Chapter 10
The weather had finally cleared the day the future became cloudy. At least that’s the view that Abby took.
She wished the rain from two weeks ago had returned. That was predictable, even if dangerous. She could diagnose the health issues that people came to see her about. She could rely on the expertise of the weather trackers and forecast models to determine the impact of continued rain. She could control what happened to her family by providing guidance and direction that would get them to a safe place above and beyond the flood waters. But the events since the top news story shifted from the rain and floods to the arrival of the alien objects had thrown all of the old rules out of the window.
Normally she was the ‘solid’ one, but Abby had seen her quick and reliable decision-making begin to stutter as she spent more time thinking about the question she was facing and the impact of the decision. And as her nerves were beginning to shake more, she had noticed a slight tremor in her grasp as she held the diagnostic devices used to examine her patients. Thankfully she hadn’t been called into surgery in the past two days, as she doubted her abilities to perform an operation without risk to the patient.
Whether it was the normal balance between twins, or a conscious reaction to what Annie saw, her sister became calmer and more comforting to Abby, Abby’s children, and anyone they interacted with. The two families had been staying together since Monday. Even though the alien craft was over 550 miles from Chicago, things had gotten very tense in the city soon after the landing, and the children felt more comfortable being with their cousins. So on Tuesday morning, Abby and Annie woke up before the rest of the family to watch the early afternoon press conference broadcast live from the ESA headquarters in France.
The alien messages had been sparse on Sunday and Monday, giving a few vague details about wanting to help return the Earth to good health. But on this day, the British translator had provided a fairly detailed summarization of the plans the aliens had announced. The plan was to relocate people from Earth to a new, clean, unpopulated world where they would have the opportunity to start afresh. The aliens are seeking 1,000 volunteers for each of the nine sites they will set up across the globe in the coming days. Volunteers will be transported to the new world over a four-month voyage and provided with materials and training to restart their lives and colonize a new world.
Annie saw her sister’s hand covering her mouth, as if she were stifling a small scream. “Abby”, she said, “what’s the matter?”
Abby’s hand slowly lowered and she turned to her sister with a scared look on her face. “What is happening, Annie?”, she said, sounding unsure and almost scared.
“Things that haven’t happened before,” Annie replied. Then she took her sister’s hands in hers and continued. “We’ve dealt with new experiences before, Abby. We can handle this one, too. The only difference is that, before, we’ve been able to learn from others because they had run into the thing before. This time, we’re learning along with everyone else. But we’ll be just as successful, we’ll make sure our children, our family, our friends and the people we love are safe, and we’ll have each other’s back. Right?” and as she asked the one word question, she tightly squeezed her sister’s hands.
After a second, Abby returned the squeeze, relaxed a bit and answered softly but firmly, “Right!”
That was Tuesday, which seemed like a year ago now.
On Wednesday, what had been a general sense of uneasiness turned a bit chaotic. The doomsday casters began getting more attention, the general population started demanding that their respective governments “do something”, while a handful of nations volunteered to host one of the remaining six alien landing sites. Yet many more denounced the alien message, saying that their citizens would never be taken from Earth. And then the Russians launched their attack.
As far as direct results were concerned, the attack didn’t have much of an impact. A large force of ground and air weapons and troops crossed from Russia into Ukraine and launched missiles and rockets at the alien site in Kremenchuk. Before most of the tanks, vehicles, drones, or planes could reach their target, they had stopped or fallen to the ground as a result of their engines and motors shutting off. The few missiles and rockets that had been launched had exploded in mid-air, but the explosion itself seemed to be contained somehow. And there was no ‘counter-attack’ from the alien craft.
As many nations had condemned the aliens for wanting to ‘collect’ humans, three times as many denounced the Russians for attacking the alien ship, and said they had no plans to do anything similar. Some of those denouncements were certainly because of the shock or displeasure a country felt about the attack. But most were simply reactions by countries who, upon seeing the capabilities the aliens had at disabling one of the more technologically advanced armed forces in the world, didn’t want to have any of the possible retaliation pointed at them.
There wasn’t any retaliation from any of the alien operations on the ground, nor from the ships still orbiting the Earth. In fact, the only reference to the attack was a message from the Ukraine facility that had been targeted, indicating each of the alien sites had adequate capability to defend itself, the sites were “safe” (whatever that meant), and the aliens would not launch any attack on humans who “cooperated with the efforts to restore the planet to good health.”
It was this last sentence which generated the largest response from people. Many casters focused on the use of the word “cooperated”, predicting the aliens would attack any country or people that didn’t give in to any of the ‘invaders’ demands. The frenzy and worry fomented overnight, and, as dawn arrived in each new time zone on Thursday morning, street protests were held in nearly every major city across the globe.
Chicago was no exception. In fact, there were double-protests. Most people gathered in Millenium Park for the main protests concerning violence, or destruction of the natural environment, or alien oversight, or one of a half-dozen other reasons. There were also hundreds of people that found their way to the Russian Trade Delegation office near the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, to directly protest the Russian attack.
Abby and Annie had gone into the hospital early in the morning, as usual. This day, they had to handle an ever-increasing load of patients created by injured protesters, a few opportunistic looters that ran into the shop owners from whom they attempted to steal, and more than a few people who had strained backs, twisted ankles and pulled groin muscles. By 7:00 am, the Chicago Public School System had canceled classes for that day, sensing the growing trend of unrest over social media overnight, so the school-aged children stayed home, gathering at the home of Annie and her husband, Luther. And, as a result, Luther took the day off to help Annie’s younger cousin, Daynyelle, who normally took care of the younger children during the day.
The protests continued to grow and Annie, Abby and her husband, Karl, all returned from their work to the Freeman-Caruthers house for a family conference. Abby and Annie arrived last, and looked a bit flustered when they got in the house.
“Well that was a mess!”, Annie exclaimed as she tossed the car keys on the stand next to the door coming in from the garage.
Abby came in behind her, picked up the keys and put them on one of the little hooks of the key and purse rack she bought for her sister two Christmases ago. “I told you it was going to be a mess with all of the traffic patterns changed, Annie.”
“Well, I wasn’t expecting quite so many people on the road today. I mean, it’s like people heading out of town for Labor Day Weekend!,” Annie continued.
Then the kids came running in from the playroom to greet their mothers in the kitchen. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Look what Dad,” (or “Uncle Luther”, depending upon the child) “helped us make today!” And the older five kids all showed their Mom’s a custom action figure that had been created that morning. “And he made the alien ship and some aliens and we’re going to hunt for them this afternoon!”
Luther and Daynyelle entered the kitchen carrying the younger two children, as the older kids finished telling of the morning’s creation.
“Luther?!”, demanded Annie.
“Well, not like hunting with guns or anything, Annie. More like hunting where they’re at so we can talk to them and find out what they want.” Luther tried to explain.
“And then take them out. Bam! Bam!”, said 7 year-old Atticus, looking up with an excited smile to his father.
“Enough of that, young man!”, Abby said firmly, and Atticus knew that whatever it was, something wasn’t fun about what he just said, and the smile disappeared from his face. “Daynyelle,” she continued, “can you start up a Disney event for the kids and lay the babies down for a nap, please?” The smile returned to Atticus’ face as he, his older brother and his cousins ran out of the kitchen to the ‘fun room’.
Luther handed his baby daughter to Daynyelle, hoping the ‘alien hunters’ topic might roll past, but he got a “We’ll talk about this more later” look from his wife when he turned back around.
“Get us something to drink, will you boys? Annie and I are going to freshen up and we’ll be back here in five minutes,” Abby said.
Luther was only too happy to comply. He pulled out a bottle of Pinot Noir from Oregon for the ladies.
Karl went to the top shelf in the pantry and pulled down two bottles. Looking at Luther with a ‘which one’ look, Luther replied “Vodka”. Karl made a vodka and tonic for Luther and poured himself a scotch on the rocks from the other bottle.
Soon, all four adults were gathered around the kitchen table again, drinks in hand.
“So how crazy was the traffic for you, Karl?”, Luther asked his brother-in-law.
“Like Annie said, I’ve not seen things like this during a week in April, even including Easter weekend. The city is getting a bit crazy.”, Karl replied, trying to make it sound like it was bad traffic leaving a football game, but even he had a hard time trying to be nonchalant about the whole thing.
“Traffic is the least of our problems,” Abby said. “We’ve got a city where everyone is starting to go crazy because they don’t know how to react to what is happening around them. There was a neighborhood comm store and a leaf-n-vape shop in Lawndale that closed their doors yesterday after work because the owners decided it was a sign from God they should leave town. When some folks decided the owners weren’t coming back this morning, they broke in and, within an hour, there was looting across six stores in that block as people got the bright idea every business was going to close because of the ‘alien invasion'” which Abby emphasized with air-quotes.
“We ended up treating five of the looters, two police officers, and a transpod passenger who was yanked out of the vehicle as a looter tried to use the pod to carry off his goods.”, Abby continued. “You remember what it was like in Bissau eight years ago!”
“I remember we had to get Kaden and Hazel out of there, and it was getting pretty intense,” Annie said. “But that calmed down after a day, once people realized the news about the Senegalese army invading from the north was fake.”
“Fake or not, the people thought it was worth panicking about. But my man Luther got us through,” Abby said, patting her husband’s hand.
Luther smiled and took a deep breath, “Crazy how it was the last day we were in country. I mean, can you imagine what it would have been like had we still been out working at the medical clinic?”
Karl rolled his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and took a sip of his scotch.
Luther said, “I remember traffic just came to a complete halt as we were headed to the airport. You remember that pedal-pod I tracked down, Karl?”
Karl gave a fake surprise look, which Luther ignored and continued his reminiscence, “That guy wasn’t going to budge, I’m tellin’ you. But once he could see my reasoning…”
“And your fifty dollar bill,” Karl quickly added.
“… he took our ladies and the babies straight to the airport.” Luther finished.
Karl leaned forward. “Don’t forget you had to pay him three times the full fare – in advance of the trip. And what about his ‘cousin’? Once that guy finally showed up and we paid him the same, he just stopped half-way, demanding double the amount to finish the trip. That’s the point ‘we’ suddenly decide nobody needs to take any more of our funds, so ‘Cousin Mamadu’ dumps our luggage on the street and tells me and Luther to get out. We had to pull out what we wanted to keep from the luggage, throw it into the two we could carry, leave the other four suitcases right there on the street and jog the remaining four kilometers to the airport.” Karl finished with a friendly pat on Luther’s shoulder.
“But we made it out,” Luther said, looking a little deflated, and taking a sip of his own drink.
“Because air traffic had also stopped until the rumors of the foreign invasion had been cleared,” Karl slipped in.
“I’m glad we didn’t go back the next year,” Abby said.
“We couldn’t have even if we wanted, Abby,” Annie said. “Beckett and Atticus were too young. Two months old, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, but I was still nervous from the events from the prior year,” Abby said. “I mean, the speed at which the chaos and near complete panic sprang up scared us all!”
They all nodded in agreement.
“And now, here we are in Chicago. In the good ol’ United States of America where, as much as I’m ashamed to admit, I think in my head that we are supposed to be nowhere as susceptible to the mass-panic that occurred in a ‘less developed’ West African nation.”
Luther looked at his wife. “So what are you saying, Abby? Is it time to head to the airport and leave town?”
“No, Luther, that’s not what she is saying,” Annie said with what Luther took to be a surprisingly calm face, as he realized he had been a bit sharp with his comment. “But Abby and I were talking on the way here and saying we should be prepared for events, instead of just waking up each day and reacting to whatever happens. We’ve been too complacent, with the responsibilities we have to our children, thinking we can get ourselves out of any situation just because we’re world travelers or think we are too smart for anything bad to happen to us.”
“What did you have in mind, Ab?”, Karl asked, looking at his sister-in-law.
“No, it’s not time to head to the airport”, Abby said with a direct look at Luther. “But we can’t be naive and think we can just ‘tough it out’ here in Lawndale,” she continued, turning to her husband. We need to decide how we’ll know it’s time to go, where will we go, what we take, how we get the rest of the family to join us, which route…”
“How much of the family are we talking about?” Luther interrupted.
Now Annie’s face lost some of its calm. “It’s family, Luther! Who all did you have in mind we should leave behind?”
“You know I’m not suggesting that, Annie. But we’ve got seven kids between us four, and I’m guessing you’d want Dayni to come along. Add your father, your brother, his girlfriend and their child, Karl’s parents, my Mother, your Aunt – we’ve already got over 20 people at that point. If it gets to a time where we’re seriously talking about leaving Chicago, you were absolutely right that we’ve got a responsibility to our children. And dragging along two transbuses full of Freeman’s, Caruthers and Jones along with a moving van full of clothes and furniture doesn’t make us very “mobile” and able to adapt.“, Luther said with his exasperation level increasing.
There was a pause in the conversation while everyone looked at each other for an uncomfortable moment.
Then Karl spoke up. “I don’t think I want Grandpa Kenyon to come along.”, he said with a straight face. “He’ll use up all the air on the bus.”, and then he slowly grinned as the others got the joke.
The lightened moment was interrupted by everyone’s commblock alerting them of a new message. Abby was the first to read it, as she already had her block in her hands. “CPSD is already canceling school for tomorrow,” she said as she read the message. “‘The situation is too fluid to predict safe conditions for children arriving and leaving school.'” she quoted.
Luther turned on the console on the kitchen wall and brought up the live news from downtown. The protests in Millenium Park had spilled out into Michigan Avenue and shut down traffic as the protesters were marching down Washington Street, presumably towards City Hall. They watched the broadcast for five minutes, learning that the looting in Lawndale had been brought under control and no other similar breakouts had occurred elsewhere in the city. But the protests had doubled in size since this morning, and it didn’t look like the police had the crowd controlled in any direct sense.
They turned off the news cast, and refilled their drinks.
“OK, so we’ve got to have a plan,” Karl said. “We should know what will be the trigger for us leaving.”
“If school stays closed an entire week and no plans for re-opening it are announced, that sounds pretty real to me,” Abby offered.
“If the conditions on the ground get worse, I say” Karl added.
“What do you mean,” Annie asked.
“If the riots and protests keep growing, or looting spreads out of control, if you’re seeing an increase in police being treated in the ER day after day, that’s what’s worse, in my mind,” Karl explained.
“I say we clear out if the City of Chicago, Cook County, the State of Illinois or the national government declaring a state of emergency,” Luther added.
The others nodded.
“Each couple should prepare a list of clothing, basic supplies for travel, and unreplaceable memorabilia we can fit in the rear space of our transits,” Annie suggested. “Luther, you can bring the trailer and camping gear in from storage and rent the extra parking space that opened up in the garage last week so we’ve got it local.”
“So who goes with us?” Karl asked.
“Everyone Luther mentioned,” Annie answered. “There’s probably a few more people we’ll want to add. We can tell them of our plans and invite them to join our families when it’s time to leave town.”
“When, not if?” Abby asked.
Annie looked in her sister’s eyes and nodded slowly.
“But we need them to promise not to say anything to anyone else,” Annie added.
“My parents have some good friends with property by a lake in Missouri,” Karl said. “I’ve driven them there to visit, and that place is big enough for the entire clan. They told me to “visit whenever I wanted”. I’ll get in touch with them and find out if the offer is still available. And, yes, we will need to hire a transbus to take everyone if all these people are interested.”
“We need to stay at the hospital as long as possible,” Abby said, looking at her sister. “We’ve got a responsibility there as well.”
“No way!” Luther said emphatically. “You want Karl and I to grab the kids, hit the road and leave you two here alone? That’s a no go.”
“We’ll ask Denzel to stay with us,” Annie said.
Luther paused to think. “How old is he now?” he asked.
“Twenty-five,” Annie answered.
“Is that Dayni’s brother?” Karl asked.
“Yes,” Abby replied.
“That’s one big specimen,” Karl said. “Wasn’t he playing in a league in Europe?”
“Yes, but he quit after this past season ended. Apparently he heard none of the NBA teams would ever pick him up to play here. He’s a bit too slow and not an exciting enough scorer for the current league.” Luther shared.
“So, what does that have to do with anything we’re talking about?” Abby asked.
“The NBA? Nothing,” Karl said. “The fact that he’s 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighs close to 300 pounds? Now that makes a difference. If he’s with you 24 / 7, I’ll consider this.”
“Wow, it’s hard to believe, but we’re actually serious about all this, aren’t we?” Abby said.
A plan that, while not guaranteed, was something that gave Abby a sense of control she hadn’t felt in quite some time. Now she felt she could weather this storm as well.