Steven Konkoly - Event Horizon

“Sounds good to me,” said Alex’s mom. “I’ll fix up pancakes and bacon. Fill them up with a good meal before we break the bad news. Slackers eat cold oatmeal moving forward.”

“Hard core! I like it,” said Samantha. “Need any help in the kitchen?”

“I’ll take all the help I can get. The quicker we whip this up the better,” said Amy.

“I can crisp bacon perfectly—on the grill. Meat handling is my specialty,” said Linda.

Samantha spit her coffee onto the table, immediately swiping her napkin.

“That’s not something you want to advertise too loudly,” said Kate, stifling a laugh.

“Good heavens,” mumbled Amy, blushing.

“This is why I pretend to be deaf around women,” said Tim. “The bacon’s in the basement freezer.”

EVENT +52:01

Limerick, Maine

Eli Russell marched up the steps of the two-story red brick building and stopped at the entrance door held open by his deputy commander.

“The building is secure. We have one hundred and forty-three residents packed into the recreation hall. Standing room only,” said Kevin McCulver.

“Secure the door and post a guard. Nobody gets in or out without my say-so. We have to be on our toes,” said Eli, entering Limerick’s “Brick Town Hall.”

No longer housing Limerick’s municipal offices, the historical Brick Town Hall building had been recently renovated to house the town’s library and generate revenue by renting the large first-floor hall for private functions. The recreation hall served as the largest public meeting place within Limerick, aside from the elementary school a few miles to the east on the Newfield border. Eli had chosen the historical building for his debut public appearance because it was a familiar landmark located in the heart of town.

He strode into the room and grasped the podium, pushing aside the useless microphone.

“Citizens of Limerick. Please. I’ll keep this brief,” he bellowed.

The din of conversation diminished, but didn’t stop.

“Please. I don’t want to take up any more time than necessary! We all have enough going on at home,” he said, smiling widely at the crowd, which finally fell silent. “I want to thank Selectman Keithman for arranging this meeting and getting the word out on short notice. My name is Eli Russell. Some of you know me pretty well—I’m a Waterboro native. Several years ago, I started the Maine Liberty Militia. Our ranks are filled with hardworking, patriotic folks just like yourselves from all over York County. Gary Flannery is one of our original members,” he said, motioning for a thin man dressed in a MultiCam uniform to step forward from behind him.

“His family has lived in Limerick for nearly a century, and you’ve been eating his family’s pizza for three decades, for better or worse,” he said, slapping Gary playfully on the shoulder.

The tension in the room eased with the joke, setting the stage for Eli’s main event.

“Obviously, I didn’t come here to tell jokes. These are uncertain, frightening times for all of us, but one thing is certain: the hardest days lie ahead. Life as we’ve known it has come to an abrupt end and is unlikely to ever return to what most of you consider normal. This isn’t an isolated incident. The entire nation has been plunged into darkness. This has been confirmed by ham radio broadcasts.”

The crowd murmured in response to his statement.

“Trust me when I say that the situation out there will only get worse. The police and National Guard are overwhelmed at the border, which is leaking like a sieve right now, leaving us exposed to the same horrors that migrated into Maine during the 2013 pandemic. The sherriff’s department personnel assigned to these parts are nowhere to be found and—”

“They’ve been murdered. Haven’t you heard?” said an elderly white-haired man from the back of the room.

No kidding.

“We’ve been so busy helping the State Police at the borders, I haven’t—this is horrible. What happened?” said Eli.

“Three of them were killed at home. Assassinated along with their families. The other is missing, along with his car. He lived in West Newfield. Residents in town heard gunshots soon after that airwave hit us.”

The room launched into an uproar, which gave Eli the precious moments he needed to capitalize on the “news.” He couldn’t have planted a better link to what he needed to say next.

“This can’t be happening,” said Eli, feigning shock and indignation. “This has to be related to the massacre!”

“What massacre?” asked a woman near the front of the room.

“At the border,” said Eli, counting on others to eavesdrop.

“Where?” asked a young man a little further back.

“Milton Mills. The whole border checkpoint was ambushed. All of my men were killed. Completely wiped out! We also found a possible mass grave behind the Methodist church on Foxes Ridge Road, just a few miles from the New Hampshire border. We’d brought supplies over to the church, since it was so close to the border. Figured it might be a good place to feed and shelter the folks trying to get home to points north. Mainers have been showing up on foot from all over New England. By the time they get to the border, they’re spent and out of resources. We let at least fifty through in the first twenty-four hours, until I lost contact with the squad out in Milton Mills…” he said, trailing off for effect.

“What happened to them?” yelled a man from the back.

“What massacre?”

“Who was in the mass grave?”

One of the town selectman, standing along the wall near the door, shouted, “Everyone! Keep it down! This is important!”

“Once we realized that this was more than some freak power outage,” Eli continued, “I drove Route 11 to the border to see if I could offer any assistance and—”

“Where did you find a car that worked?”

“We have a big organization,” he lied, “and a few of our cars survived. We were lucky. Anyway, State Troopers at the border told me that they didn’t have enough personnel to watch some of the smaller crossings until the National Guard fully mobilized, which may never happen, but that’s a different story. They asked us to set up border checkpoints at some of the smaller crossings past Milton Pond, doing the same thing the police are doing—screening refugees for Maine residents. Nobody wants a repeat of 2013, right?”

The group nodded and muttered in agreement.

“I lost radio contact with the squad at Milton Mills the night before…” He faded off, shaking his head slowly.

The room fell silent, everyone holding their breath for Eli’s next words.

“I drove out there myself yesterday afternoon and found them dead. Twelve well-trained, heavily armed militiamen killed in an ambush—by extremely accurate gunfire.”

“Who killed them?” asked several citizens at once.

“The same unit that killed everyone at the Methodist church. We found fifty plus bodies in the forest. All shot in the head, execution style. I had a few guys helping out at the church. They put up one hell of a fight, but whoever did this…” another well-placed shake of the head, “I haven’t seen anything like this since El Salvador.”

At 58 years old, the closest Eli Russell had come to Central America in his lifetime was a one-time trip to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun, Mexico, with his ex-wife. He’d joined the army in 1981, completing the infantry basic training and airborne training in Fort Benning, Georgia. His airborne qualification earned him a duty assignment to the 101 stAirborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he served in 1 stBattalion, 327 thInfantry Regiment as an M-60 machine gunner until 1986.