I've only seen a gun once in this club before right now, he thought, realizing that the soldiers and the police were all pointing their weapons at him now. His fist quickly became open palms as he raised his hands up in surrender. All they need now is the tiniest signal from my former fan, Timmy, standing there and they'll light my ass up like a Christmas tree, especially the boys in blue.
He knew it was the last time on Earth he should be cracking wise, but despite the seriousness of the situation, or perhaps because of it, he just couldn't help himself.
“Gee, fellas,” Chad said sarcastically, “no need to blow a gasket. If Big Daddy needs to see me so bad that he is willing to send a squad of goons to come get me, I guess I better see what he wants. I'm just telling you, he's going to be disappointed.”
“Not by me and my team,” Underwood assured him, motioning with his automatic rifle for Chad to step out from behind the bar. Chad complied, walking slowly towards the men with his hands still up. One of the police officers came over and cuffed Chad's hands together in front of him.
“Is this really necessary?” Chad asked the man as he cinched the cold metal restraints in place.
“It's just a precaution,” Underwood told him, placing his hand on Chad's shoulder and heading towards the door at a fast clip. The sun was just setting and the light made Chad squint as they hurried him across the parking lot and into a waiting Humvee. Underwood slapped the top of the vehicle, then spoke into a walkie.
“The package has been secured,” Underwood barked. “We are in route to home base. ETA fifteen minutes. LET'S GO! ROLL OUT!”
The vehicle was moving before the rest of the soldiers were even aboard. The police cars drove out in front with their lights and sirens on like a celebrity escort. For a moment Chad felt like he was in some action adventure movie, like he'd been called in to save the end of the world. The only thing missing was the camera mount on the front of the military vehicle and a director yelling, ACTION!
Like a Jerry Bruckheimer film, Chad thought, or some action blockbuster by that asshole, Joel Silver.
The caravan made its way up and over to Santa Monica Boulevard, following it down through West Hollywood and the tall glass buildings of Century City, on into Santa Monica proper. They turned on Ocean Boulevard, heading past the 3rd Street Promenade traffic and the Santa Monica pier with the Ferris wheel glowing and lit up, and headed down the onramp to Pacific Coast Highway. Chad was shocked at how quickly they were able to get to the water from the heart of Hollywood. In normal traffic conditions it might take as long as an hour to an hour and a half to go the same distance. Of course, having a police escort and an armored vehicle full of soldiers wielding automatic weapons significantly helped in that department. No one challenged you for the lane or cut you off when you were legally armed to the teeth, not even the pricks in their newly leased Mercedes.
Must be nice having your own private police force to command, Chad thought, wondering for the first time about their final destination.
“Where are we headed? Point Mugu?” Chad yelled over the roar of the wind as they passed the Getty Villa on PCH and began picking up speed.
The soldiers sitting on either side of him completely ignored the question. Chad got a good look at one. He was just a kid, no more than eighteen or nineteen years old. He still had pimples. Chad leaned forward to get the attention of the Sergeant Major. “I said, where are we headed?! I have a right to know!”
The enlisted men guarding Chad pulled him back, but Underwood just smiled.
“You'll see soon enough, tough guy,” he laughed. “We're almost there.”
They turned up Malibu Canyon Road and headed into the Santa Monica Mountains. Chad knew that there was a juvenile detention center up that way, Camp David Gonzalez, or Camp Snoopy as locals called it, and a Hindu temple further out towards the 101 freeway and Calabasas, but he didn't think they were headed to either spot. They twisted through the mountain roads for a few minutes before turning off on an unmarked dirt road. There was a gate that had been left open with two more soldiers posted in front of it. The sign on the gate said GOVERNMENT PROPERTY – NO TRESPASSING. The soldiers gave the Sergeant Major a stiff salute as they passed. Chad noticed that the cop cars pulled to the side and didn't follow them in. He turned his head and watched as they went off the main road, catching a final glimpse of the police cruisers turning and heading back down the hill, their lights no longer flashing.
“I guess I'm all on my own now,” Chad announced, shifting nervously. No one answered. He tested his cuffs again to make sure they were really locked. They were. They drove on in silence for a few minutes, winding around sagebrush and rock outcroppings, until they came to a flat area that looked like a large, empty lakebed. The Humvee slowed to a stop in the middle of the dry gulch and sat idling.
“If this is supposed to scare me you're doing a great job,” Chad stated. “But it won't change the fact that I don't know where Skylar is.”
“Save it for the General,” Underwood said coldly. “Hold steady now. The first time is usually the worst.”
The ground began to vibrate around them like an earthquake, sending up clouds of loose dirt into the sky. Chad heard the sound of wild birds that had been sheltering in the bushes taking flight. Two nearby deer galloped off through the brush, like something foreign and deadly was imminent.
“What the fuck is happening?” Chad shouted, but Underwood just continued to stare with that evil fucking grin plastered across his smug face.
The world around them seemed to bend and warp, like a funhouse mirror. The Humvee came off the ground and the vibrating ended as the vehicle made a lazy spin in midair. The ground beneath them parted like it was made out of water and they descended through it, protected by a bluish bubble of swirling air that had kept the particles off them. Chad fought back the urge to hurl. It felt like his insides were being twisted in knots, and he stopped being able to breathe for a moment, his mind panicking in confusion. There was a metallic taste in his mouth that reminded him of sucking on magnets, and he sensed a throbbing in the center of his forehead. Suddenly he felt like his mind was being squeezed hard, like every thought he'd ever had in his entire life was being accessed all at once, giving him some sort of brain freeze by cerebral overload. For a split second it was all too much and Chad thought he might go insane, or die to escape whatever was causing it, but then it was over as quickly as it started.
Chad panted and stars filled his vision as pinpoints of white and black swam behind his eyes. He thought for sure he was going to pass out. He blinked rapidly until his vision came back into normal focus. They were no longer outside in the mountains of Santa Monica. They were now in a cavernous, windowless garage filled with military vehicles like the one they were sitting in. Hundreds of enlisted men came and went, working on cars and choppers with no regard to the new arrivals. The soldiers calmly exited the Humvee, pulling him out with them and shoving him forward. He stopped for a moment, his arms out to ward off a fight, and doubled over long enough to spew up his lunch. He just missed his expensive Nike sneakers. While he was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he heard several men around him cruelly laughing at his expense.
“Catch of the day,” one yelled to another.
“One blue plate special coming right up,” another man shouted back to more hoots of laughter.
“Hook 'em by the gills,” still another man bellowed.
“Come along, new fish,” Sergeant Major said, taking obvious delight in his discomfort.
“Wait a minute,” Chad protested as they pushed him along again. He was still panting like a dog trying to catch his breath, the taste of puke fresh in his mouth. It felt like he had just run a marathon after smoking a carton of cigarettes. “What the fuck was that? Where are we? How did we get here? Someone better tell me what the hell is going on!”
He wasn't given any answers. Instead he was lead through a series of gray and white hallways, each time passing armed guards, wi
th the Sergeant Major having to show security clearance. They rode an elevator down, deep into the earth, crossed through a brightly light hallway filled with people dressed like doctors and nurses, each scurrying about and ignoring them, then rose up again in another smaller elevator to a special room a few floors above. Stepping off the elevator, they entered a giant war room with several holographic consoles playing at the same time. General Franks was standing in the center of the glut of information and moving images. The flashing electric images formed a sphere around him. He waved his hand to move a screen closer and enhance it, then closed it. The swirl of digital lights and information dissolved around him in a shimmer, and reappeared on the wall-to-ceiling monitors of the cavernous room.
“Those DARPA boys have been hard at work, I see,” Chad muttered, mostly to himself. There was a loud, grinding metal sound behind him that caused him to jump. He turned in time to see the soldiers who had been his personal escort standing in the elevator as the doors slammed shut, leaving only the Sergeant Major in the room with him.
“Take off his cuffs,” a gruff voice behind him barked. Sergeant Major Underwood wasted no time complying. He snapped a key out of his pocket and had the metal bracelets removed and in his pocket in seconds. Chad rubbed his sore wrists, still red from where they'd bitten into the skin. He looked up to see Skylar's dad looming over him: General Franks.
“If you're expecting me to tell you where Skylar is,” Chad began, “you're wasting your time. You could have saved these fine gentlemen the trip across town to collect me, not to mention risking exposing a civilian to whatever mindfuck technology brought us here. I don't know, man. That's the God's honest truth, Jack. She took off on me about two weeks ago and I haven't seen her since.”
“Of course you don't,” the General responded flatly. “I know that.”
“Oh, okay then. So what the fuck am I doing here?”
“You're here because I need your help,” the General explained, doing his best not to lose his patience.
“Yeah, right,” Chad laughed. “Like I'd ever help you. Shit man. How's the old saying go? I wouldn't piss on fire to put you out, not even if I was pissing pure gasoline and you were screaming in agony as it hit your face. After everything you put your daughter through you think I'd ever lift a finger to help you? You're out of your fucking mind.”
Sergeant Major Underwood looked appalled by Chad's seemingly unwarranted outburst. He held his breath and prayed the General, his hero, would give the order to pummel Chad until he showed the proper respect. To his great surprise, the General just laughed.
“Why do you always have to be such a hard on? You don't have a fucking clue what's going on, do you? We're pressed for time, so let me just cut to the chase. I'm not asking you to help me, I'm asking you to help her.”
“You can start by leveling with me,” Chad shot back. “Where the fuck are we?”
“We are locked in behind several sets of impenetrable steel doors carved into the side of the Santa Monica Mountains,” the General calmly explained. “We are literally miles below them in the first of a series of fortified bunkers. It's a windowless world with no contact to the people above us, or the events unfolding in the outside world. You are here as my special guest. Walk with me.”
The General turned and walked over to the nearest metal door. He entered a code into the security keypad and the metal door slid open. The General walked confidently out and down a narrow hallway. Chad hesitated before following him, trailed by Underwood. They passed through a series of different living quarters, each bustling with happy looking people in color-coded uniforms, all while the General explained the living arrangements.
“We've got a whole world of our own down here,” General Franks proudly offered. “We're segregated into our own groups. The military and their families stay away from the civilian population by and large. We're operating on the assumption that it's probably best to keep them from co-mingling until after the final transition.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Chad asked as they looked out over a communal dining area where soldiers in uniforms happily ate what looked like cafeteria food with their families, who all wore dark grey jumpsuits with special security laminates showing their faces on the front.
“We will get to that,” the General informed him. “Like I said, we're short on time so this is going to be a quick tour. This area has been designated for military use, but we also have an area for scientists, politicians, and those chosen by lottery. Most of the lottery winners won't join us until later on, since no final selections will be made until after the big event is already underway, but we've prepared for them here just in case the Greys change their mind.”
“Greys?”
“There is also an entire area that is just for celebrities,” General Franks continued, ignoring the question and acting like Chad had already been briefed on his secret project, “although sadly, few of them accepted their invitations and the word from the top was not to force anyone to join us. My suspicion is that many of them thought it was a hoax of some sort, or worse, an offshoot of Scientology.”
“You're not making any sense, Jack,” Chad interrupted, shaking his head to try to clear the low ringing in his ears.
It's probably an aftereffect of that little trip through the dirt, Chad supposed. Wonder how many brain cells it killed?
“If I'm going to help you, I'm going to need some answers. Starting with: what the hell is this place? Some kind of government survival project?”
“Sort of, but don't get too comfortable, because you are not staying,” General Franks assured him. He turned and marched down the seemingly endless underground corridor. Chad chased after him. They came out into a circular room with television screens overhead and a round gray sofa in the middle. There were several metal doors that led off to other areas, each with its own keypad security.
On the screen overhead an image appeared. It was like something out of a nightmare. A large creature with big, black, glossy eyes like an insect, and grayish wet skin, sporting two sets of jaws filled with tiny, serrated teeth stared back at him. The ringing in his ears suddenly became a loud humming that caused Chad to gasp in pain and rub his temples. It was gone as quickly as it had come. The screen went black again.
“Welcome to the Pacific Ark Project,” the General announced. “We are in the final stages before transition.”
“What the fuck was that thing?”
“Focus,” the General chastised. “We don't have much time.”
“I've already told you,” Chad shouted. “I don't know where Skylar is. She took off two weeks ago, no note, no goodbye, nada nada enchilada.”
“I know,” the General beamed. “I am the one who took her. I had my men pick her up the same way they picked you up. She was here safe with me up until about twelve hours ago when she escaped.”
“How the hell did she escape?” Chad asked in bewilderment. “I mean, you've got armed guards posted at every door!”
“She had help,” the General swiftly replied. “Someone with security clearance allowing access to the outside, and who had the worlds biggest crush, helped her remove her tracking chip and escape the facility. He's been captured and questioned, but there's no sign of her. That's why I sent for you. Got it, stud?”
“What can I do? If Skylar doesn't want to be found, she won't be,” Chad argued, but in his mind he was already thinking of places she might have gone to hide.
She didn't leave me, he realized, the heavy blanket of sadness lifting off his heart all at once and being replaced by a burning ember of anger. She was taken! Against her will! And even then she still she managed to escape, probably to come find me!
He realized at once why she hadn't come looking for him at his apartment or workplace. He was almost certainly being watched, his phone most likely tapped, his emails probably traced, too. Since the moment she escaped he was probably getting the whole NSA 9-yards treatment. A pang of guilt tore at him as he realized she'd pr
obably been shadowing him too, hoping for the right moment to send him a signal. How many clues had he already missed?
“If anyone can figure out how her mind works, it's you,” the General ended at last, with a pained expression on his face like it hurt him to admit it.
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