by Brian Cody
“Fine”, Lamback growled as he shoved his left into his back pocket. “Why did I even bring my wallet to a war zone?” he mumbled.
“Yeah!” David exclaimed as he turned to the counter.
“Do I even have enough?” Lamback asked as he sifted through the five, hundred-dollar bills. “I guess”, he mumbled as he lowered it to his right but then shifted it to his left hand, while a tremor pulsed along his thigh. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the cracked face of his touchscreen phone, and sidestepped to the entrance while watching those six order. He then opened the lobby doorway and stepped into the glass space. “Go”, he spoke while glancing over his shoulder. “Wait, what? A press conference?”
“Dave, are you kidding me? This is way out of the bag. The bag isn’t even in sight. Have you looked at the Lynchburg skyline? There’s no way we can cover this up. We’re having enough trouble trying to explain the giant shape that was seen flying over Igneous Mountain. Security cameras, traffic cameras, satellite imagery—we might not know all of what happened or what led up to this, but, rest assured, the news corporations, with or without our aid, will know just as much as we do by the end of the week. Getting to the point, the DOJ has signed off on them being declassified.”
“When?” Lamback asked.
“Today, in about an hour. Make sure you keep your face covered. The press conference will be in front of Farlake Field.”
“Dag it, Walsh!” Lamback growled as he flung his head.
“Hey, are they wearing their helmets? Make sure they’re wearing their helmets.”
“Yeah, yeah, right”, Lamback replied as he looked to the front counter, then took another step towards the outside door. He lowered his sunglasses, and, while rubbing his chin, inhaled and bowed. “Should I tell them about the Beta Protocol?” he whispered.
“Uh, no. I’m gonna make the call and tell you to hold off on revealing that information. The other guys were handpicked by Arthur Grant so we’re sifting through everything we have on them: internet history, family trees, and every person they’ve ever been in a classroom with. We can’t take chances. Grant almost ruined this entire thing and, if this plan is ever going to succeed, we have to make sure nothing like what he caused is done again. At the very least, we can give him a little credit: he ended up helping move everything forward.”
“And almost killed me”, Lamback added, “all right, got it. I’ll brief you at twelve-hundred hours.”
“Roger that.”
Lamback ended the call and pocketed his phone before returning his sunglasses, and opening the interior door.
“Hey, there he is!” David called, “you should pay this guy!”
“Yeah, sure”, Lamback replied, “but hey, who wants to attend a press conference?”
“No!” those six replied.
“Too bad!” Lamback guffawed as he lifted his wallet, “guy with green stripes, since you’re the oldest, you’re the leader!”
“Yes!” David exclaimed.
“It means you’ll be doing the talking”, Bryen remarked.
“No, wait, I don’t want that!” David proclaimed.
“How much is it?” Lamback asked as he stepped to the counter.
***
“Unfortunately, there is some information I can’t disclose at this point in time”, Lamback began as he stood before a podium crowned in seven microphones. “Heck, I can’t even show my identity”, he continued as he shifted his black hat, pushed up his glasses, and smiled back to a crowd of fifty with cameras, audio recording devices, and notepads along a two-lane road leading to the side entrance of a baseball stadium’s lot, and which looked on to the nearest skyscraper about two hundred yards to the northwest. That building, a scarred, pointed structure, still gleamed as it jabbed into the sky, and yet still coughed black smoke from its base.
Surrounding the reporters and their accompanying camera operators were a dozen decorated local police officers, and behind them was a grouping of civilians in suits, shirts, and ties. Business leaders probably, since the evacuation order hasn’t been lifted… Behind Lamback and to his right were four individuals—the mayor and three prominent city council members—and, after a gap of a few yards stood the six heroes facing the crowd and crumpling empty foil containers. “In due time, information will be disclosed about this heinous event, but, until then, I believe that this press conference should be directed to a more optimistic topic, and, it is with that reason, that I present to you the team of individuals who stormed into the destruction and kept this great city from annihilation.”
Lamback turned and nodded, and those six walked to the microphone before stopping a yard behind it and standing in a straight line. The crowd responded with a light applause, while half a dozen cameras flashed and reflected off of the six’s helmets. The applause ended as Lamback cleared his throat and turned to the microphones. “It is without further ado that I present the captain of this team to answer some of your questions.” The applause recommenced as Lamback looked to David and stepped from the podium. David lifted the remainder of his third chicken sandwich and motioned it into the gap between his neck and his helmet, with the breaded item maneuvering out of view while he stepped up to the microphones.
“Captain!”
David looked to his right as he cleared his throat and found a reporter on the outskirts who hopped while waving his hands. “Hey”, David replied as he knelt over the microphones.
“Captain, what do you go by?” the reporter inquired, to which all those surrounding him lifted their notepads.
“Uh”, David paused, “oh, that…well, I never really got the opportunity to come up with an alias or whatever they’re called.”
“What should we call you then?” another reporter, across from the first, inquired.
“I guess ‘the Captain’ is fine”, David replied—and it was good. The reporters shuffled to write the response, while camera operators maneuvered through the crowd to zoom in on David.
“Captain, can we use ‘Captain’ and ‘the Captain’ interchangeably?” another reporter on David’s left inquired.
“Sounds good to me”, David replied.
“Okay, now for a more serious question”, the same reporter began. “Do you think your team could have aided in the amount of damage done to the business district?”
“Huh”, David replied as he tilted back, “good question”, he began as he cleared his throat. “Actually, I have a question for you, sir: do you think your mom could’ve aided in the amount of damage to the business district!?” The reporters ceased their inscriptions, the camera operators lowered their cameras, and, behind David, Shawn chuckled, while Turrisi slapped his hand onto the front of his mask, and while Lamback looked to the mayor.
“Well, Captain, my mother is missing and presumed dead after the attacks”, the reporter replied as he lowered his notepad.
“Oh!” David exclaimed as he leaned, with the crowd silencing and turning to that one reporter. “Oh crap; I am so_”
“Captain, my next question: would you describe yourself as a gullible person?” the reporter inquired.
“I’m_” David reared up and tilted his head, “I’m sorry?”
“It was just a joke”, the reporter replied as he looked to the still-silent crowd, “my mistake.”
“I…” David became statuesque and his grip steadied along the podium’s sides. “I am going to punch you in the face.”
Murmurs were passed between the reporters. David remained unmoving, his helmeted visage, though disguised, still appearing to leer into the pale gape of the offending party. As David stared, Lamback jumped to his side, pulled his neck over to the podium, and called, “Next question!” before stepping back.
“Captain, what is your team’s name?” a reporter towards the back of the group called.
“Oh!” David stepped from the microphones while covering them, and he looked to Lamback while whispering, “Can I say ‘Team DX’?”
“Can you say �
��Team_’” Lamback flung his arms as his eyebrows rose, “No, you cannot name your affiliation with your dorm!”
“Pending!” David replied as he looked back. “Next question!”
“Captain, will your team regularly patrol the streets of Lynchburg, and, if so, what areas?”
David looked to Lamback, who shrugged. “Also pending!” David exclaimed as he spun around.
“Okay, unfortunately, that is all the time the Captain has for today”, Lamback interrupted as he ran to the podium, “and here’s your mayor!” he exclaimed as he pulled David away. The mayor stepped forward—garnering another wave of applause—as Lamback and David rejoined their teammates. She began speaking as Lamback motioned them off of the stage, and, as they descended the steps and stood in front of their Humvee, she accepted questions from the reporters who had, by then, diverted their attention towards her.
“Are we done now?” Nate asked as they stood in a semicircle, “I still have to work, unless debris levelled my job.”
“I don’t know, but I’m starting to feel those sandwiches”, David replied as he looked to the crowd. At the same moment, Bryen turned down the road. “Should I have gotten lemonade?” David asked. “I felt bad for spending Lamback’s money.”
“I’m pretty sure he could retire right now and still live pretty well”, Turrisi remarked.
“Never mind, then”, David replied. A duo of raspy calls sounded behind the group. They looked back as Bryen glanced over his shoulder and pointed towards the animal sprinting towards them—a canine with the adult build and elongated snout of a German Shepherd, and a matted silver-grey and umber-brown, hirsute coat. The animal, with its jaws agape and heavy pants blasting from its throat, reared up in front of Bryen. With brightened, goldenrod eyes looking at Bryen’s helmeted visage, it thrust its muzzle into his gut and forearms to smell him.
“Go away”, Bryen moaned. The canine dropped, hopped in place with its tail swiping, turned, and darted down the road.
“Awe, dude, we should go after it!” David exclaimed as he jogged to Bryen, “it could be our team mascot!”
“No”, Bryen replied, “and I want to go to bed in case finals aren’t cancelled. I still have to print out my research paper before noon.”
“I really don’t think they’re still going to have finals today”, Erik replied. “I’d be surprised if campus were unharmed.”
“Hey, speaking of which”, Shawn began, “Piekarsky, shouldn’t you call Clare?”
“Shoot!” David barked as he looked towards the stage. “Lamback!” he whispered. Lamback spun to David, who gestured his hands into the dialing of a number. Lamback reached into his pocket to toss his phone to David, and David caught it, spun away, and jogged to the group while pressing in each number and bowing his head with each press. He then motioned the phone into the helmet, stepped twice past the group and tapped his legs as he heard the dial tone, the ring-back—the third movement of Vivaldi’s Spring—and then the static of the connecting line. “Hey!” David hummed as his shoulders sank. As he paced and spoke with a softer and gentler voice, his teammates looked to him and then glanced to one another while sighing, grinning, and coming to a mutual, but unspoken, understanding that their campus and their normal lives appeared, for the most part, intact.
Epilogue: Later That Day
“Ah”, was hummed as the German shepherd paced between two brick factories and then galloped towards a kneeling man who wore platinum-grey sweatpants and a matching long-sleeved tee shirt. As the canine halted in front of him, the man ascended to his 5'11" prominence in a sluggish, but fluid, rise, his four-inch blonde hair swiping along his face and concealing the left of his lime-green eyes. With his arms hanging slack, that man tilted his head and then looked down as the canine backed away for three steps and sat. “Well?” he spoke, his voice a harsh murmur and carrying the undercurrents of a Western European accent. The dog barked twice before closing its maw and straightening its ears. “And you smelled him?” the man asked while rubbing his hirtellous chin. The dog barked twice, and the man, in turn, leaned towards the canine. “And what did he smell like?” The dog tilted its head back, barked, and then whined as it lowered its head and stared at the ground. The man tensed, his pupils contracting until they appeared as vertical, black slits.
A churn then erupted from the man’s throat and resonated beyond his pouted lips, and, as he rose, the churn strengthened while he looked skyward. “Hu-u-u-u-uman?” he moaned as his left eye peered past the strands of hair and angled to the canine. The dog barked once, and the man looked to that pale-blue expanse. “Bouleversant”, he muttered as he lifted his right and then brushed the locks of hair past his eye, “so…so…” he looked down as his rectangular visage tightened and hands squeezed along his hips, “upsetting; because”, he began as he knelt and massaged the canine’s neck, “if he’s human, sti-i-i-ill human, that means he’s weak; so, so_” he paused as he looked skyward and to the form diving towards the alley. “Weak.” A churn sound over his voice. He stood, while a shape slid between those structures and slammed into the ground behind him.
With the dog rising and snarling by his side, the man turned to the gleaming shape of the one–hundred-and-eightieth machine and looked into its eyeless gapes. “Check”, the man proclaimed as he opened his lips and flashed his acicular teeth. The last remainder of the lesser horde lifted its right arm, outstretched it towards the man, and squeezed its fist.
***
Arthur Grant squeezed the armrest of his tax-funded wheelchair while looking at the table a few inches from the tops of his useless knees. He looked to the surface of that table as its pale, bleached face was magnified by the fluorescent lights and was matched by the surrounding walls and underlying floor in whitewash brilliance. Arthur then glared at the rounded, glossy marks before the table’s edge which marked the hand motions of previous inmates who had sat there.
As another chair was pulled out on the far end of the table, and as the metal entrance was closed behind it, Arthur’s gaze, once stolid, tightened. His face, discolored with old burns, stretched as his brow sank, and, as he heard the placement of several items along the far side of the table, his right fist squeezed, the action jingling the single handcuff on his single arm.
He glanced to the left armrest, to where his left arm would have been located and to where a taupe-grey sleeve flapped from the motions of his respirations, and then he faced forward, his eyes gliding along the table’s surface and then locking onto the three black-and-white-striped porcelain containers placed in a straight line. Arthur looked to the arm that grabbed the largest of the three pieces—a teapot with a rounded top, tilted it towards the object sitting to the right—a teacup that could hold a little more than three ounces, and then poured a jet-black liquid that exuded a diaphanous puff. The arm retracted to stop the pouring and tilted over the cup sitting to the pot’s left. The arm then placed the teapot upright. The person across from Arthur then lowered back into his aluminum folding chair and crossed his hands along the table. Arthur, in turn, bowed his head.
“I see the CIA is handling this one now. Let me guess about what you have in that tea”, Arthur spoke as he looked at his grey-clad legs and then looked past them to the tops of his feet in his tattered and lace-less shoes, “Sodium thiopental? Amobarbital? No, you’d administer Amobarbital intravenously; and, of the two, it’s the least reliable. It can plant what we called ‘false memories’. Or…maybe that’s what you want? Maybe you want me to confess to something I had nothing to do with; something to peg on me in a public jury. You want this to go down as legal as possible while I’m gotten with the real charges via proxy; either way, I remain in prison for the remainder of my life because I have information that your people want. There will be no chair; no injections.”
“Understandable enough”, the visitor replied, his voice humming with a smooth and flawless Queen’s English accent. “You Americans don’t often prefer tea.”
“Ah”, Arthur c
huckled as he looked at his toes. “You’re a Brit. Did they pass it to MI-6? Did the Justice Department want to claim that they didn’t get their hands dirty? Or is there some piece of information you’d like to have across the pond? How much are they bribing you with? What did they tell you I had at my disposal?”
“Hmm.” The man reached for the teacup on his left, lifted it, and then took a sip. “Now I’m intrigued”, he began as he took a second sip and lowered the cup to the table. “You, Arthur, were always decently bright, and your memory proved rightly acute for a longtime officer of the FBI. I wonder, then, was it your bout with Erik, or some side effect of my suit which seems to have dulled your faculties?”
Arthur’s breaths ceased. He squeezed his hand over his armrest and looked across the table, past the three porcelain items, and towards the man in the white overcoat who bore a pale complexion, coffee-brown hair crowding below his eyebrows, an ovular head with a rounded chin, a clean-shaven face devoid of wrinkles or blemishes, and pale-blue eyes. His physiognomy was average; if he were standing, he would have neared six feet with an additional half-inch added by his Oxford shoes; and his visage was that of an adult nearing the upper limits of his prime, perhaps in his early thirties. That man grinned as Arthur made eye contact, and he took another sip as Arthur bowed and shook his head.
“This is no illusion”, the man spoke as he lowered the empty cup. “Here I am, in substantial flesh, come to haunt your tattered and imprisoned shell.”
“What do you want?” Arthur asked, the overhead lights reflecting the sweat on his forehead. “No, no; even more so”, Arthur began, “why here?”
“A valid question, I suppose”, the man replied as he overturned the teacup and clasped his hands.
“So then your back-up succeeded?” Arthur asked as he tilted his head to the right, “no, no”, he began, “if that were so, this place would’ve been razed with the rest of Lynchburg. Then you failed?”