Mary wheeled around and strode out of the farmhouse and back through the woods, where she found General Beers and Wakeman standing by a Humvee, a group of MPs just behind them. The general pushed Wakeman over to Mary’s side.
“If either one of them tries to leave the area,” he said to the soldiers, “shoot them, is that clear?” When he received no response, the general turned. “What…?”
The MPs were standing motionlessly staring up at the sky, watching as balls of blue light descended toward them.
The general grabbed the field telephone. “We have the enemy in sight,” he shouted, his eyes riveted on the sky, where the lights now came together to form a single, brightly glowing spaceship.
For a moment, the general stared at the ship, transfixed.
Pierce rushed forward urgently. “Sir, we’ve got to get the little girl out of here.”
“Get back with the other men,” the general commanded.
“But… sir.”
“Do it now!” the general shouted. He brought the field telephone to his lips. “Fire!” he shouted.
On the hill above the farmhouse, Charlie and Lisa watched in stunned silence as the missiles rose into the dark air. They rose toward the craft in wide arcs, then disappeared into its bright light.
The explosion seemed to come from the depths of the universe, huge and deafening, filling the air with sparkling light that glittered briefly then dissolved to reveal the craft again, its smooth exterior now rippling wildly with wave after wave of oddly shivering light.
“Allie!” Lisa cried.
She glanced, terrified, at Charlie, then raced down the hill toward the farmhouse.
Charlie bolted forward and followed behind her, his eyes still skyward as the craft shook and tottered, as if on the edge of some impossible precipice, then nosed downward in a sharp decline, light spewing in a gleaming mist from its wounded side as it fell and fell, and finally crashed to earth, burying itself in the ground beneath the farmhouse.
“My God,” Lisa said as she stopped dead. “Allie.”
Charlie came to her side, and drew her into his arms. “We can’t go down there”
“But we have to,” Lisa cried.
Charlie held her tightly. “We can’t, Lisa. Wait!”
“But Allie’s in that farmhouse,” Lisa said desperately. “I know she is.”
He watched the soldiers that had begun to move in toward the farmhouse. There were far too many of them. And they were well armed. It was impossible.
“What are we going to do, Charlie?” Lisa whimpered.
“I don’t know,” Charlie answered.
Down the hill, he could see Mary Crawford, staring at the craft, transfixed as it began to glow, slowly at first, then with increasing brightness, until the light was almost blinding. Squinting into the light, Charlie could just make out the figure of Mary Crawford. For a moment, she stood utterly motionless, frozen in awe at the sight before her. Then, suddenly, she bolted toward the craft, running wildly toward the light, her figure growing faint as she approached its most far-flung rays, but running still, moving deeper and deeper into the ever brightening light until she vanished into its blinding shield.
PART NINE. John
Chapter One
The darkness was thick and impenetrable, and it seemed to Charlie that Lisa’s eyes floated in that blackness, small blue orbs, moist and curiously intense, staring out into the woods and down the slope to where the craft still lay buried in the earth, the lights of the farmhouse shining softly just beyond it.
“I should have gotten her out of there,” she said to him. “My daughter’s in the farmhouse. I need to get down there.”
Charlie noticed that she’d said “my” daughter, not “their” daughter, though he knew that is what Allie was. He looked at Dewey, who stood, still transfixed, as if replaying what they’d all seen only a few minutes before, the descent of the craft, then its crash, and finally the light that had swept out of it, rolled over the woman who’d fled across the field, a light that had somehow… taken her.
Dewey shook his head. “You’re on your own,” he said determinedly. “I’m just a hunting guide.”
Charlie saw that he meant it, that the courage Dewey had shown earlier had been wrenched from him, taken, it seemed, by the same light that had swept over Mary Crawford.
“Just show us how to get down before you go, okay?” Charlie asked.
Dewey nodded.
Charlie turned back to Lisa, and noticed that her eyes had changed, that they seemed powerfully focused on something he could not see at all. “What is it, Lisa?” he asked.
Before she could answer, Charlie heard a rustling all around him. He looked up and saw a group of soldiers closing in.
“Put up your hands,” one of them shouted.
Charlie rose slowly, his hands in the air.
“You’re under arrest,” the soldier shouted.
Lisa got to her feet with a strange grace, and Charlie saw that she was no longer crying, no longer afraid.
“What is it?” he asked desperately.
“Allie’s all right,” Lisa said. Her voice seemed to come to him from far away, and there was a strange wonder in her eyes. “She’s all right, but she’s doing something… very… very… hard.”
“She’s working really hard at something,” Wakeman said. He watched the monitors that lined the wall of the trailer, the evidence they showed of the raging torrents of Allie’s brain, a storm that for all its force and fury, remained locked inside her, so that her face gave so sign of it, but remained as motionless as the eye of a hurricane. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
General Beers stood beside him, his gaze moving from monitor to monitor, from the image of Allie that flickered on one of the screens, a little girl, seated in the bare room of a farmhouse, locked in dark concentration, to a second screen that showed the exterior of the craft, surrounded by armed men who seemed poised to enter it.
Wakeman glanced again at the first screen. He could almost see the volcanic intensity of Allie’s mind, the way it seemed at the edge of explosion.
“It’s time to get her,” he said.
Beers picked up the microphone, gave the order.
On the monitor, Wakeman watched as the soldiers began to close in upon the craft. Their movements were slow and hesitant despite their lethal arms, as if they sensed that their weapons were useless against the force they confronted, archaic as bows and arrows, the primitive armor of a primitive creature. “They’re scared to death,” he said.
Beers’ eyes fixed on the monitor as the soldiers moved forward, slowly tightening the circle around the craft. They took short, cautious steps, their fingers gripped tightly to their weapons, as if they were moving in on a trapped and wounded animal of ferocious strength, a tiger that might at any moment charge toward them at inhuman speed.
Then, suddenly, the craft began to glow, and the soldiers stopped, and crouched low on the ground, as if momentarily blinded by the building light.
Beers snapped up the microphone. “What’s happening?” he demanded.
“This is Walker, sir,” a voice called back. “Some kind of opening has appeared in the craft.”
Beers’ eyes shot over to the monitor. The glow had intensified, as if the craft were readying itself for some terrible defense. “Enter with extreme caution,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Walker answered.
On the monitor, Beers and Wakeman watched as the soldiers closed in upon the craft, then moved beneath it, toward the opening.
Then, abruptly, the monitor went blank.
Wakeman’s eyes shot from one monitor to the next, each of them now going blank in turn, as if switched off by invisible hands. “We’re blind,” he said.
Beers snatched up the microphone. “ Walker, what’s going on?” he demanded.
Walker ’s voice came through the scratchy dissonance. “We’re in the craft,” he said, his voice locked in unearthly wonder. “And there’s this woman.”