Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) (2 page)

He’d been crying a lot lately, but this was different.

Jake hated summertime, because summertime meant camp—sometimes more than one. His parents said it was because they had to work in the summer, but he didn’t have school, so he needed to go someplace fun while they were working. The problem was, they had a weird idea of what was fun.

Day camps weren’t so bad, because in the afternoon he got to go home, and Mom would read to him at bedtime, and Dad would sing him a song or two. But last year they decided he needed an “outdoor” experience, and sent him to a camp in the mountains, where he didn’t get to go home at night, where he had to share a cabin with a bunch of other kids for two weeks. He told them he didn’t want to go this year, but they didn’t care. It felt like they didn’t care about him, like they just wanted him out of the way. Like they hated him.

So when they made him get out of the car, and took his stuff out, it was like he couldn’t breathe, and he told them.

“I hate you,” he said. Because he thought it would make them understand how he felt, and make them change their minds.

It didn’t change anything. They hugged him, told him they loved him, and left him there.

“I won’t say it again,” he sobbed, gazing down at the smoke. “I won’t ever say I hate them. I’ll just say nice things from now on.” He turned to Marisol. “Tell Mr. Marshall to call them so I can tell them I didn’t mean it.”

“Do you see a telephone around here?” she asked.

“When we get back to camp, then,” he said.

“I don’t think we’re going back to camp,” Marisol said.

He stared at her.

“Then how will Mom and Dad know where to come get me?” he demanded.

“Jake…” she began, but broke off and looked away. Mr. Marshall and some of the others were pointing.

Mr. Marshall took out his binoculars.

“Fighter jets,” he said. He suddenly didn’t sound as sad. He sounded stronger, somehow, like he usually did. It made Jake feel better. “F-18s, I think. They’re going after the bastards!”

Jake saw them too. They didn’t look much bigger than flies at this distance, and compared to the spaceship they were tiny, but everyone seemed excited now, yelling and cheering like they were watching a ball game or something.

He knew what a fighter jet was. He had a model one in his room. He’d been to a Blue Angels show last year, watched the planes do all sorts of crazy stunts. He’d even been thinking he might want to be a pilot when he grew up.

“The aliens are sitting ducks,” Hank said. “God, I hope they blow it to pieces.”

So did Jake. He watched, feeling like something was missing. If this were in a movie, there would be music, the roar of aircraft engines, all kinds of noise, but from here it was like watching with the sound turned down. With a really, really big screen.

“They hit it!” Mr. Marshall said, watching through his field glasses. Everyone cheered. Even without the binoculars, Jake could see the little yellow explosions, like matches striking on the side of a matchbox. Everyone kept yelling like crazy, as more and more flashes of light appeared on the huge ship.

Then Jake noticed Mr. Marshall slowly lowering the field glasses. He said some words Jake knew, and knew he wasn’t supposed to say.

“I don’t think they’ve damaged it at all,” Mr. Marshall said.

All of a sudden, something came swarming out of the spaceship like a cloud of gnats. The jet fighters broke out of their neat formations and started flying around like crazy. Bursts of red and orange began to bloom all over the sky, and in moments burning aircraft fell like a fiery rain. Jake wanted to think he was seeing it wrong. Surely the alien ships were the ones exploding.

Eventually it was clear even to him, though, that not a single alien craft had been shot down. No one was shouting anymore. They just watched silently as the F-18s grew fewer and fewer in number. Finally, the remaining planes flew away, pursued by the alien fighters.

“We lost,” Hank whispered. He said it really low, but since no one else was talking, everyone heard him.

“They didn’t even have a chance.”

That wasn’t how it was supposed to be, Jake knew. The good guys were always supposed to have a chance. They were supposed to
win
. When someone blew a city up, they weren’t just supposed to get away with it.

“I want my mom and dad,” Jake said.

“Me too,” Marisol said. “Maybe…”

She didn’t finish.

Mr. Marshall put away his field glasses. He wasn’t crying anymore. He looked sort of sad, but he also looked determined, the way he did when he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to go.”

“Where, Dad?” Hank said. “Where can we go?”

“Someplace safe,” Mr. Marshall said.

When London was destroyed, Dikembe Umbutu was in Oxford with Brian Aldridge, a mate from university. They had started the previous evening at the Old Tom Gristle, a favorite pub of theirs. On any other day they probably would have been discussing football, politics, girls—their antics as seniors—but like everyone else in the place, today their eyes were glued to the television. And not because a game was on.

Typically, the media coverage focused largely on the ships over Western European and American cities, but there was a brief report about the monsters hovering over Lagos, Nigeria, and Dakar, Senegal, which for Dikembe were closer to home.

Of course, the one overshadowing London was nearer to
him
, and everyone else in the Old Tom.

Closing time came, but the owner didn’t shut down. The place became more crowded with people who didn’t quite believe what was going on. One older gentleman insisted that it was all a hoax,
à
la the
War of the Worlds
radio broadcast. The idea caught on, and drinking games were invented. As dawn approached, Dikembe switched from beer to coffee and bought a hot breakfast.

Halfway through the meal, the television showed the torching of London. He and Brian watched, unbelieving, as some of the world’s greatest cities were laid to waste in an instant.

Dikembe finished his coffee and stood up. He stuck out his hand for Brian to shake.

“I’ll see you, old fellow,” he said. “I have to go.”

“What?” Brian said. His face was so drained of color, it nearly matched his cottony hair. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home,” Dikembe said. “May I borrow your bicycle?”

“You can have it, mate,” Brian said, “but you’ll have to pump the tires way up to cross the Channel.”

“I’ll deal with that when I get there,” he said. They shook hands and parted company, as around them the world unraveled.

The bicycle proved the way to go. The main roads were packed, not so much with refugees from London—there weren’t very many of those—but with people fleeing every other city, fearing they were next.

* * *

In some cases, they were right. Birmingham and Liverpool were annihilated within the next day. News of the rest of the world was hard to come by on the road.

He stopped for a sandwich and some crisps at a roadside convenience store whose owner still had the stones and the greed to remain open. Everything was double price. He didn’t flinch about it though, guessing that the ten pounds he’d paid would be worth slightly less than dog piss in a day or two.

He rode south and west toward the coast, skirting very wide around where London used to be, often going cross-country when the roads were too mad. He wasn’t sure what he expected—squads of aliens on the march, fliers murdering people from the air—but if the world was ending, the scenery didn’t know it in the fields and meadows of the West Country.

He first thought to go to Portsmouth, but remembered there was a Navy presence there the aliens might be interested in blasting, so he went farther west to the little resort town of Weymouth. He reached it, exhausted, about eight o’clock in the evening. He couldn’t find a room, but he did find another pub, where he ate and watched the television, which had maddeningly little to say, especially about his homeland. In England and Europe, the pattern was clear—each ship destroyed a city and then moved on to the next. So Lagos was finished. What about Kinshasa? Was it now a smoking ruin like London and Paris? From what he gathered, the first targets had been chosen by size, and some military installations had been targeted, as well.

“Is this seat taken?” someone asked.

He looked up from the well of his thoughts and saw a young woman with slightly wavy flaxen hair and a dimpled chin.

“No,” he said. “Please.” He stood and pulled out the chair for her.

“Oh,” she said. “A gentleman.” She craned her neck in an exaggerated way. “A very tall gentleman. You don’t see that a lot these days. The gentleman part.” She was about his age, maybe twenty-five. Her eyes were gray, and she had a nice smile, judging from the single one she had let slip when he pulled the chair out.

“I still can’t believe it,” she said, looking up at the television. “It’s like science fiction. So unreal.”

“It’s—difficult,” he said.

“Did you have anyone—in any of the cities?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not really. Not that I know of. Where I’m from is pretty far from any major city. And you?”

She nodded. “I’m from Atlanta,” she said, a little sadly. He had noticed the American accent, but had declined to ask about it. People were always making assumptions about him and where he was from, or else fishing to find out. He generally tried not to do the same, and found that people usually wanted to tell you about themselves anyway.

“Atlanta had time to evacuate,” he said.

“I know,” she replied. “I hope they made it out. They would have tried, but there’s no place to call, you know? Even if the phones were working.”

“I know,” he said. He had tried placing a few calls, to no effect. “Look, my name is Dikembe. And you are?”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry, misplaced my manners. I’m Hailey. Pleased to meet you.”

“Hailey, may I fetch you a lager?”

“Yes sir,” she said. “You certainly may.”

He pushed his way politely through the crowd at the bar and ordered the drinks from a young woman with purple hair wearing a railroad engineer’s cap.

“So what brought you to Weymouth?” Hailey asked when he returned.

“Yesterday I was in Oxford,” he replied. “Now I’m trying to return home.”

She nodded. He thought she would ask him if his home was Africa, as if it was a country instead of a continent. He got that a lot.

She surprised him.

“Why Oxford then?” she asked.

“School,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, dipping her finger in the foamy head of her beer. “College man. What did you study?”

“Art,” he said. He took a drink.

“Art,” she repeated. “Every parent’s dream, right? An art major at an expensive school.”

Dikembe smiled.

“My father did not approve,” he admitted. “Drawing and painting aren’t fit pursuits for a man, especially an Umbutu man. I finished my degree two years ago, but I could never quite bring myself to go home. I’ve been working up to a gallery exhibition…” He trailed off, realizing.

“What is it?”

“Well,” he said. “My studio was actually in London, in Earl’s Court. I was just visiting a friend in Oxford.”

“Lucky you,” she said. “Best visit you ever made.”

He thought about the paintings, two years of work…

“Sure,” he said. “Lucky me.”

“And you choose to go home now?” she said. “Why the change of heart?”

He gestured at the television, although at the moment it displayed only static. “Why do you think? I should have returned a long time ago. Now I may have waited too long.”

She took a lingering sip of her beer, looking thoughtful.

“I came over here to go to school too,” she said, “but it didn’t turn out to be my thing. I ended up working on yachts instead.”

“Yachts?” he said. “That must be interesting.”

“It’s a living,” she said. “The travel is fun—I’ve been a lot of places I never imagined I would see—and the owner is almost never on board, so we’re pretty much left to do our own thing. I’m still young, footloose. Surrounded by luxury, even if it doesn’t belong to me. Yeah, it’s kinda cool.”

“Why own a yacht if you’re not going to be on it?” Dikembe wondered.

She shrugged. “He’ll call and say, ‘Take the boat to Marseilles.’ Or Sydney, or wherever. Then he’ll fly in, throw a big party on the yacht for his very important guests, and then fly out, leaving us to clean up and have a few parties of our own.”

They had a few more drinks. She told him about working for a Russian mobster and he told her about growing up on the savanna, and for a little while they almost forgot what was happening in the world around them. Yet it crept back in. Dikembe mused that his handful of paintings weren’t the greatest loss to culture.

“The Louvre is gone,” he said. “The British Museum. The Prado. The Met. MOMA.”

“The house I grew up in,” Hailey countered. “The World of Coke. My parents, maybe.” She sighed. “The two of us, tomorrow or the next day, if things keep going this way. They’re beating the hell out of us. What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” Dikembe said. “Maybe they just don’t like cities.”

“We’re never going to get this off our minds with that thing on.” She waved at the television. It was now replaying footage of London going up in flames.

“What do you suggest?” he asked.

“There’s booze on the boat,” she said. Her expression was somewhere between shy and artful. He wasn’t sure which was affected.

* * *

Lao Lei climbed into the cockpit of the Shenyang J-8, familiarizing himself with the controls as quickly as he could. He had trained and flown somewhat more modern jets, most of which were now piles of wreckage near the ruin that was once Beijing.

“That’s okay,” he said to the plane. “You and I, we’re going to be friends.” He started through his checklist, just as the others in his squadron were doing.

Lu, one of the ground crew, looked up at him.

“Do you believe it?” Lu asked him. “Do you think the American plan is real?”