by David Beers
Someone needed to know what this fucking psychopath was doing, because a lot more people were going to die, more than the one man they sent in over the next few hours.
General Knox had known Kenneth Marks for a couple of decades. Or rather, he had known of him. It was the past year that Knox actually became acquainted with him, as he earned his General’s rank. He'd been assigned to this section of the military, an almost shadow unit, and he first thought it a great honor. It showed the military’s trust in his judgment, his silence, and his capabilities, because he was a part of a section that didn’t exist in the American mind. This wasn’t like black sites in foreign countries, where torture occurred—things like that would eventually be known. This only existed in rumors and on websites dedicated to men in black type discussions.
And then he met Kenneth Marks. A civilian who reported directly to the President.
Knox did his research on the man the moment he began realizing that something was off about him. Degrees in theoretical physics and artificial intelligence. General Joseph Knox was a smart man by anyone’s standards, but he recognized immediately that more than one level separated him from Kenneth Marks.
He looked deeper though, wanting to understand Marks’ rise through this organization, the one without a name, the one that newspapers wouldn’t be able to identify even if shit did eventually leak out. Only, he couldn’t find anything. Kenneth Marks was as black as the rest of the organization. Like a black hole in space, one could point to it and say, Look, there he is. But when someone looked, they would see nothing because even time stopped when it moved around Kenneth Marks. There was simply nothing on the man, anywhere.
It didn’t change the fact that he was criminally insane. Knox went that route next, studying as much as he could about Marks, using textbooks and psychiatrists he contacted. The man was a sociopath. He might even see the rest of humanity as existing only in his mind, like pawns to be moved on a chessboard, having no life outside of what he gave them. Knox didn’t know the intricacies, but he didn’t need to. He knew enough to keep himself safe, and that was what he had intended to do during this assignment.
Until now.
Because Marks was doing something that would make a lot of people less safe, not just General Joseph Knox.
How far would the man push this, and to what end?
Knox had never done what he was considering now, but he thought if he didn’t, he might be sentencing his soul to something much worse than a court martial.
* * *
The SUV rolled to a gentle stop in the middle lane of the highway. No other cars passed on either side; no other cars had passed on either side of it during the entire ride. The state was empty, or near empty at least, as far as Will could tell. If people were here, Will didn’t know where, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt anyone to stop in the middle of the road.
Will saw a gas station to his right, completely empty, the lights inside dark. That was the only thing on this road besides trees and a stoplight in the distance, that had also gone out.
“This is your stop,” Marks said.
Will knew that as soon as he felt the car begin to slow; he didn’t need Marks to tell him. Will opened the door and set his foot out onto the pavement.
“Someone will be along soon to pick you up.”
“How far out from Grayson are we?”
“About twenty minutes.”
Will turned back into the car and looked at Marks, who was already staring at him. “You don’t want to get any closer to it, do you?”
“Of course not. That’s why I have you. What good would you be if I went in?”
“What do you want me to find out when I get in there?”
“I’m not completely sure yet,” Marks said. “I’ve been giving it some thought, but I think the best thing to do is to hook up a microphone to you and put a speaker in your ear, that way I can coach you through it as things unfold.”
“How very wise of you,” Will said. “Have you thought about what your species should be called? You know, like I’m a homo sapien, what do you think us homo sapiens should call you?”
Marks smiled. It was the first smile Will had seen on him which looked predatory, like Will imagined the smartest wolf in the woods might look just before he plunged his snout into the gut of some wounded antelope. “You can call me homo get-the-fuck-out-of-my-car, Will.” He didn’t look away and Will held on for a few seconds. He wanted to think that he would get back at this man, that at some point, he would deliver whatever justice he could—but those were only thoughts. He would never have a chance at touching this man/creature, this psychopath.
Will stepped out and turned to push the door shut behind him. Just before he closed it, the smiling man spoke again from inside.
“Best of luck, Will.”
93
Present Day
Michael opened his eyes. He saw his father above him, and quickly realized he lay in his father’s lap, which was an extremely odd place to be. He couldn’t ever remember looking at his father from a position such as this, and it would have made him feel awkward if not for everything else he saw.
The place was gray, and not like an overcast day in England. His father’s flesh, normally a pale white, was now much closer to colorless. Tears ran down his skin, but that skin was something from a 1940s television show—completely black and white. Michael’s eyes widened as he looked at the rest of his father, taking in his clothes, his hair, his eye color—all of it just shades of gray. He flashed down to his own skin, but saw reality looking back at him: the colors his eyes had grown accustomed to seeing. He brought his hand up in front of his face, so that he could compare his father with it, contrasting what everything should look like versus what only his hand did.
Michael allowed his vision to expand, to take in the world around Wren, and he saw that everything else looked like his father, not as it should.
What is this?
Michael sat up, and as he did, saw that the color version of himself moved, but the gray version remained lying on the couch against his father. He didn’t stand up fully, but looked around the room, looked back to his father who was still crying.
This is happening right now. Wren’s crying and holding me, though he doesn’t know any of what I see.
Michael stood up, leaving his body completely behind on the couch. He recognized he was in Bryan’s house and remembered everything up until this moment very clearly. He had been watching the colors float out of the house, when the orange came to him and he breathed it in.
He didn’t know it then, but that began the transition to this place, whatever this place was. Because he remembered seeing the world around him fade to this stark gray—that now permeated everything.
Where am I?
Besides Wren’s crying, the place was silent.
“Where am I?” he said aloud.
He felt a murmur, as if the house itself spoke.
The vibration from earlier was still at his feet, still very real—and he thought that was because this place still reflected reality. He just wasn’t in it any longer.
The murmur though, it sounded like the house spoke. As Michael listened closer, he heard it coming from outside, with such force that it permeated all the walls around him.
Michael started walking, wanting to see who else was in this house, whether it was just he and Wren, or if the rest of their group was here too. Were they all on the other side of this reality, back where the world showed itself in vivid colors, or would they all look like his father?
Michael didn’t know how he knew, but he needn’t use hallways or doors; he simply kept walking and his body moved through the walls of this place like he was less than oxygen. He walked back to Bryan’s parents’ bedroom, where he found the others. Julie lay on the bed asleep and Rita held Bryan much like Wren held Michael on the couch. Glenn sat on a chair that he had pulled in from another room. None of them looked at Michael; none of them knew he was there at all.
The murmur from outside came again, stronger now, vibrating through the very air surrounding Michael. That was it though, nothing from the three people in this room. No sound from his father in the living room. Michael was in a separate reality, somewhere that none of these people could see or reach, but one that lived next to them in some way.
The air still vibrated with whatever communication came from outside the building. It wasn’t fading nearly as quickly as it had in the living room.
Michael walked to the bedroom wall and stepped through it, reaching the lawn the same as he would have through a door. The moment he saw them, he ceased moving. He had never seen such a number, not at concerts and not on television. The things before him—not human, nothing like human—stretched on forever. Past houses and streets and lawns, until either objects or the Earth’s curvature got in the way and Michael lost sight of them.
Tall, gray, creatures that he could see straight through. Except for their blank, white eyes.
This is where the murmur came from, where the vibrations running through the air originated.
Do they see me?
They didn’t move at all when he stepped through the house and out into their territory. All of them remained standing, staring blindly at the house. Yet they had done something when he spoke.
“Do you hear me?”
The sound came at once, from an infinite gray mouth, lacking teeth or tongue, and Michael stepped back as the noise rushed over him like an ocean wave.
YESYESYESYESYES.
There was ecstasy in the response, nearly the same feverish intensity as an orgasm. They could hear him, though they couldn’t lay eyes on him. And they wanted him. Michael knew nothing about these creatures, could barely even take in their physical shapes, but understood without doubt that mattered as much as their want for Michael.
Michael walked backwards, slowly, not taking his eyes from the crowd in front of him. He stepped back through the wall of the house, entering the bedroom again.
Nothing followed him, though the air nearly crackled with the electricity of those things' words (YESYESYES). No one inside the bedroom seemed to feel it though; none of them moved at all.
Michael looked at Bryan, lying in his mother’s lap.
He’s been here before. The knowledge came to Michael as it did when a child first learned the innate property of one-plus-one equaling two. Michael simply knew it. Wherever he was right now, Bryan had been here before, perhaps with the alien. Right now, whether because of Bryan’s sleep or because Michael was already here, Michael thought he could pull him over. He thought maybe Bryan could talk to him on this side in a way that he hadn’t been able to in reality.
If Michael pulled him over to this world of gray.
94
Present Day
General Knox watched them walk the man to his ‘office’. The room was little more than a picnic table with a laptop on it, separated from view by a green military grade curtain. It gave him the same privacy as a curtain blocking off a bathroom in a shotgun style house. The curtain was open now and Knox could see his soldier approaching with Superman, as Knox was beginning to think of the man going into Grayson.
He knew it was wrong to use the term Superman; it made a mockery of what was actually happening here, especially when Knox didn’t truly understand what was actually happening. Knox hadn’t dialed any numbers though, hadn’t made any calls to POTUS. He had sat here and waited for this man to show up, the one now walking across black asphalt in this Walmart parking lot.
“You’re going to go through with it, aren’t you?” the General asked himself, with the man maybe two hundred feet away.
He didn’t say anything else aloud, but the fact that his hand didn’t reach for a phone said all he needed to hear. He didn’t have time to ask himself why, though he thought that someone would ask him in the future.
A lot of people in other wars hadn’t asked themselves that simple question: why am I doing this? But someone else always did, and usually with cameras running and a lot of people watching.
Is this how your career is going to end? While a camera records you telling some senator that you were only following orders?
But that was laughable. Because at this rate, with whatever the fuck Marks had decided to do, there wouldn’t be any Senators left to ask questions. For that matter, there wouldn’t be much left to ask about, either.
That doesn’t mean someone won’t ask the question though, it might just be in front of pearly gates instead of a black camera eye.
It was too late for all of that now, though, because the man was here, stepping through the open curtain.
“General Knox, Sir, this is Will,” the soldier said, standing rigidly at attention.
Knox stood up. “Will?” he said.
The General nodded, looking at the man in front of him. “Thank you, Corporal. That’ll be all for now.”
“Yes, Sir.” The soldier turned and walked from the office.
“Will?” Knox asked again, this time to the only other man in the tent. He was older, maybe a bit older than Knox himself, but in immaculate shape. The man could probably win some kind of senior fitness model show if he tried.
“People higher than you don’t know my last name,” the man said. “I don’t plan on giving it out here.”
The General looked on for another ten seconds without saying anything. “Fuck it,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to live too much longer, and if you want your name to be your own, then that’s fine with me. What’s your plan once you get in there?”
Knox sat down behind the desk but didn’t gesture for Will to do the same.
“My plan?”
“Yes. You know, what are you going to do?”
The man across the table laughed as he took a seat in the chair beside him. “Maybe you have the wrong impression here. Do you not have a plan of what is supposed to happen?”
“Fucking Christ,” Knox said. “This is Marks, isn’t it?”
“Right on.”
“He’s sending you in there without any guidance? Because, I can tell you, there won't be any support from us. There’s no planning, no exit strategy, nothing but point you in the right direction and maybe see you on the other side.”
“I’m not sure I’d say without any guidance,” Will said. “You’re supposed to hook me up with a speaker and a microphone, then point me in the right direction.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.” The man’s face lost any of the humor of the previous moment.
“Did he show you what it did?” Knox said.
Will nodded.
The General leaned back in his chair, not saying anything. This wasn’t a Superman. This wasn’t someone coming in here trying to save the day with some kind of idiotic plot thought up by Kenneth Marks. This man was a victim going to his death. He wasn’t sitting on the other side of the desk crying, though. He looked straight on, even seeming to accept his fate.
“You been in this game a while?”
“Thirty years or so.”
“Is this how you thought it would end?”
The man turned his head a bit, looking to the left, behind Knox, like he was thinking. He didn’t look back to the General’s eyes as he said, “No, I don’t think I did. Not the dying part, but the being set up to die.”
Knox nodded and was about to say something, but the man kept talking.
“I guess I’ve done it to others before. So maybe that makes some sense.”
“Doesn’t make you like Marks any more, does it?”
The man smiled again, finding Knox’s eyes. “No. Not a fucking bit.”
Knox leaned forward on the table. “Look, I have my orders and I can’t break them. You’re not going to get any support from me as far as manpower, but maybe we can do something else to help you out.”
* * *
“He’s on the phone again,” Jenna said.
; Kenneth Marks felt pretty good. The car had rolled to a stop about twenty miles outside of Grayson after leaving Will at the gas station. One way or another, in the next hour or two, they would have another contact with the creature and more data for him to assimilate. He hoped Will made it back out, not out of any altruistic feelings, only because he wanted to speak to someone who had been around it—even touched it perhaps?
The President, though, was going to make an issue out of this, without a doubt.
He had called three times in the past fifteen minutes—him personally, not his secretary nor Chief of Staff, and Kenneth Marks told Jenna to send him to voicemail. He didn’t think he could send the President to voicemail for the third time though; that might be too much for the poor man to handle.
“Send him through,” he said to Jenna.
She pressed a button on her laptop and Kenneth Marks felt his phone vibrate.
“Mr. President,” he said after bringing the phone to his ear.
“Glad you could take my call. You’re evacuating the entire state?”
Kenneth Marks felt the rage underneath the surface of the man’s voice. This was the real person, the one that the public would never see (hopefully, that was the President’s plan anyway). Rage drove this man and he was more in his element right now than perhaps at any other time in his life. This was his fun, as much as toying with Rigley was for Kenneth Marks.
“It’s a necessary precaution, sir.”
“Do tell, Marks.”
“I’m having my assistant send you a video right now. Please take a look at it; would you mind giving me a call back as soon as you’re done?”
“Stay on the goddamn line,” the president said.
Jenna had begun typing the moment he spoke, and the file went over immediately.