The Simulacrum (First Contact), page 18
“Ah,” Dawn says. “But there is.”
“Where?”
Dawn points across the grassy quad at the old physics building, saying, “There are originals showing the same thing in that basement.”
As she speaks, there’s a high-pitched whine like that of an airliner taxiing on the runway at an airport. Within seconds, it’s grown from annoying to screaming in anger. A wingtip rushes into view. It’s pointing down at the ground at an angle. From over the building, a 737 cargo plane plummets toward the quad. Its nose dives down at the university. The plane itself is inverted, flying upside down. Smoke billows from its engines. The vertical stabilizer at the rear of the craft deforms under stress, twisting on its frame. The rudder is turned hard to one side but to no effect. On the ground, people run in all directions. In a fraction of a second, the shadow of the aircraft converges on the old physics building at the same time as the nose cone of the airplane thunders into the grassy park.
“Get—” Dawn doesn’t have time to yell, “Down!”
A fireball erupts from the quad. Windows shatter around them. Tens of thousands of tiny glass fragments tear through the air, but this is safety glass. It pelts them like a shotgun blast but doesn’t cut them to shreds.
The two women are blown off their feet. They collide with the desk. The computer monitor falls backward. Fire lashes the ceiling, coming up from the ground outside and billowing over them. The heat scorches their exposed hands and cheeks. The two women huddle together, taking shelter beneath the desk. Burning bits of ceiling tiles fall around them.
The sprinklers come on, spraying water over the office. Cold water drips from the desk. The fire alarm sounds, but it’s distant. It takes Dawn a moment to realize the thundering explosion rattled her ears, deafening her. Her hands are shaking.
Lisa is already back on her feet, looking down at the smoldering crater. Dawn clambers up next to her. Smoke billows high into the air. Spot fires rage across the campus. Bodies lie strewn on the burned ground. Several cherry trees have been knocked over, exposing their roots. The old physics building has collapsed. Black soot lines what remains of the edge of the building out by the road. A wall falls, sending bricks scattering across the pavement.
There’s screaming.
Sirens sound in the distance. People walk in a daze. Blood drips from limp arms. There’s a tremor. The biology building next to the old physics department collapses even though it was spared the full force of the blast. The front fascia falls forward, leaving people stranded on the open concrete floors within. Scattered bricks bury the stairs at the front of the building. Dust billows outward.
“We’ve got to go,” Dawn says, realizing their building could collapse as well.
“B—Basement,” Lisa says, pointing at the smoke billowing out of the crater. “T—The evidence was in that basement?”
“Yes, that basement,” Dawn says, unable to see anything other than rubble within the crater. The tail section of the aircraft protrudes from the debris.
Dawn wraps her arm around Lisa and leads her toward the fire stairs in the middle of the floor. It’s only then that she realizes the left side of her face feels unduly warm. She reaches up and wipes away thick red blood.
“Are you okay?” Dr. Manaas Guneet asks, rushing up to them and blabbering in his distinctive accent from the Indian subcontinent. He repeats his question. “Are you okay?”
“We’re okay,” Dawn replies. Lisa is silent.
“Is everyone okay?” Dr. Guneet asks, repeating himself and asking a question that has already been answered. “We’ve got to make sure everyone’s okay. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. Okay?”
It’s the look in his eyes that gives away the pain of shock seizing his mind. He’s uninjured, but his pupils are dilated. They’re as big as saucers.
“Come with us,” Dawn says to him, shuffling through the ruins scattered across the floor. Smoke clouds the air. Ash drifts around them.
“I—I need to make sure everyone is okay,” Dr. Guneet says, rushing off to talk to someone else already heading toward the exit.
There’s a strange silence within the concrete stairwell leading to the ground. Emergency lights glow overhead, running on battery power. The two of them follow the dazed herd inside the stairwell. Rather than being calm, the people around them are passive because they’re deep in shock. They’re walking down the steps on instinct.
Dawn and Lisa step outside into the acrid smoke filling the air. It’s difficult to breathe. Lisa wanders in a daze toward the smoldering crater. Dawn grabs her by the arm and leads her sideways, away from the point of impact. Bits of the airplane’s metal frame have embedded themselves in the support pillars of their building. Every window has shattered. It’s impossible to walk on anything but broken glass. Ash falls from the sky like snow. Several people are caked in grey dust, appearing as little more than ghosts through the gloom.
Police cars pull up. Their sirens are silent, but their red and blue flashing lights provide a beacon through the smoke and haze.
“My God. My God,” someone mumbles, pushing past them. “Are we under attack? We’re under attack. It’s 9/11 all over again.”
Firefighters wield massive metal grinders, cutting through the bollards that prevent vehicle access to the quad. A shower of sparks flies through the air. They’re operating the kind of equipment used to cut open a crushed vehicle in a crash. Within seconds, the bollards fall to one side with their metal ends glowing red, turning the walkway into a driveway.
Fire Engines drive up over the curb and into the quad. Their lights flash over the remains of the buildings. Hoses are rolled out and attached to fire hydrants. Water is sprayed through the air. The artificial torrent of rain douses the fires, reducing the smoke.
A cop stands to one side, signaling to survivors as though he were directing traffic at an intersection. People flock to him, coming from all angles. In the uncertainty of the moment, the police provide surety. Several other police officers stand further along the campus with clipboards out, writing down names.
“Roll call,” the cop calls out to the stunned crowd. “We need to know who made it out so we can find anyone that’s trapped.”
Once Dawn has walked past the first cop, she turns sideways, following the concrete walkway leading to the humanities department.
“What are you doing?” Lisa asks. “Where are you going?”
“We’re not putting our names on that list.”
“But why?”
“Because someone wants me dead. And I’d rather they didn’t know I’m still alive.”
“B—B—But all this was an accident. Surely, it was an accident.”
Dawn says, “Those images on my desk were no accident.”
“Who gave you those images?”
“I don’t know, but you asked the right question back there. Who could do this? And why?”
“And who could?”
“I’m not sure, but I intend to find out.”
Prison Life
Gabriel is called The Travel Man within Fort Leavenworth. He’s never been outside the Continental US, but with fourteen postcards lined up around the edge of his window and the head of his bed, prisoners enjoy joking with him about these far-flung lands. Maria travels a lot. Most of her postcards are from Eastern Europe, including Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey. Spain and London are popular with the prisoners.
“Your woman,” Private James Stone says from the doorway to his cell. “She knows, huh? She looks out for you. Reminds you that one day you’ll be free again.”
“Something like that,” Gabriel says with a slight smile.
The assumption is that Maria Petrovoski is his lover. As the comments on the back of the postcards are all innocuous, Gabriel’s happy to indulge their fantasies. At first, he resented hearing from her. Now, if a week goes by without a postcard, he misses that fleeting contact with the outside world. And not only him. Dozens of prisoners have made a habit of swinging by on Thursdays to see if a new postcard has arrived. A missed week is a big deal for them. It seems everyone needs hope, even if it’s an illusion, a mirage. For Gabriel, it’s a good way of being close to a lot of prisoners while still being distant. Jones was right. He needs to come across as friendly without actually striking up any friendships that could compromise him.
He takes the latest postcard down with him as he heads toward the recreation yard. It’s from Greece and shows the ruins of the Acropolis rising over the city of Athens. The message on this one is simple. It reads:
Missing you.
xoxoxo
Two words and a bunch of fake hugs and kisses leave him wondering what’s really going on in Maria’s life. In the past, her postcards have tormented him—by design. This one seems rushed. The postmark is from the airport, which is curious as it wasn’t sent from the city itself. Also, the handwriting is frantic. This time, it seems she’s the one that’s tormented. And yet, still, she sent him a postcard. She didn’t have to. She never gets a reply. For all she knows, they never make it past the admin desk and end up in the garbage. It seems the cat-and-mouse game that began in an astronomical forum continues.
Gabriel heads along the narrow walkway and down the stairs into the communal area with its fixed tables and chairs.
One of the prisoners by the name of Big Little John sees the postcard in his hand. “Oh, where is she now?”
“Greece,” Gabriel says with a misplaced sense of pride.
It’s strange, but Maria’s postcards give him social credit within the prison walls. Corporal Jones was right about boredom. It’s the one constant within Leavenworth. To those on the outside, it seems as though the prisoners are being punished by their loss of freedom, but boredom is the real punishment. The monotony of nothing happening sucks the life out of them. Every day is Groundhog Day. Nothing changes from one day to the next. The human mind thrives on being occupied and engaged. To dull the senses is inhumane. Gabriel’s seen fights break out over stupidly small shit simply because people were bored. A bit of violence draws in a crowd. For the prisoners, a rush of adrenaline is like knocking back a few beers.
“Oh, cool,” Big Little John says, looking at the postcard and turning it over in his hand, reading not only Maria’s comment but the information printed about the Acropolis. He hands it back with a smile on his face. Little does Maria know, far from tormenting Gabriel, she’s allowing him to break the cycle of boredom and bring a little joy into the lives of those in the B2 wing of Leavenworth. And joy is a social contagion. It ripples outward. Big Little John’s hearty smile has lifted Gabriel’s mood. And they’ll both carry that for the rest of the day, lifting those around them.
“Keep ‘em coming,” Gabriel says to his absent girlfriend Maria, looking down at the postcard in his hand as he walks out into the exercise yard.
The yard was once a baseball field, but it has been sectioned off with chainlink fences topped with razor wire so it can be used by several prison blocks at once without prisoners mixing. B2 gets the diamond. The grass grows long against the fence, but the paths between bases can still be seen in the dust. Various types of outdoor exercise equipment have been positioned on first, second and third base to give the inmates some variety. In practice, these have become the haunts of the various gangs within the prison.
Being of Cuban descent, Gabriel gets along well with the El Caimáns—The Alligators. They’re Cuban Americans, but most of the El Caimáns come from Florida. Some have gang tattoos, something he suspects the military would have frowned on. Most of them are muscly, using their time inside to pump iron. Gabriel hangs out on the fringes. He doesn’t want to get drawn into the group dynamics, but he needs allies, and race provides a natural link.
As he walks out into the sunshine, he spots his old mentor, Corporal Jones, sitting in the shade of the dugout. There’s respect but no friendship between them, and Gabriel’s taken his warnings to heart by avoiding anything other than a passing friendship with the other prisoners.
They make eye contact.
Jones shakes his head softly. He’s signaling something’s wrong, but what? There’s been no beef in the yard for weeks. Violence doesn’t spring out of nowhere. It simmers and builds like a volcano. Gabriel hasn’t seen anything that would suggest any tension between the El Caimáns, the Blacks or the Aryans.
Gabriel needs the sunlight. He closes his eyes for a moment as the warm rays rest on his cheeks. There’s chirping above him. Corporal Jones was right about the birds in the clear blue sky. They’re free. They’re beyond the reach of the guards, beyond the razor-wire fences, beyond the steel bars. They’re a reminder that as soul-destroying as it is to be facing decades in prison, one day, he’ll soar free again.
He walks over to the Cubans. They part like the Red Sea.
“What’s going on?” he asks Sergeant Valverde, a stout, muscular US Ranger from Daytona Beach.
“Tienes,” Valverde says, nodding with his head toward three burly Aryans walking over toward them from second base. “Este tipo acaba de meter tremenda cañona en la caretera.”
Gabriel spoke Spanish as a kid, but when his father remarried a stunningly beautiful Italian woman from New York, they began speaking English around their home. He wracks his mind to translate Valverde. The Ranger called him a dick, said something about ending him, and something about someone swerving into his lane. Before Gabriel has time to react, two of the muscle-bound white guys have grabbed him by either arm.
“Hey, easy,” he says, trying to defuse tension he doesn’t understand.
The third self-described Aryan is a skinhead from Alabama called Buddy Browne. His shaved head is perpetually pink under the blazing Kansas sun. Buddy steps in close. He’s sweaty. He leans in and whispers in Gabriel’s ear, but it’s the sharpened scrap of plastic in his right hand that has Gabriel’s attention. He’s holding a shiv, a homemade prison knife with only one purpose—killing someone in the yard.
“Maria Petrovoski sends her love.”
Before Gabriel can plead for mercy, he feels the sharp tip of the shiv cut through his shirt, punching up beneath his ribs on his left side. Pain surges through his chest. Blood runs down his hip.
The Aryans let him go. They walk off in the same direction they were heading moments before Gabriel was stabbed. To the guards watching the yard, the whole incident was over within seconds. The Aryans barely seemed to pause as they strode across the grassy in-field. Their swagger looks natural and confident. To anyone who just glanced down at the worn patch of dirt between the outdoor weights and the practice pitching mound, they’re relaxed.
Gabriel staggers. He looks over at Corporal Jones. The older man is on his feet. He lowers his head. He knew this was coming, but he couldn’t warn Gabriel, or more correctly, he chose not to. To be fair, even if he’d said something, the Aryans would have simply picked off Gabriel elsewhere, like in the showers.
Gabriel peers down at the orange piece of plastic protruding from his side. He wraps his hand around it. Blood oozes from his fingers.
“Don’t,” Jones says, walking past behind him but not getting too close and pretending to ignore Gabriel’s feet shuffling in the dust. “If you pull it out, you’ll bleed out.”
And that’s all the help Jones offers. Like the others, he keeps his distance. They’re all waiting for one of the screws to realize what’s happened and shut down the yard. The assassins have already left. Buddy Browne takes one last look from the doorway to the common area. Gabriel’s own people, the El Caimáns, have shifted over against the chainlink fence on the far side of the yard. They’re laughing, but they’re not looking at him. It’s fake. They’re buying themselves an alibi. No one is within thirty feet of him, not even Corporal Jones. He’s ducked back into the shade and has his back to Gabriel, fake-talking with one of the other inmates.
As far as hits go, this is professional. It wasn’t spontaneous. They had to have been planning this for a while, waiting for the right moment. That the El Caimáns gave consent to the Aryans suggests a level of coordination and betrayal that baffles Gabriel. Maria used some serious muscle to reach this deep into Leavenworth.
Gabriel falls to his knees in the dust. It’s difficult to breathe. It’s all he can do to fall sideways and not collapse on the shiv and drive it in deeper. His body trembles as shock strikes. Blood soaks into the dirt.
A whistle sounds, followed by several others as guards rush in toward him. Their boots kick up dust. An alarm blares. Those prisoners still in the yard know the drill. They drop to their knees with their hands clenched behind their heads.
“Stretcher,” is yelled by a guard kneeling beside him. “I need a stretcher.”
Gabriel struggles to stay conscious. Guards surround him, but most of them are facing outward, away from him, watching the prisoners, making sure this isn’t a ruse to ambush them. Visors are lowered on their helmets. Batons are drawn.
“Who did this to you?” the guard asks, leaning over him. The guard’s broad shoulders block out the sun. “Tell me who did this.”
As much as Gabriel wants to say “Buddy,” the name that comes out is “Maria.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” the guard says as a stretcher is laid next to him. “Who stabbed you? Name! Give me a goddamn name.”
Gabriel’s lips tremble. He struggles to swallow. His throat is dry. He couldn’t speak even if he wanted to. His body goes limp. His eyes roll into the back of his head as he’s lifted onto the stretcher.
Gabriel’s vaguely aware of the sights and sounds around him as he slips in and out of consciousness—and it’s confusing. His body rocks from side to side on the old canvas stretcher. There’s yelling. Steel doors bang open. Keys rattle. Locks are thrown. Boots thump on concrete. And then there’s sunlight again for a moment as he’s loaded into the back of an ambulance.
The blinding glare of the sun moves from one eye to another, and it takes him a moment to realize a paramedic is shining a penlight in his eyes. A siren sounds, but this is different from the coarse whine of the alarms within Leavenworth. An engine roars as the EMS vehicle rushes out of the prison. Gabriel’s still rocking back and forth, but this is different. He’s lying on a mattress. Straps keep him secure on the gurney. He never even noticed being transferred from the stretcher.
