The Noise Read online

  Martha leaned forward in her chair. “Now can you tell us what this is all about?”

  He studied each of their faces in turn, then looked down at his watch. “Shortly. We’re waiting on one more.”

  “Introductions, then?” the man with the British accent said. “I’m Sanford Harbin with NOAA.”

  “A climatologist?” Martha asked.

  Harbin nodded.

  “Interesting. I’m Martha Chan, a civilian liaison with the military for medical crises, and a PhD in psychology at Berkeley.”

  “Dr. Chan. Pleasure. I read a paper you wrote about a decade ago on the negative psychological effects of overpopulation in first-, second-, and third-world populations,” Harbin said.

  “I read that paper, too,” the man in the white sweatshirt and jeans said. “My name is Russel Fravel. Astrophysicist. I’m with Garner out in Boulder.” Fravel, an African American, his hair graying at his temples, studied her from behind round, silver-framed glasses. “You estimated the planet could sustain nine to ten billion people at maximum. A bold statement, considering many others post numbers nearly double that. Some accused you of attempting to start a panic, considering we’re close to hitting your number.”

  Martha shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

  “I’m Dr. Brenna Hauff, planetary biology,” one of the latecomers said. She pointed a thumb at the man to her right. “This is Dr. Brian Tomes, geology. We’re both with NASA in Houston.”

  “NASA?”

  This came from the young woman across the table in the tank top and yoga pants.

  She pursed her lips, mulled this over. “A climatologist, an astrophysicist, geologist, biologist, and a shrink. All brought together by the Department of Defense? My money is on alien invasion.”

  Martha tilted her head at her. “And you are?”

  “Dr. Joy Reiber. Department of Agriculture. I was set to give a speech today in DC and couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get a little exercise.” She jerked a thumb back at the man from DIA. “Mr. Holt kidnapped me near Washington Mall.”

  “I hardly—”

  She glared at him. “You showed me some bogus badge and rushed me into a van with two of your cohorts. I damn near maced you.”

  Harbin looked up at him. “Mr. Holt, is it?”

  Holt cleared his throat. “Keenen Holt. State Department.”

  “Are we being invaded by little green men, Mr. Holt?” Harbin’s accent made the statement sound even more absurd than it was, yet nobody laughed.

  An alarm went off—Holt’s watch. He silenced the beeping, checked the time, and glanced over at the door with a frustrated sigh. “Best to just get started.”

  From a shelf behind him, Holt retrieved a laptop, which he set on the table. The screen came to life when he opened it. He sorted through some emails, located one. “I’m going to play a statement for you. I need you to pay close attention.”

  He clicked on an attachment, and an image of an older man, bald, wearing a gray suit and red tie, filled the screen. He had a mole on the corner of his right cheek and deep bags under his eyes.

  “That’s Frederick Hoover,” Harbin said. “He’s looked better. I worked with him on a project for the US Navy about six years ago. I believe he’s with DARPA now. Or at least he was the last time I spoke to him.”

  DARPA, the notoriously cutting-edge research arm of the DOD—this was getting odder and odder, Martha thought.

  Holt pressed the Play button.

  “I apologize for the short notice, the ways and means necessary to bring each of you to your current location,” Hoover’s video began. “As you may have already surmised, the nature of the anomaly requires the utmost secrecy, and your cooperation is greatly appreciated. I would be remiss if I failed to point out that the NDAs you’ve signed clearly state that a violation of the Secrets Protection Act of 2008 carries a minimum of five years in military prison and a maximum penalty of death under the Treason Act as defined in Article III, Section Three of the United States Constitution. Should you speak to any unauthorized personnel, those individuals will be subject to the same. At this point, all your communication devices should have been turned in to an appropriate handler. If you’ve retained any form of communication device, you are hereby ordered to relinquish it immediately. Failure to do so will result in immediate charges, imprisonment, and replacement on this team. I ask that your handler pause the video at this point in order to give you the opportunity to turn in any remaining forms of communication.”

  Holt pressed pause.

  “Christ,” Harbin muttered.

  Tomes, the NASA geologist, dug through his canvas bag, pulled out an old BlackBerry, and tossed it on the table, his face red.

  Holt took the phone and slipped it into his pocket. “Anyone else?”

  No one moved.

  He started the video again.

  “I imagine you to be curious as to why you are here. Understandably so. And while I would like to offer an explanation, I’m hesitant to do so. I fear sharing our current theories and analysis of the anomaly may prejudice your own opinions and theories, and we’d prefer you approach this situation without such handicaps, at least for your initial exposure. We will reevaluate upon debrief. In a moment, you will be transported to the anomaly. We ask that you do not consult one another until after your individual debrief and return to base. We’d prefer to hear your individual thoughts before you compare notes.”

  At that point, the video ended.

  “The anomaly,” Reiber repeated portentously.

  Martha didn’t like this one bit. “Why a taped message instead of a live conference? Seems like just a way of avoiding questions.”

  Brenna Hauff, the other NASA scientist, leaned over the table and pointed at the screen where the email was still open. “Look at the cc list here—Joint Chiefs, White House, about a dozen addresses with NSA…”

  Holt reached over and closed the laptop before she could read the rest. “Your point of contact will be me. If necessary, I’ll initiate a conference with members of the distant team.”

  “Our handler,” Harbin said with an edge to his voice.

  “Correct.”

  “Since when does the Defense Intelligence Agency run scientific ops?” Martha asked.

  “Oh, this is clearly a military concern, not scientific,” Fravel pointed out.

  “I never said I was DIA.” Holt locked the laptop in the leather briefcase with the NDAs. “We’re wasting time. I need everyone in the choppers. You can leave your personal belongings in this room. We’ve got a two-hour window.”

  Martha watched him leave and head out the front door of the ranger station.

  Nobody moved.

  After about a minute, Tomes tapped his pen several times on the table. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m curious.” He got up and followed Holt.

  “Me, too.” Reiber stood as well, tugging her tank top down with her left hand. Martha noted some kind of tattoo on the small of her back but couldn’t make out what.

  Martha got up. The rest did as well.

  Outside, she eyed the concrete and chain-link barrier going up around the perimeter, nearly half done now. More trucks had arrived while they were inside.

  Harbin was studying it, too. He leaned close to Martha, whispered in her ear, “If they’re taking us to this anomaly in helicopters, clearly a distance from where we stand, aren’t you the least bit curious as to what they’re trying to keep out of this little slice of heaven?”

  Chapter Nine

  Tennant

  Dalton’s Crevasse broke the forest in half. Stretching nearly half a mile north and south, and nearly twenty feet wide at the center, it was a ragged, angry crack in the earth nicknamed “the Devil’s Doorway.” Poppa had said it was formed by a long, dry, ancient river or maybe an earthquake. Momma told her God had gotten angry and tried to tear the mountain in half. Both had claimed it had no bottom, and anyone who slipped off the edge would fall forever. Tennant
and Sophie had spent hours throwing rocks over the side, listening for them to hit bottom but they never did.

  Two footbridges crossed the expanse, one about a quarter mile south, the other to the north.

  Sophie didn’t stop; she didn’t even slow. The sight of that edge seemed to invigorate her.

  While Tennant found herself gasping for breath, Sophie only seemed to gain energy and speed. Her tiny legs moved with ungodly energy and purpose.

  As they approached the crevasse, Zeke’s barking grew insistent, panicked, filled with whines and cries. He tore through the tangle of branches, slipped on some leaves, regained his footing, and bounded after Sophie. He reached her about fifteen feet from the edge, getting under her feet, trying to trip her up.

  This slowed her, if only a little. Tennant ignored the burning in her legs and chest, and forced herself forward. She cut through the last of the trees, closed the distance, pushed off a rock, and leaped at Sophie.

  Her fingers brushed the back of her sister’s jacket, rolled over the fur at the bottom, and slipped off the top of her jeans. Tennant’s shoulder cracked against the rocky earth and a sharp, white pain cut through her vision. Her outstretched hand closed around Sophie’s ankle, and she yanked her leg out from under her. Sophie fell forward, dropped hard on the rocks, and went still.

  “Sophie!” Tennant cried out, scrambling to her hands and knees, less than a foot away from the edge. Gravel and earth crumbled away, fell down into the black.

  Sophie was awake but stunned. She stared up at Tennant with those terrible bloodshot eyes.

  Zeke shuffled back several steps watching them, a low growl in his throat.

  There was blood on her sister’s face, the sides of her head, on her neck. Not from the fall, but from her mouth, ears, and nose. Tennant ran her hands over the back of Sophie’s head, through her hair, and didn’t find other injuries. But she felt hot to the touch, feverish.

  “Hey, can you hear me?”

  There was another growl. Tennant realized it hadn’t come from Zeke, but from Sophie. Her eyes narrowed and her tiny hands reached up, scratched at Tennant’s face, punched her chest. She managed to get a hold of Tennant’s braid and yanked her head sideways with incredible strength.

  How was she so strong? Adrenaline?

  Tennant grabbed her wrists, pinned them to her sides. The girl struggled like a wild thing caught in one of her traps.

  “Stop, Sophie, stop!” Tennant wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug and pulled her close, like Poppa.

  Sophie went limp, buried her face in Tennant’s shoulder, and began to sob.

  Yet when Tennant loosened her grip, Sophie tried to slip away toward the crevasse again. She brought her knee up and caught Tennant in the gut, knocking the wind out of her. She tried to dive for the edge.

  Only by sitting on Sophie’s chest, using her weight, did Tennant manage to hold her down.

  “Let me go, you fucking bitch!”

  The voice came from Sophie but wasn’t hers—too deep, guttural, this inhuman thing.

  Zeke dropped down to his belly and whimpered, shuffled back.

  Sophie snarled, twisted, her feet and hands lashing out. “Get off me, you fucking cunt!”

  Pink tears tinged with blood dripped down her face.

  Her nails slashed the air, just missed Tennant’s eye.

  Tennant slapped her.

  It had worked once before, but this time it seemed to anger her. Her sister screamed out a torrent of awful, filthy words, some Tennant had never even heard. Then she realized she wasn’t speaking English but some foreign tongue. Momma had taught them some Spanish, but this was something else.

  Sophie’s head thrashed side to side as she yelled, screamed, shouted these terrible things in a fit of rage.

  This was all too much. Tears welled up in Tennant’s eyes, too. She found herself crying with her sister, trying to hug Sophie even if she didn’t want to, as she tried to fight her off.

  Glancing back in the direction of their village, Tennant hoped someone would come out of the woods—Momma, Poppa. Someone, anyone. But nobody did.

  She’d never felt so alone.

  Chapter Ten

  Tennant

  Tennant used the spare wire in her pack to secure Sophie’s hands behind her back. She also wrapped her belt tight around her sister’s legs just above her knees, forcing her to move at a slow shuffle. Even so, the moment Sophie was back on her feet, she dove for the edge of the crevasse again. Had Tennant not been there to grab the hood of her coat, she would have surely gone over.

  Most of the words leaving her sister’s mouth were incoherent gibberish and angry curses but for one brief instant—when Tennant had pulled her back and slammed her down into the rock again—Sophie had looked to the west and pointed, a single name rolling off her tongue: Anna Shim.

  Tennant hadn’t seen anyone and didn’t know anyone by that name. When she called out nobody answered, but Sophie had continued to gaze off in that direction, her disturbed eyes fixed. From the maps Poppa had shown her, Tennant knew there was nothing that way but wilderness for a hundred miles. She supposed there could be campers, maybe even hunters or poachers, but most of those folks tended to stay on the west side of Mount Hood. Rarely did they cross the peak and venture down this side. Too much work, too remote. Poppa once said these part-time survivalists would be the first to go when the end came. He said they would flee their homes in the cities with their unfamiliar gear and prepackaged foods and find themselves lost in the woods. Bears and mountain lions would make quick work of them. But then the villagers would find their gear and put it to good use.

  “Annnnnna,” Sophie murmured again, her red eyes still on the west, staring beyond the crevasse off into the trees.

  “There’s nobody out there.” Still holding her sister’s hood, Tennant gave it a tug. “Come on. We gotta go back.”

  She wasn’t sure if Sophie could hear her or even understand her. She’d snapped her fingers near her sister’s ears several times and gotten no response. When she spoke to her, the words seemed lost on her, meaningless. Zeke was more responsive.

  Sophie started rocking again—left to right, right to left, swaying back and forth.

  Tennant gave her a push back in the direction of the cellar. Poppa and Momma had put them there for a reason. That’s where they needed to wait.

  She tried not to think about the boot, or the look on their faces. She told herself Poppa and Momma would be standing there over the cellar door, angry that they’d left, and she was fine with that. They could be as angry as they wanted, as long as they were there.

  Sophie didn’t move at first, only rocked in place, then she looked up into the sky and started forward in an awkward shuffle because of the belt around her legs. Tennant held tight to the hood of her coat so she couldn’t run off. For nearly ten minutes, Zeke trailed behind them, darting in and out of the bushes. When he realized where they were going, he ran off ahead. He didn’t seem to want to get too close. He eyed Sophie suspiciously and grumbled softly when she looked his way.

  As they approached the village, Tennant looked for the roof of Bill McAuliffe’s barn poking through the trees. She hoped all this had been a bad dream and the barn would be there and the village beyond that, their little house. Her stomach sank as they entered the clearing where the barn had stood, stepping over the fallen boards and beams to make their way to the cellar door.

  The air buzzed with flies, stank of death.

  No sign of Poppa or Momma.

  When Tennant opened the trapdoor, Sophie took a step back.

  With her hands and legs bound, she wasn’t sure she could get her sister down the steps if she fought her. She couldn’t untie her, though, no way.

  About a dozen feet away, Zeke took a seat where the barn door had stood.

  Tennant snapped her fingers at him and pointed down into the hole—maybe Sophie would follow him down.

  Zeke only looked back at her. He lowered himself to
the ground and rested his snout on his paws with a soft whimper.

  Tennant cursed at him and knelt on the ground in front of Sophie. “Poppa and Momma will be back for us, so we need to wait here. Do you understand? Poppa will know what to do.” She reached up and stroked her sister’s tangled hair. It was damp with sweat, sticky with blood. “You need to rest. You’re getting sick.”

  A gurgle rose from Sophie’s throat, but she said nothing. She didn’t so much look at Tennant as through her. She was facing west again.

  “There’s food down there, water. Aren’t you hungry?” Tennant tried to edge her toward the cellar, toward the steps.

  Instead, Sophie’s arms jerked, her shoulders wrenched. She yanked at the wires binding her hands.

  “Don’t do that.”

  The gurgle turned to a deep growl. Sophie jerked again. Her entire body spasmed.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself!”

  When Tennant looked at her sister’s hands, she realized Sophie must have been tugging at the wire the entire time they walked. Her wrists were covered in bloody welts.

  Sophie yanked again. The metal dug in even deeper.

  “Don’t!”

  “Untie…now,” she breathed in that ugly voice, pumping her wrists. Blood trickled down over the wire, a drop landing in the dirt at her feet.

  Tennant reached for her sister’s arms, not to untie her but to hold her still long enough to get a better look. At first, Sophie let her, but when she realized she wasn’t removing the wire, she pulled away. Tennant saw enough, though. She’d have to replace the wire with something else, maybe rope or cloth, something softer. She’d need bandages, ointment.

  “Untie!” Sophie charged her. Shoulders hunched, she leaped forward in a blur.

  At last check, the eight-year-old only weighed fifty-five pounds, but when she slammed into Tennant, it was with the force of a small truck. The air burst from Tennant’s lungs, her feet went out from under her, and she fell backward with Sophie on top of her. She huffed angrily, glared at Tennant with those red, puffy eyes, then reached for her own head, grabbed a handful of hair, and yanked it out. The bloody clump fell from her fingers, fluttered through the door in stringy strands of blond.