Shortly after her connections to every network went down, the power went out in Jayla's father's cabin.
"We gotta get back to civilization," she muttered to herself. "Where is that girl?"
Jayla went out to the deck and yelled for her little sister for a while. No response.
She looked up at the sky, peeked through the door at an old German cuckoo clock on the wall, and thought the sun would be setting soon. Jada would have to return by dark. Jayla didn't think the sixteen year old had taken a flashlight with her.
She just wished she would hurry up.
Jayla fixed herself a small meal, bored without her sister and without a connection to the outside world. Even though the power was out, they had a propane tank, and the stove still worked.
She thought about cooking enough for her sister as well, but if the girl wanted to wander around the woods all day by herself, she could cook for herself also.
Jayla brought her dinner out onto the deck, watching for her sister, and watching the sun set in the sky. The horizon turned a deep purple, the sky dimming to a navy blue, and Jayla grew more worried.
Eating mindlessly, she decided she would have to search for her sister. The thought of wandering around the woods at dusk did not excite her. There weren't many bears anymore, but the wilderness continued for hundreds of miles around them. Who knew what wandered around it?
There were a few cabins like theirs. Perhaps Jada was sitting in one, jawing with the residents, completely oblivious of time. Jayla was going to kill her.
She went back inside, put her plate in the sink, and dug through drawers until she found a flashlight. She also found extra batteries and put them on the counter along with matches and a small lantern she pulled out of a closet.
It was still early summer, so she put on a sweatshirt, wool socks, and boots. Armed with the flashlight, extra batteries, and her phone, which had no signal, Jayla went out into the night in search of her sister.
At four in the morning she returned to the cabin, desperate, cold, hungry, afraid, and exhausted. She fell on the couch and cried herself to sleep.
Eva Gilliam found the end of the world quite boring.
A week alone in a safe house was enough to drive anyone crazy. She did what she could to stay busy. She worked out mostly, running on a treadmill, lifting weights, practicing yoga, and using the punching bag. She read books in the evening.
The apartment had a living room that looked normal from the entryway. A couch and a love seat, a fake, electric fireplace, and a painting of a ship at sea on the wall. A well appointed kitchen with a dining alcove was on one side, and a door leading to a hallway was opposite the entrance. Everything looked like a standard apartment.
Behind the hallway door, the normalcy ended.
There were three large rooms, besides the bathroom, off the hallway. The first had bunks enough for six people nailed to the walls, and dressers filled with clothing for both men and women. The second was the well equipped gym where Eva tried to keep herself occupied. The third held stockpiles of food, water, weapons, books, paper goods, and underwear. Fortunately there was women's underwear, as well as men's, and feminine products. The Agency was thoughtful.
The windows were bricked over. Curtains probably still hung on them on the other side of the brick, giving them the illusion of a normal apartment, but there was no way for Eva to see or contact the outside. Even her phone had lost signal as soon as she arrived.
She couldn't leave. The code on her phone had worked once to let her in. However, the lock cycled on a regular basis, and if she left, she wouldn't be able to get back in. Only the correct code or a significant quantity of explosives would open the door from the outside.
She hoped for another agent to show up so they could take turns leaving the apartment and gathering information, but no one did.
Without sunlight, the designers of the safe house knew there was the possibility of going crazy. A tanning bed had been provided and it sat in a corner of the gym. She used it liberally the first day.
But it didn't work without electricity.
The second day into her residency at the safe house, the power and water both stopped working.
Eva flipped switches on and off in frustration, then finally felt her way into the storage room. In the dark, she sorted through containers until she found batteries and a battery operated lantern.
With a little light, she could look around more, and found kerosene and several kerosene lamps. She lit one, but worried that without power there'd be no air handling and she'd suffocate. She reluctantly put the lamp out.
Days came and went in the dark, and Eva's frustration came and went with them. She worked out, ate, and read by the light from the battery lantern. She used bottled water to bathe, then took the bath water and used it to flush the toilet. She didn't know how long she could live this way, but she wanted to be a good agent, a professional.
At least there were vitamin D tablets in the food storage to make up for the lack of sunlight or a tanning bed.
On the second day of darkness, Eva looked at her eerie reflection in the bathroom mirror, lit strangely by the tiny lantern, and she asked herself who she was.
"Eva Gilliam," she replied weakly.
"What's that? I can't hear you," she bellowed like an instructor.
"Eva Gilliam," she screamed back at her reflection.
"Still can't hear you!"
"Eva Gilliam!"
It felt surprisingly good to shout. It relieved the oppressive quietness.
She went through the routine again on the third day, then added, "What are you doing here?"
She didn't know the answer to that question. Obeying orders? Obeying lack of orders?
"Saving the world!" she shouted at the mirror. Where had that come from?
Just like every reporter wanted to be like Woodward and Bernstein, every scientist wanted to be like Einstein, or Pascal, or Curie, every agent had a tiny, unspoken desire to be like Bond. James Bond. To not just do her duty, but to make a difference somewhere. Not just fulfill an obligation, but to make a difference, to save thousands of lives like Marie Curie or to break an enemy code and win a war, like Joan Clarke.
Every day she yelled at the mirror.
"Who are you?"
"Eva Gilliam!"
"What are you doing?"
"Saving the world!"
The yelling helped.
Not knowing how long the power outage would last or how long it would be until she received new orders, she patiently soldiered on.
Major Vincent Jai-Singh throttled back his F-35, radioing in the massive heat signature that showed up on his display and waiting for confirmation.
His wingman confirmed.
Combat Control acknowledged and gave him permission to engage an intercept course. An AWACS was also on its way.
Vincent ordered military power, and the two craft bucked in response, streaking to engage what had to be a certain enemy, a craft blazing into the atmosphere.
There was a remote possibility this was another meteor, like the ones that had been plummeting to Earth, laying waste to bases and cities. But it came in at a different trajectory, and something told Vincent it looked more like a spacecraft on reentry than it did a meteor heading straight down for a target.
He hoped it was a spacecraft. He could fight a spacecraft. He and the other combat pilots of the United States Air Force, along with Navy, Marine, and Army counterparts, had been completely helpless against the meteors.
Bases were destroyed. Cities burned. The oceans heaved themselves beyond their bounds and millions died.
And Vincent, flying the most advanced fighter jet in the world, had been helpless.
Now he had tone.
He requested permission to fire and Combat Control told him to do what he wanted. He was at extreme range for his missil
e, and his target, if it was a spacecraft on reentry, would still be protected by a fireball. But he could try if he wanted to.
Vincent armed the missile, confirmed lock, and called, "Fox Three."
The missile separated from his plane, and streaked off, leaving a thin contrail heading up into the clouds. He watched it for as long as he could, aware that his wingman would be tracking his scope for other bogeys.
He wondered about the craft. How powerful were these aliens, anyway? They could redirect asteroids towards the Earth, hitting targets with precision, and when they decided to attack a highly mobile, well defended target, they only sent one craft to do it.
Vincent knew who he protected. He didn't know for sure; he wasn't deemed to have a high enough security clearance, but everyone in the fighter wing knew they had orders to protect a group of aircraft at all costs. Only one such aircraft could be flying such erratic patterns over the heart of Alaska, and that was Air Force One.
Accompanied by refueling tankers, combat drones, and its own squadron of F-35s, no other asset could be that important.
He prayed his missile would find its target, making him a hero. He wasn't sure who he prayed to, though. An Indian muslim with a Sikh sounding last name who grew up in New York, Vincent had confused thoughts about religion and God. Prayer couldn't hurt, though.
So he prayed.
"That's a negative, Major," he heard on his radio.
"Acknowledged."
The missile no longer read on his scope, meaning it had detonated, yet the fireball still approached them, screaming towards them at many times the speed of sound.
"Cap Three, this is Eagle."
Eagle was an AWACS, or Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft. It could control entire aerial battles from a safe distance.
"Roger, Eagle, this is Cap Three." Vincent and his wingman, Lieutenant Travers, were the third combat air patrol pair circling hundreds of miles from what was presumably the President's squadron.
"Cap Three, the brainiacs on board have calculated that you are in perfect position for this bogey. Loiter at your current location and altitude and wait for it to get below 50. Then cut loose. Copy that?"
"Copy, Eagle."
"Don't hold back, Cap Three. Unload and get out of there. Help is on the way."
"Roger, that."
They signed off and Vincent eased back on the throttle, cutting the afterburner off. He and Travers began a ten mile diameter circle, waiting for the alien bogey to get into range.
"How you doing Lieutenant?" he asked on their private channel.
"Ready to kick some ET you know what," the farm boy replied. Vincent chuckled.
"Copy that."
Vincent thought about the twists and turns and fates of life. He had come from a wealthy family. His grandparents immigrated from India and seemed to know how to make money without even trying. Vincent had the best education, worked hard, had private tutors, and had barely made the cut to be nominated to the Academy. Once there, he excelled in everything, excelled in pilot training, and still barely made the cut to fly the nation's top fighter aircraft.
Lieutenant Travers, a farm boy from Iowa, practically fell off a tractor into the cockpit of the F-35. ROTC, a rare pilot slot due to a disqualifying condition of another candidate, middle of the class in pilot training, and yet here he was, flying wingman to Vincent. Strange world.
"What altitude do you have on ET, Lieutenant?"
"Passing through 65,000 and falling like a ton of bricks."
"Copy that. Same here." Vincent thought for a second. At the rate of closing they wouldn't have long. Then he remembered an old Israeli trick. "Follow me," he ordered his wingman.
Vincent swung out of their lazy circle, going past where he thought the bogey would cross the 50,000 foot altitude mark, then making a tight curve to come at them sideways. No aircraft could fire sideways, and they would have a longer window to take a shot. A rear shot was always best, but if this craft was coming in as fast as a shuttle, no fighter could ever hope to keep up with it.
Lieutenant Travers chuckled on their private channel.
"They do teach you senior officers a thing or two, don't they, sir?"
He'd figured out what they were doing.
"Watch and learn, farm boy," Vincent replied.
The alien craft appeared, falling at speeds faster than any missile could go, the fireball around it dissipating as it slowed in the heavier atmosphere.
"Fire a spread. We'll never get lock," he ordered, and began firing missiles into the expected path of the enemy craft. He fired his gatling gun also, hoping that perhaps even one shell might hit the enemy out of dumb luck. He couldn't fire for long, but at those speeds, the force of even one shell would tear the enemy craft apart.
He saw his wingman do the same.
He didn't breathe as he waited. It was only seconds, their aircraft closing at over 500 miles per hour, missiles streaking towards a spot in front of the enemy at over 1,500 miles per hour, the alien craft still descending at more than 5,000 miles per hour. Something was going to hit something, or else they were all just going to fly past each other.
He fired his gatling gun in bursts, conserving ammunition and hoping to get the best spread of shells for the spacecraft to fly into.
Just as he thought the enemy had closed to the point that he would know if they had missed or hit, the descending spacecraft disappeared.
"What the...?" he heard over the radio.
"Eagle, this is Cap Three. Bogey has vanished. Repeat, bogey has vanished."
"Negative, Cap Three. We read it right on top of you."
"We don't see it, Eagle. I'm out of ammo."
"Get out of there Cap Three. It's right on top of you."
"Military power," Vincent ordered, shoving his throttle all the way forward and flipping the switch that dumped raw fuel into the exhaust, causing the afterburner effect that made jets fly much faster than they should be able. Maintenance crews hated afterburner as it robbed engines of flight hours, requiring them to be replaced at more frequent intervals. Pilots loved it. The pure power. The knowledge that speed was life, and with afterburner they could get out of any kind of trouble.
He never saw Lieutenant Travers' plane break up, but his hair stood on end suddenly, the air coming into his mask smelled like ozone, and small balls of electricity climbed down the metal framework of his cockpit, some breaking free, floating for a moment, then going to ground, others shorting out equipment, causing more sparks to fly.
His flight panel caught fire and training took over. He straightened in his seat, leaned his head back, and reached down and grabbed the yellow rip cords. He took a breath and pulled.
The igniter for the explosives that were supposed to blow his canopy away shorted, damaged by the electrical balls that filled Major Vincent Jai-Singh's cockpit, and Vincent was thrust into the reinforced glass by the ejection rocket attached to the base of his seat. He died instantly. His plane died with him.
The President of the United States, his wife, his Chief of Staff, and his top general, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, watched the battle display incredulously. The Hrwang craft darted around his fleet of aircraft, destroying them like a kid swatting flies.
"They're so advanced," his wife whispered.
"It's like throwing spears at a tank," the General said.
"Shut it off. I want my children with me," the President ordered. The General moved forward in the plane, to another display watched by others. The children's nanny brought his children to him and his wife, and they pulled their little ones up onto their laps.
"I'm sorry, Aiden," he said to his Chief of Staff. The man had tears in his eyes, and he shook his head, moving to pull the nanny away and leave the President alone with his family. The nanny collapsed on the floor, sobbing.
"It's
okay. She loves the kids, too."
The nanny stood and joined the President and his family in a group hug. They smelled ozone and felt the plane drop altitude, their stomachs feeling disengaged from the rest of their bodies.
"I'm so sorry, Maddie," the President whispered to his wife. "I only brought you aboard to keep you safe. I wanted you safe." He started crying.
Someone screamed as the plane lurched again, dropping faster than the converted 787 could descend.
"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," his wife repeated, holding him and kissing him and their children.
They never felt the impact.
Air Force One crashed south of the Alaskan Brooks Range, more than a hundred miles away from the Yukon river. There were no survivors. The plane fell in a part of Central Alaska so remote that nothing but caribou and elk would see the wreckage for decades.
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