The Noise Read online

  The air was still, filled with unsettling calm.

  Tennant crossed over to her sister, each step heavier than the last, as she realized what Sophie was looking at.

  Their village was gone, too.

  Leveled.

  Not a single structure still standing. Even the stone well, near the village center, had been reduced to nothing but a hole in the ground with the heavy stones as far as twenty feet away embedded in the dirt.

  There were no people. No bodies. No wildlife.

  Tennant’s stomach twisted into a heavy knot.

  Poppa had told them about tornados, but he also told them they were rare in Oregon. She had never seen one, but nothing else could explain this.

  Her hand was on Sophie’s shoulder, and she must have squeezed too hard; her sister shook her off, slowly started rocking again—left to right, right to left.

  A dog barked across the emptiness, and Tennant’s head swiveled toward the sound.

  Zeke.

  She found herself walking toward him in a half daze, towing Sophie by the hand.

  They found the yellow Labrador cowering in the remains of their home, nothing more than a shivering puddle of fur pressed against the flattened hearth of their fireplace, the chimney a pile of rubble beside him.

  Tennant fell to the ground and buried her face in his body. “Hey, boy. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  At first, he didn’t seem to notice her. Then he tentatively lifted his head and licked her cheek.

  Sophie remained standing, her feet moving in place, her gaze lost in the direction where their room should have been, beyond that to the empty space of their parents’ room. She choked back a sob. “Where are Momma and Poppa?”

  Zeke whimpered and buried his face in the crook of Tennant’s arm.

  “How did you escape this, brave boy?” she asked him.

  He only buried his face deeper.

  Sophie’s eyes narrowed and she raised a hand, her finger pointing at something in the distance, toward the center of the village.

  “What?”

  She didn’t answer. Tennant couldn’t be sure she even heard her. Her stiff finger quivered, and she started toward whatever it was she found.

  Tennant chased after her, Zeke reluctantly following—his snout first on the ground, then sniffing at the air, a steady whine from his throat as he chuffed with concern. A bumblebee crawled out of the flattened grass and took flight—the only other sign of life she’d seen since leaving the cellar.

  Sophie had stopped beyond the well, near a large reddened heap surrounded by matted grass.

  Tennant froze, unsure if she wanted to get any closer. A voice in the back of her mind told her not to, told her to turn and run in the opposite direction, put as much distance between her and this place as she could.

  Zeke lowered himself to the ground. His tail thumped once, then went still.

  Sophie rocked again—left to right, right to left. Her small hands closed into fists and opened again in a steady rhythm like the ticking of a clock.

  A metronome.

  “What is it, Sophie? What’d you find?”

  No answer came, but Tennant hadn’t really expected one. The blood seeping from Sophie’s ears had slowed but hadn’t stopped. She feared her sister would never hear again.

  Tennant sucked in a breath, forced herself to move. She made her way to Sophie’s side.

  She’d known the scent of death since her earliest memories. Momma had once told her she’d grow used to it, and she told Poppa that she had. That had been a lie. The familiar sickly-sweet odor crawled through the grass like a venomous snake, silent and fierce.

  Death came from the pile at Sophie’s feet. But what really frightened her was that the scent of death was everywhere.

  The bloody mass at Sophie’s feet was a horse. Beaten, pulverized, a horrid mound of flesh lay in opened waste, intestines and innards strewn about from a ragged tear in the animal’s dark, glistening fur, as if it had burst under the pressure. She’d never seen anything like it.

  About twenty feet to their left, a horde of dark flies filled the air, dipping down to the ground and back up again in a fevered dance. Tennant couldn’t see what they were feasting on. She didn’t want to.

  Beside her, Sophie rocked. Right to left, left to right, tick, tock.

  She reached over and squeezed her sister’s shoulder. “We should go.”

  As she took a step back, her foot rolled and she nearly fell.

  Half-buried, a single leather work boot protruded from the ground.

  A boot she recognized.

  Poppa.

  Chapter Five

  Tennant

  When Sophie also spotted the boot, her bloody hands went to her mouth. She shuffled to the side and let out a guttural wail.

  Zeke jumped to his feet and began to bark, but rather than go to the girls, he fell back. His bark fell to a low growl as he watched them both warily.

  Tennant’s legs went weak and she dropped to the ground. There was no mistaking the boot—the intricate pattern, the stitching, the deep scratch across the back of the heel from last summer when he caught it on a sharp rock in the river attempting to net trout.

  Poppa’s boot.

  Her gaze went to the growing hordes of flies in a dozen or more places just around the village. She’d been doing her damnedest to ignore them, not wanting to know what was there.

  Now Tennant forced herself to stand and go to the nearest flies. She had to. She had no choice. When she came close enough to see it was a goat, the air left her lungs and didn’t want to go back in.

  “It’s not Poppa, Sophie, it’s only his—”

  Sophie took off—darting across the center of the village toward the trees on the opposite side. With a single huff, Zeke went after her, a blur of yellow.

  Tennant ran after them both, and although Sophie’s legs were only a fraction of the length of hers, her little sister somehow managed to pull ahead. She crashed through the bushes and underbrush with complete abandonment without any regard for the sharp branches and thorns biting at her skin, smacking her in the chest, arms, and face. Sophie pressed on at a pace so quick, Tennant lost sight of her altogether. If not for Zeke, she would have lost her sister for sure.

  Nearly ten minutes later, as Tennant’s chest burned and her legs ached, she forced herself to push ever harder. Because Sophie was racing straight for the forty-foot drop of Dalton’s Crevasse—the Devil’s Doorway—without any sign of slowing down.

  Chapter Six

  Martha

  The headset was far too large for Dr. Martha Chan. Even with the band adjusted to the smallest setting, they kept slipping down her forehead—she found herself holding them in place, alternating from her right hand to her left and back again whenever her arm got tired. They did the job, though. The heavy thwack of the helicopter rotors were reduced to a rhythmic thump with the metallic breathing of her pilot amplified over the speakers.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said again. “They’re the smallest I have.”

  He’d apologized twice now.

  At only five foot one, Martha was no stranger to things not fitting, particularly when it came to military aircraft. After getting picked up at just after two in the morning from her apartment in San Francisco, she’d been shuttled to a C-1 transport plane at Yerba Buena Island, rushed from the Army sedan up the steps and into one of the jump seats on the port side of the aircraft. She’d felt like a child as one of the pilots helped secure her with a double-banded belt, tugging it tight over her shoulders. She’d noted his fatigues bore no name badge or insignia of any kind; same with the other pilot. Aside from the two of them, she was alone in the large aircraft as it lumbered down the tarmac and took flight.

  Two hours later, they’d touched down. The moment the plane stopped moving, the pilot was back, unfastening the safety harness and ushering her down the steps to the awaiting EC135 chopper less than fifty feet away.

  “Where are we?” M
artha had asked, attempting to take in the airfield as they ran, ducking as they approached the spinning blades, her leather overnight bag slapping against her leg. She could see nothing beyond the lights of the airstrip and a group of hangars off in the distance. The night sky was black and gray, filled with dark, churning clouds. Even the moon had abandoned her.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am.”

  The too-large headphones had been sitting on the backseat of the helicopter. She’d put them on and adjusted the microphone as her escort closed and locked the door, then ran back toward the plane.

  Her new pilot had looked back at her and nodded toward a large manila envelope on the seat beside her. “Ma’am? Please place your cell phone in that envelope. I was told to collect all communication devices before I’m permitted to go airborne.” He glanced at her Apple Watch. “That, too, please.”

  Martha frowned. “The watch isn’t cellular. I just use it to track my fitness information.”

  “Please, ma’am. I have orders.”

  She sighed. She knew better than to argue with military personnel. He’d sit here for the next two weeks and wait on her before he’d violate orders. None of these guys seemed to think for themselves. She supposed that was appealing for some, but not for her. Mark, her ex-husband, would be the first to tell anyone willing to listen that Martha was a control freak of the highest degree. In the final months of their marriage, they’d had blowout arguments over things as ridiculous as who got to control the television remote. Understandable, considering his choice in programming was shit, but the arguments didn’t stop there—they’d managed to find a way to fight about damn near everything. Fighting might have been the only thing they were good at. Two strong-willed type-A personalities under the same roof was bound to end bad, always did. The twins held them together that last year. Without those two, they would have called it quits a long time ago.

  Christ, the twins.

  This coming weekend was her turn to take them. Nobody had told her how long she’d be gone this time. They never did.

  A two-hour flight in the transport plane from the airbase in San Francisco could put her anywhere in the western United States—Idaho, Utah, Arizona. Maybe Wyoming, Colorado, or New Mexico. Even Baja, although she hadn’t seen any sign of the ocean. She had no way of knowing what direction they’d flown. She didn’t like not knowing where she was. She liked communication blackouts even less.

  Martha powered down her phone and smartwatch, dropped them into the envelope, and handed it up to the pilot. The chopper was airborne a few minutes later, soaring through the night.

  From the window, she studied the distant skyline. “What city is that?”

  The pilot glanced out the window, then at her in the mirror. “I’m not at liberty—”

  She waved a hand and cut him off. “—not at liberty to say, I understand.”

  They flew in silence for thirty minutes. The pilot was the first to speak. “You’re not military,” he asked. “Are you some kind of doctor?”

  “What makes you think I’m not military?”

  “Your clothes, that leather bag. The way you’re gripping your armrest. My military passengers tend to sit back and enjoy the ride, happy for the downtime. You look like you’re ready to jump. Civilian.”

  Martha released the armrest and nudged her headphones back up on her head. “Doctor, yeah.”

  “Where’d you go to school?”

  “I did my undergrad in biology at UC San Francisco, then four years at Hopkins studying trauma surgery. After that, I got my psychology PhD from Berkeley.” She was looking out the window again. “Are those mountains down there?”

  He ignored her. “That’s a lot of school.”

  “I like school.”

  “Kids?”

  Martha nodded. “Boy and a girl, twins. Emily and Michael.”

  “How old?”

  “Eight.”

  “Good for you.”

  Light started to creep up over the horizon. They were heading east.

  “I’ve got a little boy, name’s Tim, after his grandpa. He’s going on thirteen now.” The pilot showed her a photograph of a boy with a mop of white hair holding up a fish.

  “Tighten up your belt. We’re about to land.”

  Through the window, she spotted a familiar landmark. Mount Hood. She and Mark had gone camping up here once, back when things were good. So this was Oregon.

  Chapter Seven

  Martha

  The EC135 touched down in the grass about thirty feet from two other helicopters, and a fiftyish man in a tan uniform with dark-olive pants ran out from the porch of the cabin, one hand holding his hat, the other shielding his eyes as the blades kicked up dust and dirt.

  Martha took off her headphones and fumbled with the latch on her belt.

  The man opened her door and shouted over the engine noise. “I’m Hoyt Rayburn with Forest Rangers. Welcome to Zigzag Station. Can I help you with that?” He snatched Martha’s bag from the seat before she had a chance to answer and helped her out of the chopper.

  They were halfway to the cabin when the helicopter shot back up into the sky.

  Martha turned and frowned. “He still has my phone and watch.”

  The blades of one of the other choppers started turning as a transport helicopter lowered a concrete barrier to the ground on thick cables, setting it down next to several others already in place. There were people crowded around, directing the work. The noise was deafening.

  “What?” Rayburn shouted back.

  “Never mind.”

  One hand still on his hat, he yelled, “Let’s get you inside. They’re waiting on you.”

  Another truck pulled up. Some type of military transport. A few men jumped out the back and began unloading rolls of chain-link fencing.

  Martha followed Rayburn up the steps and into the building.

  He closed the door behind her, took off his hat, and brushed the dust off. “They’ve got a crane on the way to finish up the barrier, but the powers that be didn’t want to wait so they brought that thing in from Kingsley. Probably scaring the wildlife half to death.”

  “Why are they building a barrier?”

  “Dr. Chan?”

  A man in jeans, black boots, and a white button-down shirt stood in a doorway toward the back of the room. He was about Martha’s age, with thinning dark hair cropped close to his head. “In here, please.”

  Martha didn’t move. “You are?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and walked back into the room.

  “DIA,” Rayburn said softly. “At least I think so. He got here first. I heard him on the phone.”

  “Defense Intelligence Agency?”

  “Now, Dr. Chan,” the man called out from the other room.

  Rayburn handed Martha her leather bag. “Best to keep that close.”

  Zigzag Station was larger than it appeared from the outside. The walls of the main room were lined with educational displays—photographs of local wildlife with detailed descriptions and histories stenciled beneath protective plastic. Martha imagined this was the kind of place schoolchildren visited on field trips. There was a counter off to the far right covered in pamphlets and brochures for local tours and outings. There were several vending machines, too, stocked with water and soda, candy and energy bars. Although the exterior of the cabin was covered in siding, the interior was made up of exposed beams and white oak, most likely sourced locally. There was a fireplace, but it didn’t look like anyone had used it in some time, more for show now.

  As she stepped through the doorway at the back, three more people looked up at her from around a large oak table. Two men and a woman. One man wore a suit, the second was in a sweatshirt and jeans, the woman wore a tank top and yoga pants, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Martha pictured a crew similar to the one that collected her picking this woman up from the middle of a morning jog somewhere. Without a word, they all looked back down at the large stack of papers i
n front of each of them.

  The man from DIA pointed toward a vacant spot. Another pile of pages there, a black ballpoint on top. “Please take a seat, Dr. Chan.”

  “I’d like to know what we’re doing here.”

  “No speaking until you’ve read and signed the NDA. You’ll need to initial each page in the bottom right corner as well.”

  Martha frowned. “NDA? I have Top Secret clearance.”

  The man in the suit fought back a grin and flipped to the next page of his papers.

  Martha glared at him. She wasn’t in the mood for this. Not at this hour. “This funny?”

  Without looking up, he said, “We all have Top Secret clearance, Doctor. We all argued with this upstanding civil servant, and we all found ourselves no better for it. Best to read the document and sign so we all can get on with it.”

  He spoke with a slight accent. British, but faint. Like he came to the States as a child.

  The woman in the yoga pants glanced up at Martha, offered her a soft nod, then went back to reading.

  Martha placed her bag in the corner of the room, sighed, and dropped down into the vacant chair. “Can I at least get some coffee?”

  Chapter Eight

  Martha

  The topmost page of the thick document simply read, OFFICE OF THE JOINT CHIEFS.

  As Martha read, two others joined the group and were handed NDAs of their own. A man and a woman, both in their mid to late forties. Although dressed casually, Martha caught a glimpse of a lab coat stuffed into the man’s bag, which was simply a canvas shopping bag. From their soft grumblings, she got the feeling they had been picked from a lab somewhere, and not allowed time to pack.

  Thirty-seven minutes passed before the last person slid their NDA across the table to the man from DIA. He placed each of them carefully in an oversize leather briefcase, snapped the locks, and set it behind him on the floor against the wall.