Symmetry of Fears

By Liam McCrackin

Liam McCrakin lives in Colorado where he writes paranormal science fiction and mystery novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hidden Gem Publishing LLC
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781732052550

Liam McCrackin

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1

I was afraid I would arrive too late at the hospital and it had been a long drive. The brown Colorado river was slowly winding along the left side of the highway and the rising sun was in my eyes, just high enough to reflect off the dirty hood of my truck. Coming around a bend that cut into the side of a steep hill, I noticed the hot air balloon to the north of me, high above the bluffs across the river and thought there was something wrong about it. Maybe that distracted me or maybe I was too old to drive for that long a time. Maybe I should have kept my damn eyes on the road.

Deer don’t usually walk across the highway at that time of day. Then I realized it was a herd of people in the middle of the road looking across the river. A man stood in front, behind him a woman and two small children. The woman held the hand of a little girl in a bright purple dress that sparkled in the early morning sun. That girl in purple held the hand of an even smaller girl in a red dress. Both girls looked at me while their parents remained transfixed by something on the other side of the river.

They stood far enough ahead of me that I could take it all in, but too close for me to stop in time. They filled half of the road and their car with the driver’s door open, filled the rest. It was an old Cadillac, a solid steel beast made during the Detroit heyday, almost twenty feet long and over six feet wide. Going off the road to the left would send me tumbling down into the Colorado river. Going to the right would send me into the old Caddy and a steep hillside. Either way would not only certainly kill me, but send my trailer load of lumber spilling across the highway into the family.

I had no choice. I took my foot off the brake, applied gas to maintain control and aimed directly at the helpless old beater. I hoped the family would

move to the left and find cover in the ditch. It was their only chance. My only hope, a slim one, was that my heavier truck and load would hit the Caddy squarely, knocking it forward and out of the way without jackknifing my truck and trailer. It might have worked but even as I braced and took aim, I didn’t believe it.

Suddenly the family moved and ran for the ditch separating the east and west bound lanes. The man pushed his wife forward with one hand and held the little girl wearing purple in his left arm. They tumbled off the road, giving me a hole. I pulled on the wheel hard; if I had been braking I would have jackknifed and flipped. Somehow, I missed most of that damn car. My front steel grill guard ripped off the driver’s door, carrying it past the car before it fell to the side.

I came to a stop with my truck and load upright on their wheels. Instead of being filled with relief, I was paralyzed with terror. As I had flashed by them, the man held a little girl in a bright purple dress while pushing the woman forward. Where was the little girl in red?

I looked out my side mirror. The driver’s door spun slowly on the side of the road. Other than a gaping hole in its side, the old Caddy seemed intact. I forced myself to look across the road where the family had stood. The road was empty except for a small red bundle lying motionless.

Opening my door was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I half fell out of the truck and ran to a red shape that became a crumpled girl in a red dress. More steps and it became a big doll with bright yellow hair, dark blue eyes in a red dress and one shoe. Stumbling to a stop, I knelt on the road as my knees gave out. Terrified I was wrong, I looked around for the missing shoe before looking back at the doll. She was in remarkably good shape and seemed to be smirking. Slowly, knees protesting, I straightened to kick the little smartass off the highway.

Hearing a sound, I turned and through a blur of tears saw the family emerge from the ditch. They stopped and stared at me. The man hesitantly took a step forward, positioning himself in front of his wife and daughter. Feeling impossibly foolish, I nonchalantly tried to wipe the tears from my eyes with my sleeve. I could see he was just a kid. He was slim, taller than me, dressed in jeans and a faded t-shirt. He probably thought that I was drunk or crazy or both. As I turned to face him, the woman behind him gasped.

Her man faced a gorilla. I was born ‘stocky’ as they used to say but Anne, my wife, thinks it’s funny to call me a square which, besides not being funny the first time, is something fewer and fewer people even understand as the years pass.

She also says I’m not ugly, my face just looks lived in. She’s right. It had lived in hockey arenas in hard rock mining towns around the Great Lakes from the time I could walk until I was eighteen. Then it lived in a better class of hockey arenas when I made the pros. Helmets weren’t required until well after I was out. Years of high altitude Colorado weather had created a dark layer of stain over the highly distressed wood look. Top the face with straight black hair going gray and highly improbable very light blue eyes that don’t blink, and you have a face that few take to right away. Old blue jeans, a t-shirt and work boots don’t soften the look.

The kid knew his height advantage wasn’t going to be enough. He was also a man with a family and damned if he didn’t take a couple of steps forward. He didn’t raise his fists but I saw him position his feet. Then he glanced to his right, back to me and suddenly stepped forward raising his fists and locking eyes. Instinctively, I also positioned my feet. Then I heard brakes squealing and this time I was the one in the middle of the road. Too late, I tried to jump backward. By the standard of the day it wasn’t even close. The car stopped a full fifteen feet in front of me before I finished my step. With widened eyes, the guy in the car stared back and forth, from me to the family, as if we had materialized in front of him. Moron.

I looked back at the kid and now he looked worried. Slowly it struck me. His younger ears heard the car coming and he only feinted to keep me fixed in front of it. The bastard tried to kill me just because I took the door off his car and ran over a damn doll! I missed his family by at least twenty feet.

This time we locked eyes. The color drained from his face and he swallowed hard. He didn’t budge and I was damned well not going to let him off the hook. We stared into each other’s eyes. Then he got lucky. The guy in the car suddenly came to life and screamed at us to get out of his way. I decided to give the kid a break from the beating I was giving him in our staring contest and turned to the guy in the car.

It was a day for vintage cars. His red Corvette Stingray convertible came off the line about the same time as the old Caddy. But the Corvette still looked like it did when it sat in the center of the showroom floor. The screamer was more common and can be found everywhere along the western slope of Colorado. Slightly past middle age and wearing sun glasses that cost more than my first and second cars together was an investment banker or hedge fund manager. He owns prime real estate along the rivers we all used to share and he controls who can fish in them. In Colorado, you can run your drift boat down the river in front of his house if your oars don’t touch his riverbed. If you care for his lawn, his second set of kids, his horses, clean his house or wait on him in a restaurant, you probably have a longer commute than if you do the same for him in Manhattan. So, you carpool to his home or favorite restaurant through some of the most spectacular alpine mountains in the world and you learn to drive in blizzards. You don’t live on the other side of the tracks, you live fifty or sixty miles away, in the desert along the Colorado River rail line built in the 1800’s.

A big chunk of my income comes from guys like this and normally I get along with them. After all, everyone loves professional athletes, even old, beat up retired ones. The damn doll sneered at me from in front of his car so I picked it up. Driving with the top down, he leaned forward over the windshield to yell at us. Occasionally, he paused to glance back at the balloon. When I approached, he shut up and sat back in his seat. The cars lined up behind him were a recipe for another accident so, holding the doll, I stepped aside to let him go. He surprised me by putting the car in gear and slowly pulling even with me.

Then he said in his naturally loud voice, Salt Lake is gone! Vaporized!

He hit the accelerator, lost control for a second and almost ran over my right foot with his rear tire. An instant later he was a football field down the highway and still accelerating.

Behind me I heard steps and turned to see the entire family running for the Caddy. The woman held the little girl who was looking at me, holding out her arms saying over and over, I want Betsy! I want Betsy!

The woman tossed her through the open hole where the driver’s door used to be and followed her in like a cat. The young man, right behind her, slid into the driver’s side and stepped on the gas. I realized that he had not only left the driver’s door open but had left the car running. The Caddy pulled away smoothly with the low, steady rumble of the power and grace of a lost age. I saw now that it wasn’t an old beater but a restoration project. Remembering the look on the young man’s face when he saw his car missing its driver’s side door, I realized it was a personal project.

As he pulled away, he swerved around the door lying partway in the road. The car wanted to slow but he kept it accelerating. While they disappeared down the road, the little girl scrambled to the back seat and looked at Betsy, her best friend taken by an ogre.

The next car pulled up to me and a middle-aged man and woman suppressed their smiles. Still standing in the road, I had unconsciously placed the big doll in the crook of my arm like I used to do with my kids. There was nothing to do but step back and try to return their smiles. We shared a little laugh and the woman gave me a wave as they passed. An hour later I would watch those hands gently tuck the doll into the arms of the little girl.

I turned and walked back to my truck with Betsy. I couldn’t see the family getting too far without their door. Highway patrol or a sheriff’s deputy would be stopping him before long so I would see him down the road sooner or later. The smirking doll was my immediate problem. I felt like a fool carrying it like a child as the line of cars passed me. I couldn’t carry it with one hand like a board of the lumber on my trailer. I had to face it. There was no way for a grown man to carry a doll without a little girl walking beside him. The line of cars raced by me and later I realized that I could have used Betsy to sweep the road and no one would have noticed. When I reached the Caddy car door, battered but intact, I saw the hinges had ripped out cleanly.

Trying to decide what to do with the door, I took out my cell phone and speed dialed Anne. As I did, I glanced back to the balloon. It was still there and it wasn’t a balloon. Hot air balloons don’t hang upside down. It looked like an enormous drop of water shimmering with an entire spectrum of shifting radiant colors. It was much farther away than I had thought and I guessed that it had to be well over a mile wide at its base. I couldn’t tell how high above the ground it floated.

Hello? Hello? Joe, are you there? Joe, answer me! Joe?

I’m here.

Are you OK? A pause and then more emphatically, Hon, are you OK?

You won’t believe what I’m looking at Anne.

A giant teardrop.

How did you ….

Joe, they’re everywhere! All over the country! Maybe the world! Where have you been for the last hour? It’s all over the news.

A problem popped up on the road.

I could hear the news in the background. Are you OK? Something happen?

No, no I’m fine. I paused for a second and then asked, Is Salt Lake still there?

Salt Lake? What about Salt Lake, Joe?

I interrupted, Anne, are they saying anything about Salt Lake?

No, I don’t think so. Let me switch stations. Another pause and then, They aren’t saying anything on the Salt Lake station. They are showing someone looking up at a teardrop over the temple. Why, what did you hear? Then in a rush, Is Grand Junction OK?

I looked back toward the town I had just passed through. No smoke or dust rose into the sky. Nor had more cars come down the road from there.

I don’t know, I guess so. What are these things? What are they doing?

It doesn’t look like they’re doing anything. Yet. Just scaring the hell out of everyone. A frustrated sigh. Including me damn it.

I tore my eyes away and started walking back to the truck, glancing occasionally over my shoulder at the ‘teardrop’. I was having a problem absorbing the reality of the thing. From where I stood, well off the now empty road, it looked strangely beautiful against the deep blue cloudless sky, with rainbow bands of color swirling across and somehow inside of it. Maybe if it was right over me I would feel differently. But having survived encounters with two antique cars from planet Earth’s past, I felt pretty invincible.

Joe?

It just doesn’t look that scary. Is there one by you?

There’s one over Storm King Mountain. I’m looking at it now. Joe, it’s hanging over the whole mountain!

OK, I’m sorry it’s been a strange morning. You’re right, it is scary.

It’s been a strange morning and you just saw it? Never mind, get home hon. Please! Coming from her it got my attention.

I’m on my way.

Be careful, you must be tired and you aren’t getting any younger. Love you. Drive careful.

Trust me, I will. I replied.

We talked a little more and then I used the last of my energy to get the door off the highway and myself to the car. When I finally continued my drive, I listened to the station from Grand Junction and assumed it still existed. The announcer said the president declared that the country was now under martial law. He seemed unsure how to follow that announcement so he would repeat, I repeat, the entire country is now under martial law. I listened to him for a few minutes before realizing that I had no idea what martial law meant.

Thirty minutes later, after listening to several radio channels, I still had no idea. I caught up with both the young family and the couple who had shared a laugh with me. A deer herd had been crossing the highway. A buck lay motionless in the center of the road; a doe, cut almost in half, was folded on the shoulder and others were twisted and bent off the side of the road. At some point, the old Caddy had left the road, hit a rock outcropping and tumbled end over end into a steep ravine.

The couple, Bill and Karen, didn’t see it happen. All the cars that were behind them when they drove by me had passed them, even though Bill said he was going over 80. They had seen the brake lights of the last of those cars, all well ahead of them, blink on and off but they all kept going. Bill stopped when they reached the deer and a dust cloud was still rising from the ravine on the right side of the road. They saw the man lying on the shoulder and the car upside down in the ravine bottom. He probably fell out of the hole in the car when he lost control. I suppose seat belts seemed superfluous when fleeing massive teardrops and car mangling, doll stealing ogres.

Bill then stumbled down the ravine while Karen stayed with the young man. He looked inside the car, threw up and returned to help Karen with the father. The young man was unconscious and appeared to be badly scraped. They treated him for shock and took steps to stabilize his neck and head.

When I drove up, Bill was walking back from the deer with a revolver in his hand. I got out of the truck. The teardrop was behind the hills now and there were no more in sight. Bill pointed to the deer and said, There was also a doe with a broken leg over there, pointing to the other side of the ravine.

Didn’t see any more. I think that’s it, he finished while still scanning the ravine.

I nodded my appreciation and he went to his car to put the gun in the glove compartment. He was a weekend warrior starting to go soft and she was no longer the beautiful girl she once had to have been. She was still an attractive woman with soft blue eyes. Both were dressed in Colorado casual which means blue jeans, tennis shoes and nice pullover shirts. While others had driven past the accident, they had stopped to help even the deer. They had looked much younger thirty minutes before.

They did a good job with the injured man and I said so.

Karen nodded and replied, We were both miners, which explained it. All miners go through extensive emergency response training and it sticks with them. The kid was lucky they stopped. Or maybe not.

We laid the passenger seat of my truck as far back as it would go and strapped the still unconscious young man to the seat. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, leaned in and turned on the air conditioning. Karen brushed by me to watch over him.

Then Bill and I went down into the ravine. There was no breeze and the sun was burning. We slipped on loose sand and tried to avoid the cactus. Having done this many times on other accident scenes, I knew we were descending into hell. Following the car’s path to destruction, part of me automatically cataloged the debris. A child’s suitcase with pictures of Dora on it spilled onto the road. Farther down, a man’s clothes were scattered from a ripped duffle bag. Getting closer to the car, I saw a shredded garbage bag that still contained a tube of toothpaste. The rest of its contents, a few articles of the woman’s clothing and a couple of motel towels were scattered below it. I picked up the towels. Across both sides of the ravine pieces of wet glass sparkled in the sunlight. Picking up a larger piece, I realized that it was part of a snow globe reflecting the sun. People don’t usually travel with their snow globes so this probably wasn’t a road trip. The trunk had sprung open and was empty. I was looking at pretty much the extent of the family’s world.

I tabled the thought because seeing the windshield told me the little girl wasn’t in the car. I found her small broken body across the ravine behind a bush. Her face was untouched but the glittering purple dress was now unrecognizable.

I gently gathered her up, fought my way to the top of the slope to Karen and then went down again. For a long time, Bill and I stood in the still desert heat without talking or even looking at each other, wet with perspiration and coated with dust. In the end, we knew that we needed to take the woman out of the car or the coyotes would do it when evening fell. Bill moved first. Taking a few deep breaths, he worked his lanky frame into the car and I could hear him breathing rapidly and shallowly as he worked to untangle the woman. He softly prayed as he worked. When he could take no more, he backed out, covered with parts of her, his eyes red from sweat and tears. I handed him a towel. Then it was my turn and I cursed less softly than he had prayed. We used the torn duffle bag and towels to create a body bag of sorts. Hauling her up the loose shale on that cactus covered slope to the road took time. Reaching the top, we gently lowered her into my truck and sat down, letting the slight breeze coming off the river below cool us.

Karen stood at the back of my truck bed where I had placed the little girl. Tears streamed down her face as she looked from the small body to our puzzled faces.

I know she’s gone. I couldn’t stand to see the poor baby looking like that. I saw a little suitcase and found this dress in it. I’ll bet it was her favorite, she said and then cried uncontrollably.

The pink dress must have been her party dress and like all little girls, she had loved sparkles. It was hooped, had puffed sleeves, looked new and was a little large for her. She looked small in her bright pink dress that she would never show off to her friends.

Karen, between sobs, told Bill that they needed to get back to Denver and their boys. She walked away to compose herself while Bill and I used the emergency winter sleeping bags I leave in the truck year around, as body bags. We zipped the woman in the duffle into one of the sleeping bags and covered it with a tarp. Then I set the little girl gently into the other sleeping bag.

Before I could zip the bag, Karen reached past me and put the doll I had tossed onto my rear seat into the little girl’s arms. She took a mother’s time and made little adjustments until finally she straightened and nodded at me. I tried not to look at the little pair but a glance showed me that Karen had closed the doll’s eyes. With her head bowed and sobbing quietly, she patted Bill’s shoulder and walked slowly to the truck cab to help the man who didn’t know he was now alone.

I carried the little girl’s body to my truck cab to place her in the back seat but found it occupied. Karen was leaning forward to wipe the young man’s forehead with a cloth she cooled from a water bottle. With his seat reclined, she took up the rest of the back seat. Bill tapped me on the shoulder, took the girl from me and walked back to their car with her cradled in his arms.

I pulled clean clothes from my duffle and he did the same from a suitcase in his trunk. Heading across the road to the river, he handed me a clean white towel that said Holiday Inn. He saw me glance at it and with a sad smile gave a little shrug. As we washed in the river, he told me they lived in Denver with their teenaged sons who had stayed with his sister while they took a vacation to visit the wineries in Grand Junction. They hadn’t talked to them since the day before and now, even when they could get a signal, they couldn’t get an answer. He was sure the boys and his sister were fine but they needed to get home. I knew the remaining drive to Denver would seem like an eternity.

Karen insisted on riding with me to keep the man stable while Bill followed us in their car with the little girl. When I argued that I could handle the young man myself, they nodded politely and ignored me.

Neither Karen nor I felt much like talking and she seemed comfortable with the silence. From the back seat, she kept her hands resting on the young father’s head to provide extra support. Occasionally, she stroked his forehead. She thought about her sons in Denver. I thought of my wife and daughter an hour away in Glenwood Springs and my son thousands of miles distant in Central America. Anne said that she couldn’t reach him and that was normal. He often works in places where communications are difficult. As always, we told ourselves that he’s a strong, competent man who over the years had proven he could take care of himself in remote, often wild, locations. I thought he might be safer not having us to worry about. It made more sense in my head than my stomach.

I told Karen that I knew how hard it must be for Bill to drive alone with the little girl lying in the backseat behind him. She looked at me in the mirror with a sad smile.

He comes from a long line of Kentucky coal miners and he’s a lot tougher than he looks. We decided to come out here after the Old Tree explosion. It happened on the shift after his and we both lost family down that hole. He came out here and took a job down a better class of hole. But it was still a mine. Took me forever to get him to do something but mine coal. She sighed, Yeah, he’s tough.

Then she gave me a small, unexpected smile and asked, Are you as tough as you look? Our eyes met in the mirror and I tried to give her my best tough guy stare but couldn’t hold it.

Trying to smile back I said, Sometimes, when I can’t do anything else.

We drifted back into comfortable silence. I looked often in the rearview mirror to check on Bill. Karen repeatedly told the young man that he would be fine. Occasionally, we tried to call home and when we were almost to Glenwood Springs, I reached Anne again on her cell phone. I knew she was at the hospital.

Joe, where are you?

Twenty minutes out. There was an accident and we are bringing in a survivor. Let them know he’s a young male, unconscious but stable.

Oh my God, I’m sorry. Who is he?

I briefly explained and asked her to contact Bill’s sister on a land line using a couple of numbers Karen gave me. Finally, I asked again about John even though I knew she would have already told me if she had heard from him. There was still no word.

Entering Glenwood Springs, we saw the teardrop hanging over Storm King Mountain at the edge of town. It looked identical in size and shape to the one we left behind, with the same ever shifting spectrum of colors flowing in and across it.

What can it be? Karen asked quietly.

I have no idea, I growled. Seeing it hang over our town’s mountain, it looked like an enormous, oily drop of water.

Anne and the ER staff were outside waiting for us. As the nurses removed the young man from my front seat, I introduced Bill and Karen to Anne. They were gracious but clearly wanted to get back on the highway home. Anne glanced at me and then back to them.

You haven’t heard, have you?

Seeing their faces, she hurriedly added, "God, I’m sorry. Denver is OK! I was just listening to the news from there. I didn’t mean to scare you.

I’m so sorry! The roads are closed. Military traffic only. Anne went on to explain that the roads were being closed in phases to allow travelers the best chance to get home. The east bound closures had started at Grand Junction; Glenwood Springs had closed just twenty minutes ago. She said that they stressed these were hard stop closures. Once closed, only military traffic was allowed.

We had heard nothing about it on the Grand Junction radio station and would later learn that the military had taken control of that station shortly after sunrise. Unfortunately, the teams taking control were told only to secure the TV and radio stations. The stations were secured and told to repeat the message that martial law was in effect.

It was too much for Karen. Whatever reservoir of strength she summoned to make it through the last hours ran out. She and Bill now realized they wouldn’t reach their sons because they had stopped to help. Bill held her and looked over his shoulder at me with pleading blood shot eyes.

I looked at Anne and said, I’ll call Mike.

I explained to Bill and Karen, He’s my boss, the sheriff. Let me see what I can do.

Bill’s eyes asked me if it would work. We’ll see, was all I could answer.

Anne took them inside and I helped the ER staff unload the mother and little girl. Thankfully, they didn’t unzip the sleeping bags but put them directly on stretchers and wheeled them inside. I pulled aside a nurse I’d known for years and asked if the little girl could be kept in her dress with her doll. I knew it didn’t make sense but she seemed to understand. I said if it jammed her up with the hospital director I would understand.

She looked at me and said, Joe, I’ll tell him you asked.

Seeing my look, she said, He wouldn’t mess with you. You know that.

He had better not, I replied, although I knew that he was more afraid of angering Anne and the nurse knew it. He, like a lot of other men, didn’t understand any better than I, what she saw in me.

She rolled her eyes, gave my arm a squeeze and said, Joe, I’ll take care of it. I promise. Go! In small towns, everyone knows your business.

I went inside after failed attempts to reach Mike on my cell phone. There I used a landline to call dispatch and then waited next to the hospital receptionist. I could have asked the receptionist to call me in the room upstairs where my daughter was waiting, but I didn’t want my time with my girl to be interrupted by a phone call. At least that’s what I told myself. The truth was that I couldn’t pull my thoughts away from Betsy and the little girl holding her, in the dark cold basement room below me. How could I know the name of the doll and not the girl? I had looked for any identification around the accident scene and for as much time as I could take inside the car. I settled for writing down the license plate.

I needed time to sort out the morning’s events before seeing my daughter, so I watched the news with the receptionist. The teardrops appeared at sunrise first in Newfoundland. CSN, the president’s nemesis, first picked up the reports. Someone woke the president. CSN knew this because he immediately tweeted that the reports were ‘false news’ from the lying media. Later he tweeted to disregard the CSN reporting because the information couldn’t be confirmed from any satellites or commercial aircraft flying over these areas.

For the next thirty minutes the president and CSN played out the symbiotic exchange that had helped propel the president into office and increase CSN ratings. CSN expressed outrage and disbelief that the president of the United States would challenge their reporting and once again, blatantly ignore the facts. The story shifted automatically from the arrival of the teardrops back to the president and the CSN panel of experts. Both sides were just warming up when the teardrops began appearing over the east coast.

CSN, with obvious difficulty, began shifting its reporting from their experts back to the teardrops. For a while they tried to hold to the formula by reporting that strange shapes, which the president had denied existed, were now hovering over our cities. CSN demanded that the president publicly admit he was wrong.

Simultaneously, the president tweeted that the country was being invaded by aliens. He immediately declared martial law, assured the American people that their president was safe, instructed all commercial and private flights to land immediately and told the rest of us to stay calm. He issued a final tweet and vanished.

Later, one of the CSN panel opined that it was the final tweet, ‘America will be great again’, that did it. People didn’t stay calm. He lectured that we are a culture fascinated with apoplectic themes and ‘America will be great again’ sounded like America’s death knell. Hearing this repeated over their radios, many people, upon seeing the teardrops, stopped their cars in traffic and other cars ran into them.

Almost immediately, the freeways and highways in metropolitan areas across the east coast came to a standstill and it looked as if they would stay that way. Many people, stalled bumper to bumper, looking up at a teardrop and listening to the president’s tweets repeated, stepped out of their cars and ran. Strings of driverless cars, bumper touching bumper and still running turned into a steel snake of cars and trucks. The snake crawled forward as the cars steered themselves sometimes straight, sometimes off the road, and occasionally off the overpasses onto the snakes below.

CSN showed cars driving themselves over the injured as they tried to crawl away. People were trapped and burned to death in and out of cars. Some of the snakes were on fire from end to end. Fire trucks and ambulances couldn’t reach them and with the airspace shut down, hospital helicopters couldn’t fly in. Traffic jams kept the military from using these roads to deploy so they used helicopters to move troops over and past disasters below. The videos showed people taking out the injured on stretchers with no ambulances available. Some of the houses and buildings along the highways were burning.

It was apocalyptic and yet no one reported that the teardrops did anything but float in the sky. I couldn’t stop watching the seemingly endless stream of tragedies that people caught on their cell phones and sent into the network. When Mike finally called back I had to force myself away from the TV.

Sorry man, it’s crazy out here. Glad to have you back. We need the help.

Sure. But first I need to see if you can pull some strings. I explained the problem and heard him take a long breath.

Joe, there’s no way. When dumb nuts declared martial law in a tweet, everyone panicked and a lot of them headed for the Flat Tops.

He paused for a second and said, almost to himself, As dry as it is up there, there’s no way some asshole isn’t going to start a fire that we can’t stop. Why couldn’t they just declare a state of emergency? Who the hell declares martial law in a tweet, tweets to stay calm and then disappears?

Silence. I could feel him staring toward the wilderness area behind Storm King Mountain.

Mike?

Yeah, I’m here; it’s been a long day. Look, they are trying to get people who want to run, to run east out to the plains. More room to disperse, lots of old farms and one hell of a lot easier to get food and supplies to them than in the mountains.

Are we being invaded? I asked.

"Not according to the news but there’s a rumor from somewhere that the reason they’re closing the highways to Denver is that we’re being invaded. I think Bluey is up to his old tricks but I don’t have time to deal with him.

"Joe, I feel bad for those folks but there’s no way in hell they are getting to Denver today. Tell them to let things settle down and if we’re all still around a few days from now, I’m sure the roads will open. Fill their tank from our pump. Gas is