The Autumn Aircraft: Avery's Recruits (3 page)

              “So you’re one of those end of the world conspiracy theorists, huh?  Like one of those guys who stands rambling on the corner.”

              Danny snorted.  “I was only messing with you, man.  I don’t actually think that the end of the world is coming.”  He looked away then and Alan was glad because the man in the fatigues kept his eyes on Danny for a few moments, a mocking smile on his face.

              Luckily for Danny, the guy knew nothing of the end of the world and would just dismiss what Danny had said as crazy talk.

             
Hopefully.

3

             
Danny thought it looked like they were building a bond fire and he couldn’t help but wonder if the owner of the home knew anything about the way that fire worked.  The fire was starting to get big and fed on the carcasses of old tires and tree branches.  It was only a matter of time before a fire like this became a danger to the house.

              “
End of the world, bitches
,” a white boy screamed into the night, his arms outstretched and fingers held toward the sky.

              “Think we should say something to him?” Danny said.

              Alan shook his head.  “No.  You see all the people at this party?  We need to talk to them and get a general sense of where everyone’s head is at.  A lot of these guys go to the same school that we all did and some were probably in the room when Avery told them about the end of the world.  Remember, we’re not taking sides.  We’re random kids just asking questions.”

              “We should drink,” Danny said, taking notice of all the red plastic cups everyone held.  “You know, to help us blend in more.”

              Alan laughed.  Danny wasn’t to be taken seriously. 

“This is a party with high schoolers, not some high-priced gala.  I think we’re good.”

              The back door was a wide, sliding glass structure and it was open.  People from inside were spilling out into the backyard with their drinks, laughing and cursing and having a good ol’ time.

              “So you’re listening, right?”

              Danny looked at Alan, his eyebrows up.  It was a clear look of puzzlement, as if Alan had asked Danny to pull down his underwear and chant mantras in front of the makeshift bond fire.

              “
Are
you listening?”

              Danny took a moment, then nodded.

              They were just outside of the glass door now, and Alan had his head cocked in the direction of the house.  From inside came the sound of voices that must’ve been seated on the couch, but it was hard to tell with the number of people standing up and blocking the immediate view of the living room.

             
“Everyone thinks it’s a rumor, but what if there’s a certain group out there, set up to protect government interests, disseminating that message.  Don’t look at me like that, think about it.  Do you notice how the rumor seems to be more widespread with each passing week?  Usually, this message dies down, but as of yet, it hasn’t.”

             
It was a female talking and Danny had already privately approved of what she was saying.

             
“You using those big ass words, girl.  I don’t like those big ass words.”

             
Laughter followed this and the girl continued to speak.  Alan led the way through the glass opening and into the house and Danny followed close behind.  They jostled their ways through the crowd and stopped when they arrived at a brown two-seater occupied by three guests.  A light-skinned black girl with light bushy hair and two men—men that looked like stoners—sat on either side of her (
Who in the world is she holding this conversation with, Alan wondered)
.  There was a TV on and on it, Danny saw a picture of
a
young black teen, smiling into the camera with his arm around a smiling girl of maybe three or four years old.  This man was Avery Johnston and that photograph, Danny knew, was probably the last one that he had taken with his little sister, Becka.  He nudged Alan with his elbow and indicated the TV with a tilt of his head.

              “Yeah,” Alan said quietly, his arms folded.  “He’s good though.  I mean, it is Avery Johnston they’re dealing with, don’t forget.  He’s the one we probably have to thank for the topic of this conversation we’re listening to now.”

              The female girl looked at Alan and Danny, then smiled.  She was holding a cigarette in one hand, at the moment, the tip unlit.

              “Like your hair,” she said to Alan.  “How long have you let it grow?”

              Alan grinned.  “Five years about.”

              “Nice.  You ever put it in a ponytail?”

              Alan chuckled.  Decided to get right to it.  “Be honest.  What you were talking about—are you talking about it because you saw that guy, Avery Johnston, on TV?”

              The girl looked quietly at him for a moment then nodded, regarded her cigarette briefly and then scanned the cup littered coffee table for a lighter.  “Yeah, but I was also talking about it long before him.  He’s just spreading a message that many of us already know to be true.”

              A boy passed in front of the TV, pulling a blonde girl along with him.  She stumbled once and he had to keep her from falling on her face.

              “There are stories from a number of ‘unofficial’ sources on the Internet.  Now, I’m not just one of those girls who’s compelled to believe everything she reads on the ‘net’ but what they say”— She found the lighter she was looking for, put the cigarette to her lips, and lit it—“makes a lot of sense and is hard to be denied.  When certain scientists seem to fall off the face of the Earth for apparently trying to spread the message with boatloads of proof, I thought it was odd.  So you know what I did?”

              Alan, still smiling, arched his eyebrows.  “What’d you do?”

              “Start my own independent investigation.”

              “And how did you do that?”

              One of the stoner-looking boys placed a rolling paper on the knee of his jeans, opened it up, and began to sprinkle in the little dried leaf that was going on three years legal in Colorado.  Still, the boy who was smoking it was probably under-aged.

              “I did hours of research and switched up computers to do it.  Never used the computer I had at home, because, well…who wants to worry about a sniper’s bullet leaving your brains sprayed on your drywall?”

              “Come on now,” said the stoner-guy rolling the blunt.  He was wearing a sleeveless rock and roll shirt and his eyes drooped.  His hair was cut in a mohawk.  “I don’t like the government either but I don’t think they’re going to go through all that over you doing a little research.  You sound high, girl.”

              The girl ignored the stoner and beckoned to Alan with one finger.  He stepped forward and Danny came closer as well, figuring whatever she had to tell Alan, she could tell him.

              “What’s up,” Alan said stopping a foot in front of her.  He would’ve come closer but the guy rolling the joint was in the way.  

              “What side are you on?” the girl asked.  “And please, don’t lie to me.  I’ll know before you even finish the sentence.”

              Smiling again, Alan said, “Yours.  We both are.  Though, you should’ve waited to get so detailed.  What if I hadn’t been?”

              “As I see it,” she answered, and exhaled a far-reaching plume of smoke away from his face.  “If you hadn’t been, you would’ve been no threat to me.”  She chuckled.  “I mean, come on, dude, look where the fuck you are.”

              Quieter now, Alan said, “Now, you don’t really think a government run operation would wait to kill you in broad daylight at your local Mickey-D’s, now do you?”

              The smile that had been on her face faded and she took a moment to consider this.

              “But I’m no danger to you,” Alan assured her.  “Because if I was, you’d already be dead.”  

The girl nodded.  Took another hit of her cigarette.  She clapped the weed-heads on the shoulders and stood up from the couch.  She still had her cigarette smoldering between her lips, and Alan wondered if she’d ever reach the point where he’d have to tell her that she couldn’t smoke.  He thought she might.

“Follow me into the kitchen, boys,” she said easily, adjusting the hem of her brown sweater with both hands.  The three of them shoved their way past the cigarette-smoking, weed-toking, beer drinking depths of the crowd, and into a kitchen that was scarce of guests, despite the number of drinks clearly visible on an island style kitchen counter.

              “Sorry,” she said, turning to face the both of them.  “But there are too many people around out there.”  Her eyes touched on Danny briefly but most of her attention locked right back on Alan.  “If I tell you something crazy, you promise not to laugh?”             

              Alan chortled pleasantly.  “I’m surprised you would be willing to trust us with this ‘crazy’ information so quickly.”

              “I get a good vibe from you guys, what can I say?  Besides, with the way everything’s going, you want to have some people to trust.”

              Danny had picked up a bottle of Vodka off the counter and examined it.  Alan thought he was more curious about the brand than drinking it.  Or at least he
hoped
so.

              “In certain pockets of the U.S., it’s being figured out.  Everyone’s waking up.  The government thinks they can keep everyone ignorant and blame the claims on some kind of psychosis that segments of the population are suddenly suffering.”  She took another drag of her cigarette.  “Fuck them.”

              “Who do you think
‘them’
is, exactly?  You think it extends to the president or do you think it’s officials with government influence going at it alone.”

              The girl looked at Alan closely for a moment, saying nothing.  Then, “I can’t say.  But it’s definitely government connected.”  She extended a hand to him.  “Bell.”

              “Bell?” Alan said, giving her soft hand a firm shake, which she matched equally.  “That’s a nice name.  I’m Alan, and this guy—” he tilted his head toward his friend “—is Danny.  This motherfuckers crazy.”

              Alan and Danny laughed and Bell shook Danny’s hand.

              “Not true,” Danny said.  “I’m nicer than this guy.  Don’t let his constant laughter fool you.  There’s sadness and oceans of emotional instability underneath that laugh.”

              Bell snickered.  “I hope not.  Jesus, I already got my own deep shit to deal with.”

              “So what is it you were too afraid to tell us about in the living room,” Alan asked.

              “First, I have a question,” Bell said.

              “Yeah, and what’s that?”

              “Do you think that the world is coming to an end in ten years and if so, why?”

              Alan and Danny exchanged looks and Danny went ahead and answered the question, his five foot six body leaned against the island style counter.

              “I can answer the first one right now.  Yes, we do think, —well actually we
know
—that
the world is coming to an end.  As far as why, well, we’ll have to see if you’re worthy of knowing.  Now tell us your secret.”

              Bell took another drag of her cigarette, puffed the smoke out, then smiled.

4

             
It was the smell that first caught Alan’s attention.  It reminded him of what a person might smell around an outdoor construction site.  The smell of cooked oil was mixed in and at one point, the area became smoky enough to make his eyes water.

              “A spaceship,” Bell pointed happily, leading them into a clearing that marked the end of the path they were traveling on.  At least twenty men and women with blowtorches and protective face gear, worked busily from the top of a wide, round gray exterior.  It looked like a knock-off NASA crew all said and done.  Tools were scattered haphazardly throughout the site, a couple of buckets of some unknown liquid had been tipped over, and the area was dim, something that mystified Alan. 
How are they even able to work?
  The moon provided a certain degree of light, but was far from what Alan would have deemed satisfactory.  Though in the early stages of construction, the outer shell, which stood at least fifteen feet high and twenty feet long, looked like it was destined to do no more than melt in the sun.

              Bell turned and looked at Alan and Danny, smiling.  When they said nothing, she raised her eyebrows.

              “Well?”

              Alan and Danny exchanged looks and when they found they couldn’t hold it in, burst into laughter.  Alan bent down and put his hands on his knees and continued to laugh until his stomach began to hurt.  The smell was as strong as ever from where he stood and the smoke made it difficult to read Bell’s expression.  But he was, however, able to tell that she was surprised by their responses, if not pissed off.