William Meikle: The Hole

She punched his arm, playfully.

“You know what I mean. It’s nice to get some peace and quiet.”

Bill nodded and looked up at the stars spread overhead.

“Do you ever wonder? What it’s all about? What it’s all for?”

“Having deep thoughts, Bill? It’s not like you.”

He took a while to answer.

“It was seeing those devils that did it. I always had some sort of faith, a weak one, but it’s there. But seeing those—things—has made me think. How about you?”

She had a speech pre-prepared; one honed in long, slightly drunken, conversations at medical college, back when she’d tried to engage in debate with her more religious classmates. She brought it out again, for the first time in years, but she remembered it almost by heart.

“Faith? I put my faith in science. Life for me is an opportunity to create meaning by my deeds, my actions and how I manage my way through the short part of infinity I’m given to operate in. And once my life is finished, my atoms will go back to forming other interesting configurations with those of other people, animals, plants and anything else that happens to be around, as we all roll along in one big, ever-changing, universe.”

“No God?” Bill asked softly.

She shook her head. “None needed. Not for me.”

“Then I pity you,” Bill said, and Janet felt a flash of anger that she pushed down. Back at college she would have vented at his point, letting loose a diatribe against big sky fairies and superstitious claptrap. But that wasn’t anything Bill needed to hear.

Not now, not tonight.

“Look up there,” Janet said. “Some of that starlight blazed billions of years ago, from billions of stars in billions of galaxies. I’m not so conceited as to think that all of that was created just for the benefit of folks that live on a tiny speck of blue and white tucked away in a small corner in the middle of nowhere. We folks have only been here for a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the universe, and given the way we’re going, I don’t think we’ll be around long enough to make too much of an impact on the grand scheme of things. But some of my atoms will be around long enough to be there at the death of our own star. I rather like that idea.”

Bill was quiet for a long time.

“Do you think there’s anyone else out there?” he said.

“If there is, I doubt they’re anything like us. Evolution happens through a process of species adapting to ecological niches, and ecology is too highly determined by place. Our planet’s ecosystem is highly adapted to living eighty or so million miles away from a yellow sun, with a captive, close moon. There won’t be that many others just like us… but I’m sure there’s other life out there somewhere. The universe is too big to be empty.”

“But that’s something you take on faith?” Bill asked.

It was her turn to laugh.

“I suppose it is.”

It’s faith based on a good scientific guess. But that’s a discussion for another night.

She felt a chill as a breeze got up. She didn’t feel tired, despite the long day. Years of medical training meant she was well used to pulling all-nighters, something doctors shared with cops. She held tight to Bill’s arm, and hoped their differing views on faith were not going to grow into a problem.

She was still mulling that over when she felt the squad car tremble beneath them, and heard a distant, but distinct, hum. Her headache kicked in again, and there was fresh blood at her nostrils. It wasn’t an outpouring like the gush that had hit her back in her home; the bleed was little more than a dribble. But the headache was much worse, like a vise had been clamped on her skull and tightened until the bone was close to cracking.

“We should go,” Bill said, his voice seeming to come from a great distance. Janet didn’t answer. Her gaze was fixed on Hopman’s Hollow. At first she only thought she’d seen movement there, the barest hint of something flickering. Then it got brighter, and more persistent.

A pulsing blue light rose out of the hole. It grew brighter still until it threw harsh shadows over the whole area. Something rose out of the deep and lifted into the air, hovering above them, a steely-blue saucer that hummed and throbbed before departing up, fast as a blink, into the blackness of the stars. They watched it go until its light was too faint to distinguish among the stars.

A voice whispered at her ear.

Do you think there’s anyone else out there?

She turned to see who had spoken. There was no one there. There was just the wind in the trees, and darkness at the side of the road.

“What is going on here?” Bill said.

Janet didn’t have an answer.

She was still trying to process what had happened when the squad car radio squawked into action seconds later. Young Watts was on the other end, and he sounded terrified.

“Sheriff? You’d best get back to town. We’ve got a big problem around the trailer park.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Best you see for yourself. But hurry.”

Janet got into the passenger seat without being asked. Bill spun the car into a screeching turn and pointed it back at town. Even from here on the farthest outskirts it was clear there was indeed a real problem. Half the town sat in darkness, the shadowed area pockmarked with the red flare and flicker of flames. Something exploded, with the crump of the bang reaching them a second later. A pall of gray smoke rose before getting lost in the blackness of the night.

Are we under some kind of attack?

Bill didn’t hesitate. He sped along the highway and took the first possible turn-off towards the affected area, throwing the car into the corner so much that the back end started to drift, and he only just managed to hold them on the road.

“Steady on, Bill. The town’s not going anywhere.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

They only got fifty more yards before he had to screech to a halt. There was no road ahead of them, just a gaping hole. The headlights showed only darkness ahead, with no indication of the extent of this new collapse. Bill got out of the car.

“Stay here,” he said.

Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

She got out and joined him. The hole at their feet seemed bottomless, falling away almost vertically below them. Janet felt her head swim, and her legs start to go out from under her. Bill pulled her away, only a foot or so, but enough for the vertigo to subside. Smoke and the smell of burning rubber rose from the hole, but there was no indication what was down there. Janet was still trying to gauge the size of the thing when Bill let out a soft expletive.

She looked up and followed his gaze.

It looked like the whole north end of town was gone. At the farthest part away from where they stood, where the trailer park had been, several fresh fires burned. A scream came on the wind, quickly cut off. There were some trailers remaining, a handful at most, but there had been more than a hundred earlier, most of them with families, with children.

Between what was left of the trailer park and where Bill and Janet stood, the town looked like it had been bombed. It was almost too dark to see, for the street lighting had failed, but there were enough fires to show a vision of hell.

What had once been three neat streets of well-maintained houses and gardens was now a jumble of broken timber, twisted roofing and mangled plumbing. Water sprayed high from burst pipes, small fires burned exposed drapery and bedding and electricity sparked where downed wires slithered like snakes across the rubble. Janet saw what she took to be a doll lying on the remains of a sofa, bent and broken. But it was no doll; it was a child, no more than five years old, neck broken and discarded like a rag by whatever disaster had befallen the town.