Apex (2 page)

The woman said, “We saw it too. That’s why we came out here. But we thought it was a damn meteorite, not a piece of a satellite. Holy crap, Dan! Would you look at that thing?”

Dan said, “That’s a piece of a space station, woman. Satellites are too feeble to withstand reentry into the atmosphere. What the heck is it doing here?”

For a big dumb farmer, he sure knew
a thing or two about space debris.

“Should I call the newspaper?”

“Not yet. If it’s real space junk it might be worth something to the government.”

Scott said, “It is
real space junk but it doesn’t belong to any government. Just take a look at it.”

Dan squatted at the edge of the
five foot crater and said, “Molly, come and look at this damn thing.”

Molly knelt by his side and said, “I don’t get it. What is it?”

Dan replied excitedly, “It’s our ticket out of farming, is what it is. This thing’s an alien artifact. It’s got to be worth a fortune. This is huge Molly. This is a world changing event.”

Scott said, “Whoa, wait a minute. We found it first.”

Dan stood tall and faced him. “This is my land, kid. Any court in the world will tell you that because it’s here, it’s mine. You’re lucky I didn’t bring my shotgun.”

Jack stepped in before the argument could escalate into violence. “Take it easy, Scott. Just because we got here first doesn’t mean it belongs to us.”

Molly added, “You kids have no right to be here anyway.”

Melanie stood up now, scaring the middle aged couple with her presence. They hadn’t noticed her until that moment.

She stumbled over and hooked an arm over the shoulder of each boy. “Let’s get out of here. I feel sick.”

Just then, there was a loud pop. The sphere bulged outwards and then fell back to its normal size.
It bulged outwards again and returned to normal once more, before their eyes. It was behaving abnormally for something that looked to be made of metal.

Dan yelled, “Hey, don’t touch it,” just as Jack reached down and put a hand on it. It was warm to the touch and it was vibrating.

He opened his mouth to tell the others about it when it cracked open like a budding flower, but in fast forward.

Before any of them could react, i
t blasted a blue mist at them, hissing as it did so.

Dan stumbled
backwards and his wife Molly screamed out in horror.

Melanie fell forward but Scott caught her before she fell into the broken alien artifact. He had her clutched in one hand as he swiped at his mouth with the other.

When he fell over backwards, unconscious, Melanie fell with him.

Jack’s throat seized up tight. The mist stunk of stale smoke and it tasted like gasoline mixed with chlorine, but only vaguely. It burned his nose and stung his bronchial tubes. It was like his system was under attack.

He watched in terror
as his friends all keeled over. He heard Dan hit the ground, face first. Molly’s screams became strangled right before she fell beside her husband.

Jack was the last to pass out.

Awake

Jack’s eyes shot open. He closed them up tight against the light. He opened them again, but more slowly. The sun was directly overhead. Was he alive?

He felt around him and his hand bumped into something.
It was a large muddy boot. He turned his head and saw a man he didn’t recognize beside him. The man was dead. The woman beside him was dead too.

He
got to his knees as the memory came rushing back to him. They’d found an alien artifact and it had attacked them with a strange suffocating mist.

Scott was already awake, jostling Melanie into consciousness. He whispered to Jack, “Help me. She’s not waking up.”

Before he could get to his feet, Melanie started to twitch. Her arms became more animated by the second. By the time Jack got to her, her arms were being flung around wildly. Her legs were twitching of their own accord too. The growing dark patch on her pants meant she was wetting herself.

Jack asked, “What’s happening to her?”

“I don’t know but it happened to you just a few minutes ago.”

Then she sat up
like she was possessed by the devil, and took in a deep, painful gulp of air. She looked around with wild eyes as she started to hyperventilate.

Behind him, Jack heard a muted shuffling sound. He turned in time to witness the middle aged couple doing an unconscious prone dance together, like they were making snow angels, except there was no snow and the angels would have looked more like
demons based on the spastic jerking of their limbs. Then they shot up into a sitting position and drew in huge lungfuls of air too.

It scared the
hell out of Jack.

He was sweating profusely, shivering even though it was easily ninety degrees.
He looked up into the clear blue sky and saw the sun directly overhead. Only then did he realize they’d been passed out for at least twelve hours.

He staggered over to the crater as Melanie and the couple started to come to their senses.

He wasn’t prepared for what he found though.

The crater was empty.

Schemes

As they walked back into town Jack said, “We should get checked out by a doctor or something. Whatever knocked us out can’t be good for us.”

“No shit, Jack. It was some kind of alien aerosol and it put us all to sleep. We’re lucky to be alive.”

Melanie shook her head adamantly. “My mom thinks I spent last night at Jessica’s house. There’s no way I’m going to tell her the truth. My dad would kick the crap out of me if he knew I was out with you two.”

Scott added, “You’re right. The first thing a doctor would find in our bloodstreams would be drugs. I can’t let my mom know that about me.”

Jack shook his head. He should’ve known his friends would take the easy way out. But, in a way, they were right. If a doctor found something strange inside of them, they’d be forced to recount what had happened last night. That could go only one of two ways. Either they’d become tabloid news and have to endure public ridicule, or else they’d be taken seriously and quarantined by the CDC or some shady government agency.

Melanie said, “Dan and Molly already said they’d deny ever meeting us if we went public, so we’d have too much working against us from the start. I don’t blame them either. They’re probably living outside of town for a reason. They probably don’t want other people in their business. Going public with this would be a nightmare for them.”

Jack said, “Just promise me you’ll both get checked out if anything odd happens.”

“Of course,” Scott lied.

Melanie added, “You worry too much Jack. Let’s get some lunch and then we’ll sleep on it.”

Jack chuckled. “Are you hung-over from last night?”

“Actually, I feel really good. I’m just starving and tired.”

“I’d be hung-over if I drank that much.”

“I should be too. Maybe the alien spoor defeated my hang-over.”

“Don’t even joke about alien spoors.”

Scott said, “I’m going to tell my mom I was at your house last night, Jack. You can tell yours that you were at mine.”

“Sounds
like a plan.”

Busted

Jack walked through his door knowing fully that he was in deep trouble. The police car in his driveway could mean just one thing; he was caught.

He already knew he couldn’t say he’d stayed with Scott last night. His mom wouldn’t look into his story but the sheriff would. The sheriff was useless but because he was perpetually bored, he’d dig deep whenever he thought he was onto something. He was like a dog with a bone when it came to the usually petty crimes that occurred in Ault.

Jack closed the door quietly and crept down the hallway. He heard his mom talking to the sheriff in the kitchen.

She said, “That was Scott’s mom on the phone. She said he just walked in. Jack should be home soon. I’m so sorry for wasting your time, Bob.”

No problem Jenny. I don’t blame you for worrying. Let me know when he gets in, ok?”

“I will. Right after I beat the stuffing out of him.”

“Go easy girl. He’s a teenager. They make mistakes.
I’m sure you stayed out all night a few times in your younger days too.”

She said jovially, “Hey, what do you mean by that? I’m not that old.”

Jack had heard enough. Rather than going in and facing both of them, he crept upstairs and waited for the sheriff to leave.

He’d have no choice but to tell his mom the truth.
But apparently she already knew enough. He could always leave out the part about the alcohol, pot, and alien artifact, but he’d have to fess up about staying out all night with his friends. She already knew that part anyway.

He slowly closed his bedroom door and sat down on his bed. Despite the fact that his heart was pounding holes in his chest, fat
igue crept into his limbs and took over. Before he knew it, he was pulling his covers over his legs. He slipped into a comatose sleep.

In and Out

His eyes opened lazily. His mom was screaming. He couldn’t focus on anything. He closed his eyes and blocked out the screams.

His eyes opened again but the bright light bulbs caused him physical pain so he reflexively slammed them shut again. He heard weeping beside him. He turned his head towards the noise and saw his mom’s silhouette stand up and rush over to him. Her features sharpened before his fogged up eyes.

She was staring into his face; the look on hers was hard to
decipher. He’d never seen her look at him that way before. It was a pleading look full of fear.

He shut his eyes and his mind slid away.

He opened them again. I was dark now. The air smelled funny and it was silent.

A male voice said, “I’m Doctor Henshaw, Jack. Take your time. Don’t rush this.”

Jack shuffled his butt backwards on the bed and sat up as the lights came on.

The doctor was around fifty with receding silver hair and big black caterpillar eyebrows. He had a kindly look to him that
should have instantly put Jack at ease, had the situation been ordinary.

Jack
said, “Where the hell am I? Where’s my mom?”

“She can’t come here just yet. This is a restricted area. We’ll get to that later. How do you feel?”

“Sleepy, I guess.”

The doctor laughed. “You’ve been sleeping fitfully for five days. We thought we’d lost you a coup
le of times. Try and stay awake for a spell before you go back to sleep, ok?”

Jack said incredulously,
“I slept for five days straight? Am I sick?”

“We don’t know. But strange things have happened all around you ever since you fell asleep. Your muscle mass has increased on its own. Your heart rate was clocked at over seven hundred beats a minute. Your arm twitched and you punched a hole through a
solid oak dresser without sustaining injury.”

“Huh?”

“It’s all true. Something is happening to you and it has us all stumped.”

Jack asked, “Have you run tests?”

“There are some tests that we’d love to run but we can’t. We tried to draw blood. Your skin is pliable but it doesn’t give. We couldn’t get a syringe in you, no matter how hard we tried or where on your body we tried it. X-rays haven’t worked either and an MRI is out of the question because we can’t inject you. So we’re forced to observe and hope for the best.”

Jack cracked his neck and rubbed his dry eyes.
This was all so surreal that he barely believed it. “So where am I?”

“You’re in
Denver. We have you and your friends quarantined in a small building designed for things of this nature.”

In a sick way, Jack was relieved his friends were here with him. Sure, it was selfish, but it was nice knowing he wasn’t going through this alone. “Can I leave if I want?”

“I’m not going to lie to you, son. You’re stuck here until we know what’s going on with you.”

Jack almost asked about the middle aged coup
le, Dan and Molly, but if the doctor didn’t already know about them, then he didn’t want to put him on to their trail. “How are Scott and Melanie doing?”

“They’re doing better than you. Scott woke up a couple days ago and Melanie woke yesterday. You’re all exhibiting the same symptoms, but that’s a good sign for you because they seem healthy now that they’re up and about.”

“Can I see them?”

“Not yet. Take it easy. I don’t want you overexerting yourself so soon after regaining consciousness.
I’ll send someone in with some lunch right away.” With that, the doctor left the room.

The audible click of a latch being shoved into place on the other side of the door sent chills down Jack’s spine.

Test