The Harbinger Break (18 page)

  
It was simple math–the deaths of a few verses the deaths of many. The aliens existed on Europa and were Millennia more advanced than humanity. They obviously knew of Earth–so why hadn't they made contacted? Why hadn't they done anything? A drone even, anything at all.

  
How could an intelligent race exist that advanced technologically to the stage of interstellar flight, but never developed means to communicate with the life they might find? Even just an appearance, anything.

  
They wouldn't purposely ignore man, purposely ignore his countless attempts at communication–that didn't make sense. Not unless they had already sent spies. But why would they spy?

  
The only logical explanation was to determine whether or not the planet was worth the risk of an invasion–to make sure that they could defeat humanity in a fight.

  
Humanity couldn't possibly compete with them–they were far too advanced. The only chance of survival was to utilize fear–to make sure the aliens knew that man wouldn't die without a fight–that man may be small, but would fight and kill with tooth and nail and bullet and laser, and that the planet and humanity's survival was worth dying for–worth killing for.

  
Pat focused back on the boy, who hadn't averted his gaze since Pat looked away. It felt as if the boy was daring him.

  
"Do it, human, I dare you. Murder your weak, your innocent, your defenseless–I dare you."

  
This was it. This was the moment Pat had known would come, the moment he'd been dreading. The moment that would burn, shred, and utterly evaporate any trace of humanity left in him. The weight only he could bear–the greater good only he could foresee.

  
He tried to focus on the hundred millions of other three-year-olds he'd be saving, and how many would get to live and be happy and grow old because of this war he fought alone–the war he could never be thanked for. Either he'd save the planet, prevent an interstellar war, and humanity never understands the method of his madness–or the aliens do attack, humanity is annihilated from the planet, and his sins are lost among the ruins.

  
Closing his eyes, he placed his knife gently against the boy's throat.

  
"I'm sorry," he whispered, apologizing not only to the boy, but to the God which at that moment he hoped didn't exist.

Chapter 9

   Summers couldn't help but feel like a kid again as he and Penelope Plum drove south to Jacksonville, to the Genetic Decontamination Centre. Daniel Berry, or The Warden as Summers had dubbed him, had been "a cinch" for Penelope to locate, and they felt surprisingly confident about their makeshift plan, which Penelope referred to as still in its alpha stages.

  
They listened to rock n' roll the entire drive, singing loudly their favorites along the way. Penelope had listened closely to Summers’ rehashing of the events that went down at GenDec and attempted to assuage Summers’ guilt, if only slightly.

  
"You didn't shock that kid, you didn't starve that kid, you didn't psychologically torture that kid to glorify suicide, and you sure as
hell
didn't put that gun to his head and pull the trigger," Penelope had said as he slapped his fist into his hand to emphasize every verb.

  
"And even if you did put that gun in that kid's hand–a normal, well-raised kid wouldn't have done anything with it besides say 'ooh cool' and hand it back."

  
As he finished speaking he violently swerved the car back into their lane to avoid by inches a head on collision with a guard rail. Summers couldn't help but fear for his safety and grin. His old pal really knew how to cheer a guy up and make him fear death simultaneously.

  
"Sure wish we could've taken the Skyway," Summers remarked, solely to annoy Penelope.

  
"Can't brother, you know that. I'm keeping off the grid."

  
Summers laughed. A criminal had to be especially naive to use the Skyway if he or she was wanted–and it was never the dumb criminals that the FBI and the FBE were concerned about, so the job of double-checking Skyway license plate records (in case of a computer failure) was usually held by interns. The director would give them a list of important criminals and claim, "whoever finds one of these license plates will get hired on the spot."

  
Through fifteen years of the Skyway's implementation, through hundreds of interns, rumor had it that only one had ever been hired because of that claim, although most doubted the validity of that rumor, claiming it existed solely to convince skeptical interns that they had a chance.

  
A couple miles down the road, Penelope pulled over at a rest station. "Gotta drain the barracuda brother," he said, stepping out of the car.

  
Summers followed suit and began pacing the sidewalk. He pulled out his cell and dialed Paige. She answered almost immediately.

  
"What the hell, Chris!"

  
He grinned, expecting that'd be her reaction. He hadn't updated her in a couple days, not since they spoke after he'd turned in his badge. "Sorry. I've been busy."

  
She sighed. "It's okay. So what's the scoop?"

  
"Going to the mark now. Keep a line open, we may need remote assistance."

  
"You got it. Anything else?"

  
"See if you can get me a rundown of everyone employed there."

  
"Easy enough. That it?"

  
"Yeah," he paused. "Well, Paige?"

  
"Yeah?"

  
He paused again. "Actually, now's not the time, I'll tell you later."

  
"If you say so, handsome. But I have news for you."

  
"Yeah?"

  
"It's Alcove."

  
Summers closed his eyes. Just hearing Harrison Alcove's name was enough to give him a headache.

  
"What about him?"

  
"We haven't heard from him in a few days, but he called off the APB on Shane."

  
"Idiot."

  
"It gets worse. Barnes is giving him a week. Says he'll allow Alcove to play his hand. He's off the radar, I don't have to tell you what that means."

  
Summers took a breath. "I'll keep my eyes open."

  
"Please do. Anything else you need from me?"

  
"Just updates on Alcove and Shane. I'll let you know if anything comes up."

  
"Sounds good. Be safe, Chris."

  
"Always am."

  
He hung up just as Penelope zipped up his fly, strutting from the bathroom.

  
"Playing a game?" Penelope asked, seeing Summers holding his phone.

  
"Yeah."

  
"Cool man. Games are good, keep you relaxed. Always annoyed me that the creative types got shafted with Scott's Props."

  
Summers shook his head. "I understand the paranoia. Movies and books won't do much good against alien fangs and lasers and whatever they'd harvest us with."

  
"You think that's their plan?"

  
"I don't know what I think. They're aliens man, they might not even see in the same spectrum. They might not even
see
."

  
They walked back to the car, Summers now driving and Penelope riding shotgun, propping his feet up on the dashboard.

  
"You shouldn't put your feet up there," Summers said.

  
"Why not?"

  
"I crash and those airbags are dislocating your legs right up to your head."

  
"Gross."

  
"I know, I've seen it."

  
Penelope put his feet down as they returned to the highway. They stopped talking for a little while, and Summers assumed they were both stuck in an internal hypothetical alien confrontation. Or the possibility of a confrontation never occurring.

  
Their time period referred to itself as a spiritual dark age, with the arts at a near standstill. A large majority of fiction novelists sold their craft on street corners in cardboard boxes for spare change, movies came out every few weeks, video games and television shows were the only media somewhat resistant to the compounding pressure of technology not just as growth, but as survival.

  
Summers assumed that was because someone in a political high-chair wanted the general public desensitized to violence, especially towards aliens. Reading was solely for expanding one's knowledge, as fiction could never completely absolve the impending aliens from tense minds like mindless video games and television shows could. A pretext for survival, but necessary. Paranoid minds were only useful until they collapsed, and asylums were filled to the brink.

  
This was the real cold war–nuclear threats were a laughable fear of the past. The bonds between nations were stronger with every fear-inducing rant from positions of power, attempting to inspire paranoia not only to maintain control, but as general concerns towards the safety of civilization. It was just safer to remain inside behind locked doors.

  
The military commissioned the construction of jets that could instantly burst to faster than sound travel, but what if the aliens were faster? They commissioned laser guided weaponry that can track and destroy a bullet mid-flight, but couldn't stop a laser.

  
The aliens were always faster, always stronger, always more technologically advanced. Some preached subservience over annihilation, others preached preemptive all-out war. It's possible humanity didn't have the power to destroy their motherships, but they sure as hell had the power to blow up Europa.

  
And then there was Patches Shane, and his "they're already here" theory. This was the scariest of all, like a ripple in black waters. It could already be too late.

  
But if that was the case, what was the point? Might as well enjoy it all–the terminally ill don't show up to work when the end is nigh–when there's not much to do but enjoy what little time left. But the end was nigh only in theory.

  
It was possible that the aliens simply didn't care. Maybe they just enjoyed the spectacle of humanity from afar, like watching trapped birds in a cage of mirrors, pecking at their invulnerable reflection to a heart-attack. Man might be their art, their television. The tiger in the entrapment, marking ownership of its cage–the Earth as man's cage–prowling around his land. Earth might already be the aliens’ real-estate.

  
Well then, Summers thought, might as well wipe clean the shit. GenDec was a blight on the portrait of humanity. It had to go, regardless of whether or not man was walking dead.

  
He could understood Shane's line of thinking, but he also understood what Shane did not. Even if the aliens were hiding on earth, spying on humanity–it was paradoxical to think that saving humanity by murder would save it at all. If Shane's ideology spread, regardless of whether or not the aliens attacked or whether or not they even initiated contact, humanity as an ideal would be forfeit, because humanity was based on the sole proposition that man is good and man should be good and good men can coexist. Society was based on the idea that large amounts of coexisting men can work together to create a better life. And when murder happens preemptively society is forfeit, the good of humanity along with it, and then man himself. Destroying society's ideals to save humanity would destroy both and save no one.

  
Or maybe he was wrong–but regardless, he slept well enough at night.

   They arrived at Jacksonville around eight and booked a hotel for the evening. The following morning, after a text from Paige, they were ready to initiate the first step of their plan. Summers had awoken earlier than he'd planned, and as he listened to Penelope's choking snores he found himself silently praying that the lines of man and fate were drawn on separate sheets of paper.

◊   ◊   ◊

   Sam Higgins blended locally grown vegetables in a juicer and drank the mixture with cement resolve. He'd become healthier since his new diet, both in mind and body. The initial withdrawal had faded completely, and his mind was a crystal greenhouse where words and thoughts never sprouted so easily, and as he drained the last of that green chunky mixture he weighed his options.

  
Something was definitely in the food–Pat was right about that, and until Sam found the hidden poison in humanity's sewers, Pat couldn't die. Only after he'd exposed the truth could Pat be wiped like a bug on a windshield from the face of the planet.

  
He decided to drive to the Bixplus distribution center, north of Savannah, on Maple if he remembered correctly, to investigate Pat's claim which had evolved into an undeniable fact. He packed a bag, and while packing he wondered if he should buy a gun, and if he should then how? A pawn shop? How much did guns even cost?

  
An hour later, Sam hit the road. He pulled up to a pawn shop next to a gas station. Two drunkards stared as he parked his car, and as he slowed to a stop that old nervous tick crawled out from hiding.

  
What if the shop ran a background check? What if he wouldn't be allowed to buy a gun because of his past? What if buying a gun set off a red flag, and led to him being tracked?

  
The two drunkards still hadn't averted their gaze.

  
No, Sam thought, better safe than sorry. He backed out of the parking spot and drove off, resolving that better ways of handling danger other than using a gun must exist. Pat only carried a knife, and he got along just fine. But then again, Pat was the one who did the attacking–he never had to defend himself.

  
Sam's silver Civic engaged the Skyway north, and Sam reclined in his seat and closed his eyes. He'd have to get as much sleep as he could, as there wouldn't be time to sleep later.

   After a nine hour journey he awoke to a wailing alarm clock as his car disengaged at its predestined Maple exit. The magnetic claw released his car on a moving platform, which moved his car out of the way for any other car that might be disengaging behind him. The cars rotated in a circle, and the claw could sense open areas on the moving platform. If a car didn't drive off after a few rotations, a Skyway worker would usually go over to the car in question and knock on the window until the driver awoke and drove off. On the extremely rare occasion that there were no more openings on the moving platform, or no Skyway worker at that drop off, the Skyway would reengage the vehicle attempting to land and drop them off at the next available stop, to the extreme aggravation of the driver. But Sam had never seen that occur, and as he drove off the moving platform he wondered how often that even occurred.

  
He parked at a drugstore a block away and walked to the Bixplus distribution facility. Large semis drove to and from, surprising to Sam considering the late hour. He hadn't expected activity this late, and was forced to investigate before attempting to break in.