Arrival: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

12

The news of the invisible wall had spread as people figured out where it stood and which side they were on. The radio in the rig bleated with non-stop calls from EMD, new accidents coming in by the minute. Crowds gathered and shouted at Maya and Reno as they drove by, most of them just looking for answers—just like Maya and Reno.

“Still nothing?” Maya asked.

Reno threw up his hands. He tossed his phone onto the dash and Maya sighed.

“I’m sorry,” Reno said. “I don’t know what to tell you. That damn wall has cut off all our communications except the radio, and the dispatchers are overwhelmed.”

Maya gripped the steering wheel, her palms sweaty. “I have to get to my mom’s.”

She could feel Reno’s eyes on her, and she glanced at him while keeping her focus on the chaos in the streets.

“What?”

He looked straight ahead and put his right hand on his chin. “Nothing.”

She knew what he was thinking—there wasn’t much she could do for her kids right now, and it might not even be possible to get there. What if this bizarre barrier now stood between her and her children? Once Gerald realized she was trapped inside, who knows what the drunken maniac would do?

Interstate 65 was backed up to a crawl. Most people had abandoned their cars. Maya drove down the shoulder with the siren blaring, and anyone standing on the shoulder quickly moved out of the way to avoid being struck by the speeding rig.

“Jesus,” Reno said, looking at the other side of the divided highway.

Two men had gotten into a fistfight and a group of bystanders was trying to pull them apart.

“Everyone’s going mad,” Reno said.

“People can’t get bars, can’t text loved ones. That’s enough to make some people want to commit murder.”

They crested a hill and saw blue and red police lights flashing, the patrol cars lining the entire width of the interstate. Maya hit the brakes, sounding the siren.

She came to a full stop on the shoulder, at the rear of the crowd. Police officers stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the patrol cars. People were yelling, their fists raised. Several threw rocks over the heads of the police dressed in riot gear, and each time they did, a blue pulse flashed in mid-air where the rocks hit and spiderwebbed out like a crack on a windshield before fizzling out. Every rock bounced off the invisible wall and dropped onto the patrol cars.

Maya bit her lip as she realized they’d found another section of the invisible wall. Apparently, it cut across fields and over roadways. Reports of accidents from across Davidson County continued to overwhelm the EMD radio, and she could only think of Laura and Aiden. Her mother. Suddenly realizing how telescoped her focus had been, she scorned herself for being selfish and turned to Reno, realizing he had people he cared about, as well. But it was the bigger revelation that she hadn’t wanted to admit to herself or talk about, until now—something she had intuitively felt earlier.

“We’re trapped in here.”

“What?” Reno asked.

“Behind a wall or barrier. Nobody can get out. Or in.”

“You don’t know that. We’ve only run into the wall twice. There are other ways out to the suburbs and the rest of Middle Tennessee.”

“Listen to the EMD. There are accidents everywhere. You don’t think if we go out towards Bellevue or head south to Franklin that we aren’t going to come up against this invisible wall?”

Reno fell silent. He stared out the window at the crowd in front of the rig.

After another moment, Maya opened her door and Reno grabbed her arm.

“What are you doing?”

“We have a job to do. If we’re going to be trapped in here, we’ve at least got to do our part to make sure injured people get treatment.” She pulled her arm away from him and stepped out of the vehicle. He followed her, walking around to the rear and helping her grab their gear from the back.

Maya and Reno pushed their way through the discordant crowd. Most continued throwing rocks at the wall while some of them yelled at the two paramedics as they pushed toward the line of police officers. Maya ignored people’s questions. She fought her way to the point where the police stood in front of their patrol cars, keeping people away from the wall.

Several officers faced away from the crowd and gestured at their counterparts on the other side of the barrier. Tennessee State Troopers and members of the National Guard had mobilized and been keeping those on the other side of the wall away from it. Those people were also shouting and throwing rocks, but Maya couldn’t hear them—she could only see them. Officers from different precincts in the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department began communicating with each other by scribbling notes on notepads or fast food wrappers and then holding up the makeshift signs. Maya approached a cop on her side who had been writing furiously on a yellow legal pad.

“They can’t hear us at all through that thing?” she asked.

The cop shook his head. “Our radios are going in and out.” He turned to face the accident closest to them. “Another car ran into the wall from the other side about a half hour ago—some damn idiot trying to break through. We couldn’t even hear the impact from this side. Strangest damn thing I’ve ever seen. The front end folded up like an accordion, and I saw it all happen. Silently.”

“Are those people on the other side okay?”

The cop looked at the scene and used his fingers to point at his own ears, making it clear to Maya that he had no way of knowing.

“Has the crowd turned yet?” Reno asked.

“Thankfully, no. We had to break up a fistfight. One of those guys hit an officer. I think everyone realizes that we’re not behind this, at least. That we have no idea what the hell is going on, either.”

Maya gestured toward the state cops and National Guard troops on the other side. “What are they doing to try and get us out?”

“Hopefully more than we can from inside this thing. They’ve got the feds involved. This shit’s all over the news. They said the President’s planning on making a statement. Not sure what he’s gonna say. I heard the Marines might try and land a helicopter in here. The problem is, they don’t know how high this wall is. It’s getting harder to coordinate anything with emergency radio bands coming in and out.”

For the first time, someone had confirmed her suspicion—they were on the inside of this barrier, and the rest of the world, including her children, were on the outside. Maya thought of the obelisk at Centennial Park and how she’d seen the blue flashes lighting up the sky. “How do they know it’s not covering the entire area? Like a dome. We watched that obelisk come out of the ground and destroy the Parthenon. It broke through the clouds as far into the sky as you could see.”

“A dome? You mean like that Stephen King book?”

The officer looked at Maya, his eyebrows raised as he shook his head.

“Something like that, but not exactly. What is the obelisk doing? Who put it there? How long has it been beneath the Parthenon and why did it come up now?”

“Listen, lady. I don’t know the answers to your question. I’m in this, just like you.”

Reno stepped in front of Maya and turned to face the cop. “What can we do to help?”

“Stay out of the way but ready. We don’t have serious injuries on this side. Yet.”

“Thanks,” Maya said. “We’ll do what we can.”

“He’s got a gun!”

Maya spun around when she heard those words. Several gunshots rang out then, the bullets creating micro-explosions where they hit the wall fifteen to twenty feet in the air, sending bolts of blue lightning racing across the invisible surface. Two police officers tackled the man who had fired the gun. Others panicked and ran at the wall, hoping the gunfire had compromised it.

With her ears ringing, Maya heard cries for help coming from her left, where the crowd had parted. Maya ran over.

“She’s been shot!” a woman yelled.

“We’re paramedics,” Maya said, repeating herself a few times so that people slowly shuffled backward and away from the injured woman. “Step out of the way.”

The woman lay on the ground, clutching her shoulder and crying.

“A bullet ricocheted off that invisible wall and hit her,” a man said.

“We’re going to take care of her,” Maya said. “Everyone, stay back!”

Maya kneeled next to the woman. The bullet had entered her right shoulder near her ball and socket joint.

“It hurts! Please help!” the woman pleaded.

“We’re going to take care of you, ma’am,” Maya said. She turned to Reno. “Keep her stable and stop the bleeding. Is there anyone else who needs to get to a hospital?”

“I don’t think so.”

Maya ran to the rig and retrieved the stretcher from the back. She unfolded the legs and hurried back to where Reno had been holding gauze pads over the woman’s wound, replacing them when they turned a deep, crimson red. Some people ignored the injured woman, but others had circled around her, giving Reno room to work and clearing a path through the crowd for Maya.

At least people still care about their fellow humans. For now.

Maya lowered the stretcher and, with Reno’s help, loaded the woman onto it. They rolled her to the rig and secured her inside. Reno jumped into the back with her, shutting the doors.

Maya climbed into the driver’s seat and threw the rig into gear. She took one last look at the crowd and the police trying to maintain some semblance of order.

I hope you guys are on the other side and far away from this thing. But if you’re not, stay away from it. Mom is coming.

She turned on the siren and sped away.