Harvest Earth (8 page)

16    Madison

Something black and solid strikes the face of the ventilation hatch and the sharp slits that make up the grating cuts into Madison’s face. She yelps and tilts her head back. Her neck aches she is unable to move any further due to the confines of the shaft.

“Shut the hell up!” Somebody yells. It is a raspy voice, like someone shouting a whisper. Madison can’t see where the person is, but knows they are a woman. She senses them standing just below the ventilation duct’s opening.

“Hello?” Madison says, matching the tone of her unseen companion. “Please, help.” The words escape from her like the last bit of steam escaping from a dilapidated vehicle, overheated, its engine burned out.

“Just hold tight and shut up.” The voice says.

Madison doesn’t care what she is holding tight for. For all she knows this person was one of the ones that had attacked the base and caused the roof below to cave-in. But in that moment Madison doesn’t care. It would be better to die by a bullet then stay trapped in that tight space forever.

Madison rests her forehead against the grating. Her whole body has relaxed into complete complacency. There is nothing left to do but wait. She can hear rustling sounds below her. It is the sound of a metal object being dragged across the floor. Madison closes her eyes and just listens. The sound of another living being is comforting in comparison to her lonely struggle up and out of the maintenance tunnel.

She then hears boots on metal and a muffled grunt. Madison lets her eyelids peel open and sees the face of a woman with strong lines and a black complexion staring back at her from the other side of the ventilation hatch. She has the barrel of a rifle pointed at Madison’s head.

“Who the hell are you?” The woman says. She is young, in her twenties. She has black curls tied back behind her head in ponytail. Round almond-colored eyes can be seen behind a squinting and suspicious brow. Madison can tell by her fatigues that she is a part of the Air Force Security Forces.

“Comm’s officer.” Madison manages to squeeze out of her lips. “Madison Hart, First Lieutenant.” It sounds weird to hear her own name said aloud. She had never expected to hear it again.

“What’s the e-code ?” The woman shouts back. She closes one eye, lining the barrel of her rifle up. She is aiming it between the slits in the venting at the space between Madison’s eyes.

E-Code? Madison mind is blank. It is empty from hunger, dehydration and utter fatigue. She is emotionally spent and her body is running on empty. Her mind tries to grasp what the woman is saying.

“The e-code!” The woman says louder, though still cautious of the volume of her voice. She seems afraid that someone might hear them.

E-codes are sent out weekly, Madison seemed to remember. The “e” stands for emergency. It was sent via a confidential e-mail to all base personnel. It changed every week, presumably just for this situation. So that when two base personnel met they would know that the other was not an intruder. So that both would know that they were both supposed to be there. But what was the code? Madison had made a conservative effort to remember it. But that was back when she had the mental energy for such a task. She had remembered it just in case one of her superiors decided to quiz her while in the hall. The code was stuck somewhere in her brain, she just had to pry it loose.

“Three…” The woman with the rifle starts counting. Madison assumes when she gets to one Madison would have a bullet in her brain. She tries to make that same brain work now. She tries to remember what the secret password was that would spare her life.

“…two…” Security personnel no doubt took the e-codes more seriously than everyone else. It was a part of their jobs to know the codes and to enforce them. Had Madison been talking to anyone else, in any other department, they would see her uniform, she that she had clearly been in some distress, or heard her rank, and immediately helped. But this woman is from security. It is her job was to keep everyone safe by following procedure.

“…one.” The woman tightens her grip and the muscles on her fingers around the trigger of her rifle tighten. Madison braces herself for the potential pain that will follow. It will be quick, Madison reminds herself. Death will be instant. That is, as long as this soldier is an even half-decent shot.

Shot! The word rattled around in Madison’s head shaking something loose.

“Whiskey-Bravo-Tango-Alpha-Alpha-Nine-Two-Three.” Madison stammers. The words explode out of her just like she had rehearsed them a thousand times. They spill forth from her frigid memory. Her brain is thawing. It is the same effect that a shot of whiskey has after a hard day.

The woman holding the rifle freezes. Her teeth are clenched and her pupils are dilated. The muscles in her neck are stretched taunt. She is ready to fire the rifle in that moment, but instead she lowers it. Throwing the rifle over her shoulder where it dangled by its strap, both women’s bodies relax.

“Well, why the hell didn’t you say so to begin with?” The security woman’s mouth and brow are still firm flat lines. They are calloused features set in stone from grim thoughts. She is a woman hardened by military service. Madison ses that her eyes are softer now though. They have lost their ravenous fire. “I nearly shot you, you know?”

“Please, get me out of her.” Madison wheezes. She had been holding her breath in anticipation of her death. When she speaks, she releases all of her fear and associated tension.

“Yea. No problem, Sir.” The woman pulls a knife out of her utility belt and works the blade into one of the screws holding the grating onto the wall. With a few flicks of her wrist she works the screw loose and it falls to the floor. Madison wonders why she didn’t carry a knife herself. How much easier it would have been to open the ventilation hatch in the tunnel below had she had a knife and not of had to use her decorated stripes. They were not just
decorated
, they were
decorative
, Madison thought. If she survived this she suspected somehow she would get more.

The grating that had previously kept Madison from any hope of survival pops off the wall. The other woman gently lowers the hatch onto the box she is standing on. She then reaches inside the ventilation shaft with two powerful arms and wraps them around Madison’s shoulders. She pulls while Madison pushes. Madison’s body shoots out of the shaft like a pressurized cork. Madison spills onto the metal box the woman has been standing on and nearly knocks them both off.

“Geezus!” The woman in security fatigues exclaims. “You must either be damn skinny or able to suck it in real good. How the hell did you fit in there?”

“I had to.” Madison manages to say. Her body is draped across the top of the box, limp. “No other way.”

Madison’s body feels like a spring that has been uncoiled. Every muscle and joint sparks to life as blood flow rushes through her body, returning to numb limbs and digits. She feels a brief sense of elation as the feeling of renewed wellness floods her brain. She is alive and she is free. Soon there may even be rescue.

“Now get up, Sir.” The other woman says this as she pulls Madison from her dream-like euphoria. She leaps down from the box and gestures for Madison to do the same. But Madison is content to just lay there. She is happy to never move again until a medic comes by to carry her off to the nearest medical base for help.

“We gotta move.” The woman prods Madison again.

It is now that Madison remembers what she had learned in the control room. The memory is like yet another shock to her system. There were no communications. For all she knew no one is talking to anyone. No one knows that she is there in that base. She has no choice if she wants to live but to push herself a little farther.

Madison rolls over and off of the box. She flops forward and the other airman catches her. She steadies Madison until she finds her balance. To Madison it feels weird to use her feet again.

“What happened?” It was the only question Madison could think to ask. The cave-in had come so suddenly, but had not affected this wide entryway. It was after all designed to be invulnerable to a cave-in or any attack.

The security woman drapes Madison’s arm around her back, supporting Madison’s weight. The two of them cross the floor of the open entry space in tandem, careful to avoid fallen bits of rock that had seeped through. “We got hit. That’s what happened.” The woman replies.

“But how is that possible?” Madison’s head was still swimming. She pushes her body further as they make their way in the direction of a small security hut. It is a cubical structure, only five feet by five feet. There is a single door and windows all around the brim. The small hut stands in the middle of the entryway, with two lanes of traffic on either side. One lane for vehicles going out and one lane for vehicles coming in. All were checked by security personnel at this small building.

“Us...this base...nobody knows we exist. How did we get attacked?” Madison says this between heavy breaths.

“Somebody knew.” The woman responds. “Our government knew. They were the only ones.” She is growling as she voices her assumption.

“You think our own government bombed us?” Madison is shocked. The thought had not even been a seed within which to grow in her mind. She had no concept for the scope of the betrayal.

“They’re the only ones that knew we were here, right?” The woman says as they near the security building. “And you know this program would have been unpopular with the public. Maybe they took us out before some politician could get a bum rap.”

When they got to the security shed, the woman nudges the door open with her foot. Madison wobbles inside on her own. The woman steps inside after her, locking the door shut behind her as she enters. “It wouldn’t be the first time the government tried to cover up its own covert operations. Remember Roswell and Area 51?”

17    Gabriel

“Aliens?”

The idea is absurd. Images of little green men with ray guns flash in the eye of Gabriel’s mind. That, and the images of those that had called him an ‘alien’ as a boy. His father had been an immigrant, and to some, an unwanted invader. The word held an emotional power that reminds Gabriel of the bronze color of his skin.

“I know it sounds ridiculous.” The older man says as he scratches at his beard. “But when you’ve ruled out all rational and natural explanations, it is time to look at the irrational and unnatural.” The man shakes his head,  clearly uncertain he even believes the idea himself. “I don’t have any other word for it. No other concept. I’m putting together what I can with what I can. Aliens, U.F.O.s, extraterrestrials. Whatever you want to call them. Something came and took over this planet and those are the only words I have to describe what I’ve seen.”

Gabriel is in disbelief. He leans back in his chair. From their initial confrontation in the library, Gabriel, the older man and the young woman had all migrated down to the school’s abandoned teachers’ lounge. There were no bodies here. A large window overlooked the playground and let in a lot of moonlight. The man, whose name Gabriel had found out was Jules, had a camping lantern that was fueled by gas. He had lit it and set it in the center of the table to give them extra light.

The young woman, her name Tayna, is flipping through the book they had found in the library. The book that was titled, “U.F.O.s: What we know about them and what they know about us.” Tanya stops on a page that depicts an artist’s diagram of a flying saucer.  It is a flat, round disc with a bulbous half-circle resting on top of it. The diagram breaks down the different compartments of the saucer, some amateur’s best guess at the purpose behind the alien technology. The book is designed for children. It has simple words and stylized pictures. Gabriel thinks the whole idea of aliens is childish. It is material reserved for a children’s library, not something to be taken seriously.

“I don’t believe any of this.” Gabriel finally says. He stares into the fire made by the small camping lantern and watches the steady flame.

“How else do you explain what you’ve seen?” Jules says. The lantern’s light casts dark shadows across his face.

“I haven’t seen anything,” Gabriel pushes himself away from the small lounge table and goes to peer out the large window. He stands looking out at the empty playground. There are swing sets, slides and monkey bars. All of them are abandoned and have a ghostly glow in the moonlight. Parts of some of the sets are missing. Circular indents remain where sections of the sets have been removed. “Just those damn holes.” Gabriel mutters. “I don’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s…” Gabriel can’t even bring himself to say it.

Jules is concerned for Gabriel. His eyes flash between Gabriel’s back and the young woman who is with them. The young woman whom Gabriel has confirmed is the older man’s daughter. “What do you mean you haven’t seen anything?” Jules strokes his beard again and ponders over Gabriel’s words. “Were you hiding when they invaded?”

Gabriel turns away from the window. “Hiding? No. I just woke up and everything was gone.” There was something missing, something that the two parties were missing from one another. Something was blocking their attempts at effective communication.

“You were asleep then?” Jules leans back in his chair and furrows his brow. A silence falls over the room. Jules is lost in his own thoughts until his daughter kicks him playfully in the shins.

“You’re doing it again.” Tayna says.

“Doing what?” Jules says, snapping back from the recesses of his mind.

“Playing professor.” She says, cocking her eyebrows. She turns to Gabriel. “Dad was a professor at U Penn. Sometimes he gets like this. Thinking rather than talking.”

“A professor?” Gabriel confirms as he comes back to the table with the lantern and takes a seat.

“Yes.” Jules says as he rests his elbows on the table. “Biology. Neurobiology to be specific. I study brain waves mainly. How they are transmitted, at what frequency, and when. That kind of thing.”

Gabriel didn’t know anything about ‘that kind of thing’, but nodded his head anyway. “I worked maintenance at a building in Center City.” Gabriel says as he looks directly into the professor’s eyes. Gabriel was searching for answers. “I was in my office. It was in a basement. That’s where I woke up.” Gabriel then averts his gaze. “I don’t remember falling asleep. But when I woke up I was hungry, dressed in my same overalls, and then there was this.” Gabriel rubs his face where his beard was coming in.

“Remarkable.” Jules says. He studies Gabriel carefully. It makes Gabriel suddenly feel very aware of his appearance. He wishes he had shaved when he had the chance earlier.

“Dad!” Tayna says, nudging her father with her elbow. “He’s not one of your lab rats. Stop looking at him like that.”

Jules realizes he had been staring, probing Gabriel with his eyes looking for some clue to further his investigation. He turns now to his daughter. “I just think it’s interesting is all.” He says.

“What?” Gabriel asks. “What’s interesting?”

“Well,” It is Tayna who speaks. She is looking at a picture in the book of one of the saucers in the sky. There is a beam of light coming out of the bottom of it. The beam engulfs an image of a cow who is hovering off the ground, presumably being picked up by the beam.

“Everyone that we saw, those who fell asleep.” Tayna pauses and points at the picture of the cow. “They were taken.”