Harvest Earth (3 page)

4    Madison

There had been no warning before the power had gone out, and for eight hours straight Madison and the other analysts worked to figure out what had happened. The only one who got any break during this time was the man who had been found unresponsive at his station when the generator initially took over. It had been determined that he was unconscious and nothing that the medics did was able to wake him. They reported that his vitals were stable and he seemed to be in a “deep sleep” before getting a stretcher and taking him out of the room. The coincidence that the man should fall unconscious at the same time that the power went out was too great. People whispered, he had been the only one to have been on vacation leave recently in the control room. As they worked there were reports of other people who also seemed to be sleeping in the base. Each was found unresponsive after the dim lights came on. All of them had recently been outside the base.

It was just one of many mysteries Madison and her colleagues were frantically working to solve. But answers were getting harder and harder to come by.

What they did know is that they didn’t know much. Every hour Madison’s superior would give a report to the whole team, summarizing what was found out during the last hour. They knew that the satellites were no longer broadcasting a signal. They knew that they weren’t able to contact anyone and that no one was able to contact them. Even the airmen’s personal cellphones appeared to be effected. They also knew that the structural integrity of the facility was intact. This was something that worried Madison the most.

The military facility was one of several throughout the country, possibly the world. It was built to monitor communications across the globe, intercept them and determine the threat level of the communiqué. They received and reviewed everything. Phone calls, emails, social media postings and even outdated fax transmissions. Not just in the United States but all around the world. Everything passed through the base’s filter of analysts. Each analyst was watching and listening for the next great threat to the country.

In order to ensure the secrecy of the base, and protect it from public knowledge, the base had been built into a mountain range outside of a rural area in New Mexico. It was buried under thousands of pounds of rock with only one point of entry in or out. The base was entirely self-contained. They had their own well water, processed their own waste, and even generated their own electricity. The only contact they had with the outside world was the occasional opportunity to take leave. That, and the hundreds of thousands of communications the analysts seeded through each day. But today there was nothing. Not even a whisper. It was as if the entire world had decided to just stop talking to one another.

After eight hours of staring at blank world map, Madison’s monitor shuts off suddenly. It had been happening to others as well. One-by-one monitors began turning off without notice. Someone had said it might be a delayed effect from the initial attack that had knocked out the base’s primary power. They had started calling the event an “attack” around hour five.

Madison volunteers to go to the server room to investigate the cause of the ongoing shutdowns. She is dismissed and is glad to rub away the tiredness from her eyes that comes from staring at a computer screen for hours on end. Her legs nearly buckle under her from stiffness when she rises from her chair, forcing her to steady herself against her darkened monitor. By the time she is nearly to the door of the control room, she can already feel the headache that has developed from staring at the screen starting to recede. Then someone taps her on her shoulder.

She spins around and nearly falls over when she sees Lt. Trevers, less formerly known as Dale, standing behind her. “Sorry.” He says. He tries to help Madison with her balance but she pushes him away.

“What do you want?” She scolds. The only thing Madison wants is a moment alone and is eager for the prospect of some silence in what she envisions will be a still server room.

“Um?” Lt. Trevers hesitates. He adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose. “Captain asked me to tag along. Seeing as we work in the same department and all.”

Madison sneers but Lt. Trevers just shrugs his shoulders. Madison is quite certain that he had asked their superior to come. A chance for the two of them to spend some alone time together perhaps. Madison knows what that means and she isn’t interested. However, instead of chewing the man’s ear off she says, “Well, come on then.” As she marches out of the room refueled by her annoyance, Lt. Trevers struggles to keep up with her.

5    Gabriel

The sunlight from outside warms Gabriel’s skin and fills him with energy as he steps out of the stairwell and into an alleyway. For a moment he is even able to ignore the stabbing pains of hunger in his gut. The air is just starting to get crisp as Fall is approaching, but Gabriel now feels a warm breeze of Summer as it brushes up against his overalls. The smells of a city carry in the breeze and fill his nostrils. With his ears, he picks up on the sounds of distant birds chirping merrily.

But that was it
! As Gabriel realizes this, he is suddenly troubled.

Gabriel had spent the past two years in Philadelphia and had never heard the streets so quiet. There were no sounds of screeching tires, honking horns or the ticking of traffic lights. Looking down to the end of the alley at the sidewalk Gabriel sees no businessmen, vagrants, police officers or students. With a brisk jog, he runs towards the end of the alleyway where it meets up with what Gabriel only ever knew as bustling streets. When he emerges what he finds put him into a sudden delirium. It is as if Gabriel is standing in the midst of an elaborate dream.

With the exception of a few birds that soar through the air several stories up, the city is still. The sidewalks are nearly empty, with the exception of debris which has accumulated and is bouncing across the cement. The road is congested with cars, many of which have crashed into one another. It is as if everyone had suddenly slammed on their brakes at the same time. The traffic lights are out as well.

One of the vehicles nearest to Gabriel has veered off the road after being hit from behind and is pushed up onto the sidewalk. Gabriel approaches it cautiously, afraid of what he might find inside as he peers into the passenger’s side window.
Empty
. The vehicle is empty. Gabriel strolls around the car to get a better look. Where the driver’s side door should be there is just a big hole. It is as if someone has drilled a hole into the vehicle and taken everything out of it. The hole stretches from the middle console to where the door should have been. All that is left of where the driver’s seat had once been is the frame of the vehicle. Gabriel rubs his fingers along the missing part of the vehicle. The edges are smooth, cool and show no sign of grease or flame.

More carefully surveying the streets, Gabriel finds that all of the vehicles have similar holes that have been carved out of them. Some only have one hole on the driver’s side, but some have others located in the front and back passenger’s sides as well. Walking farther down the sideway Gabriel even finds a bus where nearly every seat has gone missing. In the place of the seats, only perfectly spherical impressions remain. Many of the buildings have these circular holes missing from them as well. All of the holes are the same size, about five feet across, with only a spherical void left where something else should have been.

It is while examining the bus with the several holes that Gabriel catches a reflection of himself for the first time in the bus’s large sideview mirror. Gabriel rubs his hands across his face to confirm what he sees. His beard has grown in. It appears to be a few days’ worth of stubble.

“That doesn’t make sense.” Gabriel softly whispers the words and finds the sound of his voice strange. He brushes off a sudden feeling of uneasiness and tries to remain rational.

Gabriel always shaved, he reminds himself. All of the people who worked in Gabriel’s building shaved, all expect for the most senior executives who somehow earned the right to forgo the arduous task. Perhaps to fit in, or maybe because he thought it was an unwritten rule of the building, some “must do” that existed in some book somewhere that Gabriel didn’t have access to;  Gabriel always made sure he was clean-shaven before work. There was no way he had forgotten, and even if he had his face bore several days’ worth of hair, not a single neglectful morning’s worth.

It was bizarre. Everything was out of place. That same feeling of uneasiness came back but more suddenly this time. Gabriel could feel his body tense as his mind tried to put all the pieces together, but there was still so much missing and the picture wouldn’t fully form. Gabriel stares at his reflection in the bus’s side-view mirror. He turns his head side to side and checks his scalp for any bruising or lacerations. He wants to rule out that he hadn’t hit his head or been knocked unconscious. There is no evidence of injury. A plethora of other possibilities to explore soon come flooding to him, but none of them are pleasant.

The mirror begins to shake. At first Gabriel isn’t sure if it are tears welling up in his eyes or if it is just another symptom of what had happened to him. Edging towards the mirror he places his palm against the mirror pane. He can feel the subtle vibrations as they course through his hand and up his arm. It is soothing to know that he is not imagining the restrained quakes. Gabriel can trust his hands. His eyes and mind might lie to him but Gabriel could always trust his hands. Whether he was repairing a broken copier or cleaning out a chewed up garbage disposer, Gabriel relied on his sense of touch to tell him when something was right. And now Gabriel’s hands are telling him that something is coming because the vibrations in the mirror are getting stronger.

6    Madison

If Madison thought that the control room was frantic it was nothing compared to the pandemonium she witnessed in the base’s server room. She had volunteered to visit the server room in hopes that it would a nice tranquil retreat. What she found were technicians dripping with sweat dashing between rows of tall black server towers. They were tossing both fiber-optic cables and profanities to one another. The moment Madison entered the room she could feel the heat emitting off of the servers. It was like stepping into a sauna, only without the anticipated sense of relaxation that she had so desperately wanted.

One of the lead technicians spots her as she and Lt. Trevers enter the room. He stands up from where he is working on the opened back of one of the server panels. A flashlight is clutched tightly between his teeth. Beads of sweat roll down the man’s bald scalp, dripping down his nose and accumulate in the hairs of his gray-tinged mustache. His glasses are fogged from heavy and sticky exhalations.

“What the hell do you want?” He stammers. Obviously protocol and rank have been long ignored in this section of the base. Madison doesn’t let it slide. Normally she doesn’t like to throw her rank in other people’s faces, but it has been a long day.

“I should be asking you!” She snaps back. She erects her back and puffs up her chest highlighting the markings of her station and rank on her breast. “We’re losing our computers left and right upstairs!”

The man is either too tired or too frustrated to care about all of Madison’s stars and stripes, “Well known of this would’ve happened if you airheads up there had seen this coming to begin with.”

Madison’s internal temperature rises, to the same boiling level as everyone else’s in the server room. It has an effect on you, being crammed in a small space with dim-lighting. Everyone is bumping into one another and shouting. Lt. Trevers must have noticed this because he tries to intervene but he is too late.

Madison grabs hold of the sweaty technician’s lapel with two hands and then shoves him backwards, knocking him into a server cabinet. “That’s airhead, sir, to you!” She snarls through her teeth. The lack of rest, food and answers fuels her agitation. It gives her arms strength as she holds the man pinned in place.

The entire server room has gone quiet as everyone looks on. Perhaps they are waiting for a fight to break out. They need it to, to give them a release. The only sounds come from the buzzing fans of the servers. The blades on the fans spin rapidly trying to maintain equilibrium and blow off the building heat. Lt. Trevers cautiously surveys the room and vigilantly protects his coworker. The two of them are woefully outnumbered should violence ensue.

Madison notices the tension in the room as well. She needs to do something to deescalate the situation while still maintaining her position and authority. She loosens her grip on the analyst but keeps the same snarl on her face. “Now how the hell can Lt. Trevers and I help you blockheads get these pieces of junk working again?” She gestures to the servers and speaks with a sternness in her voice that makes the statement sound less like a question and more like an order.

The analyst straightens his collar, his eyes shifting between Madison, Lt. Trevers and the onlookers. He wipes the beads of sweat off of his forehead with the back of his hand. Taking a step towards Madison, she stiffens. He then reaches past her and picks up a small technician’s kit. He holds it out to her. “Take this down to the lower levels. Our crew down there needs some extra supplies to re-route some of our systems.” His voice is soft as he adds, “sir.”

Without another word Madison takes the bag. She and Lt. Trevers disappear down the back end of the server room and down a flight of stairs. They feel the technicians’ eyes piercing into the backs of their heads as they descend down and out of sight. Once in the lower levels, Madison allows her body to relax as she takes a deep breathe. The tension of the earlier scene escapes from her.

They find a handful of airmen in overalls working in a narrow service corridor at the bottom of the stairs. They are grateful to see the supplies that Madison has brought them. One of these technicians, a woman covered in grease with her hair tied up in a loose bun, leans up against the wall as she rummages through the bag. Her identification tag reads, “Private Lui”.

“So, we know anything new?” The Private says as she picks up what looks to Madison like a long-nosed screwdriver out of the bag.

“Not really.” Madison replies, carefully watching as the Private peels off the faceplate of a fuse box on the wall. “What about down here? Do we know why our systems are losing power?”

Pvt. Lui tucks a stray hair behind her ear and then steadies her hand. She tips the point of her tool into a narrow space between a jumble of wires. “Well, the shielding that protected our systems from the initial blast, attack, or whatever it was; it protected most of our hardware but not everything. Those components that were affected seem to finally be having an impact on other components further down the line. If it continues like this it won’t be long before the whole base goes dark.” To Madison, Pvt. Liu says this last line as if it is an inevitable certainty. One that the Private has already accepted.

Lt. Trevers bristles at the thought. “Can you fix it?” He says, trying to hide his uneasiness.

“Of course I can.” The Private responds just as a spark flies out of the fusebox. It caused the lights overhead to flicker. She gives them a coy smile as if to say, ‘I meant to do that.’ Madison feels briefly encouraged by Pvt. Liu’s calmness and sense of humor. Madison tries to make a note to try to come down to the lower levels more often. To learn more about how these systems that powered her own workstation work. To also learn more about Pvt. Lui and the strange tool that she uses that looks like an elongated screwdriver.

The lights then flickered again. Pvt. Lui giggles, “That time it wasn’t me.”

But the Private’s thought is cut off when ceiling above her collapses. The whole corridor shakes with a tremendous force, and the walls on either side of them collapse as well. Lt. Trevers pushes Madison and she falls backwards. She is blinded by dust and becomes disoriented as it fills her lungs. Everything goes dark. The only way she even knows she is alive is from the sounds of tumbling rock and screams nearby.