Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization (26 page)

But Charlie didn’t.

* * *

“Detonation sequence initiated,” Lieutenant Ritter said.

Jake’s voice crackled over the comm again. “Tell P—love—her!”

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

Ritter monitored the countdown.

“Three,” he said.

“Two.

“One.”

Jake was rapidly losing the rest of his vision from the force of his fighter’s spin, but when the bombs went off, he was still together enough to notice that he hadn’t been vaporized. A hundred tiny stars appeared simultaneously inside the immense dome—but each was contained in a tight sphere, each not much larger than a bomber.

“N—negative impact! The bombs were contained—by an energy shield—” He tried to say more, but he was completely out of breath. The simulators had never been like this.

One of his plane’s wings snapped off, and other pieces started to follow.

The bottom of the alien ship was coming up mighty fast. Now maybe it was time to eject.

* * *

“The ship’s outer doors are closing!” the first flight officer said. In a state of complete shock, everyone in the command center watched the massive hangar doors shut.

“We’ve lost their signal, sir,” Ritter reported.

David kicked a console, angry and frustrated. Patricia stood motionless, unable to process what she’d just heard. Jake was alive, or had been a moment ago. How many other pilots were trapped inside the alien ship? How would they get them out?

“Something’s happening!” one of the staff officers alerted them.

David raced to one of the monitors feeding satellite views of the alien ship from different orbital vantage points. A small opening, neither a hangar bay nor a cannon aperture, was forming at a point on the hull distant from the location of the Legacy Squadron dogfight. An object of some sort—moving too fast to identify or see in any detail—shot up out of the ship. Another satellite picked up its trajectory. As it got to the boundary between atmosphere and space, it exploded, sending an expanding concentric wavefront washing around the Earth.

As the wavefront touched each satellite in low Earth orbit, a tiny flash of light appeared, signaling the satellite’s destruction. Much higher up, in geostationary orbit, other satellites blew apart, joining the wreckage of the orbital cannons in a ring of debris.

One by one, the monitors in the command center fizzled out, and a moment later the room went dark. Illuminated only by emergency lights, officers and staff swung into action, trying to recover their surveillance capabilities and get the power working again. In the midst of it all, David sank into a chair, heartsick and defeated.

“She baited us,” he said to no one in particular.

Their best shot had been wasted.

* * *

Catherine Marceaux took the images from Okun’s room straight to the one person on Earth she thought might know enough to help her understand them. In a dark room generally used for interrogations, she sat with Dikembe Umbutu, displaying the images on a large screen.

“You understand some of their language,” she said urgently. “I want you to tell me if any of these symbols mean anything to you.”

Dikembe looked doubtful. “We only decoded a handful of their symbols, and even those we can’t be sure of.”

“Please try,” she said.

He focused on the first image she displayed.

“Anything?” Catherine asked.

Dikembe shook his head. She cycled forward to the next image.

“What about this one?”

* * *

The interior of Cheyenne Mountain facility was barely controlled chaos, with people swarming in every direction, trying to reestablish contact with the outside world. In the control room, President Lanford waited as long as she could, but finally she lost her patience.

“Someone give me a situation report!”

“We’re trying,” Tanner said, “but all satellites are down. We’re completely blind.”

The president didn’t reply. Between that and the failure of the bombing run, she thought things had about hit rock bottom.

Then emergency klaxons sounded. “What’s that?”

“Proximity alert,” a nearby officer responded.

“How close are they?” Lanford demanded.

A huge, echoing boom answered her question as a plasma beam cut through the reinforced concrete wall of the control room, scattering chunks of debris. Everyone dove for cover, and when Lanford stood up again she saw that the rug in the middle of the room was on fire. It bore the presidential seal.

Through the smoke, aliens appeared, walking down a tunnel they had cut from the surface. Lanford had never seen them before—not in person—but she’d watched enough video footage to know that these were twice as big as the ones they’d encountered last time. The aliens hadn’t wasted the twenty years since the War of ’96 either.

They were headed straight for her.

“Get behind me, Madam President!” Tanner shouted. He grabbed a fallen officer’s sidearm and emptied it at the approaching figures, joined a moment later by fire from Secret Service agents. The bullets had no visible effect on the aliens. The nearest of them whipped out a tentacle and put an end to Tanner’s unexpected show of bravery.

Even in the middle of the chaos, Lanford was affected by his devotion. She’d always considered him a purely political animal, and now he had defended her with his life.

She didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because the next person the aliens grabbed was her.

* * *

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico, Sam drove past a mile-long lineup of cars waiting at a gas station.

“Look at the line,” she said. “There’s like a thousand cars. We’ll never get gas here.”

“Have a little faith,” Julius said.

“Really?” she responded. “You want to talk about faith? My parents are probably dead, and most of my friends—”

“She’s only upset because her boyfriend, Kyle, is for sure a goner,” Bobby said.

At that, Sam broke down in tears. Shooting a venomous look at Bobby, Julius said, “Pull over, sweetie. Get some air.” Sam eased the car to a halt on the left side of the road, which made Julius nervous. She got out and stared at the horizon.

Poor kid
, Julius thought. He walked around the car to stand beside her.

“I’m very sorry for everything you’re going through,” he said quietly. Then he looked back at the other children, and made sure she saw him looking. “But they’re still here. And so are you.” He wasn’t getting through to her. She just stared off into space. “I lost David’s mother when he was very young,” Julius went on. “I didn’t think I could go on, but I knew I had to, for him.”

“What’s your point?” she said.

One hundred percent teenager, this one
, Julius thought.

“You’re gonna have to do the same thing for your little brothers and sister, and when it feels impossible, ask for help from the big guy up there.” He gestured toward the sky. “You might be surprised by how much he listens.”

She went silent, and he figured she was thinking about it. Kindness almost always got through, in his experience, even if expressions of faith didn’t. Just then, a gas station attendant came walking along the road.

“We’re all out!” he shouted. “Sorry. Pumps are dry!” He didn’t even go back to the station, just kept on walking.

“Clearly
he’s
taken the day off,” Sam said bitterly.

Julius waved this little obstacle away.

“Something will come up,” he replied stoically. “Now let me drive, give you a bit of a break.”

Sam looked better. More together.

She looked at him and said, “You would’ve been a good grandpa.”

This gave Julius a little pang.

“Maybe one day,” he said as Sam handed him the keys.

* * *

Flanked by two Marines, Lieutenant Ritter entered the command center, where General Adams was trying to get reports on the status of the aliens’ drilling progress, other nations’ military responses… anything. But they were for all intents and purposes cut off from the world. He turned to Ritter and noted immediately that one of the Marines carried the suitcase known colloquially as the football.

“General, Cheyenne Mountain is gone,” Ritter said, keeping his professional cool even in the direst of circumstances. “All seventeen members of the presidential line of succession are presumed dead. To the best of our knowledge, you’re the highest-ranking officer still alive.”

The other Marine held a Bible out at waist height, for General Adams’s right hand.

“We need to swear you in, sir,” Ritter continued.

David Levinson watched the proceedings with visible cynicism. “I’d say congratulations, but under the circumstances, it seems more appropriate to wish you good luck.”

Then he got up and left. Adams placed his hand on the Bible and the Marine began to administer the presidential oath of office.

* * *

Whitmore had been right all along, and he’d never wished so hard that he would be wrong. This was even worse than ’96. Much worse. They were scattered, isolated, defenseless… and mourning.

His cane clicked along the concrete floor as he searched through the personnel section of Area 51 until he found Patricia. She was in the pilots’ locker room, sitting in front of a particular locker.

Joints creaking, Whitmore sat down on the long bench next to her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“They never had a chance,” she said, her voice dull and almost without inflection. “You were right. We’re not gonna beat them this time.”

Whitmore just looked at her, his beautiful and intelligent and resourceful daughter, who had survived so much when she was a child and lost her mother in this very research complex. He wished he could say something to comfort her, but he knew anything he said would be a lie.

The first thing Jake heard when he started to regain consciousness was screaming.

Human screaming.

Then he registered gunfire, and reflexively grabbed around for a weapon, but he couldn’t reach anything. He opened his eyes, his head clearing a little, and he saw that he was hanging from some kind of giant machine, moving slowly through an endless field of otherworldly vegetation. He’d have thought he was dead and in some insane afterlife if he wasn’t hearing people screaming.

Or maybe this was hell?

He looked around, swinging in his chute harness, which was caught on a protruding part of the harvester. In the distance he saw alien soldiers massacring the surviving pilots. The wreckage of burning jets and bombers—and a lot of alien fighters, as well—speckled the field as far as the eye could see.

So he was alive, but maybe not for long, if he didn’t get moving.

Jake unbuckled the chute harness and fell into the marshy field with a splash. The water was up to his knees, and cold as hell. He got to his feet and looked around, and the first thing he saw was a detachment of alien soldiers headed right for him. They opened fire, shredding the vegetation around him. He lost his balance trying to run, and someone came out of nowhere, tackling him out of the way of a second barrage.

When he got himself clear of the muck again he saw that his rescuer was none other than Dylan Hiller, who had taken a round to the leg while saving Jake. Dylan was tough, however—he took off running.

“Your leg,” Jake said, and he ran after him, just catching Dylan’s answer.

“I’ll live.”

They ran until they found a thicket that might provide some decent cover, and ducked out of sight.

“We gotta get the hell out of here,” Jake whispered.

“They’re closing in on both sides,” Dylan said, looking back toward their pursuers. “There’s nowhere to run.”

The aliens came closer. Jake held as still as he ever had in his life. It wasn’t going to work, though. They were on the verge of being discovered when there was a tap from Dylan. He looked over and saw Dylan slipping down under the water.

Good idea
, Jake thought. He sucked in a deep gulp of air and did the same, hoping he could hold his breath long enough for the aliens to pass by.

* * *

Julius rolled down the main street of some one-horse town in the middle of Nevada at about fifteen miles an hour, ignoring the blaring horns and upraised fingers of passing traffic.

“If we go any slower, we’ll be going backwards,” Bobby griped.

Julius didn’t want to hear it. “We have to conserve our gas.”

“Area 51 is still seventy-five miles away, and we’re running on fumes,” Sam said. She was right, but Julius didn’t know what to do about it. They hadn’t seen a gas station with working pumps all day.

Up ahead, he saw a school bus on the side of the road, its side painted with the words CAMP JACKRABBIT. A dozen or so kids wearing rabbit ears hung around outside the bus, trying to stay out of the merciless Nevada sun. Julius thought something didn’t seem right, so he pulled the car to a stop and powered down the passenger side window.

“Who’s in charge here?”

A freckled redheaded boy with a name tag that said “Henry” answered.

“No one. Our driver left us to take a ride to Minnesota.”

“He left you? Just like that?” Julius was disgusted. Who would do that to a bunch of kids in rabbit ears?

“He went to go have sex with his girlfriend,” another kid said—this one with the name tag “Dennis.”

“It’s his wife, stupid.” That was “Kevin.”

Julius had an idea. He got out of the car.

“Where are you going?” Sam asked, but he didn’t answer until he’d climbed into the bus and turned the ignition, just to see. The gas gauge went up, up… three-quarters of a tank! Even in a gas-guzzling hog like this, he thought, that had to be enough to make seventy-five miles.

He stuck his head out of the window.

“All aboard!”

“What about our car?”

“We’ll get you a new one when you get your license,” Julius said. He was impatient to take advantage of this good fortune, and get going to see David. His son would have answers. “Everyone in! We’re off to see the wizard!”

* * *

In the fields hundreds of feet below Rain Lao’s dangling feet, the massacre of the other surviving pilots was over. Alien soldiers filed back into their troop transports. They hadn’t seen Rain, but it wouldn’t matter soon, because she was snagged on a protruding piece of the ship’s interior, with a fatal fall below her and her parachute slowly tearing loose above.