David Morrell - The Shimmer

“But I can see them. They’re obviously out there.”

“Headlights.”

“What?”

“You’re looking at the road from Mexico. Those are the headlights of cars driving along the highway. The road goes up and down over there. That’s why the headlights seem to float. A lot of people have been fooled by that road.”

“But…”

“The lights don’t look anything like that. Besides, it’s the wrong direction. That’s southwest. You need to look southeast.”

“Over there!” a man yelled.

As one, the crowd turned southeast, and the Winnebago shook again. Several pointed emphatically.

“There!”

Brent turned to stare in this new direction and felt overwhelmed. The first thing he noticed were the colors. He’d grown up in Michigan. One disturbing summer night when he was ten, he’d been out- side after dark and had seen countless ribbons of colors rippling across the sky. They’d radiated from the north and filled the heavens, eerily lustrous, swirling as if alive.

He’d run into the house and warned his mother, “We’re going to die!”

“What?”

“The sky’s on fire! It’s the end of the world!” His father had died from a heart attack six months earlier. That was probably why death had been on Brent’s mind.

When his mother had finally realized what was happening, she’d held his hand and made him go outside with her.

He’d struggled with her. “No! It’ll kill us!”

“There’s no reason to be afraid. What you’re seeing is the aurora borealis.”

“The what?”

“The Northern Lights. I heard an explanation for them once. Apparently they’re magnetic rays from the sun reflecting off the polar ice cap.”

What Brent saw now-off in the distance-made him feel as if the Northern Lights had been squeezed into seven shimmering orbs. Their iridescent colors kept changing, rippling from within, giving the impression that something churned at their cores. Their shimmer was hypnotic as they drifted and floated, sank and rose and hovered. Even though they were far away, Brent tried to reach out and touch them.

Many in the crowd felt the same. They reached toward the darkness.

“Get out of my way!” a man yelled.

“You’re blocking the view!” somebody complained.

“Move!” a woman insisted. “I need to get closer! I need to be cured!”

“Stop shoving!”

“No, don’t…”

Everyone surged toward the fence.

“Can’t breathe!”

People slammed against the motor home. As it shook, Brent had trouble keeping his balance. When even more people surged, it trembled violently. He reached out for something to hold him up, but all he grasped was air. The next time the Winnebago shook, his knees gave way. Suddenly he was in the air, plummeting toward the crowd. He fell between bodies, struck the gravel, and groaned from the mass of people charging over him.

Earl Halloway sat in the harshly lit surveillance room beneath the observatory’s dishes. He’d just swallowed six aspirins, for a total of a half bottle today, but he still couldn’t control his headache. His stomach burned. The hum from the facility’s generator or the dishes or whatever the hell caused it became louder, making him grind his teeth to try to relieve the pressure behind his ears.

This wasn’t Halloway’s shift, but there was no way he could contain himself enough to watch a movie on the computer in his room. He’d attempted to turn off the lights and lie in bed with a wet washcloth over his closed eyes. But the headache was too excruciating for him to lie still, so he’d come to the security office in the hope that doing something useful would distract him from it.

The harsh lights only made the pressure in his head more intense.

“Are you okay?” one of the other guards asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You look like hell.”

Halloway had given up trying to make anybody else understand about the hum. No one else seemed to hear it.

“Every day’s the same. We keep looking at those monitors. Nothing ever happens.”

“That’s the way I like it,” the second guard said. “You’d rather have somebody attack us, just for the excitement? Maybe you didn’t get shot at enough over in Iraq.”

“As if terrorists care about an observatory,” the first guard said. “I have no idea what we’re doing here, but the pay’s good.”

“You got that right. The pay’s good. So Earl, just shut up and quit complaining.”

The night-viewing function on the cameras outside had been activated several hours earlier. On the monitors, the dishes, the fences, the scrub grass, the dirt, the miles and miles of godforsaken nothing-all of it was tinted green. One of the screens showed three coyotes loping by. Their body heat made them glow brightly. On a different screen, a jackrabbit jerked its head up. Sensing the coyotes, the rabbit bounded away in a panic. It, too, glowed unnaturally.

Moments later a third screen showed the coyotes chasing the rabbit through the green darkness.

“Who says nothing ever happens?” the first guard asked. “Any bets on who wins?”

“My money’s on the rabbit,” the second guard answered.

“How much? Oops, too late. Just as well you didn’t have time to make your bet.”

Halloway scowled at the screen. “Man, even blood looks green on those night-vision images.” He stood and walked toward the door- way, stumbling slightly.

“Get some sleep,” the second guard said.

“If only.” Halloway left the room and walked along the stark corridor. His bootsteps echoed irritably.

The door to the Data Analysis area was closed. Wincing from his headache, he put his left ear against it.

You’re not supposed to be in here, the researcher named Gordon had told him after Halloway had made an effort to be friends with him. Gordon’s eyes had looked stern behind his spectacles. This area’s off- limits. You belong in the surveillance room.

Try to be nice to people, and they treat you like shit, Halloway thought.

He pressed his ear harder against the cold metal door. All he heard was the hum. Throughout the afternoon, he’d made yet another effort to find what caused it. He’d searched every room in the facility- the latrines, the sleeping quarters, the kitchen, the mess hall, the generator room, the exercise room, the surveillance room-and yet again, he hadn’t found any answers.

I didn’t get a chance to check the research area again, he thought darkly. That son of a bitch Gordon decided I wasn’t good enough to be allowed in there any longer.

The hum filled Halloway’s head. The only time he hadn’t been in pain was last night when he’d listened to the music-the wonderful music that made him feel he was dancing with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, smelling her cinnamon hair, tasting orange juice and vodka.

He gripped the doorknob and turned it.

Nothing happened. That bastard Gordon had locked it.

Halloway banged on the door but didn’t get a response.

He hammered louder.

Down the hall, one of the guards leaned his head out from the surveillance room. “What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?”

“We were told to stay out of there.”

“I thought I heard somebody shouting for help.”

Halloway pounded so hard that his fist throbbed, but the pain was nothing compared to his headache.

Suddenly the door was yanked open. Standing in the harsh lights of the research area, Gordon glared from behind his tortoiseshell glasses. His face was bright red. “What’s the matter with you? Damn it, follow orders.”

Halloway stared past him toward the other researchers. Amid banks of glowing electronic instruments, they all wore earphones. A headset-presumably Gordon’s-was lying on a table.