Whitley Strieber - The Omega Point

Sam dropped like a bag of ashes. Mack lifted him and arranged him on a bench. Maybe the mouth tried to open. The eyes stared into his, pleading. Mack said nothing. Sam couldn’t move, but he was still conscious.

“You’ll be fine, buddy,” he said. Except, not with your boss, not so fine there.

Now he would work his way to the low area in the wall near the service gate that led out onto Route 16. Sam had been a piece of cake, but this next maneuver was going to be seriously dangerous. The guards were a bunch of nervous kids, and nervous kids were hair-triggers.

The old gate he was headed for hadn’t been opened in a long time, and it was on the opposite side of the property from the town. So it had one, maybe two guys on it. He could do two, no problem.

He moved through the garden, strolling casually. Let them think that Sam was sitting on a bench sipping his usual cup of coffee.

When he came to the end of the garden, he stopped. Ahead and to the right was a hydroponic greenhouse. To the left, the disused road to the service gate crossed a clear field of grass, nothing to shelter him at all.

So, okay, speed would shelter him. He strode out of the concealing garden and onto the road, heading for the gate. A moment later, the guard came out of his little station. He wasn’t dressed like the ones near the house, in discreet blazers. This guy was in full battle dress, helmet and all. He carried an automatic rifle on his shoulder… and a paperback in his hand, a finger holding his place open.

Mack pushed away the thought that it would be easy. You take that approach, you are dead.

As he drew closer, he smiled. “Hi, there!”

“You need to stay away from the wall, Sir.”

“I’m just getting some exercise.”

“Stay away from the wall.”

Mack moved closer to him. “Sure. No problem.” He kept going closer.

“You need to return to the garden, Sir.”

“Sure.” He started to turn. Then froze. Looked more closely at the guard. “Man, that can’t be an M14A SOPMOD.”

The kid shuffled. “Yeah, it is.”

“Jeez, can I just come close enough to get a look?”

“You’re Mack Graham. You have a minder.”

“Oh, come on, take it easy. He’s got a sore foot and he’s over there sitting down. Don’t make him get up, he won’t like me anymore.”

The guy smiled slightly, then ported the rifle. Mack took three quick steps toward him. The kid was trained, but not so well that he recognized Mack’s movements as an assault setup.

A quick rap to a point just between and above his eyes and he went down. As he doubled over, Mack grabbed the rifle out of his hands and set it down back in the guardhouse. Then he pulled the kid in. He’d be unconscious for only five minutes tops, but there was a difference: this maneuver blew out the short-term memory. The kid would not recall that Mack had even been here. He’d assume that he’d fallen asleep and try to cover that with his superiors. Mack would have done the same thing with Sam, but if he woke up in five minutes and found his charge gone, he’d raise hell. He needed the time he’d get out of Sam to put distance between himself and the clinic.

He reached up to the roofline of the guardhouse and pulled himself up. No question but that he could be seen from here, so he had to keep moving. Not a problem, though. The guardhouse was only two feet higher than the roof, so he was sliding through the razor wire in a couple of seconds.

For a moment, he teetered on the narrow edge that topped the wall, then dropped down onto the far side.

Still not out of danger, though. He had to move fast now, to get into the cover of the woods that spread across the wild portion of the Acton land. A hundred-foot perimeter had been created between the wall and the trees, and so recently that the stumps were still bleeding.

Only one thing to do, now: cross it and trust to luck that nobody would see him from the two other towers that watched over this particular spot. In fifteen seconds, he was in the shade of the trees. He waited. No alarm. So he headed deeper.

The storms of earlier had gone, and the air was clean, faintly tanged with smoke. One thing solar electrical energy this intense did was to cause spontaneous fires in wiring of every kind. There were houses and buildings burning all over Raleigh County, no doubt.

He moved off deeper into the forest, taking a long, curving path among the trees, one that he would use later to guide townspeople to this vulnerable spot. He would bring them back, a great number of them, and they would come to kill, and while they did, he would do things to Caroline that would definitely bring the information he needed. Black Magic had many tricks up its sleeve, many tricks, and some of them caused amazing discomfort and amazing confusion, and some of them could hypnotize your adversary into becoming your slave.

He wondered who would break first, Caroline or dear little David. His money was on David. That Caroline was beautiful on the outside, but the interior was tough. David was nervous, rule bound, and insecure. Start pulling his skin off, he’d tell you every damn thing he knew.

He found Route 16 and sped up his progress by jogging. It was no trouble for him. In his condition, he could jog for hours.

Not until he came to the outskirts of Raleigh did he slow down. In that time, he had not seen a single car or a single person. The town was quiet, too. Very damn quiet.

He moved on, dropping back to a walk as he passed Raleigh Mortuary Services and the Dairy Queen. There would be a mayor. Some leader. He would find him. They would talk. And mayhem would come to the Acton Clinic.

David and Katie sat together in the living room of his suite attempting to get some kind of idea what was happening in the outside world. The Internet was still down, and, in any case, when it had been up, the Spaceweather.com website had been too swamped to be accessed. Toward one in the afternoon, the television signal had failed, both on cable and satellite. Prior to that, though, the stations had not had much information except endless repeats of the FAA statement that all aircraft were grounded and Homeland Security’s warning to remain indoors.

Katie turned on the radio, trying to find a station. Voices drifted in and out, sounding as if they might be emanating from a land of dreams. But most of them were probably from Baltimore, fifty miles away.

Security was working frantically on the surveillance system, which was blowing circuits left and right due to massive atmospheric electrical overloading.

Katie picked up the small radio, raised it above her head, then slumped. She put it down.

“Just when you need them, they’re not there.”

“People are looking to their own lives.”

“David, how bad is it? You know, don’t you? You understand these things.”

“It’s certainly the most intense solar storm since 1859. Sunspots, a huge solar flare, and an intensely energetic coronal mass ejection. So it’s inevitable that the satellites would be gone, but many of them are programmed to shut down during incidents like this, so they could come back. On the other hand, even well-insulated power grids are going to be collapsing all over the world. Even here in the U.S., if it keeps up.”

“But it’s not what people are saying, surely? It’s not the end of the world?”

Before he came here, he would have brushed off the claim as having no scientific basis. But even though he now knew the truth, how do you tell another person a thing like that?

“We need to be prepared for anything,” he said finally.

She looked doubtful, turning away, then glancing back at him.

“I think it’s the last thing they would admit. The panic would be incredible. People would claw their way into every hole in the world. Anyway, how can they tell us?” She gestured toward the radio.