Chapter 1
Fear is a funny thing. It’s not intense like hatred. It’s not loud like violence. It’s simple. Quiet. Just like the streets Kaleb walked right now.
He trod the deserted pavement with hasty steps. And although a normally lively street like this looked eerie empty on a Tuesday afternoon, it was better than finding it crowded with looters. That was the new norm, looters or a silent emptiness, with the residents peeking from their apartment windows like paranoid old men, some of them with actual hunting rifles.
He was only a block from home, and his street wouldn’t be any livelier than this one. He’d told his mother to watch from the windows too, in case someone got the bright idea of upgrading from shopfronts to apartments, not that they had much to be stolen in their home. They were doing okay, somewhat. Since his mother had gotten diabetes along with a dangerous dose of hypotension, they’d been scraping by on his job and the little bit she made off sewing for her contacts. It was still better than letting her continue in a high-stress job.
Jane was going to a good school, or rather had been going to a good school before it all began and everyone started holing up in their homes. They could hardly send her to be the only one in class. Besides, a good half of her teachers had stopped going to work the last time they’d checked.
He took a turn at his block’s corner, his steps echoing off the walls, and as expected, it was as empty as the last one. The apartment buildings here were a little rundown and small, but they housed a decent amount of people. He reached his building and keyed the door open, then climbed the stairs to their third floor apartment.
As he opened the door, he heard his mother calling from inside. “Kaleb?”
“Yes, mom. Weren’t you watching the street?” he said, walking into their modest living room. His mother was sitting on the couch doing some sewing.
“Sorry,” she said. “I got tired of sitting on that wooden chair.”
Kaleb sighed. “It’s okay. I will move one of the plush ones to the window for you. Where’s Jane?”
“She’s asleep,” his mother said. “I’m worried she might be getting depressed or something. She’s not seeing friends, not going to school, not even getting to play in the street.” She sighed and shook her head, some of her dark brown hair sticking to her forehead from the heat,
“It will get better,” he said, pausing. “I hope.”
“They tried to nuke them again.” She gestured towards the off TV then focused on her sewing.
Kaleb looked at her quizzically.
She looked up from her sewing, trying to hide the dread that everyone carried. “Nothing of it, like last time. They will be here in 2 months, supposedly. Everyone is desperate, leaving their jobs, looting. Except you.”
He shrugged. “I’m just glad my job is still available with all this going on.”
“Why don’t you stay home like everyone else, it’s safer.”
“And live on government rationing?” he said. “No.”
“You’re so responsible,” she mimed a serious countenance, then she chuckled. “Just like your father was.”
Kaleb nodded. He still remembered him. He’d passed away when he was twelve, and Jane five. It’d been nine years. He had the same dark hair as him, but he remembered him being so tall, so big. Though his mother said that he was already close to the same height he was.
“I wish I could’ve put you through college,” his mother said. “You deserved it. I’m so–”
“Stop that,” he said with a little anger mixed in. “There’s no point to it, mom. I’m good. Besides I wouldn’t have finished college, most of them are shut down now. No one is going to work.”
She sighed and nodded, returning to her sewing.
Kaleb turned on the TV to a news channel showing a live shot of a large oval bright disk in the ocean. “What’s that?”
“You don’t know?” His mother paused her work again. “They showed up a couple of days ago in the oceans. They lure in sea creatures or something. They don’t know what they do with the captured fish. Some people say they’re the aliens’ things, taking them for experiments.”
Kaleb stared at what appeared to be a large upright disk of grainy liquid. He couldn’t guess its size until he saw a dolphin leap out of the water and dive into it, disappearing. “The hell?” The disk was perhaps twice as tall as a human, and just as wide.
“Think it’s the aliens?” his mother asked.
“We don’t even know if it’s aliens that are coming,” he said, shrugging. “Nobody’s contacted us. All the images show colors, like auroras or something. Maybe it’s a cosmic phenomenon.”
“But they destroyed the probe sent to communicate the first time.”
“Maybe the probe just got too close to the phenomenon and lost its integrity or something.”
“Well, the government seems to think they’re living things, and they’re coming directly towards earth.”
“Whatever, I guess,” Kaleb said. He gestured towards the TV. “I can’t believe I didn’t hear about that the first time it appeared.”
“People aren’t really reacting to things anymore,” his mother said. “Mrs Rookly is just stuck to her chair staring at nothing all day.”
“Yea,” he said. “But she lost her son in the riots, remember?”
His mother nodded sadly, getting back to her sewing.
He went to his room, a small space, but it was just for him. His mother had to share with Jane. It was too early for bed, but even if he acted like all was good, it wasn’t. It would have been good to be young now. Perhaps if he were as young as Jane he wouldn’t know that everything would end in two months. Facing kingdom come wasn’t as epic as it was repeatedly imagined. It was quiet and dangerous and angry. And he hated it. That’s why he let sleep embrace him so early.
************
Cold drops of water woke him up, stinging at his skin like needles. His sister’s giggles rang in his ears as his now open eyes tried to process what was happening. It was dark, and she had squeezed a wet towel over his face then stepped far enough from him to avoid retaliation. Funny that. She always miscalculated.
He sat up slowly, half pretending and half drowsy. She tensed but stayed at her post with her 12-year-old grin. His lunge was immediate and without warning. He caught her arm, her quick reactions barely giving her a chance to turn around in an attempt to flee. She squealed and laughed as he picked her up and threw her on the bed, wrapping her in his covers. He grabbed his pillow and hit her with it. It would be painless and it wouldn’t deter the little rascal, but it would deliver justice.
After he hit her a few times, she slipped out of the covers and ran outside, with him on hunt. She swerved as soon as she got out of his room and hopped into her and mom’s room, shutting and locking the door behind her. He heard her victorious giggle form inside and snorted.
With the lights on in the living room, he saw his mother still sewing on the couch, her brown, slightly graying hair laying haphazard on her shoulders. “Some depression she got,” he said, chuckling.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant she was losing her energy, especially when you’re not here.” She looked at him, gaining a bit of mirth at his haggard appearance. “Maybe you should quit like everyone else. Stay here and keep us company.”
He sighed and went to the bathroom to wash up.
Kaleb decided to spend the twilight hours on the balcony. There he could keep an eye on the streets, while the other watched the beautiful and nowadays dreadful night sky. It changed your perspective somewhat when you knew death was soon to come from up there.
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Sitting there in the cool breeze and with nary a sound to interrupt his thoughts, Kaleb almost forgot all that made him wound up like a coil. He made an effort to relax, to use the moment to its fullest. His mother took a break from her work. “Want something to eat?” she called.
“I’m good. Thanks.”
************
He was on his way back from the hardware store, where he’d made multiple dubious sales of tools that could be used to wreak a decent dose of violence.
He’d long ago memorized every rock and stone in this route. That was why, even while lost in thought, he noticed that a lamp post was missing from the edge of his vision. When he focused in that direction, he froze. For a few moments, he forgot to breathe. Right there where the lamp post used to be, there was an upright colorful disk, a bit taller than the average man and just as wide. It was the exact same as the ones in the ocean, just smaller.
He stood there for a while, not sure what to make of it. Should he approach or flee? Then he caught sight of another one appearing by the end of the street. It had started as a flashy spot in the air, then it had expanded in less than a second, taking the same form as the disk next to him.
“Shit,” he said. Then he ran home.
His heart beat against his chest as people started noticing the disks and panicking. Some hid within their homes, refusing to observe them. And some others he saw chose to approach to poke and prod them with sticks or tools. One such man with a fire poker pushed a disk a little too enthusiastically, and was rewarded by the thing swallowing the tool and almost pulling him with it. If he hadn’t let go once it had started pulling the poker, he’d have accompanied it wherever that thing led.
While some treated the disks with caution, distancing themselves, others saw a need to test or attack them. He even saw a man aiming a gun at one. And that just made him more nervous.
He didn’t linger to watch, streaking home as fast as his legs could carry him. It didn’t take long for him to arrive, as he’d already been halfway there. And as he’d expected, there were two disks already present in the street, colorful like captured rainbows.
He glanced at the apartment and saw his mother and sister stuck to the window, staring at the disks. They noticed him and started waving wildly at him to come into the building, as if he’d jump into whatever those things were otherwise.
They met him on the stairs and they went into the apartment together. “Did you see? Did you see, Kaleb? I thought they were so beautiful but Mr. Schindler fell into one of them!” Jane said, her complexion pale and her eyes wide.
His mother shut the door to the apartment and nodded as he looked at her quizzically. “It’s true. He did. His wife wanted to go after him but they stopped her just in time.” With a grave expression she looked at the turned off T.V. “Do you think they’re like the ones in the ocean? Sent to capture us for experimentation?”
Kaleb’s mind was muddled from the intense sequence of events and he couldn’t put words together for a while, but eventually he answered with a subdued voice that was hard for even him to hear. “I don’t know. But, but… it was never proven that the ones in the ocean were the aliens’. It doesn’t even make sense.”
They sat in silence in their living room for most of the evening, with Jane occasionally running to the window to steal glances and deliver her reports with fear-induced enthusiasm.
For the following few days, Kaleb stayed at home, and realized that he’d have to keep it that way. The streets had become restless, more restless than before. Some people disappeared trying to destroy what people now called portals. Many died in the riots. Their street had only had one incident of rioters passing by, thankfully, but it was terrifying nonetheless. They’d torn apart the closed shop fronts, and they’d hammered on their building’s entrance to his family’s horror. Thankfully, none had made it in, though Kaleb had prepared a handy axe and a hammer on the side. He wouldn’t take any chances, not when they were on his doorstep, where his family lived.
It would have been funny watching the rioters giving the portals wide berths like a river parting against a rock if anxiety wasn’t king on those days.
It wasn’t just rioting either. People had attempted to destroy the portals in multiple ways, from guns to explosives, and the military had done some experiments, all of them ending with failure. Nowadays the national guard’s patrols made themselves visible around every corner, and martial law had become the staple. But a new oddity had begun as the aliens' arrival drew closer. Some had seen it unlikely that the portals belonged to the aliens. Positing that if the aliens could deliver these portals to earth so quickly, it wouldn’t take them so long to arrive. Perhaps they could’ve used these portals to come to earth if they were really theirs.
Kaleb noted that all that this theory did was earn the portals even more scrutiny if possible, with the military posting units in the vicinity of every few of them, and armed citizens getting more jumpy near them most of the time, some of them claiming to have seen something attempting to come out after emptying a mag in the portal. Though it was doubtful since most military installments reported no such thing. The more likely case was paranoia.
The unexpected result of this new theory was that some of the desperate had decided that the portals were there to save them, citing that the portals first appeared at sea to save marine wildlife from the coming ‘apocalypse’, before moving onto terrestrial life. While this approach had some merit, it was met by the ridicule of most including Kaleb. What he didn’t expect however was that some would act on that belief within the next month, packing up and bravely if not foolishly walking into the portals. A new kind of tension had landed on earth. It was this uncertainty. Were the portals traps or saviors? Would it matter if they were traps? Even some logicians had agreed. The aliens were almost certainly hostile, and the end was nearing. If the portals were traps, then it was all the same. But if they were a way out, then such an opportunity was perhaps literally a godsend.
In the following month more and more people seeped into the portals, though they remained a minority. It was then that Kaleb had the first discussion with his mother.
“No, ma,” he growled. “It’s not better than nothing. We should wait. NASA has got this new project with the military. It could work.”
“It will fail like all the others. We should just go. They’re getting closer everyday,” his mother pleaded. “I don’t want to end up like that fossilized corpse of a mother holding her dead child as disaster strikes.”
Kaleb glanced at Jane who was sitting at the side, trying to look as brave as possible.
“You’re not talking sense, ma,” he said, softly this time. “We’ll wait.”
His mother hadn’t responded by starting to pack up, perhaps because she was as uncertain as he was; or perhaps she hadn’t become desperate enough yet.
And so they waited, and were rewarded with nothing as the days passed. The rations had tapered off, and they’d had to rely on what they had stocked.The military’s presence had weakened, and even looters and rioters had gotten less enthusiastic. And it wasn’t long before news arrived.
“It didn’t work,” his mother told him, more jaded than triumphant. “What should we do?”
They were only half a month away from the arrival. The telescopes now had better visuals, yet all they reported was an aurora-like blanket of light still honing in on earth. Some scientists believed that it was advanced concealment tech that we couldn’t see through. With news that the last joint mission had failed, what was a trickle into the portals turned into a stream of people. While they were still a minority, they weren’t a tiny one anymore.
And so Kaleb found himself with no other choice but to hope that they weren’t being herded. Reason had only one hand now, and it was pointing towards the portals. “Pack up,” he answered. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
His mother nodded without much fanfare, beginning the process with the help of the ever quieter Jane.
He joined them, and they were soon deciding on what was worth taking. Eventually, they settled on necessities, like food, drink, clothes, and some other items. Besides that, they’d take jewelry, and anything valuable but small.
By the next day, they had multiple bags stuffed with all they could stuff them with. Kaleb had had his mother mark the bag with the non-essentials in case they had to dump any extra weight later on. He was still unsure what was on the other side, after all.
The sun was setting, when they walked towards one of the portals in their street, each of them loaded with more bags than they could carry for more than that distance. Even Jane was dragging two small wheeled luggage bags. There was another family there when they arrived in front of the upright disk of color, two parents and two toddlers. They looked at each other with the same trepidation, before said family walked in first. Kaleb inwardly saluted their decisiveness.
“I’m sorry,” his mother suddenly said. “About everything.”
“It’s not the time, mom.”
“If it isn’t, I don’t know when it will be. We don’t know what’s on the other side.”
Some of the stifled boiling anger of years past came up to his stomach as she spoke. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I’m sorry about the money,” she continued, eyes to the ground. “I didn’t know what he’d do.”
“It isn’t about the money!” he snapped. “Now stop.”
She stared at him, her guilt not weakening her determination. “No,” she said, “I don’t know if I will be able to get myself to speak again on the other side. So you’ll have to hear me.”
Kaleb set his jaw and glared, though he was listening.
“After your father died, it wasn’t the same,” she said. “I tried to act as if everything could work. But…” she paused. “I felt we needed to be a family again.”
“We were a family!” he snapped again, but caught himself. “We were. Why did you have to go and look for a stopgap?”
“Something was missing, okay?” she said, anger starting to seep into her voice as well. “Your father was missing.”
“So you went to look for another one for us. You did it all for us, right?”
“No,” she said, her voice rising a note above the norm. “I did it for me too. But if I’d known it would end up hurting you, I never would have done it, Kaleb. I’m not asking you to forgive me. I know that money could have changed things for you and Jane.” She glanced at his sister with downtrodden eyes. “I just want you to know… to understand.”
Kaleb chose to nod silently. There was no will in him to talk about this. Because he was so, so angry, and he hated being angry.
“I forgive you, mom,” Jane’s faint voice came from beside him.
Their mother looked at her tearfully. “Thank you, honey.” Then she turned towards the portal with no other words to speak.
He and Jane did the same, staring at the upright disk of color.
They hesitated more than the previous family, but they were determined. It was too late to change their minds, and it would be pointless. Jane struggled to free a hand from her bags and slipped it into one of Kaleb’s. He ached when his busy hand couldn’t squeeze her hand back for reassurance. “We’ll be okay,” he muttered. She heard him and nodded.
Then they went into the light.