Paul Jones - Revelations

“Where the hell is that landing strip?” MacAlister asked over the intercom. The light was fleeing the world so fast it was becoming hard to make out the actual buildings of their camp from their shadows. “I don’t want to have to set us down on Coronado, if I can help it.”

As if they had heard his complaint, Emily saw three bright-red lights burst into life one after the other on the ground. Flares. Whoever lit them had tossed them down to form a triangle that was obviously meant to define their landing point.

“Starboard, Mac,” Emily said into her microphone.

“Where?… Okay, got it.” He swung the helicopter around and dipped it down toward the improvised landing pad. They descended and Emily thought she heard all four of them let out a sigh of relief when the tires finally touched down.

“Terra firma,” Mac said as he cut the engines, then added with a grin, “The firmer it is the less bloody terror. Welcome home.”

Emily could see the beams of flashlights around the edge of the landing pad; they were moving toward them now, bouncing back and forth as their owners ran to greet the returning group, the Black Hawk’s rotor blades already slowing to a stop.

The door of the helo was opened from outside and Rhiannon’s face appeared, ghostly in the orange glow of her flashlight. Thor sidled over and licked the girl’s face, his tail beating against Emily’s leg.

“Hi,” Rhiannon said nonchalantly, as if they had just returned from a shopping trip rather than an exploratory mission to seek out new life and boldly go where no one had gone before, to quote Captain James T. Kirk. But Emily saw the girl’s eyes flit from person to person as she made sure everyone was accounted for. The kid had a caring heart. It was going to be difficult for her to keep it in the world Emily knew lay ahead of them.

Now, as Emily unbuckled her safety harness and jumped down to the waiting crew, for the first time in what seemed like years to her, she felt a real sense of hope. A sense of belonging. She threw her arms around Rhiannon and hugged her, welcoming the one she got in return.

“You okay?” she asked the girl.

“I’m good. Did you find the spaceship?” The question was asked so innocently, as if hunting for crashed aliens was something normal, another reminder of how topsy-turvy the world had become. Spaceships and aliens and the end of the world. Oh my!

“Yes, we found it,” Emily smiled.

“Cool!” Rhiannon said. “Come on, Thor.” The dog gave a deep bark and chased after Rhiannon as she headed back to the camp and the welcome warmth of its security lights.

“Everything okay, Em?” MacAlister said as he climbed down from the cockpit and joined Emily on the ground next to the rapidly cooling Black Hawk.

“I’m going to need everyone assembled in the canteen,” she said, ignoring the barrage of questions fired at them by the small group of sailors who greeted the four returning comrades. “Can we do that in about an hour?”

MacAlister nodded. “I’ll make sure everyone’s there.”

“Thanks, Mac.” She reached out and found his hand and squeezed it. “And thanks for waiting.”

He gently returned the squeeze. “Anytime.” Their hands lingered for another second then reluctantly drifted apart.

It took a little longer than the hour Emily had requested to get all the survivors into the same room together. But as the last stragglers walked in, Emily took a swig from her bottle of water and looked out at the rows of expectant faces staring right back at her.

When the last butt was in a seat, she stood and raised her hands to quell the hum of chatter.

Where to begin? Where to begin?

“I know most of you are probably only now coming to terms with the events following the rain. And I also know that most of you probably think I’m a little… nuts.” There were a couple of knowing smiles from the crowd and a scattering of polite smiles. “But I would also hope that you would at least accept that what I’ve told you up until now has been proven correct, in as much as it’s possible to prove. So, if you can give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m not completely crazy, it will make what I have to say next a little easier.”

She took another long pull from the water bottle. It was room temperature by now but it still felt good against the scratch of the sandpaper that had suddenly coated her throat. How best to say what she needed to say next? Straight to the point would be best, she supposed.

Okay, here we go .

“During our expedition to discover what the object was that took out the ISS and crashed in Nevada, we discovered a spaceship. It had landed just outside Las Vegas, and during a… altercation… I was captured by the aliens that caused the red rain. I was taken somewhere, I don’t really know where it was, and they explained to me why everything that has happened since the day the rain occurred.”

God, that sounded ridiculous, but it was the truth .

There was a smattering of embarrassed laughter from the crowd, but mostly Emily saw blank stares or faces twisted with incredulity looking back at her. She couldn’t blame them, of course; how would she react if she were in their place? How many kooks and crazies had she walked away from when she was working at the New York Tribune who insisted they had been abducted or seen a UFO? No, she couldn’t blame them, but still, she had to convince them.

Truth be told, it did not matter what they thought about this part of her story, because what she had to say next was going to be even more unbelievable to them.

“I know, I know. It probably sounds crazy to you—”

“Probably?” one of the sailors said from the back of the room. His remark was followed by a scattering of snickers.

“Hey!” MacAlister said, rising up from his seat at the front and turning to face his crew. “Give it a rest.”

Emily began to explain how she had woken in the ship, how she had met the aliens calling themselves the Caretakers, and the explanation they had given her for why they had chosen Earth. When she was done a heavy silence settled over the crowd of sailors.

“We’ve still got a couple of nukes in the bay,” a sailor Emily thought was named Cooper said finally. “I say we drop one on the bastards and see how they like that.”

Captain Constantine spoke, “Wonderful idea, Mr. Cooper, and then what? There are God knows how many more of these ships around the world, so how would you suggest we handle it when one of them decides to take a shot back at us? That’s assuming our nuke even has the possibility of hitting them. For all we know, they could lob the thing right back to us. Or detonate it before it even left the launch tube. No. There won’t be any nukes.”

“Do you have the photographs?” Emily asked.

Mac nodded. He had found a printer in one of the unused offices and run off enough copies of the photographs Emily had captured for everyone.

“Pass these along,” he said, handing a stack to the first sailor in each row.

There was a chorus of curses and expletives as the photos were passed from hand to hand.

“That is what we are dealing with,” said Emily when the last of the men had the image in his hand. “And Commander Mulligan mentioned there were more, seven in total we think, that landed around the world besides this one. Still think it’s a good idea to nuke it?”

The mood of the crowd had become less cynical since they had been handed the photographs, Emily thought, and a little more receptive, so she pushed on.

“But that’s not all they told me,” she continued. “They also gave me a warning that I should pass on to all of you.”