Bea Cannon - A Small Gray Dot

I looked at him and the rage I’d kept down surged and I burned with fury.

“You could’ve warned us,” I said softly.

He gave a surprisingly cheerful laugh. “Oh, so you’ve made that discovery. No doubt, you’ve spoken with Dr. Bennett. He is quite a clever man and a little while ago, I uncovered the fact that my files were compromised. He would be the one to have made that accomplishment. That, however, will make no difference. And why would we have warned you of the anomaly? You are nothing to us. We have been quite successful at turning a profit here, and once Luminary Pah saw that, with a few adjustments, this world would be good for the spawning of his kind, we contracted to take it. We will have it the same as we’ve had all others we wanted and the Luminary will reward us well for our efforts.” He raised the gun and smiled. “Goodbye, Mr. Murray.” His finger tightened on the trigger.

With no time to aim, I threw the knife I still held. It hit him in the right shoulder and he giggled/screeched and the bullet from the gun went wild. He dropped the gun and it skittered toward the burned out front of the building but he held on to the canceler. I jumped and flew into him, slamming him into the side of one of the machines. He shoved me back but I grabbed his arm and took him with me. I was off balance and we crashed to the floor. I twisted to keep him from landing on me and he screeched again as the knife in his shoulder went in deeper. I jumped on his back and he thrashed around and managed to throw me off and flip over but I piled right back on him. We grappled and rolled toward the front and he clubbed me upside the head with the canceler. I barely felt it.

I smashed into his face with an elbow and grabbed for the device. He kept his grip on it and snarled at me then raised a hand and deliberately brought the canceler down hard on the cement floor. It smashed into pieces.

He bared his teeth in a ferocious grin. “Now you cannot use it and soon the **** will come.” He gave that sickening cheerful laugh again. “Then you will be gone and this world will belong to the Binqua.”

Whatever was coming didn’t translate into English but I imagined he’d already sent for more fighters, probably better ones.

Furious, I slugged him and his head slammed against the floor. I tried to pull my knife from his shoulder and slit his throat but somewhere in the scuffle, it had driven so far into him that I couldn’t get a grip on it. I glimpsed something lying outside of what used to be the door. Whoever had the sledgehammer had dropped it. I scrambled to it and turned back in time to see Henderson trying to get the gun near his left hand. In the fight, I hadn’t noticed it. I leaped and brought the sledgehammer down on his hand and he screamed. He looked up at me, his eyes knowing he was about to die as I raised the sledgehammer and unleashed seven and a half years of rage down on his head. It split open like a rotten, overripe melon.

Breathing hard, I looked at the pieces of the canceler. No way would it work. I reached for the pocket that held Dr. Bennett’s scrambler. It was gone. I remembered my jacket ripping while fighting with a Binqua in the lot. It must’ve fallen out then. I staggered out to search for it, but finding it was impossible in the lot littered with bodies and debris. I stumbled back into the burned out shell of a building and stared at the wedge sitting there calmly. Both devices that could’ve taken it out were gone. The Binqua still had access to our world. Everything had been for nothing.

Bitterness rose in my chest and anguish ripped through me. I screamed. My mind exploded, fueling the insane rage I’d kept in check since the day of the Event and I swung at the wedge with the sledgehammer.

Images sprang bright and real into my mind, engulfing me with pain, and I swung.

Zoni, her eyes staring into eternity, our children never to be conceived, and I swung.

My mother in unmoving pieces on the kitchen floor never to touch me again, and I swung.

My father swarming with flies on the hot deck, his smile forever stilled, and I swung.

Will, about to go off to college, his young life extinguished, and I swung.

My sister whom I never got to see again, and I swung.

Dave, staring into nothing, his body in pieces falling onto the lobby floor, and I swung.

The friendly clerk at the Quick Mart, the people in the parking lot of my building. Five billion human beings dead in an instant.

I swung.

And I screamed and I swung.

I don’t know how long I pounded with that sledgehammer but slowly, I became aware of a bright shaft of light hitting me, breaking through the agony of the images enveloping my mind and filling my soul with crackling fury, grief, and madness, and I paused.

I looked down. The wedge was a crumpled pile of twisted metal. I looked up.

The sky was clearing.

IWATCHED THE GRAY INTERFACE FADE OUT AND disappear from over Blue Heaven and my overwhelming rage began to dissipate. I looked around, confused.

Our remaining forces out in the parking lot and doing mop-up on the Binqua were cheering. A large man wearing the torn, gore splashed, dirty uniform of his former employers ran up and grabbed me in an embrace. It was Earl.

His broad face wreathed in a wide grin, he slapped me on the back and shouted, “You did it, man! You got th’ sonofabitch!” He whirled away and caught up a woman who was clutching a bow and grinning at him, hugging her tightly, and they both joined in the cheering with the others. Cue pulled that big machete of his from the back of a dead alien, raised it in the air and gave a big whoop. He grinned widely, and gave me a thumb’s up.

It finally penetrated my dazed mind that, somehow, I had managed to destroy the wedge. And its destruction on this end meant the rebound had taken out the other end destroying the base of the being we’d seen in the video. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was something, and it meant the path to our world was gone.

I dropped the sledgehammer. It landed with a crashing thud in the ruins of the machine. Funny how such a low-tech tool had brought down such an ultra-high tech instrument. I hadn’t been able to deploy either of the more sophisticated methods, and I guess I’ll never know if either would’ve worked but in the end, fueled by rage and armed with a sledgehammer I had gotten the job done.

I looked out across the parking lot. Simon was leaning over Lowell, helping him to his feet. A rush of thankfulness hit me that my two friends had survived. When I saw Lowell fall, I thought he was gone. I’d lost sight of Madison as I made my final push to get to the wedge. I looked for her and she was carefully picking her way over bodies, heading in my direction. I sagged with relief and lowered myself down to the seared and blackened floor. I leaned tiredly against the one, still standing, crumbling wall.

I stared up at the Carolina blue sky. It was the first time in seven and a half years the neighborhood had seen anything overhead except a gray haze. The sun cast brilliant beams that played among the wreckage like schoolkids let out for recess.

The last time I shed tears was the day I stood at the backyard graves of Zoni and my parents. I hadn’t been able to cry since. Now, as I looked up at the clear January sky, tears ran down my cheeks leaving a warm trail on my cooling face.

“Tennessee? Are you all right?”

I lowered my gaze to see Madison stepping over the doorless sill and into the burned out building. She still looked good. The last time I’d spotted her she was spinning around like a whirling dervish and demolishing a line of Binqua who probably thought they had an easy mark in her. Their mistake. Those high-heeled boots of hers were lethal weapons. Somehow, she’d managed to get through the fight with only a few spatters and smudges here and there. She maneuvered her way through the rubble and strewn machine parts, and with a concerned expression, she squatted down and took one of my hands in hers. She had lost her hat somewhere and her hair stirred in the chill breeze.