“No, you weren’t,” Mary said authoritatively. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait outside.”
“But…”
A child’s voice called from inside the farmhouse. “It’s all right.”
Pierce looked into the room’s dark interior. “You sure?”
“She’s not going to hurt me.”
Pierce motioned Mary inside the room, then stepped outside.
Allie sat on the bed, her hair falling freely to her shoulders. So small, Mary thought, and yet so powerful.
“It must be strange for you,” she said. “Finding out how strong you are. All the things you can do.”
“It is a little,” Allie said softly.
“I’ve frightened you a lot,” Mary said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you.”
“You don’t care if you do,” Allie said.
“That’s not really true,” Mary told her. “I’m not the kind of person who takes any pleasure in frightening people. In hurting them.”
“But you do all those things.”
Mary saw it in her eyes and in the serenity of her posture, an eternal solitude. “They’re not coming, are they?”
“I don’t know,” Allie answered.
“Maybe that’s for the best.”
“Maybe.”
“Would you like to go home?”
“Yes.”
Mary drew the artifact from her pocket. “This is something that belonged to my grandfather,” she said. She held it out to Allie. “Tell me what it says.”
Allie stared at the softly glowing piece of metal.
“You can read it, can’t you?” Mary asked. “Tell me what it says.”
Allie’s gaze lifted from the artifact. “What do you want it to say?”
Mary’s mouth twitched into a snarl. “Pick it up and read it!” she snapped.
“I can’t,” Allie said. “Not yet.”
Mary stared at the glowing metal. The letters were moving now, some information fading from it as other information formed, new symbols rising to its glowing surface as others vanished.
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.
