An explosion rocked the sky as debris rained down on the massive crowd. Maya looked up to see a fireball where the helicopter had been a second ago. Blue lightning flared out from the flames.
“That helicopter!” a woman screamed. “It exploded!”
“Run!” someone else yelled.
The crowd scattered, sprinting in every direction and trying to avoid the hunks of burning metal and plastic falling from the sky. The dome seemed to repel the helicopter fragments at a high velocity, sending debris back onto the crowd below. Maya turned and sprinted toward the hospital, a throng of people coming up behind her.
Reno grabbed her arm. “This way!”
The crowd filled the street as Maya and Reno dashed toward the underground parking garage on their right.
“Look out!” came a warning from someone in the crowd.
Big hunks of the helicopter tumbled to the ground in balls of fire. A blade from the main rotor slammed into the middle of the street, landing on three people who couldn’t get away in time.
Maya’s eyes went wide. She dove under the overhang of the parking garage entrance, Reno right behind her. They rolled over and looked out as more debris fell, killing people in the street.
“We have to help them. We’ve got—”
“No!” Reno said, standing up and getting between Maya and the entrance. “There’s nothing we can do for them right now.”
She stood still, and then nodded, realizing that they’d be no help to anyone if burning debris killed them, as well. Maya had to stay alive to help others. To find her kids.
Reno and Maya ran deeper into the garage, down a ramp to the first subterranean parking level. There, they listened to the screams above as they caught their breath, doubled over with their hands on their knees.
“That wall isn’t a wall. It’s a dome,” Reno said. “The helicopter flew right up into it.”
“There has to be a way out.”
“There’s not,” came a voice from the dark shadows of the garage.
They both stood and turned to see the middle-aged man with the Yazoo t-shirt. He’d followed them into the garage.
“I will mess you up, man,” Reno said. “Leave us alone.”
“It’s a beacon.”
Maya furrowed her brow. “A beacon? For what?”
“Don’t listen to him, Maya,” Reno said. “He’s a damn lunatic.”
“Perhaps. But I know what’s going on, and nobody else around here seems to have a clue. I’ll tell you if you give me a ride home. My wife and child are there, and they need me. An emergency vehicle—like an ambulance—is the best chance I have of getting there.”
“No way,” Reno said.
She thought it was unlikely that this crazy guy knew anything, but he hadn’t seemed aggressive, and they could put him in the back, just in case. And what if he did know something? Didn’t she owe it to her children to consider all the possibilities? An obelisk had caused an earthquake and obliterated the Parthenon, and now an invisible dome had dropped over Nashville. Maybe this man wasn’t so crazy after all…
“You talk to us while we drive. And you tell us everything you know.” Maya said.
“You’re not really thinking about giving him a ride?” Reno asked.
“We’re running out of options, Reno. And if this guy is for real, he could help me find my kids.”
Reno exhaled. He put his hands up in the air and walked away.
The old man smiled.
“Thank you, Maya. But you must understand, once you know the truth, you can’t ignore it. You’ll be universally obligated to act on behalf of all humanity. No going back.”
She nodded at his bizarre phrasing, already wondering if Reno had been right.
“My name is Jack, by the way.”
“Good to meet you, Jack. Now let’s get to the rig. You need to start talking.”
15
Maya looked out the window as they passed the crowds gathering downtown. Most of the city’s churches had been represented by people holding signs, many of the Bible Belt’s faithful claiming the dome had been God’s doing—that Jesus was coming ‘home.’ Others not affiliated with a church screamed at those holding signs, believing this was a terrorist attack. Some of East Nashville’s hipsters even seemed to think a conspiracy was at play, with the United States government behind it. Maya turned away, trying to block out the conflicting words and ideologies attempting to explain the unexplainable.
Reno had insisted on driving to give Maya a break, and she knew she needed it after witnessing the helicopter’s explosion. Jack sat in the back, but had thrust his head into the rig’s cab to talk to them. Maya checked her phone every few moments, but still couldn’t get a signal. She thought of Aiden and Laura, her mom, and even Gerald—the thoughts kept rushing in, and made her eyes buzz. Finally, she sighed and shoved the phone into her pocket.
“I’m sure your kids know you’re all right,” Jack said.
Maya rubbed the back of her neck. Sweat collected on her brow.
“You need to start talking,” Maya said, ignoring the man’s comment.
“Lots of traffic out there. People in the streets,” Jack said. “There’s plenty of time.”
Pedestrians ran across the street without bothering to look for cars. Many vehicles sat in the middle of the road, several having been abandoned by their drivers. Even with the rig’s siren blaring, Reno had difficulty maneuvering through the crowds.
“I’ve got no problem dropping you off with all these crazy fools if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain,” Reno said.
“Earlier, you called that thing in the park a ‘beacon,’” Maya said. “What did you mean by that?”
“Let me first ask you a question,” Jack said. “What do you think it is? I doubt you’ve been reading the confidential reports that I have access to.”
Reno huffed and shook his head.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t even have a guess.”
“Humor me.”
Maya exhaled. She wasn’t in the mood to humor anyone. She had already convinced Reno that taking the crazy man back to his house was a worthwhile idea, and now she was having second thoughts about it. Jack talked like one of those conspiracy-theory nutjobs.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “A lot of people are claiming this is a terrorist attack. That seems to make a lot of sense. Between the Middle East, North Korea, and Russia, there’s a lot of people who would like to attack us.”
“And how exactly do you think one of those rogue states could get a six-hundred-foot-tall structure into the ground and then make it magically rise from underneath the Parthenon?”
“Look, I was just trying to answer your question,” Maya said, her voice cracking. “Don’t play games with me. Tell me what you know. I mean, maybe the obelisk was already buried underground, and one of those countries figured out how to connect to it or something.”
“Ah,” Jack said, raising both his index finger and one of his eyebrows. “Now you are onto something.”
“Look, man,” Reno said. “We’re not letting you out of here until you tell us what you know. So why don’t you go on and spit it out?”
“All right, then. Since you kids don’t want to be patient, I’ll go on and let loose. Have you ever heard of the ETC?”
“No,” Maya said. “What’s that?”
“It stands for the Extra-Terrestrial Coalition. It’s a group that’s been around since the late 90s, right around the time the internet started to take off. I’ve been a member since ’99. I got into their theories during the Y2K craze. Stumbled across it while looking at some conspiracy theory type stuff.