Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Looking at his watch, Louis sees that six hours have passed. He slept in his hiding place for four hours. The waiting was very hard, and with caution; Louis opened the door to the cooler slowly. He crawled out on his knees and crept up to the window. Looking out he sees that the road is clear, he sees the car the creature was behind, but it does not seem to be there now. Louis goes back to the counter, he braves standing up now, and grabs a few plates. Opening the door, he throws them quickly out into the street. Shattering on the street, making a lot of noise in the artificial canyon of main street, the sounds echo and spook a flock of crows from the rooftops. He also sees some rats scurry away from a dumpster, and a clowder of cats, “What a strange term.” he thinks, run from an alleyway. But, there are no monsters, it is several seconds until he realizes that the animals on the ground would probably not be there if that thing was still around.

Packing up for what seems to be the hundredth time today, he decides to push on as far as he can get. He also needs ammunition for his gun. He thinks of this just as he notices a gun shop on the street. He throws a rock through the window, and climbs in. He quickly finds the ammo he needs, and finds a pistol he thinks he can handle. He begins to wonder why this town has not been looted like the others he have been.

As he climbs back out the window, a sound erupts from the end of the street. Erupt is the proper term as it sounds as if there was a huge explosion, like a house blowing up. This is in fact what has happened; a giant fireball climbs the slight skyline of the town, and with the flame tinged in green and pink. Louis thinks these are strange colors for fire to be, but as the shockwave hits him and knocks him to the ground, the colors of the flame are the last thing on his mind.

Louis picks himself up and feels himself for injuries. Finding none, he begins to make his way down the street towards the explosion. As he nears the site, he hears someone shout “Hey! Get away from there; I don’t think I killed it!” Looking around Louis does not see anyone, but he had just heard him. Backing up cautiously, he hears something running, fortunately, it was moving away from him. It was large, and it was kind of a reddish gray, but that is all the information he could get from the brief glimpse of it he got.

“Who is there?” Louis shouts. Looking around, he sees nothing moving, he also hears nothing now, and all the wildlife has gone silent. Nervous now, he begins to load the rifle, walking backwards towards the side of one of the intact buildings. He looks behind him occasionally to make sure he is going the right way. However, every time he looks, it seems as if he is not moving. He sees debris from the explosion and walks past it backwards. However, the building is not getting any closer; turning and running now, Louis begins to panic. He is now getting closer to the building, but it still takes much longer than it should to travel the short distance to the sidewalk.

Ducking into the doorway of a hair salon, Louis catches his breath. This town is making him very nervous, and he wants to get out quickly. As he looks around, he sees that around the edge of his vision are distortion waves, as you would see over a hot stove. Also, every once in a while he also sees flashes of color. Vibrant blues, stunning pinks, and other bright almost neon colors, are flashing through his vision, he wonders what all of this means.

Louis finally catches his breath and gathers his courage; he knows that he needs to find a safe place to spend the night. Turning away from the explosion site, he begins to walk downtown, towards the edge of town. As he is walking, he continues to see the colors behind windows and over the buildings. Turning away from a collapsed building, was that there before? He sees that there is a double rainbow across the road at the edge of town; he can see all four of the ends on either side. Louis begins to get much more unnerved, this town is very strange. On the edge of the road, he sees that he is in the town of Arcadia. Just before he gets to where the rainbows are arching across the road, he suddenly feels a prick on the back of his leg. Looking down, he sees a small thorn sticking from a downward angle; as he pulls it out, he begins to feel ill. This has become stranger minute by minute, he thinks just before he collapses to the ground.

Sebac taps his fingers impatiently as the tech runs programs on the mysterious message. Technology, while useful, is very irritating, what he would give for the old system of runners, or even a vacuum tube system to suck messages through the walls. The tech has been in his office for more than an hour, not obviously doing anything except clicking, and maybe typing a few things. Sebac is about to go get a cup of coffee, when the tech jumps up declaring, “It is safe, but password protected. I believe that it is only able to be opened by you.”

“Okay,” Sebac says warily, “I am not sure what it could be though.” The tech just shrugs as he gathers his few tools.
“Will you need anything else sir?” he asks, a little testily. Sebac is not impressed by his tone, but this guy is just a civilian.

“No, but stay in touch, and make sure you make it to my meeting, which is,” he checks his watch, “in an hour. I believe we will be working together a lot in the next few weeks. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“William Bradson, but you can call me Gopher.” He says, with pride he adds, “I have a master’s degree in computer engineering and a bachelor’s in programming with a minor in security. I have spent 7 years in the service of the US government in computer security and counter terrorism. I have personally caught four different attacks on our computer systems, one that was targeting the nuclear stockpile. I have also been contracted most of the more prominent NGO’s to do black market background checks on some of their own people. I am not proud of some of the things I needed to do on those jobs, but the money was right, and they were checking up on potentially powerful individuals.”

“I am impressed, truly, you have impressive credentials, of course I only understood every third word. I am quite a bit older than you and these computers are way beyond my level, I can barely get my email!” Sebac jokes. “I would like to hear some of your stories, but not now, I have quite a lot on my mind.”

“Well, sir, I will let you get back to your mystery message. I will be at the meeting. I am interested in hearing what you have to say,” Gopher says politely and excuses himself.

Pulling himself back to his desk, Sebac decides that he should open that message; it may have important information for his meeting. Clicking on the message in his mailbox, it asks for a password. Thinking, he tries his own terminal’s password, and that one fails; he tries his full name, his old dog’s name, among many others. All of these are wrong; he sits back to think some more, for twenty minutes he thinks and tries many others.

As time passes, he realizes that he is not going to figure out the password before the meeting. On a lark, Sebac tries just the word “Password”, remarkably, it work instantly. Sebac quickly looks at the clock and realizes that he does not have the time to read all of this information, page after page of text begin scrolling down the screen, a few pictures but mostly all single spaced text. He hits the print button, and gathering his notes, runs out the door. Corporal Veronica is just getting her stuff together to go to the meeting herself; Sebac asks her to wait to bring the print out and to also skim it and give him a brief on it as soon as she can. She happily agrees, she does love a challenge and the chance to digest new information.

Moving down the hallways, he sees that the entire staff is moving towards the cafeteria for dinner and the meeting. He nods to the few of the staff he knows, and holds the door for the women, just as his mother taught him. As he walks in the cafeteria, he hears a few hushed whispers and sees some watch him cross the room. He knows that people are scared, scared of the situation outside, the situation he is going to speak of, and just afraid of him. His position lends an air of wariness, as if he will shoot someone for saying the wrong thing; he is not a Soviet Commissar from World War Two.

The cook staff made a delicious dinner as usual, down home pot roast and roasted vegetables. Meals like this reminds Sebac of his mother’s cooking, country cooking at it’s best; fine meat, melting in your mouth and juicy enough to not even need gravy. Vegetables, roasted to perfection though still crunchy and sweet. Sebac sits back and enjoys his meal, reminiscing about his younger days, more care free days. Corporal Lopez jars Sebac from his reverie, the look on her face a combination of worry and enthusiasm.

“Sir,” she says, “we need to talk. “Either we have a spy, guardian angel, or this situation has gotten much, much more interesting