October 17, 2003

Eyes shutting lazily, Abi breathed in Anthony’s scent as she rested her head on his shoulder. Anthony took her hand in his, caressing her thumb gently with his own before leaning his head against hers and sighing contentedly. A deafening screech jolted them then, as a bright flash whizzed across the night sky, above the tops of the dense trees surrounding them. It brightened ever still against their eyelids until–startled–they both sat board-straight, examining the outside through the car’s windshield.

“What was that?” Abi whispered, glancing between her husband and the sky, the edges of her words taking on an air of uneasiness.

Cautiously, eyes trained upward, Anthony turned off the car’s headlights, “I’m not sure,” he killed the ignition, “do you think it went towards the woods?”

“I didn’t get a good enough look.”

A low, consistent hum overtook them and it seemed as though they heard it not only in their ears, but in their heads, and felt it in their bodies, rumbling the car in a soft buzz. Anthony opened his door first, the vibratory sound–the feeling–permeated the entirety of the outdoors, and as Abita left the car to join by his side, they took in the sight of a sleek, steel disk hovering a few hundred yards away in the sky, a bright beam descending towards the ground below it through an opening at the bottom of the object. They shared a glance with one another before setting off in the direction of the object, the view of any continued happenstance obscured by the old, high-reaching pine trees. The event was over almost as soon as it started, a screech and a bright flash perforating the sky, the hum leaving their bodies and their surroundings, although they still felt racked by dull trembles. They jogged towards the woods, Abi always a little bit behind Anthony, wonder and fear equally churning their bellies. About a hundred yards out, they noticed a number of people hurrying out from the area over which they had estimated the disk to have hovered. A group of men, were they? Dressed in suits in the middle of the woods?

“Hey!” Anthony cupped his hand around his mouth, shouting towards the group, “Is everyone alright?”

The men stopped in their tracks as they acknowledged the couple moving towards them. They looked between each other, stricken with something that Abi thought might be surprise or panic.

“What was that?” Anthony asked, closing the distance at last.

“Uh,” one of the men stuttered, looking among the others as if searching for an explanation, “you can’t be out here.”

Abi felt a pang in her chest, a feeling she had come to recognize, over the years, as intuition and the dread that tends to accompany it, and so she took a small step backward. Carefully, she said, “This is a public area. We were just worried that someone may have been hurt–”

“You can’t be here,” the man repeated more adamantly, taking an abrupt step toward Abi.

Anthony raised one arm, instinctively placing his hand on Abi’s stomach to separate her from the men, guiding her behind himself. “We’ll leave. We just wanted to know if you saw what we saw, we wanted to make sure everyone was alright. It seemed like there was a disc and some flashing lights and–”

The man across from Anthony pulled a gun and aimed it at his chest. Abi whimpered behind him, burying her face into his back and squeezing his hand tightly.

“Anthony, please, please.” Panic seeped into her words as she stifled a sob.

Anthony flinched, eyes widening and pulse quickening, “Easy,” he said, his voice unsteady against his will. He breathed deeply and raised his other hand, which betrayed him as it shook, “We’ll go.”

The man held his position across from Anthony as the other men began resting their hands against holstered guns.

He took another step back, sweating now, vision tunneling as his voice trembled, “Please, please just let us go. We’ll forget what we saw here. We won’t tell anybody, my wife, she’s–”

“Please,” Abi sobbed behind him, the word petering out at the end against her stilted breath. She now cradled her slightly rounded belly with her hands, her tears falling to stain the top of the shirt which covered the small bump.

Anthony began backing away, still holding one hand out towards the men in caution, the other guiding Abi backwards toward the direction from which they came. He scrutinized the men carefully as he and his wife slowly established several yards of distance from the group. Once he determined that the men made no such moves as to follow after them, the two turned, increasing in urgency to a speed walk. 

“No sudden movements until they’re out of sight,” Anthony whispered, “it’s going to be okay. Let’s just get to the car.”

The woods curved around a clump of trees that led back to where their car sat, separating the road from the field, and once they rounded the curve, the two broke into a sprint, clinging to each other’s hands. They reached the car and threw themselves inside, Anthony momentarily fumbling with the keys in his alarm, hands shaking as he pushed the key into the ignition and started the car. He shifted the car into drive and squeaked the tires, peeling out from the shoulder and back onto the road. He took a deep breath and glanced at Abi who silently caressed her belly as fat tears poured from her eyes, staining her cheeks. With her free hand, she squeezed his hand, and he returned the gesture in hopes that he might be able to comfort her.

“We’re okay,” he cooed, “we’re okay.”

His words felt hollow as they left his mouth. Although he hoped to calm his wife, his own anxiety ticked ever higher as he tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. As he rounded a corner, he noticed a black town car gaining on them. His eyes shifted between the road and his rearview mirror, realization stirring the bile in his stomach as the town car didn’t slow to adjust for his presence. He pressed on the gas, murmuring an expletive, and let go of Abi’s hand to grip the steering wheel more securely. Abi whimpered, turning slightly in her seat to glimpse the car behind them.

“Oh my god!” She shrieked, “Is it them? Are they following us?” Desperation laced through her words, her voice climbing an octave.

“I’ll lose them,” he glanced once more into the rearview mirror and then back at the road where he spotted the next turn he would take. He yanked the gearshift, accommodating for the tight right-turn, losing the other car as his tires screeched against the pavement. He accelerated again, quickly dismissing the relief he so desperately wanted to feel. As his heart pounded in his chest, threatening to leap right out as it felt, Anthony instructed himself to take some deep breaths, in through his nose and out through his mouth. He tried to focus on the road ahead of him, but Abi’s hysteria reached a new level as her sobs turned into sharp hyperventilation.

Another car peeled out from a gravel roadway, tailing them even closer than the last. Abi howled, and for a moment, Anthony was overtaken by an icy chill, fearing that Abi was in pain–that the stress was causing some sort of complication in her vulnerable state. He tried to direct soothing words at her, but his own voice quaked with fear, and he knew that he was of no help in that moment, that they were both terrified, and that the only thing that could assuage their fear would be losing their pursuer.

He felt his heart sink and he clenched his fists against the wheel, swallowing around the rock that formed at the back of his throat. His eyes watered as he jerked the gearshift again, accelerating the car up to 90 miles per hour, but the car behind them matched their speed, tapping the bumper. Anthony sped a little more, correcting the steering and pulling a bit of distance from the pursuer.

He shut his eyes momentarily, pulling on everything in him for strength, for courage in that moment. He thought of the face of his little girl at home, how all he wanted was to make it back home safely with Abi so that they could tuck her in soundly. And he wanted Abi safe. He loved her and their daughter more than anything else in the world. He had to make it. For them. For the little one they hadn’t met yet.

The pursuer accelerated again, once more bumping into the back of their car, causing it to sway ever so slightly towards the side of the road. Abi’s cries cut through the groan of the car’s engine, bringing a moment of stark dread to Anthony as a tear fell down his cheek. This couldn’t be happening, not to them. Abi folded over her belly as her wails ripped through her body, and he once again tried in vain to soothe her. The car was bumped again from behind, and Anthony frantically readjusted, a rear tire catching on a piece of debris off of the shoulder. He lost control. The car behind them fell back abruptly. Anthony turned the wheel slightly but over-adjusted, causing the back wheels to fishtail. Abi’s screams pierced through the air, and Anthony, too, whimpered as he shut his eyes. The momentum of the car tipped it and it was sent spinning, rolling off the road and to the side into a deep ravine. The car took several final rolls until it reached the bottom, resting upside down in the ditch.

Their lives were extinguished during the first, violent tumble, only shortly after Anthony had found Abita’s hand one last time. They had felt no pain.