. And if she doesn’t tell me what I need to know, your breakfast princess is going to be eating Jell-O in a padded room for the rest of her life.”
Martin lunged. The table tipped, spilling the coffees. Jeffrey tumbled back, mouth open. A mug smashed. Martin fell on Jeffrey, hands around his throat.
Jeffrey swatted at Martin and pushed up under his chin. Martin let go with one hand to slap at Jeffrey’s face, but a hand, the bartender’s, caught his wrist. The bartender shouted, but Martin heard nothing but the blood rush in his ears. He twisted his arm free and punched Jeffrey under the eye. Jeffrey bucked him off into a pool of coffee spiked with the shattered mug and struggled to his feet.
Martin followed, shoving the bartender aside, and tackled Jeffrey. “He’s going to kill us all,” Martin shouted to anyone who cared to hear.
Jeffrey kicked at him and gained the door on his hands and knees. He pulled himself to his feet on the crash bar.
“He’s crazy,” yelled Jeffrey. “Call the cops.”
Martin was out the door a half-second after Jeffrey, and punched at the back of his head. Jeff
rey stumbled and then turned, setting up in some kind of martial-arts stance. He laughed, backing to the Lincoln Town Car.
The bartender and the Lewistown tavern regulars spilled out onto the sidewalk.
Martin started forward, but Jeffrey touched something on his left wrist. And Martin collapsed into the gutter.
~ * * * ~
Martin awoke in a heap in Jeffrey’s empty parking space. He lurched up, his legs and arms on pins and needles, his clothes stained brown with cold coffee. He brushed bits of gravel from his palms and the side of his face. The bartender and the other patrons were heaped in undignified piles on the sidewalk. One had cut his head. Martin stumbled to the Screwmobile, scrabbling in his pockets for his keys. He backed out as one of the patrons got to his knees.
Martin guessed Jeffrey had had only a few minutes’ head start. The mostly-empty Screwmobile roared easily up into the please-step-out-of-the-car-sir range of the speedometer. Jeffrey had to have come this way. Highway 15 made practically a beeline to Brixton, and the portal.
“Pasco, Washington, you’re Beyond Insomnia.”
“Evening, Lee. My name is Clark. I’ve been awake a long time, but I ain’t heard nothing like this. Gives me chills. But I have a question for your guest.”
“Thomas Worthington, yes. Go ahead.”
“Yeah, Thomas, you said you fell asleep every time, and then woke up a few minutes later. What was that like? And did you dream?”
“I’ll first let you know that I am not narcoleptic, and I have no history of sleep disorders. I didn’t dream. And it wasn’t scary. The first time, it caught me by surprise. The second and third times, when I heard the insects go quiet, I immediately lay down wherever I happened to be. And then I’d be out. Like falling asleep at night. I don’t know if it’s a protective effect of this phenomenon, something to keep witnesses from seeing things, or if it’s a natural effect of the technology. It surprised me that it didn’t disrupt the recordings. Perhaps whoever set it up didn’t care about technology, only eyewitnesses.”
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