D. MacHale - SYLO

“This is it,” she said.

“Sure seems that way,” Dad replied soberly.

I wanted to ask what he meant, but I had already heard more than I wanted to. Besides, they were my parents. They were always looking out for me. If there was something I should know, they would tell me.

So I kept my mouth shut and ran up the stairs.

Arbortown had become a ghost town.

At Dad’s insistence, he and I went out the next morning to Schatz’s Bakery to get bagels and try to pretend like all was normal, but one look at Main Street proved that it was anything but. The day before, the town had been packed with people enjoying the Lobster Pot Festival. Now, only a few brave souls hurried along the sidewalk while keeping close to the storefronts, as if they might offer some protection against…what? Some people even wore surgical masks. Abandoned festival booths lined the street. Paper napkins blew past overflowing garbage cans. The festive bunting and smiling-lobster banners swung lazily in the offshore breeze as cruel reminders of a happier time. Yesterday.

“Everybody must be hiding under their beds,” I observed.

“That can’t last,” Dad said. “Life has to go on.”

Every so often we’d see a pair of SYLO soldiers strolling together. They weren’t walking with obvious purpose, but it definitely felt as if they were on some sort of patrol. Still, they each made a point of smiling and offering a friendly “Good morning.”

“They aren’t wearing any protection,” Dad pointed out. “That’s gotta mean we aren’t in any real danger.”

“Or maybe they’ve already been given some kind of vaccination,” I offered.

That made Dad pause, but he shook it off. “No. If that were the case, why not just come out and give it to everybody? I’m thinking there’s no real threat.”

“Really?” I said skeptically. “That looks pretty threatening to me.”

I pointed out to the water where a Navy warship stood guard over the harbor like a silent, shadowy specter—with big guns.

“Whatever’s going on,” Dad said, “I’m sure we’ll be told everything real soon.”

Something (besides everything) had been bugging me all night. I needed to talk about it with somebody. Dad was the logical choice.

“Do you think there’s a connection?” I asked. “I mean between the quarantine and what Quinn and I saw the other night? You know, the explosion?”

Dad stopped walking, as if my words had struck a nerve. He gave me such a grave look that I expected him to blurt out, “You’re right! I hadn’t thought of that!”

He didn’t.

“What makes you think that?” he asked cautiously.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who thought it might have been a military exercise. It seems like a pretty big coincidence that a dramatic military event happens right before we get dramatically invaded by the military.”

“We weren’t invaded,” Dad corrected.

“Whatever.”

Dad looked out to the water and the warship that was anchored at the mouth of the harbor.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I guess anything’s possible. But like I said, I think we’ll find out sooner rather than later.”

I had to agree. There was no way an entire island of people could be cut off from the rest of the world and kept in the dark for very long.

We continued on to Schatz’s Bakery only to discover it was closed. No big surprise. None of the other businesses on Main Street had opened either.

“It can’t last,” Dad said with conviction. “It’s Sunday. By tomorrow things will start getting back to normal.”

We spent the rest of the day at home. Cable was back. So was phone service. We stayed glued to the TV, watching for any news on the quarantine and talking to friends and family who lived on the mainland. The phone never stopped ringing. We had become national and probably international news. Friends from Connecticut called, wanting to know what was going on, but we didn’t have any more information than they did. I kept expecting—or hoping—that President Neff would break into regularly scheduled programming to announce that all was clear. I wouldn’t have minded if he did it during the Pats–Jets game since the Jets were kicking the Pats’ butts up and down the field. But there was no such announcement.

In the afternoon Dad and I took another walk down to the harbor, where we found an entirely different scene from what was there in the morning. There was an amazing amount of activity going on. Transports were arriving and dumping off tons of equipment. As each ship emptied out, it would then shove off and quickly be replaced by another. More troops were arriving too. Helicopters flew overhead, dangling wooden pallets holding large, heavy crates. The president said that SYLO would be setting up somewhere on the island. I had to believe that these choppers were making round trips to deliver equipment to their temporary base, wherever that was.

In just a few short hours, Arbortown had gone from a ghost town to a hub of military activity. The SYLO soldiers controlled the streets (and the water and the air) while the islanders kept to the sidewalks, watching in stunned wonder as their quiet little island was overrun.

“That’s a lot of gear,” I said. “Looks like they’re planning on staying a while.”

Another troop transport arrived, but instead of soldiers, these boats carried a load of people in civilian clothes pulling rolling suitcases. It was a mix of men and women who could easily have been mistaken for tourists.

“CDC,” Dad said. “The cavalry has arrived.”

“They’re not wearing protection either,” I said.

“See?” Dad declared brightly. “If anybody should know if there’s a danger, it’s them.”

Waiting for them was Captain Granger. The guy was tall and thin, towering over most of the other SYLO soldiers who were part of the reception committee. He definitely carried himself like a soldier, with straight posture that made it look as though he had a pole stuck up his back. Or somewhere else.

Granger didn’t welcome the newcomers or shake hands or salute or anything. He just stood there, quietly observing. A few of the arriving scientists gave him a nod as they passed him but Granger didn’t return the acknowledgement. He stood with his arms folded, staring at them with his steely eyes as if sizing them up.

A stream of black Humvees (when had they arrived on the island?) pulled up to the wharf. The scientists moved quickly up the ramp, handed their bags over to a few waiting SYLO soldiers, and jumped into the vehicles. The soldiers loaded the bags into the backs of the big cars and seconds later they roared off.

Granger never said a word. He stood observing the process until the last Humvee had driven off, after which a military Jeep screamed up to him. He got in the passenger seat, and the Jeep took off after the line of Humvees. The whole process took only a few minutes.

It was a disturbing scene. I’m not sure if that was because it had to happen at all, or because of the intensity of the moment. You could feel it in the body language of the arrivals, and definitely with Captain Granger.

In a word, it was tense.

“Those guys mean business,” was my comment.

“Yeah, well, they didn’t come for the chowder,” Dad replied.

On the way home we walked past the Blackbird Inn. It was Dad’s biggest client and he wanted to get a heads up on any work that needed to be done. We were about to turn off the street onto the pathway that led to the house, but I stopped him.

“What?” he asked.

I motioned toward the big house.

On the porch were Olivia and Kent. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear that Olivia was upset. I didn’t need two guesses to figure out why. She’d wanted to leave Pemberwick even before the quarantine and now she was stuck here without her mom. Kent leaned against the porch railing, pretending to be interested in what she was saying. I knew he was faking because no sooner did Olivia turn her back to him than he glanced at his cell phone, probably to see if the Pats had come back against the Jets. He wanted to be anywhere else but there.