He glanced at the trucks. Tempting as it was to take one, even a brief delay could be fatal. Whatever had killed Tim, had so far spared him. But that could change at any moment. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him toward the opening in the fence. Beyond that, he could see Peter waiting nervously, the AR-15 sweeping back and forth. Jim scooted through the hole like a startled rabbit and let out a loud sigh of relief after making it to the cover of the trees.
Peter was at his side in seconds. “What the hell was that?” he asked. “Poor bastard just blew up.”
Before Jim could respond, the siren went quiet, replaced by a high pitched hissing noise from overhead. Looking up, he saw a line of smoke descend and penetrate the building roof. A couple of heartbeats later the entire structure was torn apart by a massive explosion, the blast from which sent both him and Peter sprawling backwards. The resultant fireball rose for more than a hundred feet.
Jim struggled to his knees and continued staring in morbid fascination. After a few minutes, the fireball began to settle down a bit. Nothing was left. Even the armored trucks were burning. He felt a hand touch his shoulder.
“We need to go,” Peter urged him.
Jim regarded the scene one last time. Heat from the flames was stinging his face, and the air was filled with the stench of burning fuel. Nothing remained intact. Any answers that might have been here had been annihilated. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”
They set off toward the main highway. Jim was grateful that Peter seemed content to wait until later before assailing him with questions. The truth was, he didn’t understand what had happened himself. He'd had his suspicions as to what Constitution might be, but everything had come to a head before he could be sure.
After less than half a mile, Peter grabbed Jim’s shoulder and pointed to the sky off to their left. A glowing orb of white light was hovering a few hundred feet above the treetops. For a moment Jim thought it might be a helicopter, but he could hear no sound of rotors. After a minute or so it darted off to the right with unbelievable speed, then shot back to its original position.
“What the hell?” gasped Peter. “You ever seen anything move like that?”
Jim shook his head. He’d heard stories about UFO sightings - lights that moved in ways that defied modern aerodynamics - but until now he'd never experienced such a thing firsthand.
The orb continued to zip back and forth a few more times, then began drifting across in the direction of Constitution.
“I say we leave it alone,” suggested Peter.
Yeah. We should, thought Jim. But after what had just happened, he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Maybe we’ll stay just outside of town for now,” he said.
Peter groaned. “You’re right. Last time we didn’t get quite close enough to getting killed. Let’s see if we can do better this time.”
Jim ignored him and hurried as fast as he could in the direction of the highway. By the time he reached it, the orb was higher and Jim guessed that it was now positioned directly over the town. They headed south, back toward Constitution until they could see the outline of its buildings in the distance beyond another road barricade. Two men were on guard here, but their attention was currently centered on the orb rather than on anyone who might be approaching at ground level. Jim and Peter crept up as close as they dared without alerting them.
The orb hung silently for a while longer. Then, gradually, it began pulsating faster and faster until it looked like someone had placed a giant strobe light in the night sky. Slowly it descended, all the while sending beams of thin light shooting out in every direction. Just when it reached the level of the treetops, it stopped. Jim heard a low buzzing sound. Though he imagined it was originating from the orb, the noise seemed to literally surround them, as if it was coming from everywhere at once.
Peter gripped him by the collar, pulling hard. “Come on,” he said, his voice quavering badly.
But Jim couldn’t take his eyes off the glowing apparition. He jerked himself free. He was certain that whatever destroyed the building had sent this…thing. He needed to know what it was. The volume of the buzzing increased until both he and Peter were forced to cover their ears. Then, in an instant, everything fell silent. The orb split into four equal parts and began moving in a tight circle, ever increasing in speed until it looked like one continuous circular beam.
Horrified screams shocked Jim back to attention. Both of the sentries were clawing at their heads and faces, thrashing about and crying hysterically. Joining in with their anguished shrieks, Jim could also hear faint screams coming from within the town. With this mayhem continuing, the spinning lights suddenly stopped and melded back into a single hovering orb. It then dimmed and began shrinking. Smaller and smaller it became until appearing no larger than a distant star in the sky. A second after that, the speck of light disappeared completely. Immediately all screams ceased, as if flicked off by a switch. The two guards collapsed onto the ground.
Jim took a cautious step forward, but again Peter tried to hold him back.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he hissed.
This time Jim looked him straight in the eye. “If you’re scared, don’t come.”
Peter threw up his hands. “Scared? Of course I’m fucking scared. And you’re an idiot if you’re not. Did you see what just happened? Who in their right mind wouldn’t be scared?” He spun around, mumbling curses and pacing back and forth.
Jim watched him for a long moment, recalling all that had happened between them recently.
Eventually, he lowered his head. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m an idiot. And I shouldn’t expect you to go blindly with me into something this dangerous. Why should you? I haven’t exactly treated you like a friend since we left Fairview. And I want to apologize for that right now. You don’t have to come. But please understand, I need to know what just happened.”
Peter stopped pacing and gave Jim a twisted frown. “You’re an asshole. You know that?” Having said this, he loaded the chamber of the AR-15. “But then again, so am I. Lead on.”
Jim slapped him on the shoulder and cracked a smile. “We’ll just check a few houses, then we’re out of here, I promise.”
On reaching the barricade they could see that the two guards there had torn great chunks of flesh out of their own faces. What could drive anyone to do such a thing, Jim wondered? Blood covered their hands, and was still seeping from out of their ears. In death, their expressions were frozen into masks of sheer terror.
They continued toward town until reaching the corner of the first residential street. Jim considered going back to Ian’s place, but he knew what he would likely find there. He had no desire to see the body of a dead child.
Instead, they entered the nearest house. Candles were still burning in the living room and the fireplace was smoldering. Jim motioned for Peter to wait at the door before moving on further inside. The only sounds were his own footsteps, together with the rustle of the wind in the trees outside. Similar to Ian’s home, a door at the rear led through to the bedrooms, but before reaching this, he noticed a shadow on the floor behind the sofa. Kneeling down, he saw that it was a body of a young woman in her early twenties. Just like the sentries, her face had been torn to pieces by her own fingernails, and a trail of blood was still trickling from her ears onto the floor. He checked the bedrooms and found a young man in the same condition.
The next two houses they visited produced similar sights. Nothing but dead bodies, all with ravaged faces and bleeding ears. Jim stood in the middle of the street and stared up at where the orb had been hovering. Slade’s words resonated in his mind: 'Now we have to start over again.'
Start what over?
He rubbed his temple and shook his head. “I’ve seen enough,” he said.
They left the town and kept going until it was nearly dawn. As they walked, Jim recounted everything that had happened to him after sneaking inside the mysterious building. When he told Peter that Slade
had indeed remembered him, Peter spat a curse and sneered.
“I should have killed the bastard when I had the chance,” he said.
“How?”
“I had to bring him his food for more than a month,” he explained. “I could have poisoned him, I suppose. Or something like that.”
“Then you would have ended up dead,” countered Jim. “And they would have just sent someone else after me in Slade's place. If you hadn't shown up when you did, God knows how things would have turned out.”
Peter nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
Jim could see the self-loathing written on his face and realized he had been too judgmental. Peter had done nothing but help from the moment he'd arrived. And the man had stayed with him throughout, even when most others would have fled.
“You told me before that you didn’t think the soldiers were human,” Jim said. “You think they were clones?”
Peter nodded. “I always thought so. Either that, or brainwashed people. Who the hell knows for sure? But I think the people back in Constitution were the same thing.” He began laughing to himself. “Whatever they were, they were a damn long way short of being normal.”
“What’s so funny?” Jim asked.
“Nothing.”
His response did not satisfy Jim. He stared intently at his companion.
Peter sighed. “Okay. I was just thinking that, for a while, I thought you might be one of them. You know. Like the soldiers.”
Jim raised an eyebrow. “And what changed your mind?”
“If you were like them, you’d have gone blank at the same time Ian and Maggie did.”
In spite of things, Jim couldn't prevent himself from joining in with the laughter. “You mean you've suspected for all this time that I might be…well…not human. After everything that's happened – all the stuff you saw at the platform - and you still only figured out a few hours ago that I was okay? Damn!”
Peter winked. “Let’s just say I’ve been keeping a close eye on which way your gun was pointed.”
Jim laughed even harder. And here I was thinking that I couldn’t trust him, he thought.
They camped near to the road and decided to stay put there until the next morning. Peter was complaining about a sore back, and Jim was certainly in no hurry to get to Atlanta. In fact, the more he thought about things, the more a feeling of dread threaded its way into his heart.
Slade had said just enough to plant seeds of doubt in his mind. He had even considered the possibility that maybe he wasn’t really human. But Peter was right. He wasn’t like Ian, Maggie, or the soldiers. So whatever it was that made him so important to Slade and those above him was still a mystery. And while there was no guarantee of finding any answers in Atlanta, there was one thing he was becoming increasingly certain of.
He was much better off being free and searching for the truth, than in the hands of his enemy.
End Episode Two (Season One)
Tallos - Episode Two (Season One) Page 7