Jubilee Year: A Science Fiction Thriller (Erelong Book 1)

by Gerard O'Neill

  Storm feigned horror and reflected on his own good luck. He and his friends had ended their speed trials when Ethan lost interest in spending his spare dollars on gasoline and tires.

  As he looked at the gun rack, he considered if he was to take one what Harris might say. The farmer had shown him the hidden gun cabinet, and that was a fact. Surely that was as good as an invite to take whatever gun he wanted in an exceptional circumstance such as this one. Storm decided he was going to interpret things that way. It certainly didn’t look like Harris would be anyone returning to the house anytime soon.

  He pulled the 308 Winchester from the rack. Harris said he kept it for kangaroos. The weapon was heavy. He returned it carefully to its place and selected the lighter caliber the farmer had given him to shoot the rabbits.

  It was really—just for show—just in case. Of what he wasn’t sure, but it seemed a good idea. A gun in his hand would convince most not to give him any trouble, so long as they were not a band of gun-toting hostiles. He didn’t like the last thought and cast it aside.

  He opened the first drawer below the rack. It was packed tight with boxes of rounds. He slung the rabbit gun over his shoulder, found the cartridges in the draw and backed out of the room cradling several boxes in the crux of his arm. It was only when he closed the cabinet that he noticed the shotgun was no longer in its place, resting against the wall.

  The barking from the dogs turned desperate when he walked toward them from behind the sheds. The pathetic mutts were beside themselves with hunger and thirst and they pawed at the doors of their kennels.

  He picked up a hose lying in the dust and filled their metal bowls from outside the cages. He looked on in dismay when in their overwhelming eagerness to quench their thirst, they stepped in the dishes and spilled the water between the floor planks. It was a wasted effort.

  “Come on, guys,” he called out as he flipped the bolts on the doors of the three cages.

  The hungry animals needed no coaxing. They leaped to the ground and bounded after one another toward the sheds and the possibility of food.

  Gasoline And A Dog

  He stared through the dust-streaked windscreen, concentrating on breathing deeply so he could calm himself before he tried to turn the key one last time. Once more, the starter motor turned over and again nothing happened. At least Stella had only recently bought a new battery. He gritted his teeth. One more time.

  This time the cylinders fired. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel and sighed, waiting for the motor to settle into a steady roar before he lifted his foot off the accelerator. With the stink of engine fumes invading the cab he thought about how much of a liability Stella’s car had been for at least two years. It was nothing but a sinkhole for her money to disappear into.

  It was a little after midday when he drove over the bridge into Coona. He left the engine running as he stopped in front of the sandstone clock tower at the intersection that marked the town center. The streets were empty of traffic and there was no sign of movement, aside from a scattering of tin cans and plastic rubbish bags propelled by a sudden wind gust over the pavement and across the road.

  Perhaps the mayor had called an emergency public meeting in the town hall? What with all that was happening, Storm imagined they might. They had a public meeting when the bushfire hit the region a few years back. Still—there ought to be someone around, at least an oddball or two staying back to clean a bench top, or simply to stare out a window. He should have seen somebody doing something by now!

  The shops were all closed. Even the hotel parking lot was standing bare of vehicles. What was with that? The pub was never closed.

  The first service station he came to was deserted. When he got out of the car, he found the kiosk locked and the pumps switched off. At the second service station, he saw a hose and nozzle lying across the concrete slab in front of the pumps. There was not a sign of life.

  A heavy curtain of smoke hung over a good part of the town and he saw that a bushfire of monster proportions burned on the outskirts. Hot embers carried by the wind presented a clear risk to houses and yet—nothing. There ought to be sirens calling on the volunteers. Instead, the firehouse lay still, draped in a veil of smoke and silence.

  He parked the car opposite the black-and-white checkered sign and walked up the tiled steps to the beige concrete entrance. He tested the closed double white doors with a push and found they were bolted tight. When he pressed the call button, he heard the buzzer sounding inside the police station. When no one came to answer the door, he cupped his hands against the thick glass of the door and peered inside at the empty reception area.

  He gazed around the entrance for a sign of surveillance. Above his head, a small white dome with a bubble of dark glass hid a camera in the ceiling of the entrance. The unmistakable glow of the bright red diode surely meant his image showed on a monitor somewhere in the building. He waved a hand at the camera and turned back to the doors and shook them.

  “Get back in your vehicle and leave.” The weary voice said over the speaker next to the door.

  “I need gas for my car!”

  “I don’t give a stuff!” This time the voice had a fractured quality to it. “And leave this area!”

  There was silence for a short spell then he heard a crackle over the speaker as if a microphone had been moved or switched off.

  Storm did not budge. They would have to tell him to bugger off to his face. Someone would come to the door, eventually. He pressed his nose against the glass and peered inside again. Then he saw the figure standing in the unlit interior, in front of the reception counter.

  He was a large man, wearing the standard issue blue police shirt, only his was open and disheveled. A handgun dangled loosely from one hand.

  “Hey!” Storm called out.

  The policeman stepped forward and waved the weapon with menace. Then the cop walked rapidly toward the door.

  Storm turned and stumbled down the steps. The car engine was still running, but he paused before driving off for one last look back. There was no one coming out of the station.

  He slammed the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. Things were turning to shit in a very bad way.

  No one answered when he knocked on Ben’s front door and it was the same at Ethan’s, even though Storm saw a car parked in the driveway. At Ethan’s he found the front door ajar just as old man Harris’s had been. There was nothing odd about an unlocked house in Coona, not when people were home. This was a little different because all the houses he tried were empty.

  Apart from the policeman, the only creatures he had come across so far were skittish cats and small packs of hungry looking dogs. It was the same everywhere he went. By the time he reached Pete’s, he had driven around the boundary of the town without laying eyes on a single person either living or dead for that matter.

  His dad’s old jalopy was parked permanently in the driveway, so he turned into the neighbor’s drive and parked at the back of the house. He didn’t want to flag his presence by leaving Stella’s car on the street. It simply made sense to hide the car. Just as a precaution.

  Pete had told Storm that he often saw the old guy buying groceries, but a passing greeting was the only contact they had shared since he moved onto the street.

  He knocked on the neighbor’s door. He knocked again before he gave up with a heavy sigh.

  He scaled the wooden fence between the two sections and dropped into Pete’s backyard. At that time of day, his da usually worked on the rusting Holden Station Wagon, or else he could be found repairing the equally ancient diesel generator in the garage.

  He knocked on the back door and received no answer He was getting used to that. He found the key where Pete always kept it, under a jar in the corner of the veggie garden.

  Tiredness so overwhelmed him that the unmade bed in the spare room looked inviting. He threw himself onto the strewn blankets and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  Storm found a pen
and a scrap of paper in the kitchen and sat down at the table to write Pete a note in the dim light of early morning. He told him about the caves Aunty had described, carefully setting out the route they would be taking. When he was done, he signed it ‘love Storm’ and slid it under the saltshaker.

  When he stepped onto the porch, Champ nearly bowled him over.

  The mutt jumped up to lick Storm’s face, and when it was told to settle down, it rolled over to get a stomach rub.

  “I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you?” Storm asked the dog.

  He hadn’t thought about breakfast but having company made all the difference. Back in the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator door. There was a block of cheese, butter on a plate, a moldy loaf, and a small paper wrapped package from the butcher’s. He threw the bread into the trashcan and unwrapped the slices of beef. He sniffed them, and satisfied, popped one in his mouth. It tasted good. He ate another slice before he dropped the remainder on the linoleum in front of Champ and watched the meat disappear in a single gulp.

  When he walked outside, he saw clouds that ran in long, narrow furrows. They stretched as far as his eye could see. Another bloody weird sky and it was luminescent again. This time it was an intense orange. On any ordinary day, he would have figured a front was sweeping in, but the wet scent of rain was absent. It was the same acrid stench that filled his nostrils when he drove into town the previous day.

  He lowered his head and closed his eyes as he turned the key. The engine started, and he smiled.

  When he raised his head, it was a small movement in a side window of the neighbor’s house that caught his eye. A flick of a curtain, but he had caught it. A thin finger held up the edge of the bleached green fabric a moment before it the curtain fell back into place.

  He got out of the car and walked up the steps. From behind the peeling red back door came a sound of a chair leg or a cane on the floorboards. Storm called out once and getting no reply he didn’t try again. The door was not going to open.

  When he got back into the car, Champ was sitting on the seat beside him. He rubbed the shaggy head, and the dog gave a plaintive whine.

  “We’ll find Dad,” Storm told the dog. “We’ll keep coming back until we do.”

  He was about to pull out of the driveway when he braked at the sight of two birds perched on the rail fence across the street. The fence belonged to Mrs. Sedgewick and so did the Rainbow Lorikeets. They bobbed and bowed their bright blue heads like old friends engaged in a lively conversation.

  “They aren’t going to last long sitting there,” he told the dog. “A hungry cat will have them for breakfast quick smart.”

  He sat there a minute longer, a chill passing through him as he realized Mrs. Sedgewick had set them free. She would never have done that unless she thought she wasn’t coming back.

  Sky Pressure

  Storm shouldered the empty sports bags he had brought with him and walked up the path to the surgery entrance. He tried not to gaze up at the sky because it was giving him the creeps in a bad way. It reminded him of the flame-reddened haze above a bushfire.

  He tapped the five digits into the keypad. It hardly mattered if the alarm went off since alarms were doing that all over town. What was one more among a hundred? Still, it felt like he was breaking-in. The lights flashed to verify the correct sequence and the lock mechanism disengaged. He turned the key and sprang through the door, quickly pulling it closed behind him.

  The storage room was right where Franchette said it would be. He dropped the bags on the floor. This wasn’t going to take so long after all. His heart sank when he looked up at the shelves filled with neatly arranged boxes bearing multiples of scrawled labels; long words he didn’t recognize, and each box differentiated by type and measure. There were too many boxes on too many shelves. Finding everything on the list was going to be more difficult than he had imagined.

  He told himself the less time he spent in town, the sooner everyone would be safe in a shelter, and that he would do his best. He decided to start with the largest items. At least the oxygen tanks were easy to find. It took longer to find the regulators, the masks, and hoses and carry holsters. Once he filled the sports bag with the heavy breathing equipment, he dragged it into the reception. Back in the storage room he looked at the rest of his list and groaned. He was just getting started.

  More than three hours had passed by the time he decided he was done. He saw that he had crossed off almost everything on the piece of paper Franchette had given him. He gazed down the list of pills, potions, lotions, vials, bandages, syringes, and scalpels. Good enough, he thought. It was not everything she requested, but he had given up on finding any more. It was going to have to do.

  He stood beside the cash register and stared at the phone; surprised at the courage it was going to take. Perspiration dripped from the tip of his nose onto the Formica counter. He could see the droplets quiver on the polished surface.

  Outside, the sound of rumbling was building in intensity. It was the noise made by a hundred jumbo-sized flaming arrow traveling overhead. Sonic booms shook the lightly built clinic and rattled the glass in the window frames.

  He picked up the receiver and heard a dial tone. With electricity and phones still available the situation could not be as bad as it seemed. He took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. It took only a single ring before he heard the voice he recognized instantly. Only it wasn’t quite the same as the last time he heard him speak.

  “Mr. Boas?”

  “Hello again, Storm.”

  There was no longer a familiar local twang to the voice. It sounded remarkably free of an accent of any kind. It sounded as the creature looked—colorless.

  “I need to ask you a question,” Storm said.

  “Go ahead,” Martyn replied.

  “Is that the plasma you were talking about that’s lighting the sky today? Because it doesn’t look right at all.”

  The telephone line crackled, and he thought he had lost the connection. An eternity passed before he got a reply.

  “I have already told you everything you need to know,” Martyn said.

  The air reverberated again with several loud booms. Each followed the other in quick succession.

  “You are wasting time,” Martyn told him.

  “I want to know what’s happening.”

  “You would like me to tell you everything will return to normal once they turn off the sound and light show. Isn’t that so?”

  “You didn’t tell me the end of the world was due to begin the day I left Canberra!” Storm said, feeling rising dread.

  “Earth can no longer defend itself from the impact of the intruder system,” Martyn said with a sigh.

  Martyn sounded as though he was overwhelmed with tiredness.

  “Those who would rule this planet struggle to hide the truth from its ignorant inhabitants. They know they are about to lose control and all their lies are being revealed.”

  “We aren’t ready! I’m not!” Storm let out a sob. He fought to gain control, but he was very afraid.

  When Martyn spoke again, it was as if from a great distance. Storm pressed the receiver harder into his ear. “What did you say? I—I couldn’t hear you.”

  “You need to drink something,” Martyn repeated.

  “Okay,” Storm said, struggling to hold himself together.

  “Switch on the intercom system and leave the receiver next to the microphone,” Martyn told him. “And try to breathe normally.”

  Storm stepped back from the counter and spotted the small console beside the cash register. He flicked it on and heard the speakers in the corridor to the doctors’ rooms’ crackle into life. Somewhere in the circuit was a loose electrical connection. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to him except getting out of the building and out of Coona.

  He saw that the office opened into a small kitchen. In a corner, a single sink stood against the wall. He turned the taps as far as they would go. They sputtered and coughed
. He looked back at the waiting room and saw there was a water dispenser.

  The large upended blue flask was empty but when he rocked it to and fro he heard liquid sloshing about inside the container. He held a paper cup beneath the tap and pulled the machine twenty degrees. There was enough water trickling out to fill his cup to the brim.

  Martyn’s voice came over the speaker. “It’s time to leave!”

  The first gulp went the wrong way, and he coughed until he cleared his windpipe. The remaining water in the cup spilled over his chest. He pulled on the machine again. This time he was only able to half fill the cup, but he was able to swallow the contents.

  “You didn’t tell me what comes next,” Storm said into the phone.

  “I have told you all you need to know.”

  “Tell me again!”

  “It seems I expected too much of you.”

  “What? Hello-hello? Mr. Boas? Martyn?”

  “I’m still here, Storm!”

  “Alright, so I’m slow. I didn’t get that you explained everything!”

  “Stop panicking. You know enough to save yourself and your group, and each hour you spend on the surface increases the danger you are in. I don’t have exact times to give you. I know the orbit of objects within the system is at this time taking them close to the Earth. You must find shelter within two days! You have one more sunrise to find shelter, Storm. Consider the next few days, if can you survive them, as a practice run for the main event.”

  Storm took a deep breath and steadied himself.

  “One more thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Davenport was going to make sure I told no one anything, wasn’t he? That was the plan, wasn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “You planned to have me killed before I talked to anyone. Like what happened to the others in the observatory. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “You’re a smart boy. You have gifts—your talents. And now you show me you are as stupid as the rest of them—Davenport is dedicated and as such he is useful. No, he was not planning to hurt you, and I never told him to do that. Do you really think I would expend all this energy on you only to have you killed on the way back home? Davenport’s time here is almost over. Yours is not. You and I may meet again. But if we do—no—when we do, we will both be nearing the end of our allocated time. Until then, Storm.”