The Vanishing (3 page)

Her hands trembled as she unwrapped the
carton. She knew it was wrong to smoke, but it was either that or
commit herself to the nearest mental hospital. There was only so
much stress a person could handle before she broke down. She
grabbed her lighter and lit the end of her cigarette. After three
years of not smoking, she took her first drag and closed her eyes,
savoring the taste. How she missed tobacco. So it wasn’t good for
her. Did that matter when her entire world was falling
apart?

As she exhaled, she began
to calm down.
It’s all a dream. I’ll wake
up. It’ll be Marianne’s wedding day and we’ll laugh this whole
thing off.
How she wished that was the
case. Trying not to break down in front of everyone, she looked
around. It amazed her that people could slip right back into their
daily routine as if nothing had happened. She took another drag and
exhaled the smoke. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Some people did
talk about their missing loved ones, but for some reason, this
unveiling of the aliens took precedence over the vanishings. In
fact, there seemed to be an expectancy that tonight would answer
their questions about the disappearances. She hoped so. Even if she
didn’t fully believe aliens were real, she hoped that something
might be resolved tonight.

The watchers are watching
you.

Her head jerked up. She saw the man
who’d returned the blouse walk by her. Did he say that?

He didn’t look in her direction. He
just laughed and said something into his cell phone.

No. It couldn’t be him. She returned
her gaze to her shoes and got ready to take another puff from her
cigarette.

Autumn, we know who you
are.

Again, she directed her attention to
him. It came from him. Didn’t it? There was no one else
around.

As he crossed the pedestrian crosswalk,
a dark shadow surrounded him and in the midst of that shadow, she
saw slanted black eyes staring back at her.

Startled, she dropped her cigarette.
“Ouch!” She jumped off the bench and swiped it off her leg. After
she stepped on it, she glanced back at the crosswalk.

The man was gone.

She took a deep breath and scanned the
full parking lot. Did it happen again? Did more people vanish? Her
hands shook so badly that her lighter fell to the ground. What was
going on? Were people going to be removed from the Earth until
everyone was gone? And the biggest question of all kept picking at
her: exactly where did the people go?

A driver backed a car out of a parking
spot. As soon as she realized it was him, she nearly cried with
relief. Thank goodness. No one else was disappearing. She watched
the man as he drove by. There were no shadows this time. There were
no voices.

Closing her eyes, she waited for her
heartbeat to return to normal before she headed back into the mall.
It was just nerves. It had to be. She’d had little sleep in the
past two weeks and a great amount of stress. Even if some people
could return to their lives as if nothing happened, she couldn’t.
Her sister was missing. A lot of sisters, brothers, mothers,
fathers, relatives, and friends were missing. She recalled the
announcement on the radio for people in the Bismarck area who had
lost a loved one to join the support group. Maybe if she joined,
she’d start getting some answers.

Chapter Three

Autumn stepped into the school
auditorium, unsure of what to expect. The room was practically
full. It gave her some comfort to know that other people were also
concerned about what had happened. She didn’t feel so alone
anymore. Others had been affected by losing loved ones in the
twinkling of an eye. She checked her watch. Five o’clock. She could
only stay a half hour before she had to return to work. Ignoring
her growling stomach, she bypassed several people who lingered in
the aisle so she could find a seat. She could eat after work. Right
now, she needed answers.

“
Autumn?”

She stopped and scanned the
crowd.

“
Over here!”

Her gaze focused on Alex who was
standing in the middle of a row that was toward the front of the
auditorium. She waved and made her way over to him, saying excuse
me as she struggled to avoid bumping into anyone who was already
sitting. In this large place, it was nice to see a familiar face,
and they both loved her sister so they had something in
common.

“
I had no idea there’d be
so many people,” Alex said over the hum of voices surrounding
them.

She sat next to him and nodded. “This
is good though. I went to work today and it’s like no one vanished.
It was spooky.” She almost told him about the strange man she saw
but decided against it.

“
Things are starting to
settle down. The first week was the worst. The police had to put
down some riots.”

“
Really?”

He laughed. “You’re kidding,
right?”

“
No. I rarely left my
apartment.”

He stopped laughing and cleared his
throat. “I’m sorry, Autumn. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“
It’s fine. I guess it’s
my fault for not turning on the TV or checking the
Internet.”

“
It has been hard without
Marianne.”

Her heart went out to him. He must feel
the loss as deeply as she did....just in a different way. “You were
supposed to be on your honeymoon by now.”

“
So much for that, huh?”
He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled. “Listen, Autumn.” He
shifted in his seat and leaned closer to her so that no one
overheard them. “You know that I thought the whole alien thing was
a joke when I first heard about it, but I was
wondering...”

“
What?” Did he ask himself
the same thing she did but was afraid to say it? She decided to
venture on it. “You think the aliens took her?”

He rubbed his eyes and shook his head,
chuckling. “It’s crazy. But the timing is too much of a
coincidence, don’t you think? I mean, one minute the president is
making the announcement to the world that these...beings...exist
and not even five minutes later millions of people
vanish.”

“
I’ve thought the same
thing.”

He looked relieved. “You
have?”

She nodded and took a deep breath. “I
don’t know what else it could be.” She glanced around the room,
wondering if anyone else was thinking the same thing.

“
That’s not the strangest
part.”

She returned her attention to him,
noting the anxious tone in his voice.

“
Sometimes I think I’m
being watched. I even woke up in the middle of the night and
thought I saw an alien standing by my bed. I’ve heard of alien
encounters but I always thought they were people’s imaginings, you
know?”

She gulped. The knots in her stomach
tightened. “What did it look like?”

“
Like what you’d expect it
to. Gray with large slanted eyes. Like the ones you see in
movies.”

If he saw the same thing...then she
couldn’t have imagined it. It had to be real. And that meant that
there was something wrong with that man...and that she heard
someone, or something, talk to her. “I had a similar
experience.”

“
You did? One was by your
bed?”

“
No. It was hovering near
someone. I don’t know who he was either.”

“
So maybe they’re already
down here.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear.
“They may have been here already. It’s just that for some reason
they’re going public with it.”

“
But why? Why wait until
now?”

“
Maybe that’s what
tonight’s broadcast will be about.” She shivered despite the warm
temperature in the room. She was glad she was going to be at work
when it was due to air. Then she could at least watch it with
Alicia. But then she’d have to go home to an empty apartment, and
suddenly, that seemed like a very scary prospect.

The people grew silent as the speaker
headed up to the podium at the center of the stage, so she leaned
back in her seat and tried not to give further thought to her
fears.

***

Two minutes after seven, Alicia got the
live video on the Internet. Autumn scanned the area. No customers
were in sight, and Hampton was who-knew-where. She picked up her
part of the earpiece while Alicia took the other one. If Hampton
didn’t hear the broadcast, then they just might make this work,
though why he refused to let them go to the employee lounge to
watch it, she didn’t know. Well, maybe she did. He was a control
freak.

“
You ready for this?”
Alicia asked.

“
No.” But curiosity was
getting the best of her.

Even though people had been talking
about the grey aliens with the black slanted eyes and even though
she saw a blur of it herself, she still expected something
different. Different how? That is how they looked in the Area 51
video that was supposedly leaked out over the Internet a few years
back. But that was supposed to be made up. This was real. And this
alien stood next to President Jordan at the front of the
room.

Autumn willed her impending headache
away.

President Jordan finished his speech
about how this was a new day in the course of human history. Autumn
only half listened since it was the same type of spiel she’d
expect. After all, the movies involving aliens had some message
similar to this, except for the couple she’d seen where the aliens
just came to destroy people from the very beginning.

The alien wore a black robe, so people
could only see its gray face and long gray fingers. Its black eyes
dwarfed its nose and mouth. When it spoke, its voice was clear and
low. “We have visited you throughout your history.”

Autumn glanced at Alicia. “Shouldn’t it
need someone to interpret what it’s saying?”

“
I hear your questions
regarding my language,” the alien said in a calm tone. “I am
speaking in the universal language of all intelligent life forms,
but you hear me speaking your language.”

“
Cute. A mind reader.”
Autumn should have known. As if losing her sister, hearing voices,
and aliens coming to Earth wasn’t enough!

“
We have given you
advancements to help you along in your evolution as a species,” the
alien continued. “But we promised to return, and now we’re here.
You are now ready for the next stage in your evolution. You have
come to the knowledge of the deoxyribonucleic acid which you’ve
abbreviated to stand for DNA. This genetic code is what we
deposited here thousands of years ago. We have helped you along in
your early development, as a parent watches and cares for a child.
Some names you’ve given us over the course of your existence are
Atum, Ra, Gaia, Zeus, and Quetzalcoatl. Those are a few. Most of
you now refer to us as aliens. We’ve watched you and assisted you
when needed, even when we didn’t make our contributions known to
the world. In return, you honored us with sacrifices and worship.
We are your creators, or as you call us...your gods. Some of you
believe us to be many. Some say we are one.”

Autumn grabbed her purse and dug out
her bottle of pain killers.

“
Girl, this is awesome,”
Alicia cheered. “I always knew we were planted here by
aliens!”

Autumn plopped a pill into her mouth
and unscrewed the cap of her bottled water. She didn’t know what to
think. Matters of aliens...or gods...didn’t even concern her—at
least not until recently. She quickly swallowed the water, wishing
she could wake up to the sanity that once defined her
life.

The alien continued talking in a gentle
tone that bordered on the effect of being hypnotizing. “The
question on most of your minds is why we have come now, at this
point in time? As I said, we have come to complete the final stage
of your evolution. You have only tapped into 3% of your DNA. There
is 97% left to explore. This is not junk DNA, as some of you have
claimed. This is the most important part of your gene sequence, and
now that you are able to manipulate it, you are ready to become
like us. You will become gods.”

This isn’t real. It’s all a
dream...or some elaborate hoax.

“
Those who have left did
so of their own accord. They did not wish for what we offered. They
asked to go to another planet to continue in a lesser capacity, so
we obliged them.”

Autumn frowned.
How is that possible when they vanished before
you made this announcement?

The alien looked directly at the
camera. “Autumn Daniels, we can communicate directly with everyone,
and we know your thoughts.”

Alicia grabbed her arm and squealed.
“Oh my gosh! It just said my name. He assured me that I’ll be one
of the first to become like them!”

“
What?” Autumn stared at
her friend. Her name? It didn’t say Alicia’s name. It said
Autumn.

“
We communicate with each
person on this planet when we need to,” the alien said. “This is
part of what you will accomplish when you are able to fully utilize
your brain. Your consciousness will expand.”