“April the third,” JayDee said, picking up the recollections and emotions. He felt a hammer blow to his heart, and he thought he had progressed past that pain, but he had not. There was so much pain, for everyone. His wife of thirty-two years had died in their apartment here, in March. He had watched her slowly lose her mind, cry for her mother and father and tremble like a little child when the aliens were fighting in this area and their explosions shook the earth. Deborah had stopped eating and dwindled away, a victim of lost hope. He had tried to feed her, tried his best, but she lay in bed day after day and stared at the stained ceiling and the part of her that had known joy and freedom was already gone. And as he sat at her bedside and held her hand in the deepening twilight with the oil lamps lit, she had looked at him with her weary and watery eyes and asked one question in the voice of a child imploring her father: Are we safe?
He had not known what he was about to say, but he had to say something. Though before he could speak he heard the wave of them coming, the shriek of their approach, the thunder of their headlong rush against the walls of Panther Ridge, and he heard the first rifle shots and the chatter of machine guns, and when he looked at Deborah again she had left this earth because she could no longer bear what it had become.
At that moment John Douglas had faced a choice. It involved either the rifle or the pistol he owned. It involved what he intended to do in the next few minutes, as he stared at the dead woman who had been the love of his life and had raised for them two daughters and a son. It involved whether he had the strength to go out there and join the fight, or whether he needed in his heart and soul to follow Deborah to whatever Promised Land lay beyond life, because this one had become a blighted and corrupted nightmare.
The minutes had passed slowly, and not without its thorny seconds. But in the end he had left Deborah sleeping alone, and he had taken his rifle and pistol out to defend his fortress.
“That day,” JayDee said quietly. “April the third. It was about ten in the morning. Oh, I remember the time exactly. It was eighteen minutes after ten. I was in my office, doing some paperwork. One of my nurses ran in, said for me to come look at the TV out in the waiting room. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, all the local channels were covering it. Huge explosions in the skies across the world. What looked like fiery meteors blowing up, and out of them were coming…those Gorgon ships. Nobody was calling them ‘Gorgon’ yet, I mean. That was later. But they were coming out of the blasts…just gliding out, and then the fighter planes went up and they were shot to pieces, and that went on for…I don’t remember how long.”
“Two days,” Dave offered. He flicked his Bic and lit a cigarette without asking permission, because nobody gave a damn anymore whether you smoked or not. “It was over in two days. I know you don’t remember Nine-Eleven,” he said, speaking to Ethan, “but this was…like…a thousand Nine-Elevens, one after another. The Gorgons finished off our Air Force and the Army and Navy, too.” He blew smoke through his nostrils, like a furious dragon, though his eyes were blank and nearly dead. “It was the same all over the world. Nothing could hurt those ships. At least nothing we had. Nothing created on earth. The Gorgons hit some of the cities, but not all. New York was blasted, so was Atlanta and Dallas and Los Angeles…Moscow…Tokyo…Berlin…Beijing. A show of power, is what the big dogs at the Pentagon said. But the big dogs were suddenly not so big. Suddenly…nobody was very big.” He focused once more on the boy through the drift of smoke. “You don’t remember any of this?”
“No,” said Ethan. If it had ever been there, it was all gone. And maybe, he thought, it was better that way.
“A cloaking device,” said JayDee, “is what the scientists said got the Gorgons close enough to our atmosphere to enter without being detected. And by then they were calling them ‘Gorgons’, so that name stuck.”
“Why that name?”
“Somebody at Fox News came up with it,” Dave answered. “Supposed to be so terrible to look at you’d turn to stone. The idea was there…that the Gorgons must be so different from us…it would drive a person insane to see one. Anyway, once that name was out there, it was used in all the newscasts.”
JayDee remembered images of the worldwide panic. People were running, but where would they run to? The President of the United States urged calm, and then he disappeared into a “secure location”, as did every other elected official in Washington. Elsewhere around the world, the so-called leaders fled their positions and roles. All civil order broke down and all police forces were overwhelmed. The television networks and radio stations hung on as long as they could. Within forty-eight hours of the first Gorgon ship being documented as it slid from its fiery womb, amateur videos were taken of what appeared to be swirling black portals opening in the air, and from them emerged the huge, sleek bat-like shapes of what came to be known as the Cypher ships.
“An enigma,” JayDee said, almost to himself. “The unknowable.” He blinked, bringing himself back to the moment. “The Cyphers,” he said to Ethan, “came from what looked like black holes opening in the sky. Then…those two forces went to war. Humans were puny. We’re the bugs to be stepped on…or played with,” he added. “But their battle is with each other. Soon after the Cyphers came, power grids around the world started failing. The cell towers went out. I suppose the communications satellites were destroyed. The Cyphers must’ve done that, to silence the chatter I guess. Or another display of power.”
Ethan finished his meager cup of water and was still thirsty but satisfied at least that he’d gotten this much. He was trying to take everything in, and it was a lot to take. Dave smoked his cigarette in silence for a moment, and then he said, “I talked to somebody who heard one of the last radio broadcasts.” He regarded the cigarette’s glowing tip, and blew on it to make it flare. “Some scientists and military men were talking. Giving their ideas on what was happening. That these two civilizations—whatever they are—have been at war…like…forever. And maybe it’s the Earth they’re fighting over, and maybe not, because—”
“It’s the border,” said Ethan, who heard himself speak those words as if from a distance.
Dave and JayDee said nothing, but they both stared at Ethan with renewed interest.
“The border,” Ethan repeated. “Between them. Their worlds, or their universe or dimension or wherever they come from. Earth is on the border, and that’s what they’re fighting over.” He realized, almost startled, that he he had no doubt what he was saying was true. “They’re going to keep fighting until one destroys the other. That may never happen, because…” He felt a sudden panic rise up inside him; he felt he was floating away from himself, into an area unknown. It took him a moment to draw a deep breath that hurt his lungs, and to calm himself. “They’re in an—” He cast about for the right term. “An arms race,” he said.
The silence went on, as the two men stared at the boy who had named himself after a high school.
It was JayDee who spoke first, in a tight and cautious voice. “Now…tell us…how would you believe all that, if you can’t remember anything else? Did you hear that from someone? One of your parents?”
“No.” Ethan felt hot and sweaty, uncomfortable in his own skin. His bones were aching like sore teeth. “I don’t know who told me. I just…” He met the doctor’s puzzled stare. His own blue eyes glinted with a nearly feverish intensity. “I just know that’s the truth. We’re on the border between them, and it’s not the Earth they want. It’s a line in space.”