Chapter 3: The Calm Before the Storm


3/25/65

I stood within the kitchen, slowly eating the orange because in deep thought. I calmly walked over to the sink window and opened the blinds to see that it was still dark outside. The time on my fridge read 6:07. The street lamps were still on, suffusing their surroundings with a soft, golden hue. A line of conifer trees stood right across the neighborhood road running behind the townhouses. I gazed upon those conifers that were framed by the window and perceived their silhouettes becoming more pronounced as the sky gradually shifted from night to early morning twilight. The few visible stars that I could make out gradually disappeared. I remained in that same position for a little more than half an hour, which made me perceive that nearly imperceptible change in the sky.

A while after finishing that orange, I became aware of how tired I was. I hadn't slept the night before because with my semester having recently ended the previous Sunday, I had decided to stay up late last night and the following early Wednesday morning to type out a story that I had been in my head for a while. I had been immersed in my typing when I noticed the brief flashes forming faint shadows on the wall opposite the window, which I had been facing while sitting at my desk. I had left my blinds wide open overnight. It was then that I had walked over to the window to witness those distant flashes and soon realized what they signaled.

I went back to the fridge to grab the pitcher of cold water within and I poured myself a tall cup. Then, I made my way up to the third floor where my old bedroom was. When I entered the bedroom, I saw by the hallway light that I had just switched on that it was still the same beside the replacement of my old bedsheets with plainer ones and a few containers stacked up on the wall opposite my old bed. It had evidently been used partly as guest bedroom and partly as extra storage space after I had left. I had never stayed overnight with my parents after getting my own place a little over two years ago to be the guest and so, sleep on my old bed once again. Therefore, when I fell on my bed just then, it was my first time laying on that bed in a long time. The window, which faced southeast, was right at the head of my bed and I opened the blinds while laying on my side by simply pressing the button on the side of the nightstand. I could see the lights of many aircraft still speeding eastward, although most did not fly directly overhead. Sometimes, the formation lights disappeared behind a layer of barely perceptible clouds and reappeared some moments after. It was still too dark for me to clearly make out the shapes of the aircraft, however. With the faint sounds of those aircraft, I drifted into a deep sleep.

In my sleep, I dreamed. I dreamed that I was on a beach all alone. The sky was overcast. I waded in the shallow waters, which went up to my thighs. Then, a sudden, strong undertow began to pull me toward the sea despite my feeble attempts to resist it. Firmly planting my submerged feet in the sand didn't help at all. The sand merely gave way to the pull of the ocean. I had dreamed such a dream many times before.

As the undercurrent brought me into deeper waters, I saw an immense metallic body a few hundred feet away. Its length was parallel to the shore. It looked like the partially submerged titan that the fishermen off of Devonport had sighted. A pang of fear filled my heart as I was helplessly pulled toward that motionless mass. As I neared the metal body, I realized just how massive it really was. Before I could collide with it, I was suddenly awakened by my own panic.

When I woke up, my fear from the dream had already begun to subside. My memory of it was already becoming a blur. I saw through the window that the sky in view was covered with intermittent sheets of low and mid-height clouds. There seemed to be more cloud than sky. The holo-clock on the nightstand read 12:37. Despite being midday, I saw that it was not glaringly bright outside because of the layer of cirrocumulus clouds higher up in the sky, which mollified the sun's light. I sat up on my bed, then drank the cool water from my cup that had been on the nightstand. Being recently awakened and with my mind still gaining its bearings, I felt that it was just a normal day.

However, not a moment later, my heart was struck with a worry that came with my remembrance of previous events. I looked out the window once again, but with more frantic eyes. It was quiet. I was a few hundred miles inland, away from the eager advances of the plague.

Had the enemy been defeated at sea? Had they been stalled? I wondered.

I dreaded the thought that they had been swiftly approaching as I had slept. My window gave me no reassurance because the row of townhouses across the street blocked any view of the horizon that could ascertain whether the plague was near or not. I hurriedly made my way downstairs to the living room and turned on the TV. The same EAS messages were still moving across the top of the screen, but there were no new updates. Gaining no assurance from the news or the EAS, I went downstairs to the door that lead to the garage. Once I made it outside to the driveway where my car was parked, I noticed something moving among the conifers down the road in my peripheral vision. I looked to see what it was. About thirty or so feet away, an old man, who was facing away from me, was handling a rope while standing upon a stepladder. It was when I saw him throw the rope over a low-lying branch and noticed the noose on the end of the rope that I understood what was happening. My anxiety regarding the status of the plague's advance was put off for the time being.

"Hello! Sir!" I called out while walking briskly toward him. He turned around briefly.

"Hello, sir. Wait. Let's talk about it?" I offered with a calm demeanor, having slowed my pace once I got closer to him.

It was then that the old man began to cry heavily. I stood silently behind him, casting my eyes downward. He slowly lowered himself from the ladder. When he reached the ground, he fell to his knees and continued crying. I lowered myself and sat cross-legged beside him, looking across the still waters of the artificial drainage pond behind the conifers. The man was going to hang himself. After a while, he stopped crying and remained nearly prostrated with his hands resting on his knees and his body arched forward. I cast a sideward glance toward him, waiting for the right time to speak. It was after nearly half an hour of sitting amid the trees with the occasional squirrel that I spoke.

"You were going to hang yourself?" I asked plainly. He kept silent and motionless.

"I lost my bullets…Threw them in the water a few days ago," he said in a gentle voice, nodding his head toward the pond.

"It was dumb of me to do so…But I told myself that they might be okay…but then I heard the president's words this morning…" he shook his head suddenly and his voice seemed to weaken.

"The water is too deep and murky to go looking for them," he explained regarding the bullets. "I'll wait for the water to drain."

I waited once again for the right moment to ask a further question.

"You said she. Who is she?" I meekly asked.

"An old friend. I had known her since I was a child…She went to England, the Lake District." He needn't say more.

I remembered those live videos that showed the fate of those who had escaped to the Lake District. Some of the live comments in the feed were especially offensive, some making trite attempts at humor with references to H.G. Wells' famous novel. It was in this video that the world saw glimpses of the Horuses of the plague, although only faintly by the flashes of an intense night battle. One of the more disturbing scenes from that recording came toward the end with the haunting scene of dozens of eerily motionless Scarabs amid a beautiful field during early sunrise. They were brooding over dead bodies in their usual habit. It was the aftermath of a retreat. What looked to be a blackish smoke emanated from the Scarabs, which adhered to the mangled bodies, and gradually dissolved them. First, the skin was dissolved, then the underlying flesh and bones.

The cameraman had zoomed in on the process and his camera was of high quality. And how different were these machines from those advertisements and toys that had depicted them! They were far from child-friendly and inviting as I had been grown up to believe and were instead, with the dents, grime and blood, and bits of branches and bushes covering them, the unfeeling machines of systematic death that surpassed any fictional demon or monster in terror. After this monumental video, the president had issued an executive order that had made the dissemination of recordings of such incidents a crime punishable by life imprisonment. Of course, there were still those who knew how to get away with disobeying this law for the sake of the public's morbid curiosity. Not long after the executive order was issued, Great Britain was lost.

"I'm sorry," I said after a long silence.

After a few minutes, the old man rose to his feet and looked over to me. I saw the mild and depressed expression on his face, which then formed a kindly smile despite his sadness.

"Where is your family, young man?" he gently inquired with a benevolent concern. "Why are you here all alone in these times?"

"My parents and my sister evacuated this morning. They lived over there," I pointed toward their house. "They're going to Colorado to stay with my mom's sister."

"Are you going with them?" He asked, interested.

"I don't know."

"Is there someone else that you would rather be with?"

"I'm not sure," I answered hesitantly.

For a moment, I remembered my best friend, who had moved away some years ago. I would rather be with her, I thought. However, I had made it a habit to repress my memory of her and so, the thought didn't linger long. It was an unconscious habit to avoid a sorrow for something that was unchangeable. If only grieving had the power to make me see her one last time; to make me feel her again. No, I admonished myself. No.

The old man looked at the grass beside me in thought.

"Hurry and catch up with your parents, young man. Or whoever it is you cherish. Now is not the time to be alone. Spare yourself the grief that has stricken me," he urged warmly.

I wanted to say that it was too late for that. That I was experiencing the aftermath of it. However, I knew that it would likely invite sympathy, which was just as powerless as grieving. Those who have known my grief have realized how bizarre sympathy can be unless it be of an understanding silence and nothing more. Can sympathy bring her beside me once again?

I remained seated on the grass in deep thought. He then proceeded to sit cross-legged beside me and we both experienced the silence and stillness between the conifers for a while. Together, we quietly watched the scurrying squirrels, the branches swaying in the gentle wind, and the subtle ripples on the pond before us.

After what seemed to be at least half an hour if not more, he put a kindly hand on my shoulder, raised himself, took one last look at me, then slowly walked toward one of the houses and entered through the open garage without closing it behind him. I saw the door within the garage open and close slowly after him. He didn't say a word to me as he left, and I thought it would be unfitting for me to speak. That was a moment that would stick with me for life.

I rose to my feet and walked back onto the road. I decided that I would drive to the nearby Japanese restaurant for food and so I walked back to my car in the driveway. As I walked, I noticed movement in the sky in my peripheral vision. Looking above, I saw in plain daylight numerous black, triangular aircraft in countless v-formations stretching across the whole of the visible sky. They flew with a majestic slowness and quietness with no visible contrails behind. The entire sky in view seemed to be dotted with what I assumed to be those manned bombers that had been made obsolete around a decade ago when the U.S. Air Force had switched to automation. I stood in the middle of the road as I gazed upon this sublime scene. The bomber formations were flying in different levels, some below or above the others, which made the scene more astonishing by its depth. There were too many of them for the thick clouds to obscure entirely. I imagined in my amazement that there had to be at least one bomber for each robot of the swarm. There had to be. Rarely in my life had a sight so filled my mind that not even a mere fragment of a thought remained.

After a while of gazing in complete awe, a siren sounded loudly and I hurried to my car. Once I got in, I informed the AI of my desire to go the particular Japanese restaurant that I had in mind. As the car backed out of the driveway and drove along the neighborhood roads, I looked through the sunroof at the endless formations. As I departed from my old neighborhood, I saw a number of VTOL aircraft take off nearby. I assumed that they were taking off from the same large parking lots that I had seen filled with military personnel and equipment during my arrival this morning. Each of these aircraft, rising in apparent synchrony, were lifting one of those colossal tanks that I had seen grouped together earlier. This sudden appearance of vertically rising military aircraft did not just happen in one place but seemed to be happening all around me. I then saw a further addition. Large, gray military transports below the bombers, but above the VTOLs flew past, although in smaller numbers. I imagined that these large transports could carry at least two or three of those tanks. All of this was happening below that great formation flying above the layers of cumulus clouds. I turned on the radio as this show of military force went on.

"Forces are anticipating the arrival of ES-17 all across the coast of the eastern seaboard. Our informants have told us that the swarm had managed to completely bypass the bulk of the naval force patrolling off the coast of Virginia," stated a female reporter with an even voice.

That was the only major information shared regarding the impending invasion. The rest of the news consisted of relatively petty domestic affairs that seemed unfitting considering the dire circumstances showing around me.

I was relieved to know that the swarm had yet to reach our shores. That incredible sight of all those military aircraft heading eastward assured me that humanity would triumph in the end. How could anyone feel otherwise after seeing such a display of military power? Regarding the news report, I didn't understand why the reporter had stated that the swarm had "completely" bypassed the naval force. I had seen the incessant flashes of the battle that had been going on over the horizon before twilight this morning. I assumed that the reporter had merely exaggerated what really happened and that maybe the naval forces had only encountered stragglers from the main body of the swarm. I gave no further thought to the matter. To be honest, I was then starting to become slightly unsettled by the thought of the swarm making intelligent decisions just so that they may have more bodies to inhumanly devour. I focused again on the accumulation of aircraft to dispel that train of thought.

When I arrived at the nearby restaurant after about ten minutes, I perceived the rear end of the seemingly endless formations of bombers some distance to the west overhead. It wasn't endless after all. The last of the VTOL vehicle transports and larger transports were then flying past as I parked my car in the empty parking lot of the small shopping center, which looked to be completely abandoned. Once I got out of my car, I simply stood and looked around at the emptiness. The place was devoid of military personnel too, which I assumed was because of the smallness of the parking lot relative to the larger ones around, which probably made it tactically useless. However, I wasn't a military expert or enthusiast and I really didn't give such things much thought. The bombers continued quietly overhead above the clouds as I walked toward the Japanese restaurant. I had worked there when I lived with my parents.

Before I reached the entrance, I already knew that it was empty because the lights were off. Although the main parking lot was empty, I had up until then assumed that maybe the employee cars were parked in the back. The store owners and employees had apparently decided to evacuate with the rest long before I had arrived, although some of the stores were automated and staffed by bots. Fortunately, the door was not locked, and I entered freely. First, I turned on the lights within, which were intentionally soft and dim to foster a calm atmosphere in line with the typical, semi-fancy Japanese restaurant. Then, I grabbed the remote for the TV, which was stowed within a cabinet behind the front counter as it had been when I used to work there. I immediately switched to the news and sat down at one of the tables, each of which were of the same varnished dark-wood as I remembered. It seemed that the employees had put the chairs down from the tables in anticipation of a normal business day and had left them down in their sudden evacuation. There were no conspicuous signs of a frantic evacuation, however.

How peaceful it was to be alone in what would normally be a busy place! I sat in solitude. I saw that the fish in the lit aquarium, which was integrated flush against the left wall, were still swimming nonchalantly. The aquarium extended along the wall until it terminated before the kitchen that took up the back-left corner of the restaurant. As I sat in a contented silence, I decided that I would cook myself my favorite food and I went to the kitchen while the news provided for a sense of company. It was then, as I was walking, that I heard on the news something that grabbed my attention.