Sergeant Simmons tells the Congressman about the first man who died in the hole. “He was a contract worker, pounding rebar posts, along this edge here, to construct a safety fence.”
The Congressman cranes his neck to take in the incredible scope of the cliff’s edge next to The Hole. “Ironic,” he says.
“How’s that?” the Sergeant replies, annoyed.
“I said it’s ironic, the man working to erect a safety fence falls in because of the lack of a safety fence.”
“That’s not what happened,” the Sergeant says. “He was pushed.” Pausing to choose his words, he adds, “But I believe that was an accident.” There is another pause while dark winds whirl above the pulsing light coming up from The Hole like tornados yawning to feed in the bright night.
The Congressman drinks from the canteen, and the Sergeant nods at him. “Go easy on that,” he says. “It’s the last of the potable water we have on site. I have no idea how long we’ll be here until backup shows, if it’s even coming.”
The Congressman caps the canteen and returns it to the Sergeant. He says, “Oh, backup is coming. Don’t you worry about that, son.” Changing the subject, the Congressman asks him, “So, what was it like just after this Hole opened up?”
Later, there is a briefing for the newly arrived. The first man to die in the hole was Oscar Pecadoro, a nationalized immigrant from El Salvador. He was a contract employee with a secured and trusted vendor. What happened here was an unfortunate accident, but there were lessons learned.
The Commanding Officer briefs the small crowd, pacing a path in the front of the room like a panther. He speaks while stalking back and forth through the crowd. His voice grows loud at times but stays stable because these are facts and truths these people need to hear. Loud is for emphasis on the most important parts. “The Hole, as we’re colloquially calling it in this impromptu military base, opened up two weeks ago after the largest natural catastrophe ever recorded by the human mind happened in what used to be Yellowstone National Park, where you’re sitting right now.”
A massive explosion blasted forth from the stinking sulfurous middle of the North American continent. Some titanic underground super volcano had enough of this being one land and severed the Earth for hundreds of miles, as far South as North Texas and further than we have ever dug into the ground or ocean. Millions of Humans died in the initial series of blasts, followed by collapse, which lasted for hours. Entire cities were destroyed in a puff of seconds. And then the fallout rained down on streets, buildings, and homes. The Sun has been blocked for two weeks. It could be months before the ground sees sunlight. The darkest night has descended upon America. At high noon, the horizon has dimmed as far away from here as New York City and Boston, and the Sun is a short-term memory for everyone right now.
The Army Corps of Engineers was the first to arrive on the scene after the public entrances to the park had been shut down. The event occurred in the Norrison Geyser Basin, once one of the world's hottest areas of geothermal activity. This site has been labeled H0. The Rangers and other first responders immediately set up an impromptu military base. This base was labeled H1. This military briefing room was the makeshift quarters of the first twenty-five people on site for disaster response and to lead the recovery of human remains, but there were no bodies to recover. An estimated 800,000 human beings perished in an instant, “Like they were blinked out of this life by a cruel God,” the Commander tells them. “Friends, I’ve been in four wars over sixteen tours. And I’ve eaten lunch in the Capitol Mess Hall. So, not much scares me anymore.” Nervous laughter rings around the room, and the sobering truth comes next, “But what I believe will come up out of this Hole scares me more than anything I’ve encountered yet in this soldier’s life. Whatever this is,” he waves his hand around in the direction of The Hole. “It’s just getting started.”
Sergeant Dickey Simmons commanded the first unit onsite at The Hole before the eruption of light, which scientists projected would be visible as a cosmic light event halfway through the known universe. Species unknown and unimagined, living mind-boggling distances away from the Earth, may see the light that came out of this Hole billions of years from now, very far away from where Sgt. Simmons now sits in a folded plastic chair, leaning forward, arms on a smaller conference room table. This is the meeting after the meeting, and this group is smaller, but not by much.
There are buses on the way. They are filled with people. That is all that is being said about that. The three men talking in front of the room now look the same, dress the same, and use the same words. Bad shit is coming. Sgt. Simmons knows it. He has survived situations he shouldn’t have as if the hand of God had sheltered him in the middle of the many battlefields of his life. After the third or fourth time, he asked himself why that might be. Why was he saved when he watched his friends die, faces crumpled up in agony, while all he could do was bear witness to their painful passings and feel gratitude for the messy, merciful endings of their suffering? A standard alert alarm sounds. The buses are about to arrive at site H1.
Walking to the gate, he takes note of the flickering glow behind him, lit like a science fiction film set. There is a rhythm to the light and hum coming up from The Hole. It’s a thrumming sound rumbling up from the deep planet's core. The human biology of all exposed is being affected, though no one understands how yet, and there may be no time to perform the necessary science. The world could be on a borrowed clock now because this wasn’t just an earthquake but a planet-rupturing event. The gravitational relationship between the Earth and the Moon has shifted. Weather patterns are changing. The deserts are flooding, and the mountains are burning. Beaches are freezing, and volcanos are starting to pop up out of the ice sheets like pimples on the frosted ass of the Earth.
The heavy metal gate slides open, and the razor wire retreats like a dog, closing its mouth after a good growl. Three buses are lined up to enter the processing yard. Sgt. Simmons commands three of his Private First Class soldiers to coordinate the processing of each bus. He wants to know who these people are and why they are here.
But before PFC Chenoweth gets the driver to open the first bus door, a large military presence erupts in the yard, and they are not U.S. Army. His soldiers in the yard are surrounded by superior firepower aimed at their heads. The soldiers pointing these guns are clad in all-black with balaclavas and lightweight field armor and are armed to the teeth. Pistols, knives, high-powered rifles, and clips stacked on clips hooked on belts all over their bodies. This will either be a surrender or a massacre.
One of the men who spoke in the meeting has a bullhorn and speaks to the crowd. The Congressman stands by that man’s side, nodding and scanning the crowd. The Congressman sees him and nods, but Sgt. Simmons knew something was wrong with that Congressman. Weasily fucker. No honor. This is a goddamned coup. Who the fuck are these people in these buses?
Sgt. Simmons never found out who the people were on the first buses. They all died, pushed into The Hole at gunpoint. More buses are coming and won’t stop coming for a long time. When the buses stop coming, the world will be quiet while it dies, and the people trying to survive on a dying planet won’t talk much to each other anymore. Sgt. Simmons won’t see any of this happen, but it wouldn’t surprise him if he were told about it.
Just after the last person was pushed into The Hole, the Congressman and those three big-mouthed men turned around to gaze into The Hole and behold their work, which was just beginning but starting off well in their eyes. The Congressman smiled at the other men, who smiled back, and this was the moment Sgt. Simmons realized why he’d been saved all those times. No one saw him coming. He plows into those men like his whole life was a kinetic force rushing into this moveable moment, and they all fall into The Hole. The crowd’s gasp is audible over the humming. A short-range automatic weapon fires a burst of warning bullets because there will be no uprising here, and the buses are already coming.
Days later, the next buses arrive, and the work begins. This time, there is nothing to clean up, no ashes to dump, no bodies to bury, and no proof to measure. People are erased like fixable mistakes. Sgt. Simmons would be ashamed of his country right now. He might have reconsidered tackling those men into The Hole but probably still would have done it. That’s who he was, how he was raised.
Then, one night, something changed in the harmonics of the humming coming up from the depths of the Earth. Everyone there felt a shift in vibration before they heard it with their ears. The soldiers moved the operation back ten feet from the lip of the edge at The Hole. A pervasive surge of scraping sounds is audible above the shifting hum, nearly an A-minor now from a G flat. The light of the hum casts a shadow from the first hand to reach above the lip to grab the dirt and pull a body up behind it. In seconds, there are hundreds of pale bodies standing together, animated corpses, empowered by a native light so foreign that it never occurred to the people who sent the buses that it could have been an alternative spiritual energy source that would forever alter Human DNA and create a race of super creatures who would one day sail the spaces between stars and galaxies.
The bullets don’t stop them once they get up here, and these creatures, once people, keep coming up from The Hole.
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