Above From Below

Part One

Beneath an unusually dark sky, a building in the middle of nowhere, West Texas, sits as it gets pelted by heavy rain mixed with hail. The warning systems at the National Weather Service were right, and the storm was developing into a supercell. It gave off strange atmospheric readings that kept the one person assigned to the observation post busy.

Nico Gonzalez volunteered for the assignment. He was working on his degree and needed the money, so working as a weather monitoring technician was an easy gig. It gave him time to study while he worked the three twelve-hour shifts a week. For a college student, the forty-dollar-an-hour pay helped offset the cost of tuition, made housing more affordable, and allowed him to afford dating from time to time.

As the storm outside roared and the sounds of hail tapping on the roof grew louder, Nico watched the screens in front of him, sipping a cup of coffee, occasionally exchanging text messages with his girlfriend. Andrea was nice and hardworking. She had her nursing degree finished and was working in the emergency department at Midland Memorial. As another text from Andrea popped up on his screen, he smiled. She was always one of the nicest people, but had an E.R. nurse's sense of humor.

One of the alarms went off at the observatory station, and Nico jumped. This was the loudest alarm he had heard, and from one of the screens he normally didn’t monitor. Being the only one there, Nico had to check the monitor and report the alert to his superiors. Reading the alert, Nico scratched his head, his mouth agape. The images coming in were astonishing. He knew the satellite access systems well enough to read where the anomaly was coming from. What he was seeing, however, didn’t make any sense.

Nico entered the record command and began downloading the alert to the servers at the observatory. As the information was saved, he picked up a phone and dialed. When a voice answered on the other side, Nico started to report the incident. His voice stammered a bit, and his boss told him to spit it out.

“Sir,” he hesitated, “I think you should take a look at the Antarctic Alert System.”

Nico hesitated, his boss telling him to hold. As the satellite images continued to come in, he realized that this wasn’t just the AAS system reporting an anomaly. This was coming from two separate systems.

“Um, yes sir. I’m seeing them both. Everything is downloading to the servers,” he explained to his boss. “Yes sir, classified. I understand.”

The morning shift technician walked in as Nico was hanging up with the director. Her name was Samantha. She was always friendly and brought donuts in for the mornings. Usually, Nico would stick around and have a few, but it was Saturday, and he was looking forward to curling up with Andrea and spending the day together for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Nico packed his bag and left the building, holding his bag over his head as he ran to his Charger. Moments later, he pulled onto the highway to Midland. It was still dark out because of the storm front resting over the region. The rain coming down was heavier than normal for the region, and the roads were saturated. Waters ran across them, the ditches overflowing and causing flooded areas.

It was about twenty minutes into his drive before he saw another car on the road. Nico looked in the rearview, noticing headlights approaching at an accelerated speed. He thought about the roads and how quickly the car was approaching. They’re gonna end up hydroplaining, he told himself.

It took less than a minute for the lights to catch up to him. A black Suburban started trying to pass him, and Nico let off the gas. The last thing he wanted was for them to hit a deep spot and lose control with him right next to them. He watched carefully as the Suburban was nearly even with him.

What are they doing, he wondered.

The passenger window of the Suburban opened as it caught up. Nico looked to his left, seeing the barrel as the glass shattered in front of his face. The second shot stopped everything, and his Charger began to spin out of control as it ran off the road, into a deep gully. The Suburban stopped alongside the road. A woman stepped out, something in her hand. As the rains continued to pour over her, soaking her clothes, she pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it at the Charger. A moment later, the black Charger exploded into a bright orange fireball that lit up the early morning sky.