Hostile Takeover
At the Firestone Town Meeting Chambers
The meeting chambers, situated in a large brick building, had been flooded with anxious, clamoring people.
Elders shouted in consternation to each other. Adults, arms crossed and stances wide, territorial even, kept their confused young children in check or searched for friends to mingle with. Teenagers exchanged the word amongst their own, glaring about belligerently as if expecting an attack like the one that had demolished the town hospital.
The mayor, a portly balding man in a black suit, ambled out of the building and held up a hand for silence, clutching a megaphone in the other. He pressed a button and the megaphone gave a wailing whoop. People flinched and someone’s baby whimpered with discomfort.
Towards the edge of the gathering, Nikki stood tense behind Tyson’s wheelchair. For the umpteenth time she did a count to make sure that her friends were all nearby, while reading their emotions.
Lia, her blond hair bleached white as bone under the bright lights flooding the parking lot, impatiently checked the time on her cellphone, looking over the heads in front of her towards the agitated mayor.
Ben stood beside his girlfriend Kitty, who fiddled with the ends of her dark, curly hair. His gaze occasionally but discreetly flicked to Donovan, the boy who had saved Nikki’s life in the hospital explosion, as if suspicious. But Donovan was as stiff and blank-faced as stone.
Vince, hunched in on himself, shifted from foot to foot like a bear. He stared up at the stars, clearly wishing for all the world, as Nikki knew that all of the others did, that their friend Jonathan wasn’t missing and that everything was as it had once been.
Of course, Jonathan was more than a friend to Nikki.
Nikki examined her shoelaces to keep from weeping. Jonathan, the young man she loved and her best friend, had been missing for weeks now, and she was starting to lose hope that she would ever see him again. She looked up around her, at her friends and the other people gathered in the cold. That’s why everyone was there.
People had been going missing. Natural disasters were tearing across the world in abundance and out of season. Crime sprees and general violence had spiked country-wide. Everyone wanted answers—and needed a plan of action.
The mayor’s voice belted staticky from his megaphone, and voices hushed into an attentive quiet.
“People of Firestone! As you may be aware, every Thursday night we gather to discuss local events and any issues that need to be resolved. It saddens me that we are all here on this particular night because of the grievous events of the past month. Terrorist attacks have claimed lives. Kidnappings take place on our safest streets. And gangs seem to be sprouting up in full force from the most unlikely of places. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Why doesn’t anyone seem to know what’s going on? I hope that by putting our collective minds together this evening, we can do more than just panic alone and live in fear. Perhaps we can create a game plan.
“There are almost four times as many people here tonight than ever before, so the board members and I have set apart six rooms, one for each of us to meet with perhaps twenty at a time. That should be enough. One of the rooms, the first down the hall and to the left is for young adults 14 to 20 only and will be led by our youth committee member, Josiah Fairbanx. All children younger than 14 are welcome to wait in the hall or meet in room 63 down the stairs. Mothers and fathers please take your babies there too if you wish, there will be daycare management.”
It was miracle enough that the townsfolk had been able to hold their tongues even during this short speech. But now they resumed clamoring as they bustled forwards towards the doors.
“Josiah, I like him,” Nikki remarked. Josiah was hers and Jonathan’s school counselor. He was a polite young man in his late-twenties who had always shown interest in Nikki and her boyfriend, as if they were all close next-door neighbors. She began pushing Ty forward.
Tyson sat in still, subdued silence, but Nikki could see the cogs working behind his eyes. There was no doubt he was thinking of questions to bring up to Josiah. He had recovered extremely well from the plane crash he’d survived almost a month ago. Despite the haggard pallor in his face and the gruesome scars on his hand where he had almost lost three fingers, his eyes were alert.
“I don’t know what they think’ll happen,” Ben muttered behind Nikki. She turned and frowned at him over her shoulder. With a spurt of irritation, she noticed that he had purposefully fallen back to allow Donovan to walk in front of him, as if he expected Donovan to stick a knife in his spine. His strange distrust of the kid who had saved her life frustrated her. When the hospital where Tyson had been recovering from the plane crash he’d survived had blown up, Donovan had rescued Nikki, catching her before she could plummet out a window to her death—and yet Ben treated her hero like he had sinister ulterior motives.
“You never know,” Kitty said, her tone optimistic and encouraging as always, though the gleam in her eyes had dulled. “If we all share our experiences then maybe someone can take our stories and put them together like a puzzle to make sense of them. Right, Donovan?”
To Nikki’s surprise, Donovan flinched at being addressed by Kitty, as if her words stung him. Avoiding her eyes he gave a brisk nod but said nothing. Kitty gave Nikki a mildly offended look but Ben reached forward, took her hand, and pulled her beside him to kiss her cheek.
Nikki heard him lean aside to mutter something to Vince, who turned on Donovan a look of appraisal, and shook herself. Ben’s suspicion and Donovan being startled at sweet Kitty’s voice had to have been the result of tension; of stress. Everyone was acting strange, what with the whole world crashing around their heads. Tonight, she promised herself she would leave the meeting chambers with answers.
Their meeting room was packed full of all sorts of kids. Nikki and her friends recognized most of them from school. They had all gathered into their cliques: shy kids with shy kids, material girls with material girls, athletes with athletes and so on. But all looked worried and sickly. They brooded, arms folded and legs crossed at the knees, displaying nervous tics like chewing their nails, twirling their hair, and biting their lips.
Josiah sat at the head of the table, a long, polished hunk of wood bare but for a few pencils. He seemed comfortable compared to the kids, his feet up on the tabletop, his big leather boss’s chair tilted back. His hands were clasped behind his head and there was something about his pointed face that made him look important and authoritarian. His long-ish black hair, rather like Jonathan’s but more shaggy, was clean and combed, his olive eyes taking in everyone’s expressions and seeming to analyze them. Josiah always dressed festively, like a man going to a party. Tonight, he donned deep-green cargo pants and a scarlet button-up flannel shirt with yellow lines that ran up and down it in an orderly pattern.
He waited until the last person to enter closed the door and then spoke in that laid-back, calm way of his.
“Let’s bring this to business, shall we? In an orderly fashion, might someone begin our discussion? We’ll start with questions.”
All at once, shouts rose up like a riptide. Nikki winced and Lia covered her ears. Josiah blinked furiously and managed to talk over the hubbub, though it didn’t seem as if he had raised his voice.
“People! Please, please, please…please! Shhhhh…” The clamoring ebbed into frustrated murmurs as other kids struck up the task of quieting their fellows.
Josiah got everyone to raise their hand before speaking, and the meeting settled into a dull Q and A, except that hardly anyone had any A’s. Throughout the whole thing, as questions became more pointed and specific, as other kids told of their experiences, of glimpsing strange people in dark robes and developing vivid, detailed night terrors, something like a memory nagged at the back of Nikki’s mind. She felt as if something important hovered at the fringes of her thoughts; some sort of information she could contribute. But first, she had to remember it herself.
That evening in the park with Jon, after he had led the football team to victory against their school rivals... Something had taken place then that fit like a puzzle piece into this whole mess. A group of men had jumped them, taunted Jonathan, called him a prince…but that didn’t seem to mean a thing. There was something else. Something Jonathan had said…
They had been so scary, so abnormal...and they had known Garrett.
In days Garrett had transformed from the brutal school thug who everyone tried to avoid into some sort of savage monster that had nearly, remorselessly, led a kid to getting killed snowboarding on the mountain. Garrett had always harbored an intense hatred for Jonathan, and his friends by extension. Once, he had shamed Nikki, had touched her, and had it not been for her own intervention, she had little doubt that Jonathan may well have killed Garrett for it. Most of the school believed that Garrett had had a part to play in Jonathan’s disappearance, including Nikki and her friends, but Garrett had vanished just as mysteriously as Jonathan had, his house as empty as if it had never been lived in, and the police, overwhelmed as they already were with the hospital bombing and the kidnappings and the uptick in violence had little time or resources to spare in launching an intensive investigation.
Nikki remembered her last conversation with Jonathan, discussing Garrett’s potential for being involved in the strange things happening in town and across the country, even the world. Was that it? Was that significant? Was that what she’d wanted to share?
Nikki strained her mind like she was twisting water from a cloth. There was more to it…but she was getting closer. Beside her, Donovan slid his hand down on the arm of his chair, gripping it tightly.
The next day, after the incident in the park, Jonathan had said something about them...called them something and said they were pure evil. He had seemed to have known something…and then he had vanished. How could she have forgotten that? What was the connection?
A haze was lifting from her mind, unsticking as if it were reluctant. Donovan stood gracefully beside her and excused himself to the bathroom, sounding weak. Nikki nodded distantly.
What had he called them? In all of the chaos with Jonathan going missing and her own near-death experience she had forgotten. Or had she? She had been about to explain to her friends the day that vehicle had crashed into the hospital and detonated. The haze kept drifting away, as if sucked through an invisible tube. Rakers…Rain…Rainer…Rankers! Everything snapped into focus.
“Rankers!” Nikki shouted. She saw Josiah smile slowly and only half-realized that he had been watching her think the whole time. Faces turned to her, blank and questioning.
“What did you say?” an older guy asked, brows raised.
Nikki explained in a rush of words. “The people attacking us call themselves Rankers.”
Faces fell when no one recognized the name. They had at least been hoping to know exactly who was attacking them.
Nikki urgently raised her voice, cold shivers stealing over her skin: “They want to corrupt us! Kill us! It’s what they do, it’s like their whole purpose.”
“Nikki?” Tyson murmured, stunned. He craned his head back to stare up at her.
Kitty, sounding worried for her friend’s sanity, asked gently, “How do you know this?”
Nikki clawed her hair away from her face and behind her shoulders impatiently. The words flew from her lips before she had time to process them and take in what she was saying.
“My boyfriend told me.”
Tyson gave a jolt as if he’d been electrified. Vince’s eyes widened. Lia’s hands flew to her mouth, Kitty gasped, and Ben recoiled as if struck, his expression pained.
“What’s a Ranker?” a young woman asked.
“How does your boyfriend know?” asked someone else.
“What do they want?” came a question from the back of the room and suddenly desperate questions were boiling up from every corner.
“Oh brother, her boyfriend?” A guy in a hoodie near the doors sneered scornfully, his tone angry and abrasive. “Big deal. Everyone knows this is all just some elaborate hoax; terrorists or something. She’s making stuff up to get attention!”
Many of the other youths cast him anxious, disdainful looks, disapproving of his tone.
Furious, Nikki exclaimed, “My boyfriend, Jonathan He’klarr, told me!”
At this, a hush crashed down on their heads ominously. Everyone knew Jonathan or had at least heard that he had gone missing.
One younger boy had looked up at Jon’s name. It was Carl; a young man whom Jonathan had once saved from being eaten by a bear up in the mountains. His lips twitched in remorse at Jonathan’s name, but his dark eyes were expectant. He had experienced first hand Jonathan’s selfless heroism. While nursing a sprained ankle alone on the cold mountain, hungry predators had circled closer. Carl had called for help as the surety of his impending death had crept in upon him. Then Jonathan had appeared like a bright light to pierce shadow. Who better to know the darkness than someone with a light as bright as Jonathan’s? So Carl instantly believed Nikki, and was ready to learn all he could about this new, unknown enemy.
Ben didn’t seem to be on the same page.
He whispered hastily into Kitty’s ear, “Bathroom, be back. Tell me everything later.”
Nikki overheard him and turned to give him a flustered look. Given what she had to say, she thought that Ben could wait to take a potty break later. But before either her or Kitty could ask questions, Ben slipped out the doors and disappeared.
“I’m not lying,” Nikki fumed, her face flushed, turning back around to glare at the skeptic glaring by the exit. Josiah’s hands were steepled and he watched her over them, seeming amused by something; encouraging and expectant.
Nikki growled, “You all knew him.” There were morose nods. “He was a friend to all of us.”
She pointed suddenly at a scruffy girl in a tie-dye beanie, who jumped fretfully.
“Do you remember when he fixed your skateboard and then afterwards helped you personalize it? It was the talk of the skate park for weeks!”
The girl bit her lip and nodded.
Nikki redirected her point to a handsome boy her age with curly hair. His face twisted in chagrin when he saw that he was going to be picked on next.
Voice shaky with suppressed sobs, Nikki said, “When your girlfriend’s dog got stuck in a drainage pipe, Jonathan climbed down and got all mucky and soaking to rescue it and let you have the credit for saving it.”
Nikki’s gaze landed briefly on Carl. The boy sat up straighter, waiting for her to address the great thing that Jonathan had done for him, but Nikki only smiled sadly and looked around her at the attentive faces.
“He wouldn’t tell me anything but the truth. Especially about something as serious as these catastrophes.”
“She’s lying!” rebuked another scowling boy in a black hoodie. He stood with his hands in his pockets in the corner nearest the first malcontent. Nikki hadn’t noticed him before. There was something odd about him. In her startled surprise it took Nikki a few seconds to realize what it was: though everyone else sat in frustration, anger, or dire dismay, the corners of his mouth fought to smile. He held himself as one who knew a juicy and unpleasant secret.
Josiah leaned forward, frowning at the boy. His knuckles were white on the arms of his chair.
“No!” Nikki objected, voice pitching into tones of desperation. “It’s the truth, I swear!”
The hoodie-boy moved forward to lean against the table’s edge with the stealthy grace of a cat. Sneering across the table challengingly, he said, “The people attacking us only wish for peace. But as with any great change, there arises opposition and that opposition must first be annihilated. Such is the way of war. Such is the way of...conquest.”
Faces revealed shock. Those nearest to the crazy hoodie-boy scooted away.
All at once, the boy moved aside out of the way of the doors, Josiah launched to his feet, and a host of people in black robes burst in. Their movements coordinated, precise, as if rehearsed, they surrounded everyone. Their faces were all covered in deep, cavernous hoods. No light reached their faces. Those nearest the door parted and one more person entered. His hood was down and he held a large gutting knife. Kids screamed and ducked or threw themselves backward. Those that scrambled for the doors or a window were shoved back.
The newcomer leveled his weapon at Josiah. “Sit down,” he ordered smoothly.
Josiah sank obediently into his chair, and from where Nikki stood, it almost seemed as if his eyes were alternately blinking white and red. Terror and adrenaline chewed her heart as the gunman turned to face her.
“There’s a new gang in town,” the knifeman grinned. His black hair framed his piercing green hawk-eyes, which were narrowed malevolently.
The boy aiming the gun directly at Nikki’s chest…was Garrett.
At Jonathan’s House
Ethan He’klarr teetered on the steps of a rickety, creaky ladder. He smiled to himself, ignoring the burn in the muscles of his arm from holding it up for so long. A drop of green paint splashed onto his upraised cheek, but he simply rubbed it away on his shoulder.
His wife may have passed away long ago, but ever since he had heard her voice, telling him that their son Jonathan was alive, Ethan had felt a sense of purpose and focus that he had not possessed in more than ten years. For starters, Ethan had stopped watching the increasingly depressing news, had stopped hanging out with the wrong crowd after work, had gotten rid of all the alcohol in the house, and had started living his life again.
Cleaning up the house had been a lonely but distracting chore, and the company where he had been employed as an electrician was contemplating letting him back on full-time at regular hours. Jonathan had tried to do their taxes and pay the bills with the income from his job, but now Ethan was ready to take over and be the parent he was supposed to be. When Jonathan came home, Ethan wanted him to see a new man.
After the initial task of fixing up the home, Ethan had gone out and bought paint for one more job. Now he was in his son’s room, doing his best to finish up the fantastic mural that his son had been painting on the ceiling. He himself was no major artist, but the painting was coming along nicely.
Half paying attention to the local podcast cracking jokes and discussing high school sports from his phone resting on Jon’s bed, he almost didn’t notice the sudden hush in the hosts’ raucous laughter.
Ethan frowned at his phone, waiting, wondering if the wifi had dropped or if his phone had died, but then he picked up faint voices, as if the hosts had leaned away from their microphones to have a low conversation.
After a minute had passed and the podcast still had not resumed, Ethan set down his brush, picked his way down the ladder, and picked up his phone—then abruptly dropped it when one of the men began speaking loudly and dazedly, as if he’d just seen something extremely shocking.
“Breaking news, Firestonians. There’s been some kind of commotion at the meeting chambers—my daughter just called and-and said that…”
His co-host joined in with a bit more alarm— “Our employees are getting calls from loved ones who attended the meeting tonight, reporting that a small group of gunmen are holding them hostage. I don’t know what’s happening, but a cavalcade of patrol cars just raced by, and—with everything else going on, I dunno, something isn’t right. I’m going to go check it out, man.”
There were more sounds of commotion away from the microphones, a jumble of voices and doors opening and closing.
For a moment, Ethan stood stock still, holding the phone away and watching it as if it would grow a mouth and start talking to him. After a moment of fighting with himself over what to do, Ethan He’klarr closed the podcast, set his jaw, grabbed his coat, and was out the door.
