Whitley Strieber - 2012 - The War for Souls

All the new-age gurus were howling that it was going to completely blow the mind of man. Wiley figured it was another Y2K, when the coming of the year 2000 had been expected to cause an outbreak of chaos, but which had actually been a lot of overhyped nonsense.

When he closed his eyes, it seemed as if the office did not have his desk in it. Instead, there were two recliners with reading lights beside them. Where he kept his little TV, they had a bookcase full of science tomes, archaeology and physics. He saw the books so clearly that he could almost read the titles.

The bells were now joined by the long wail of a warning siren.

He found himself uttering a prayer for the other Harrow, and all whom she was losing on this night, right here, right now, December 1, 2012.

Near him, he could sense movement.

He tried to open his eyes, couldn’t. Really tried. Could not. He called Brooke, but nothing came out.

The room in Martin and Lindy’s house became more clear.

He could see a woman—Lindy. Kind of pretty. Scientific looking. Not gorgeous like Brooke.

She, also, had heard the bells ringing, and had come in to listen at the window. She was haggard and had a shotgun in her hands—not a good one like his, but rather an old ten-gauge that had seen better days—much better ones.

Then he noticed that he was typing. The damndest thing, he hadn’t even realized it. His eyes were closed, but he could hear it. Feel it in his fingers.

He tried to draw his hands away from the keyboard, couldn’t.

“Lindy,” he said. Sweet name. She drew her head back from the window and started out of the room.

The phone in her version of the room rang. Wiley couldn’t see it, but he heard it so clearly that he froze, his fingers stopping just above the keys. He could hear her breathing, gasping almost, between the insistent rings.

From down the hall, he heard a murmured sigh as his Brooke tossed and turned. Was she aware, at least dimly, of the sound of Lindy’s phone?

Lindy put her hand on it. She tightened her grip. Her face reflected a torment that was horrible to see. She picked it up.

ON NOVEMBER 29, 2012, WHAT had started so strangely in Gloucestershire on the 21st had become a great terror that had, on that night, struck millions of cities, towns, and villages across the world, and expanded from there. Now, on December 1, the White House that Martin had visited was long since evacuated, Washington was in chaos, the world was in chaos. The stories from the great cities were beyond horror. Rather than face what was happening people by tens of thousands had gone out of windows in New York and Chicago, leaving heaps of untended bodies in the streets. The country’s communications had broken down, fuel and food had ceased to move along highways choked with refugees, and worse had happened, much, much worse.

Harrow, Kansas, however, had not been struck. All the towns in the area had organized themselves and were as prepared as they could be, but so far the problems had not affected Kansas—at least, not this part of it. However, with communications down, they really had very little idea what was happening past thirty miles away.

Martin was on watch in the steeple of Third Street Methodist when, just before one in the morning, he saw light flicker in the clouds that choked the dark west. As he looked more carefully, the clouds lit up briefly. But there were thunderstorms out there, so there would be lightning, of course.

Another flash slowly dwindled and was gone. He knew archaeology, not meteorology, but he had never seen lightning that lingered like that.

He turned on the little radio that he’d brought up with him, just in case there would be some signal from somewhere, but the world remained as silent as it had been these past three days. No radio, no TV, no Internet, GPS mostly not working. Landline telephones were sporadic, cell phones were local only, and then only occasionally. There was no TV, and even the shortwave radio consisted of static, and in the higher frequencies, endless streams of what sounded like some sort of singsong code, a machine language.

Another flash, this one going close to the ground, then expanding and getting brighter.

He became aware that his heart had begun to thutter. He faced the fantastic reality: They had come to Lautner County. That light was over Holcomb, not twenty miles away.

Nobody had ever seen them. The only thing known was that the fourteen lenses, when night fell on them, disgorged thousands of dully glowing bloodred disks, which fanned out spreading the most appalling and bizarre form of death ever known to man.

He picked up his cell phone and called the town’s police officer, his friend Bobby Chalmers. “Got some bad-looking flashes in those clouds, Bobby.”

“I’m lookin’ at ’em.”

Next, he phoned Lindy. Attempting not to alarm her, he kept his voice casual. “Hey, Doctor Winters.”

“Hey, Doctor Winters.”

“Sorry to rouse you from your beauty sleep, but, uh, why don’t you go ahead and get the kids ready? I think you need to come over here. Looks like we could have some activity coming in from the west.”

She didn’t get a chance to react before his phone started beeping in another call. He clicked over. “Hi, Bobby. Where are you, BTW?”

“On my way to you. Ron Turpin over in Parker—”

Parker was between here and Holcomb, a scattering of trailers and a tumbledown convenience store at a crossroads. “I know Ron.”

“Yeah. He’s sayin’ there’s a formation he can see in the flashes, moving with the clouds. And nobody’s answering the phone over in Holcomb.”

“But they’re working? The phones are working?”

“They’re ringing. No cops, no sheriff, no paramedics picking up, nothin’.”

“Dear God.”

“You better get down outta there, now, Martin.”

Immediately, he clambered down the four flights to the choir loft, glanced out across the dark church, and then went down the stairs to the entrance. Bobby had arrived and was going into the electrical closet as Martin reached the foot of the stairs. Bobby hit the power switches, lighting up the nave, then all the external lights.

Martin flipped open his cell phone and called the minister. “Reg, we could be getting hit tonight, looks like.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It looked like Holcomb was getting it a few minutes ago and now Bobby can’t raise them on the phone. Disks passed over Parker coming this way. We’re the only town in this direction for eighty miles, Reg.”

“I’m on my way.”

Martin stepped outside. “I called Dennis Farm,” Bobby said. “We—” His phone buzzed. He flipped it open, listened a moment, then closed it. “That was Larry Dennis screaming for help, they got Sally, the light’s coming down like rain—then the line—” He held out the silent cell phone.

In both of their minds was the same thought: it couldn’t be happening here, it was something you heard about, a big city thing, a European thing, a Chinese disaster.

“Wake ’em up,” Bobby said, “we’re under attack.”

Martin went back into the church and started the bell. There was a whirring sound as it began ringing, its stately tones trembling off into the night. His finger hesitated over the siren. It hadn’t been sounded since September, when it had been turned on for the tornado that had taken out the Conagra silo and the Kan-San Trailer Park.

He flipped the switch, and the siren began as a low growl, quickly increased its volume, then filled the air with its wailing. Across the street, Sam Gossett came to the door in his pajama bottoms and yelled, “Is it for real?”

“Holcomb and Dennis Farm just got it,” Bobby said. “It’s for real, all right.”