Second Contact, page 34
part #2 of Not Alone Series
“You don’t have to explain,” Clark said, standing at the bottom of the stairs and getting ready to run. “Seriously, it was a smart idea. But they’re right: this is so much bigger than us. Even if it was absolutely guaranteed that Walker wouldn’t mention us, I would never forgive myself if I let him do this. I don’t think the Messengers would actually let him say it, anyway… but just in case they’re not still keeping an eye on him after all this time, I have to stop him.”
“Go,” Emma said.
“Clark, I have to say…” Timo began. “I am a human being so I had my doubts, but this puts to bed the idea that your collective silence over the course of the last year has been anything other than a selfless struggle.” He turned to Dan. “It’s one thing to say that you are bearing a difficult load for selfless reasons, but it’s another thing altogether to maintain that load when circumstances present an easy way out of your difficulties.”
“Thanks, man,” Clark said, “but we should probably save the reflections for later.”
Emma, equally as focused as Clark, implored one final precaution: “Whatever happens, make sure you take all of Walker’s security camera footage. All of it.”
“Good thinking,” he replied. “Anything else?”
“Just be safe,” Tara chimed in.
Emma shook her head. “Nothing else. Good luck.”
Clark, itching to run, looked at his silent and pensive younger brother. “Dan?”
Eventually, Dan spoke: “Whatever it takes, you have to stop him.”
Clark nodded before hurrying up the stairs.
“Whatever it takes,” Dan called after him. “No half measures.”
C minus 17
Tour ship
Southern Ocean
Despite a growing tiredness that was beginning to approach exhaustion, Billy Kendrick sat in a quiet cabin looking into his computer’s webcam and tried to appear energetic as he conducted his ninth live interview of the day.
Of all the important players in the complicated history of the IDA leak that many observers believed was somehow related to recent events, Billy alone had been physically present to see the Kerguelen bolide. As such, his views on the California Fireball were at the top of the wanted list for countless news stations around the world.
“I don’t know where Montana fits in,” Billy admitted for the fourth time in an hour. “Maybe it doesn’t, since that was a man-made satellite in a decaying orbit rather than a space-borne wanderer. And you can call me crazy for saying this, but the timing of this satellite thing doesn’t feel like an accident.”
“So what does it feel like?” the interviewer asked, persisting with the tactic of staying out of the way as much as possible and prodding Billy with open questions only when necessary.
“Like something big is going on,” he replied. “I think it’s high time for President Slater and other conscientious national leaders to press for a full audit of the GSC. What exactly are we paying for, here? What exactly is really going on in Buenos Aires? Because whether this is some sleight of hand by Godfrey to push for more power or whether it actually is second contact in the form of a coded message or maybe even as a precursor to direct contact, the one thing we can count on is that Godfrey knows more than we do. I’m not here to call for further protests, but the question I’d ask is a simple one: are we okay with this?
“Are we really okay with a career politician running a global space agency that’s funded by national governments — or, to be more accurate, one that’s funded almost entirely by American and Western European taxpayers — yet answers to no one? If nothing of note was going on in the sky, this would still be an important question. But with everything that is going on, this could literally be life or death.”
“Well, Mr Kendrick, we certainly don’t want to strike a tone of alarmism or—”
“Listen to me,” Billy interrupted. “If you can sit there with a straight face and convince me that we have any reason to believe that the GSC is doing everything possible to make sure we’re safe… well, then and only then will I let you throw around words like alarmism. But how about realism? How about we start throwing that word around?”
The interviewer fumbled over a few words while receiving instructions in her earpiece. “Live? Uh, now? Y-yes, okay. Uh, Mr Kendrick, I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave it there for now but—”
“Of course you are,” Billy sighed, only too accustomed to this kind of thing happening whenever he moved towards topics which the news networks would rather avoid.
“Really, Billy,” the interviewer replied in a more urgent and focused tone. “Richard Walker is about to begin a live video interview with Joe Crabbe.”
Billy’s eyes widened. He hadn’t seen any headlines for several hours so had no idea this was coming, and it was just about the last thing he’d expected to hear. He chuckled slightly through a half-smile.
“Just very quickly, I want to let it be known that I support the growing calls for the US to withdraw from the GSC with immediate effect,” he said. “Something tells me that Walker might be about to say something similar, so I just want to get that in first. But yeah, thanks for having me on tonight, and let’s hear what the old bastard has to say…”
C minus 16
Stevenson Farm
Eastview, Colorado
With his visual attention shared between the road, the time, and the speedometer, Clark made the short drive to Richard Walker’s cottage with only one thought in his mind: no half measures.
Those had been Dan’s final words before Clark left the basement, and they rang true. By any means necessary, he quite simply had to prevent Walker’s live interview with the odious Joe Crabbe.
Taking the semi-concealed turn onto the narrow road to Stevenson Farm didn’t feel as odd as it would have if Clark hadn’t been there with Dan so recently, but it still brought back some uneasy memories of the night when they found Walker’s bed empty while his dog went crazy in the hallway.
As he approached the cottage, going right to the doorstep instead of parking further away to avoid wasting too much time on foot, Clark noticed that the front door was wide open. This didn’t exactly ease his mind, but there was no backing down.
Rooster came dashing out of the house as Clark made the few steps from his car. Fortunately the dog was excited to see him rather than spooked by anything other-worldly, as had been the case a year earlier, and Clark led him back inside before closing the front door.
“Walker?!” he called, with no way of knowing that the old man already had his noise-cancelling headphones on.
Clark then saw that the back door was open, too, and he hurried to close it before Rooster could run out that way. As he did this, the thought hit him that Walker would also be considering that the Messengers might intervene; almost certainly, the doors were open precisely so that Rooster would indeed have a way out.
“Don’t worry,” he said to the oblivious dog. “I’m here.”
Clark then looked at Walker’s bedroom door and put his hand on the knob.
“Ah, Joe,” Walker boomed. “At last!”
Clark heard this through the door. He immediately opened it while crouching down — being seen on camera would be a disaster that even Emma would struggle to clean up — then desperately looked around the room for something to throw at Walker to capture his attention.
While untying his own shoe in the absence of any better options, Clark felt a sudden and unbelievably powerful force as a bright flash filled the bedroom and something threw him backwards against the wall on the other side of the narrow hallway. He could immediately feel a pounding in his head and for several panicked seconds he struggled to inhale any air as pains shot up and down the side of his body.
Rooster, for his part, sprinted into the kitchen and began knocking things down all over the place as he desperately searched for a way out.
Clark caught his breath at last and pushed himself to his hands and knees. A faint humming noise filled the air, but Clark couldn’t be sure whether or not it was all in his head following a serious full-body impact with the wall.
The threshold between Walker’s bedroom and the hallway was consumed by a total light that defied all logic; it didn’t spill into the hallway, but it utterly concealed the bedroom despite the door being wide open.
“Do it,” Walker said, as clear as day over the faint hum. “And at least finish the job this time, you bug-eyed sons of bitches.”
“Walker!” Clark roared. Through severe aches and pains, now most pronounced in his ribs and neck, he forced himself to his feet. Whether or not Walker heard his words, no reply came.
The humming, previously so obvious, ceased as quickly as it had begun — faded wasn’t the right word for this kind of instant change — and Clark took a long, deep breath as he gazed at the light in the doorway.
Following the disorienting events of the last twenty seconds, Clark gave no further thought to the webcam inside Walker’s bedroom; fortunately for him, the computer was no longer functioning.
As the same kind of animalistic survival instincts that were still driving Rooster crazy encouraged Clark to turn and run away, his mind turned to Dan and Emma… to how they had unquestioningly trusted him with this task, and to how they were so fully counting on him to be thorough.
Clark McCarthy didn’t know what was on the other side of the threshold and was anything but sure that he wanted to find out, but there was no one else to do the job.
He held his breath and charged at Richard Walker’s bedroom — towards the door, and into the light.
C minus 15
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Dan pushed himself to his feet, reeling from the most intense neck pain yet. There were tears in his eyes and there were tears in Emma’s; both had endured an almost unimaginably intense sensation — like a spike being driven deep into their skin — at the precise moment when the feed from Richard Walker’s live interview had been consumed by a total white flash before cutting out completely just milliseconds later.
Tara, seeing them deal with this kind of pain for the first time, was almost hysterical in her concern. Timo didn’t feel much more comfortable but in an odd way the extent and intensity of Tara’s panic had forced him to be calm. He held her back while Emma convulsed — a mercifully brief part of the incident — but if Dan and Emma had remained in their helpless and frightening state for much longer, he had no idea what he would have done.
Fortunately they hadn’t, and Dan helped Emma to her feet just after rising himself. As seemed to be typical, he didn’t suffer quite so badly as she did; he didn’t know why and there wasn’t much in it, but it was something they had both noticed.
Tara wrapped her arms around Emma as soon as she was lucid, but Emma pushed her away after barely a second. “You two go next door,” she told Tara and Timo. “We have to go and see what happened.”
“Who else knows where Walker lives?” Timo asked.
“No one,” Dan said. “But who cares? Clark could be in trouble!”
“If anyone else knows where he lives, they’re going to be on the way there right now,” Timo said. “Are you sure that—”
“Joe Crabbe and no one else,” Emma said. “And he’s hundreds of miles away. There’s a small chance he might call the emergency services if he tries to call Walker and can’t get hold of him, but why would he? If you don’t know what we know, that would have looked like a computer failure or a power cut.”
Dan ran up the stairs.
“Dan, act cool,” Emma called. “Your dad…”
Dan tried to compose himself as he walked through the house towards the front door.
“Are you watching this shit?” Henry asked from his usual spot by the couch. “Crabbe was supposed to be interviewing Walker but the feed cut out. Total bullshit if you ask me. Typical Crabbe to promise something and not deliver.”
“Yup, typical Crabbe,” Emma said. “Anyway, we’re just going next door to check something on my computer.”
Henry raised a hand of acknowledgement without turning away from the TV.
Without telling anyone else, much less asking if he could, Timo broke the script and walked over to Henry. “Mr McCarthy, before I go, I just want to congratulate you for raising two good men of such moral standing.”
Henry nodded, quietly grateful for the comment, then grinned. “Have you definitely met Clark?” he asked.
Timo patted him on the shoulder before joining the others at the door where Dan was putting on his shoes. Emma, unimpressed, pointed towards her house and ushered Timo outside.
“Be really really careful,” Tara pleaded as Emma and Dan walked to the car.
“We can’t just leave him,” Emma said. “We don’t know what happened.”
Tara nodded weakly.
“But if there are any risks, I’ll take them,” Dan said. He meant it — he would insist on being the one to take whatever risks were required — but he said it out loud mainly in an effort to ease Tara’s concerns over Emma’s safety.
“I was telling both of you to be careful,” Tara replied. An attempt at a smile crossed her lips. “But thanks for trying.”
Dan got in the passenger seat of Emma’s car and fumbled to buckle his seatbelt. Emma tore out of the driveway and drove like they were being chased by lava. This fast was perhaps too fast in the eyes of the law, but it was nowhere near fast enough as far as Dan was concerned.
Throughout the short journey, Dan tried calling Clark over and over again. Every time, it went straight to voicemail. Disconcertingly, this suggested that Clark’s phone may have fallen victim to the same forces as Walker’s computer.
Dan thought back to their fateful night in Lolo National Forest, when Clark’s phone had exploded in his pocket and badly burned his thigh. He also recalled Clark’s persistent inability to pass through invisible thresholds which Emma and Dan could pass through unfazed; for whatever reason, the Messengers had never afforded Clark the same status. Dan didn’t know quite what this different status entailed, but the word ‘protection’ was bouncing around his mind.
“Dan, what are we going to find when we get there?” Emma asked, speaking for the first time during the drive and speaking in a genuinely helpless tone for the first time Dan could ever remember.
“They wouldn’t hurt him on purpose,” Dan said, convinced by this at least, “and I really don’t think they would take him.”
Before long, Emma made the turn onto the narrow road which led to the all-too-familiar cottage. “When this is over, I don’t want to waste any more time,” she said.
Dan turned sideways to look at her for a clue as to what she meant, but just as he did so a bright light entered the car from up ahead.
It was a beam rather than a flash, and it was getting brighter.
“His car!” Emma yelled excitedly. She flashed her own headlights several times then pulled up at the side of the narrow road.
The rapidly approaching car skidded to a reckless halt, and Dan quickly saw that the plate was indeed Clark’s. “It’s definitely him,” he said.
“Obviously,” Emma said with a relieved chuckle.
They ran outside and straight towards Clark’s door.
In too much pain to step out unnecessarily, Clark rolled down his window as they approached.
Dan arrived first. “What happened?” he called as soon as he saw that the window was open.
Clark reached up towards the light-switch next to his rearview mirror. Even this small action sent an ache running through his shoulder, and speaking hurt like hell. “They got to him before I did,” he said, flicking the switch to illuminate the car’s interior.
Dan’s mouth fell open just as Emma arrived beside him; not because of what he heard, but because of what he saw.
Wearing a blunt look of exhaustion mixed with uncharacteristic distress, Clark McCarthy’s face was absolutely covered in blood.
C minus 14
10 Downing Street
London, England
As John Cole caught a few hours of sleep, Jack Neal sat wide awake in the middle of the British night.
Jack had spent the last hour following up on a lead which he hoped would be the one to get Cole off his case; he’d been handed a sizeable slice of luck and had known straight away who to contact to make the most of it.
Now, at last, the off-the-books intelligence specialist had called him back.
Jack held his phone in his hand, imploring it to give him some good news. “Well?” he asked, answering the call.
“Good news, Mr Neal,” a digitally disguised voice replied. “We have a decisive match, and it’s going to interest you greatly.”
Jack closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of blissful relief. After a few seconds spent basking in the warm glow of this fortuitous breakthrough, he snapped back to life and sat bolt upright. “Send me what you have,” he ordered. “And pronto. I need to get started on the real work.”
C minus 13
Stevenson Farm
Eastview, Colorado
“Oh my God!” Emma yelled when she caught sight of Clark. His nose was badly bent out of shape, and almost his entire face was enveloped in a bloody crimson mask.
“The short story is that I ran face-first into an invisible wall,” Clark said, pre-empting the inevitable questions. “A forcefield.”
“Are you okay?” Emma asked.
Clark nodded slightly, moving his neck muscles no more than he had to. He then cracked his lower jaw back into place with his hands; this hurt for a second, but it made speaking far less painful. “And don’t worry, there was no blood on the floor or walls or anything else when I left.”
