Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers (39 page)

The first one hit and then the next.

CRUNCH… CRUNCH.

“Darn.” The whispered word seemed to come from everywhere.

At the same time, the back of his eyelids turned bright
white. He opened his eyes, and although the bright light hurt his eyes, he
could see the person that stood next to him. “Evelyn?” he tried to ask, but no
sound came out.

She gave him the most beautiful smile and said, “Whoops.”

---

He was looking at her with half open eyes. His lips formed
her name. Her face flushed as a large smile formed, “Whoops,” she said, “I was
trying not to wake you.”

“Evelyn?” he asked again. He was still half asleep, his voice
a barely audible croak.

Her smile grew larger. “Sorry,” she said. She looked downward,
taking a small, insecure step. This was so out of character for her,
so…vulnerable. It made the moment strangely endearing to Adamarus. He rubbed
his eyes and stifled a fake yawn, pretending he hadn’t seen the movement. Then,
looking up, he smiled sheepishly and joked. “Looks like I’m busted.”

She put her hands on her hips and shifted her weight. “You
are so busted,” she said gamely, a twinkle in her eyes.

Chapter Twenty One — Aftermath

“…the universes’ expansion proves the
existence of these 'other world' universes. They really exist! They exist right
here, right now, and if we could see everything going on around us, it would
look like a raging storm of static. The subatomic world is almost completely
empty space, however, about three billion years ago, the incredible expansion
rate of 'other world' universes ran out of subatomic room and the universe
began the runaway expansion we see today – this is your dark energy.”

The Loud Named Bugs

Opening Speech, 23
^rd
Amular
Symposium
on Quantum Physics

Source: The Archive

President Wicker sat behind his desk staring into space.
Everything
had changed
, he thought. Yet nothing had changed. What chance did they
have? None. Yet how did this change what they must do? He needed to get
Thornton’s thoughts.

He reached for the intercom to call for him then paused. He
remembered how shaken and depressed Thornton had looked towards the end of the
meeting. Who could blame him? But Thornton’s depression had seemed so intense
that it had concerned Wicker, even spooked him a little. Wicker decided to go
to Thornton instead. He got up and left his office.

Passing by his secretary, he told her where he was going,
then he walked out the door and down the hall. Entering Thornton’s outer
office, he saw that Thornton’s secretary had stepped away, so he walked up to
the door and knocked. Almost immediately, he heard a strange noise from within.
It sounded like a chair had tipped over. He knocked again louder…nothing. He
tried the knob and the door opened.

The first thing that caught his eye was the overturned chair,
then the kicking feet, then the entire horrific scene: Thornton was hanging by
the neck from a ceiling fan jerking and kicking!

Wicker gasped, “Oh my God!” He immediately ran to the chair,
and with shaking hands, up righted it, then jumped up on it and grabbed
Thornton in a bear hug, lifting him up to take the pressure off his neck.

Thornton continued to flail his legs and arms, hitting and
kicking Wicker and making it hard for Wicker to hold him.

Wicker needed help, but there was no way to call for any! Repeatedly,
Thornton’s flaying arms and feet hit and battered Wicker. Wicker hollered,
“Help! Help! Somebody help me!” but nobody came. He cried out for help again
and again…nothing!

Suddenly Thornton quit lashing out. He trembled violently –
then he went limp. Still, Wicker didn’t want to let go of him, but he was beat
up and exhausted. “Help! Please help me!” he cried out.

After several minutes, unable to hold him up any longer, he
tried to let Thornton slip through his arms gradually. However, Wicker
accidentally let go and Thornton dropped. The packing twine yanked Thornton’s
neck up violently. There was a crack and Thornton’s neck extended! Wicker, only
inches away, was shocked! He cried out and fell to the floor. He sat there
rocking back and forth. Tears were streaming down his face. He could not look
up at Thornton.

---

The smell of the rain, the soil, and the vegetation almost made
the atrium seem like a real forest back on Amular.

Still half asleep, sprawled out on the ground which was a
combination of dirt, grass, leaves and sticks, and leaning against a tree, Adamarus
looked up at Evelyn and smiled. The overwhelming and depressing memories of
this morning’s meeting were held at bay mostly, he mused, by her smile. “So…asleep
against a tree, lying in the dirt…I suppose you’re going to report me?”

Evelyn just barked a soft laugh. She was thinking she’d like
to join him.

For many seconds, they looked at each other—the only sounds were
the distant birds singing and wind coursing through the trees. Periodically, a
cool breeze blew though the glade, blowing across their faces.

The dream still seemed to be with Adamarus, distracting and
numbing him. To shake it off, he got to his feet and brushed himself off while
Evelyn, standing about eight feet away, watched, shifting back and forth almost
nervously.

He noticed an anthill on the ground in front of him. A slight
wave of dizziness passed over him and he frowned as he watched the small black
insects crawl up the dirt mound and into the hole on top. For an absurd moment,
he thought about pitting all of Amular’s military might against that anthill
and what the ants might do to defend against such an attack. Then, the next
instant, he felt like one of the small insects…tiny…powerless…insignificant.

He blinked away the strange feelings and remembered his
dream. There seemed to be something significant about it, and he almost saw
what it was, but his thoughts were interrupted.

“What’s wrong?” Evelyn asked in a concerned voice. She had
been watching the play of emotions on Adamarus’ face and was leaning forward
looking at him.

Suddenly remembering the special “Black Raven” security level
and the fact that he could not let anything slip concerning this morning’s
meeting, he forced himself to regain control and used the anthill as a
distraction. He pointed at it, “Can you believe it? Do you think they included
them on purpose?”

She looked down at the anthill in surprise – an anthill was
not something you usually saw at Hideaway. Instinctively she walked over and
bent down for a closer look, “At least they’re not the red ones that bite.” When
she stood, she found herself very close to Adamarus.

They looked at each other and Adamarus felt something passed
between them. Then they both blinked and looked away and the moment was gone. They
both stepped back awkwardly and looked away from each other.

After a few seconds, Adamarus said, “Look,” and pointed
upwards. Through the trees and rising mists, they could see a rainbow
stretching from one side of the atrium to the other. Spellbound, they watched
it.

Suddenly the background sounds of the birds surged to the
foreground and dozens exploded from the trees and rose into the air. They flew
upwards towards the shimmering colored arch and then seemed to fly around and
through the misty bands of color.

A second later, the reason for the commotion appeared –
Leewood and Harrington were walking quickly towards them. Adamarus and Evelyn
set out and met them halfway.

Leewood and Harrington did not look well. Both were pale and
Harrington’s eyes were red and puffy from crying. They seemed to pause
awkwardly, look at Evelyn and then at each other. Evelyn was about to ask them
what was going on when Leewood said, “Secretary of Defense Thornton has
committed suicide.”

---

That evening, Wicker had recovered as much as possible from
the ordeal and sat alone in his office. He had finally dealt with all the
security people, the police, the interviews, the required written statements,
the concerned friends, staff members, and aids.

Fortunately, Thornton had never married and his only living
relative was a sister. Wicker had personally called and notified her.

They had found Lance Thornton’s final correspondence on his
desk in a blank unsealed envelope. Now Wicker settled back for his second
reading of the suicide note.

“My worst nightmare as a child…the thing I feared most when I
was growing up…was this: I imaged that if the ocean somehow drained, the empty
chasm it would leave behind would be too immense to look into. More than anything
else, I had always feared looking into such an abyss. Now I find myself
standing at the edge of an infinite cosmic rift more enormous, vaster, than
anything I could ever imagine and my terror is absolute.

“I have pledged to guard and protect the people of our world
and settlements, an oath that meant everything to me. But I can see now that my
failure is total and complete. Forgive me, but I cannot continue on with the
weight of this failure while balancing myself at the edge of an abyss so vast
that I cannot even think about it, let alone face it.”

Secretary of State Thornton had penned the note in a very
shaky hand and then signed it. Wicker read it over again, then whispered, “I
forgive you, Lance,” and he did.

He set the note down and used his com unit to summon a
meeting with everyone else who had attended this morning’s gathering. The
summons read, “Right now.”

---

“We can’t find Dr. Van Loader anywhere,” Leewood told the
President.

“I am very, very concerned about him.” Dr. Donnelly added.

Wicker resisted the urge to rub his temples. He resisted the
urge to even look down. He looked Leewood in the eye with all the confidence he
could muster. Right now they deserved no less from him. “Admiral, let’s get
every asset involved with the search, but…let’s also try to keep it as low key
as possible. We don’t want to get too many people asking the kind of questions
that might lead to this morning’s meeting.”

“Understood,” Leewood replied.

“Does anyone else…” Wicker backtracked, “does anyone feel
that they need…help? We need each other right now more than ever and our
civilization needs each of us even more. Forgive my bluntness, but I don’t want
anyone else taking their life. If you are worried about someone else, let me
know so we can get him or her help. Please, people, we need to get through
this.” He looked at Bugs who had said nothing so far. He fully expected Bugs to
say, ”I warned you,” and its continued silence was almost worse.

Adamarus sat silently, haunted by the feeling that something important
had happened, but he could not put his finger on it. He was haunted also by his
encounter with Evelyn.

Finally, President Wicker got each person to promise him that
if they had suicidal feelings or a depression that they could not handle, they
would let him or Leewood know immediately. He told each of them that he would
do his best to be available to each of them at any time, day or night. After
this, he dismissed them.

---

At the center of the domed atrium’s ceiling there was a ring
of large air vents. Within this ring was a small hole six feet in diameter. Inside
the hole, a walkway ran around the perimeter of the hole and there was a
five-foot railing providing protection from falling to the floor 1000 feet
below.

Access to this small area was very hard to find – you had to
crawl underneath a walkway and one of the fifteen-foot air ducts. Although the
small hole was visible from the floor below, the small area was next to useless,
and most of the maintenance crew did not even know of its existence.

Night came and the lights were dimmed in the atrium so only a
dim ghostly light shown through the hole and illuminated the walkway and
railing. All through the long night, a haunted whimpering filled the small
area. The huge air ducts surrounding the small area carried the mournful sound
down through the walls.

---

The next morning Leewood checked with the security section
leaders whose crews had spent the night searching for Van Loader. They had not
found him.

Leewood frowned and asked for ideas. No one seemed to have
any, but one of the security men looked like he wanted to say something. Leewood
looked at him, “You have something?” he asked.

The section leader looked uncertain, but spoke up anyway. “My
crew searched the super structure in the atrium and…well…all night we thought
we heard…” he waved his hands searching for the right words.

“What?” Leewood prompted.

“Well, the air passing through the air ducts makes it hard to
hear anything but…all night my people claimed to hear something. I heard it,
too, but, it seemed to come from everywhere. Truth be told, it spooked the hell
out of us. It was like some God-awful moaning or whimpering. It was just barely
audible and might have just been the sound of the air passing through the air
ducts. Except…”

“Except what?” Leewood prompted again.

“Well, it seemed to go away around, oh, say 4:00 AM.” He
rubbed his tired eyes. “I just don’t know. It was weird as hell.”

Leewood put his hands on his hips and frowned. “Shit,” he said
nodding, it was probably Van Loader. Those conduits and ducts will carry sound.
“All of you, get into that superstructure again and do a systematic search. He’s
in there.”

---

The atrium was dry and back to normal and the Council of War
started again right on time.

Van Loader’s empty seat at the conference table and
Thornton’s empty screen were very conspicuous. Everyone had heard about
Thornton by now, but so far, no one said anything about the missing Van Loader.

Leewood gave Harrington a quick reassuring look, then called
the meeting to order. “Picking up with yesterday’s agenda, first we’ll hear
from Mr. Wendell Warren on the overall…”

“Naaaaooooooo!” The ratchet sounding scream sounded like it
had come from a great distance, its echo made it come from every direction. “First…you’ll
hear from me!”

Everyone was looking around for the source of the
interruption. One of the observers from the bleachers screamed, “Oh my God!”
and suddenly half a dozen of the observers were looking upward and pointing.

The voice continued, “I have done the calculations. I have
researched sources from around the world. There can be no doubt! What comes in
that ship…is not a mere life form from another star. What comes in that
ship…what comes in that ship…”

Finally seeing the pointing arms in the bleachers, Leewood
followed their gazes upward. Then he saw someone standing behind a railing
within a small circular opening at the very center of the dome’s arcing
ceiling. However, a closer look showed that the person was standing on the
outside of the railing!

The speaker’s voice had risen to a scream! “What comes in
that ship…is…God!” Leewood’s eyes were confused. “It’s God!” Suddenly something
was dropping from the ceiling, drawing his eyes away from the opening.  He
forced his eyes back to the railing…the person was gone!