by Rob Mclean
“What about Jesus?”
“He might have been a real person, I don’t know. I see the whole Jesus thing kind of like a membership.”
“Membership?”
“Yeah, say you believe and you’re in.” Aaron spread his arms wide and gathered in imaginary people.
“So what’s in it for you?” John didn’t care if he sounded cynical.
“Look, I’ve hung with some real bad people. Got to the stage where I’d get up in the morning, not knowing if I’d be alive later that day. These guys,” he nodded towards the rest-rooms, “are much nicer.”
John shook his head, trying to come to understand this Christian of convenience sitting across the table.
“These are ‘good’ girls; they don’t do drugs, they’re clean, you know, down there,” Aaron pointed under the table, “and they don’t cheat on you.”
The thought of a disloyal woman sent a stab of pain through John’s heart. Memories of his previous girlfriend, Natalie came flooding back. The images of her with all those men were burned into his mind. He never thought he was the jealous type until he saw her having sex with all those other men. He had to admit that it was one of the main reasons he found Angela so attractive. Her loyalty was something he hoped he could always count on.
“Heads up, man,” Aaron said, nodding in the direction of the rest-rooms. “Here they come.”
John turned to see Angela and Christie chatting and laughing as they came over.
“So you’re just in it for the women?” John growled.
“Hey buddy,” Aaron slapped him on the back as he got up to greet Christie. “Aren’t we all?”
Aaron met Christie with a long wet kiss. He held her tightly with a hand in the small of her back, so he could lean into the kiss. Christie had to lean backwards, falling into his arms under the force of his embrace. It was as if he hadn’t seen her for weeks. John was certain now that it was definitely for show.
John stood and guided Angela to the window side of the booth. Once he sat himself back down, he held Angela’s hand. She looked almost as uncomfortable as he felt.
“You boys looked like you’re getting along fine,” Christie said, once she extracted herself from Aaron’s clinch and sat herself across from Angela.
“Just talking sport and politics,” Aaron said with a grin.
John wondered how Aaron really felt about Christie. She seemed too nice a person to get messed up with someone as selfish and superficial as Aaron. Then he remembered Jarred and his experiment. When he told them of his brother and explained his experiment, it was Christie who suggested that they all try it. John was not surprised when Aaron was not as enthusiastic.
“What do you think Angie?” Christie asked.
John thought he saw her hesitate for a fraction of a moment and his heart missed a beat, but then she smiled at John and in a small voice, said, “Sure, why not?”
The small blonde waitress then returned with their drinks. “Gotta let you all know,” she said peering out the window, “that we aim to close by eight.”
She left before anyone could protest. John checked the clock above the counter. It said they had twenty minutes.
She returned moments later with their food. “Sorry ‘bout the rush folks, but things are starting to happen outside,” she looked to the ceiling, “and we want to be getting home. You might too.”
They ate up their meals with barely a word. John looked around the table and wondered if they were now regretting coming up the mountain.
They soon finished their meals, and paid up. John left a good tip for Amber. Before leaving, John asked for directions to Keller Peak. They had missed the turn-off on the way up.
A worried look crossed Amber’s face. “Are ya’ll mad? What do you want to go up there for?” Do you want to get yourselves killed?”
A deep resonate voice rolled out from the kitchen. “Now don’t be getting yourself all worked up girlie.” A portly man in a stained apron emerged, stomach first, from the kitchen swing doors. “Ain’t nobody killed yet. Is just some shooting stars over Texas and the like, dat’s all.” He turned to John and his friends. “You wanna go up there, dat’s fine. Should get a good view. Me, I wouldn’t, but you kids have fun.”
“Life on the edge, eh?” John nudged Aaron, who was looking less sure of himself than usual. To the cook, he said, “Thank-you sir. Great food.”
“You most welcome,” the big man beamed.
“C’mon team,” John said over energetically. “Let’s go.”
Once outside all eyes turned towards the heavens. John couldn’t see anything unusual. There was far less smog and haze in the skies up here than he was used to down in the city, but still there were only a few stars visible. A dull orange-white glow came from over the hills to the west. He couldn’t tell if it were the last light of the setting sun, or the glow of the city lights that he could see.
“Are you sure this is safe,” Angela asked as soon as they were in the car.
John turned on the radio, but there was only music. “I’m sure they would have heard about it if people were dying.” He jabbed his thumb back at the diner, before starting up the car and pulling out onto the road.
It wasn’t long before they saw the turn-off to Keller Peak, just before the Children’s Forest, as Amber had told them. The road got narrower and windier. After about a quarter of an hour they reached the summit. A fire look-out tower stood empty, its antennae, flag-pole and communication dishes were silhouetted on spindly legs against the glow of the city.
John jumped out of the car and looked to the sky as he took the picnic basket from the boot of the car. The others followed, but no-one saw anything unusual, only more of the evening stars twinkling amid a clear summer sky.
“So when does the show start?” Aaron asked, rummaging through the food.
“Hang on, I’ll phone a friend.” John pulled out his phone.
“Why don’t you give your brother a call?” Angela asked.
John just smiled, gave her the ‘thumbs up’ and pointed to his phone that was pressed against his ear. Angela went to punch him on the arm again, but John anticipated it and moved away.
Out of habit, he kept ambling away from the group as he waited for Jarred to pick up.
“Hey bro’” Jarred answered. “Seen anything yet?”
“Not a thing,” John answered, still keeping an eye on the skies. “More stars than I’ve ever seen before, but nothing else.”
“You wanna see stars? You should go out to the desert sometime.”
“Yeah, but not tonight.” John couldn’t help but feel let down by the hype, especially in front of Angela and her friends. “Do you know what we’re supposed to be seeing?”
“The reports coming in are saying that there are really intense meteor showers happening at different times and different locations across the night-side of the planet. They’re going for about fifteen minutes and then starting up at some other location. There isn’t a schedule on the alien’s website, but pretty much all the big urban areas are being covered.”
“So how are they doing it?”
“It would be like throwing a handful of sand or gravel at us from space, except at high speed, so it burns up in the atmosphere. What amazes me is that they must know where all our satellites are and have worked out the exact times that they can fire in the crushed up asteroids or whatever it is they’re using without harming the satellites. Or perhaps they’re just dumping their toxic wastes at us from their spacecraft and laughing their green heads off as we gape at them. Who knows?” Even over the growing static on the phone, John couldn’t miss the sour tone of his brother’s voice.
A girly cry of surprise drew John’s attention. Angela and Christie were staring up at the sky and pointing. John followed their direction and saw the first of the stars starting to fall.
He had seen a shooting star when he was younger, lying on the back lawn with Jarred one summer night many years ago, but that was just one solit
ary streak of light across the sky and it was gone before he could recognise what it was.
Now he could see a bold streak of light blazing brightly across the night sky like a flare. No sooner had it burnt out, then another took its place. Then another, followed by more and still more. Soon the sky was alive with blazing meteorites, flashing through the sky like tracer bullets. They came from directly above and fanned out radially across the sky. The effect reminded him of a scene from ‘Star Wars’, when the Millennium Falcon jumped into hyper-space and the stars became lines of light.
John ran back to the car. “Gotta go. Looks like the show’s started,” he said to Jarred but he was sure he wouldn’t have heard it over all the crackling static.
The numbers of meteorites increased steadily until it looked as if they were in the middle of a torrential tropical downpour of light. John found himself closer to the ground and realised that he had involuntarily crouched down. He saw that the others were similarly cringing and instinctively shielding themselves with their arms.
“Anyone got an umbrella?” he shouted, even though the light-show didn’t make a sound.
Christie squealed and let out a nervous laugh that spread infectiously.
“Whoo-ho, man. This is so intense,” Aaron decided to stand defiantly with his arms outstretched to the sky.
“Oh my gosh,” Angela giggled nervously, “this must be how Henny Penny felt.”
“Oh God, this is so awesome,” John heard Christie whisper as she stared up into the sky.
The sky-show went on for about a quarter of an hour, as predicted by Jarred. John could imagine some alien spacecraft pulverising asteroids, and then maybe holding it in some force-field type of arrangement, until it was time to fling it with uncanny alien precision at the Earthly targets. It didn’t take too much to work out that if they could do that with grains of dust, then they could also do it with much larger rocks. He was certain by the looks of awe and wonder on the faces around him that he wasn’t the only person to have worked that out.
He smiled to himself. First we try to nuke them and they respond with this subtle warning, disguised as a ‘World Peace Celebration.’
Suddenly, almost as quickly as it had started, the fiery streaks lessened in number until they stopped altogether. The sky looked abruptly empty and the remaining stars appeared dull and lonely.
They all looked around at each other, wide-eyed and speechless. Then John’s phone rang.
“Hey bro’, you okay?” The static gone, John could hear by Jarred’s tone, he seemed to have caught their excitement. “I saw it from the balcony. It must have been totally awesome for you.”
“It totally was man. You sorry now you didn’t listen to your older and wiser big brother?”
“Yeah, maybe…” John could hear Jarred typing on his laptop. Then, “Hey, you might want to look to the north-west.”
John spun around to see what Jarred was on about. The others followed his gaze. In the far distance, they could see tiny flashes streaking vertically through the north-western horizon.
“What is it?” John asked everyone.
It was Jarred who answered. “Looks like they’re giving San Fran a show as well.”
John pictured how it must look from the alien’s perspective. As the Earth turned and brought another city to the night side of the planet, there was a meteor shower targeted for it. Had they brought in the gravelly dust from the asteroid belt or were they using, maybe moondust? However they did it, he could see the same thing happening with killer asteroids wiping out city after city in a relentless progression. Despite the warm summer’s night he felt a chill pass through him.
His thoughts were interrupted by Angela. “That green stuff?” She sounded more curious than alarmed, “I’ve seen it at the Observatory.”
John quickly looked to where she was pointing.
All across the far distant northern horizon, a greenish curtain of ghostly luminescence glowed, tinged with reds and yellows.
“Northern lights,” Christie said, her voice thick with wonder. “They never come this far south.”
John relayed the news to Jarred.
“Far freakin’ out!” Jarred said. “Do you know what that means? They’re messing with the magnetosphere.”
“English,” John said. “I need plain English.”
“Either they’ve increased the solar wind from the Sun, or they’ve somehow weakened the Earth’s magnetosphere.”
“It’s so beautiful.” Angela stared into the distance.
“Increased the wind from the Sun? You’re not making a whole lot of sense dude.” John felt his frustration levels rising.
“No wait, maybe they have some way of gravitationally focussing the solar wind - the charged particles from the Sun – to make the auroras go this far south. Probably happening in the southern hemisphere as well. Man, they’re really trying to make sure we get their message.”
“About what they could do…”
“If the referendum doesn’t go their way…”
“Scary shit man.”
Chapter 16
Angela appeared at her front door as soon as John arrived. She called her ‘goodbyes’ to her parents and skipped down the front steps. Her summery full-length dress flowed around her as she walked to John’s car. She gave him a quick kiss before putting on her seat-belt.
After more than two weeks off from the bookshop, Angela was looking much happier and relaxed now that she didn’t have to deal with Chelsea on a daily basis. She hadn’t heard from her ex-best friend, but neither had she heard from her loser ex-boyfriend either – or so she was saying.
John had earned a rostered day off from all the overtime he had put in training the squads for their future roles in the upcoming referendum and although there were a million more entertaining things he’d like to be doing with Angela, he had promised Jarred that he would help him with his research.
John had planned to pick Angela up on his way to drop off the Rohypnol tablets before going on to Jarred’s lab workshop. He wanted to leave Angela in the car while he dropped off the pills. He didn’t want her to meet Eloise and have her hear his boss’s corporate views on the direction his relationship with Angela should take, but she wasn’t too happy about it.
“Don’t you want me to meet your boss?” John hadn’t missed the tone behind the pointed question.
“Because it would only slow us up,” he shrugged. “She’ll only ask a million nosey questions…”
“She?” Angela cut him off. “You didn’t tell me your boss is a woman.”
“You never asked.” John knew it was a lame defence and he regretted saying it, especially when he saw how it now caught Angela’s attention.
“I bet she’s not ugly.” John wasn’t used to Angela being sarcastic. It brought a smirk to his face that he tried to suppress.
“No and she’s not old either.” A broad smile escaped when he saw her frown. It didn’t improve her mood.
“Okay, technically, she’s pretty good-looking, in a corporate sort of way, but really? She’s seriously not my type.” He could see that he wasn’t making any impression on her sulky mood. “Besides, I have known her for ages. If anything was going to happen, it would’ve already.”
“And it’s only your good Christian morals that stop you, I suppose?” John thought it wouldn’t be wise to tell her how much she sounded like her mother.
“I’ll tell you all about her later if you really want,” John wondered how much he should tell her. He didn’t think she would like to know about Eloise’s plans for motherhood. He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek before he got out of the car. “But I think it’s really cute how you’re getting so jealous.”
“Get on with it.” She waved him away with a half smile and an evil glare. “I don’t want to spend all day here.”
John put the bag of pills in his pocket and walked briskly past the ever-present gardeners. Once inside, he found Samuel, who accepted the pills without
comment. When Samuel asked if he wanted to talk with Eloise, John declined. That brought a wry smile to Samuel’s pasty face.
Bright sunshine and the sound of sprinklers met John when he stepped back outside the building. He saw one of the gardeners had stopped work and was leaning on the car, talking to Angela. As he walked closer, he saw that her door was open and that the gardener had one arm on the top of the open door and the other on the roof of the car.
“Hey, can I help you?” John asked with intent.
“We was just talkin’” the gardener said, not overly worried by John’s concern. He took off his cap and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck.
“It’s okay,” Angela accepted a hand from the gardener as she got out of the car.
“You with him?” the gardener raised a frown. “I thought you were with Gordon Campbell’s boy.”
“I was…” Angela winced, “but it’s a long story.” She gave the gardener an apologetic smile instead of an explanation.
“You know this guy?” John asked, not taking is eyes from the gardener.
“Des goes to our church,” Angela said.
“Desmond Hargreaves Jr.,” the gardener extended a calloused hand to John.
John took it, relaxed slightly and introduced himself.
“I used to go to her church,” Des said to Angela, but cast a guilty glance at John. “I haven’t been lately.”
“No,” Angela said, “we haven’t seen you for a while.”
“We?” Des directed his question to John, but Angela answered for him.
“John has been coming for a while now.” She gave John a bright smile.
“Since we’ve been seeing each other.” John reached for her hand. He wondered what Eloise would think if she knew that her workforce was infiltrated by Christians. As long as they were only blue collar, she probably wouldn’t mind too much.