31
The rumble in the jungle bounced the boys to life, machines tore through the soil unencumbered by the friction of flesh, lost time was recovered as the planet was unearthed. It wasn’t nearly as fun to watch as the keystone kops had been, but still Paul filmed, and still a fenceline of protest condemned the building, but no one boosted the riot over the razor wire, so the law was left with no citizens to protect.
“SkyFortress, this is Curly Sue, do not respond, I repeat, do not respond.”
A curious Miles did not as he was told, Selam was his boss, after all, kinda.
“14-C-Apple, I repeat, 14-C-Apple. Click the call button twice if you copy.”
Beep beep.
“Love you guys, you’re doing great, over.”
Beep beep.
Miles knew what 14 meant, it was actually gonna be pretty intense, but he had to check the key to decode the time it would go down, three am, good thing he got that hour of sleep.
The day dragged along with the excavator, most of the mob returned to camp under the limbo stick of planned inaction, a divised recovery from yesterday’s losses as guards let down their hair. Only the council knew the whole plan, and trusted conspirators had a good idea, but the schleprocks and incognito mosquitos were left thinking that maybe the fight was over.
And hopefully that was the word that leaked out, subdued for now at least, it was a swing and a hit but they’d brought a bat to a gunfight, and now they’d been pushed off the field entirely. You Fossil cops might as well take the rest of the night off.
At two-thirty the yard was silent, the air was still, no sign of red alertness on the hill, but rest assured that a lookout was searching for midnight oil. Miles and Paul each climbed a tree past any reasonable zone of comfort, in the dark, and all while pulling up between them the ends of a length of paracord. The watchtowers were synchronized by ten of, positioned on the dark side of the moon’s subtle nuance. At five til, Miles gave the string a tug.
He clicked on his flashlight and twirled it around without illuminating his own position, a little extra attention focused towards the hill, then he cut it off. Sixty seconds later, Paul mirrored the unidentifiable lights in the sky. Then Miles again, followed by Paul, and as the back and forth continued, the flicker grew more frequent. After a quarter hour, the lights were synced by the on switch, both jostling around without apparent rhyme or reason, enough of a quandary to captivate the scouts on the hill who theorized some kind of treefort tomfoolery, at least until the orbs started floating across the sky.
The flashlights were clipped to pulleys that rode along the slackline, their eerie pace throttled by a spool of fishing line, which explains the repeated rendezvous of open air conspiracies that had the fossils freaked the F out.
After a half hour, the mysterious lights disappeared, another half to let the heat cool off, a cautious descent home and their shift was over. Maybe they’d spooked the few who believed in ghosts, or aliens, or not to go digging up ancient Indian burial grounds, but this hadn’t been a cheap rip off of a Betelgeuse disguise, their primary objective was realer than real, and it had worked like a lucky charm, if you believe in that kind of stuff.