Bea Cannon - A Small Gray Dot

I nodded. I took a gulping breath, raised my eyes back up and pointed to the sky. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

She laid down her gun and settled beside me, putting her arm around my shoulders and pulling me to her chest. She looked up at the sky and smiled.

We both ignored the gruesome remains of Henderson lying several feet away.

“Yes, it is. Now it looks like the sky in the rest of the world.” She turned to me and pulling a handkerchief from the purse she’d managed to hang on to through everything, she began to gently wipe my wet face.

ONE OF THE COPS WHO’D FOUGHT WITH US contacted the uptown police department who sent over medics and ambulances to attend to and transport the wounded, and the unfortunate ones who didn’t make it through the fight. They sent patrol cars to pick up Harlow, Talbert, and Slim – who’d gotten as pissy drunk as I’d thought they would – and arrested them for participating in Morgan’s kidnapping.

As it turned out, the majority of the guards were legit, including the one I’d head-butted. Henderson had fed him the same bullshit lie he’d given Earl and Jim about Morgan being a thief, and he was horrified to learn the truth. Slim and Talbert, determined not to go down alone, told the cops about other humans involved, who were non-guards. Law enforcement apprehended all but two, who had skipped. I, along with Duncan, Lem, and Percy who also survived the fight and eagerly joined me in the search, eventually tracked them down. But, that was later. And is another story.

Oh, and the few Binqua who managed not to get killed, were rounded up by our fighters and hauled away, first by the local police, then by the government. I don’t know what they did with them. Quite a number of people want to see them hang but I doubt if that’ll ever happen. My guess is they’ll be thoroughly interrogated, then they’ll spend the rest of their lives, however long that may be, being poked and prodded in a lab somewhere. I admit I don’t care.

Madison agreed with Dr. Bennett that to ensure she wouldn’t suffer any permanent damage from having ingested the ecstasy, a doctor should check Morgan, so she stayed overnight at the hospital where she was determined to be in satisfactory condition. The staff physician told her not to travel for a few days so Madison brought her back to Dr. Bennett’s house.

They remained there for a week before Madison decided Morgan was recuperated enough to go home to Wilmington. I stayed with them. Dr. Bennett insisted on cooking for us and he turned out to be quite good at it. We all ate well during our stay.

Madison – who was now my ex-client so I wasn’t breaking my rule – stayed in my room and we became better acquainted while we were there. As were several women in the past, she was surprised – and pleased – to learn I wasn’t as old as I looked. The first morning we went down together for breakfast, Morgan, already at the table, complained to Madison that she was noisy, but her eyes were dancing as she said it. Madison laughed and told her she was just jealous. Morgan giggled.

I smiled. Madison was noisy, but it was a good noise.

She invited me to go with them when they left. She understood when I declined to leave Charlotte, just as I understood that she had to get back to her city and her business. She smiled and said she would be making a return visit soon.

I kind of liked the thought of that, and Wilmington wasn’t so far away I couldn’t go for the occasional visit myself.

Our elimination of the Binqua wedge isn’t going to change the shit of the last seven and a half years. It won’t bring back Zoni or my family, it won’t bring back the five billion peoples of Earth who died that day or the ones who perished in one way or another since, but at least now, we have a shot at rebuilding.

Our country, while not in blue-chip condition is in better shape than are many others, because say what you will about it, our government with all its warts and barnacles, through all the craziness of the years after the Event, never went totally under. It hung in there in spite of it all, and is doing its damnedest to recover. There are, as you might expect due to the hell everyone endured, many social issues with which to contend. Some folk are not that cooperative though generally, most are pitching in. There is also the criminal element that persists wherever you find humans.

It helps that cellphones, television, airplanes – all the things that went out of commission because of the Binqua, will work again once we can get everything back up and running. I’m going to kind of miss phone booths when they go. I’ve gotten used to them.

The… things… that inhabited the patches of what we called blight, began to die off because once I destroyed the wedge, all the emissions keeping them alive stopped. The worst stretch, of course, was the one encircling Blue Heaven, and it’s now a blackened ring around the neighborhood and the city has sent workers to clear out the strip. They plan to put in new trees, shrubbery, and flowers. The neighborhood, by the way, is back to normal – or as normal as anywhere else now. No one gets lost there anymore. I go there from time to time to visit with the doctor and when I do, I usually drop by The Hole in the Wall to see Joe. Sometimes Frank is there and he always offers to buy me a drink.

Dr. Bennett took a look at the metal that composed the wedge and the other machines and says he has no idea what the material is. He thinks it’s some kind of alloy but exactly what kind is a mystery. The government hauled the scraps of the wedge and the other machines away. I guess they’ll figure it out. I’m just thankful that whatever the material, it went down under the forged steel of the sledgehammer. I supposed we agonized for nothing over how to get rid of it, but who knew the thing could be destroyed that way? The doctor says that sometimes it’s the simplest things that work best.

Still, even though I never got the chance to deploy the canceler or the jammer, I have to give them credit for getting us going. Without them, I don’t know if we would have been as quick at going after the Binqua.

Dr. Bennett has shared all the files he pulled from Henderson’s computer, with other scientists and they are having a field day with it. I’m sure some new technologies will be forthcoming. My wish is that they could all be benign, but now that we know for sure we aren’t the only occupants of this universe, it makes sense to prepare for visitors who could perhaps reach us via spaceships or some other method. They may not come in peace.

The rest of the world learned what caused the Event and how our small, cobbled-together army destroyed the aliens and their machines that kept our world from recovering from its effects, and countries from all over wanted to pin medals on Dr. Bennett and me, and the folk who helped stop the Binqua mission.

I didn’t want a medal but Dr. Bennett said that had it not been for me, even though he did the math and learned the cause, and found out about the aliens and their agenda, we’d still be on our way to perdition because he’d had no idea on how to begin the task of getting rid of the Binqua. I reminded him that I was simply working a tracking case, and if the aliens hadn’t kidnapped my client’s sister, none of it would ever have happened. It had been pure chance. He said it was fortunate, then, that I took the chance when it came along, and he insisted I go to the ceremony, so I went with everyone, and smiled and nodded when appropriate. I was pleasantly surprised to learn there was a monetary award, but I was glad when it was over.

Terry also received an award and since he was underage and had no living relatives, the accompanying money went into a trust for him with a lawyer appointed to determine an executor. Terry asked Dr. Bennett if he could live with him and the doctor was willing but the family with whom he lived tried to keep him – and his money – from leaving. The lawyer along with the newly recreated Child Protection Agency, questioned the boy, the neighbors of the family, and the doctor, and in the end, chose the doctor as executor and an ecstatic Terry went to live with him.