Day 145 - Babel - Chapter 41 (2056 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 41

Eric didn't know what was going on with the Babel, things had changed since the arrival of that plane with the three unnerving strangers from across the Tasman Sea on board. He had finished his shift. Been sent to another area, a former first class lounge, to sleep and rest up for whatever would be coming the next day and he awoke to the rapid burst of gunfire and then screaming. He could hear distinctly as he ran from the room with a couple of other watchmen woken by the noise, that there were Watch and Babel making the noise, from the swearing of the Watch and the odd gibberish squeals and growls of the language-less Babel.

The noise had stopped by the time he got to the warehouse where they had set the volunteers to stacking and loading the trucks with a supply cache they found when securing the airport, but he was not expecting to see the Babel, the weirdly calm and collected visitor from the plane among them. Not just among them, he was the centre of them no matter where he stood in relation to the rest. Eric could see instantly that something about the others, who had been mostly a frustrated and hard to wrangle group at the best of times, they suddenly were content and calm, just like the visitor. There were no words or touches between them, but Eric saw a new body language developing between them all, a comfortable silence and proximity that was there, he could feel it as an outsider who had problems connecting with others even with the power of understanding speech.

The new dynamic in the room was the first thing he had seen, and only when he processed that there was blood on the ground and the smell of gunfire in the air, that he recalled why he had come running in the first instance. One of the Watchmen was shaking and holding his head in his hands, the gun he had been using now being held away by another guard while a third was covering a body, and a Babel was sitting down with an arm would he was applying pressure to as the others stood around content to do nothing. Eric came to the aid of the man who was injured and started looking at the wound, trying to remember the basic first aid training he had got before the Babel, before the Watch. It was less than a minute of his head scratching and trying to prise open the tight grip of the injured worker when he was firmly but gently moved to one side and four of the other Babel workers, people who he had no idea about the history of were moving as one person, each one taking a role and without a word, sound or even a glance at each other they took the injured party and tended to the wound.

The man who had been shot moved in conjunction with them, releasing his grip as a second person started clearing the blood from the wound with a torn piece of clothing, a third person taking a belt and making a tourniquet above the wound while a fourth was applying a bandage. The whole thing was done in silence and it was like a ballet, a precise dance that was made of time and judgement, it made more sense if you heard the music, but it could have just as easily existed on it's own merits. It was a thing of beauty and terror, because as good and amazing as it was to see, the implications of the Babel suddenly being psychic, (was that what was going no here, psychic Babel?) was too big and terrible to contemplate.

That was the moment that Eric realised that the tables had turned on them and the advantages that the Watchmen, the Few that had the speech and understanding still, they looked to have been suddenly, shockingly out evolved by the Babel. Was this phase 3 of the disease?

The two men that were with him were attending to the shocked Watchman that had panicked and shot into the crowd. He was possibly the only other person in the room other than Eric that had seen the change, the difference in the Babel after the connection to the new guy. The others just saw a guard losing it, snapping and firing into a crowd, losing control and falling off the sane wagon.

The man from the plane was looking at Eric, not smiling but not worried either, just staring at him, waiting for him to engage. Eric stood in front of him and raised his gun, not sure why he needed to display his authority in the situation, but he felt threatened by this man, and was not sure how to react or what to do to protect himself and his friends.

The disappointment in the man's eyes was immediate and the action in the following seconds was faster and more military than anything that Eric had seen to date in the watch, even with the training sessions he had attended with fellow Watchmen who had Military, Police or Army Reserve training. They took the guns from their hands, and separated the four men from the Watch physically in the space of a few seconds, they had taken control of the warehouse. They stood their ground for a five second count and then as one they emptied the rounds from the guns, removing the chambered round last and then handed the empty guns back to the soldiers, placing the extra gun taken from the distraught Watchman on the ground, at the feet of Eric and pocketed the bullets.

All of this happened in a synchronous movement, that did not surprise Eric and did nothing to phase the soldier still reeling from the bullets he had unloaded into the crowd of workers in the warehouse minutes beforehand. The other three watchmen, the two that ran in with Eric and the one that had been guarding the workers with the man who had opened fire watched with open jaws at the display and the uselessness they felt was universal at the syncopated rhythm of the Babel working together I the Loop.

“What the fuck was that?” Johnson, that was all Eric knew him by, as he was nominally in charge by experience and rank, said out loud to the air.

“They can talk to each other.” Eric was looking at Philip, though he did not know his name, he was just the man from the plane. “Or I think they can, like … I don't know.” Eric shook his head, wishing he had not opened his mouth.

“What the fuck are you saying? They can read minds now?” Johnson looked spooked and the other Watchmen watched him for guidance.

“I don't know.” Eric shrugged.

“Then why the fuck did you say it?” Johnson was turning his rage at Eric, having nowhere else to direct it as no one was engaging with him, Eric had taken the bait and replied and there was no backing down.

That was it for Eric. “You know what? Fucking leave me alone! I don't fucking know okay!” His rage was building from fear and frustration, the Babel were communicating, he could see it, he knew it, but he could not say how or why. “They were moving and acting like … I mean for fuck's sake, look at them!”

Johnson stared but all he saw was a dozen or so people standing there, not really doing much. He closed his mouth and reached into his belt to retrieve a clip, but before his hand got even part way to his belt there was movement and he was pinned by two sets of arms while a third took the clip from him before he could touch it. The remaining watch had their clips taken the same way, except Eric who saw and raised his hands in surrender, so he was not restrained, he just had the ammunition taken away.

“Jesus. I think you're … shit. They are psychic.”

“Watch! From and centre, regroup at...” A voice shouted in from the airfield outside turned all their heads and another Watchman burst through the door and skidded to a halt as he saw the odd configuration, the injured people and Eric with his hands raised, the others being held by their arms. He cocked the gun before he stopped running and took cover by running to the side, standing at the edge of a truck and training the gun on the man he recognised as the one from the plane that had landed.

“Talk to me Johnson!” He shouted and flicked his aim from target to target, picking them off mentally and working out which of them would fall in what order if he needed to take action.

“Don't ask me. Ask the professor here.” Johnson nodded his head at Eric, who lowered his hands slowly, but with no gun and no ammunition he presented no threat.

“Solider?” the man who had the drop on them all barked at him.

“I'm not a soldier. I'm barely a fucking Watch, I just took the job to read, I just wanted to read man.” Eric looked at his feet.

“What the FUCK is going on!” The man tightened his grip on the gun, and the Babel in the room were all in sight, there was no one play that would not have led them to a death, maybe one or two at most, but they all simultaneously raised their hands in surrender as the safest option.

“What on earth? Jesus, will somebody tell me what the fuck is happening?” The new man looked the to the Watch for answers but they had none.

Eric sighed and pointed to Philip. “I don't know how, or even what really, but they can talk to each other like psychically, I think, in their heads I mean. Like mind to mind contact, you know in...”

“I know what psychic means. Fucking retard.”

That was it for Eric who stepped right up and poked his finger in the man's chest, fed up with the way the day had gone, from the deployment with the fifty calibre gun, to the armed guard patrol and now this bizarre twilight zone madness that was unfolding in front of him. He just wanted to go home and read, drop into a fictional world that was less crazy and more predictable than the one he lived in. His rage came out in spittle as he pushed into the man “I have no fucking idea what the fuck is going on, I answered your fucking question and you call me a retard? This idiot shot these unarmed people! See that? I have no idea what happened before because I wasn't here, but these … PEOPLE are talking to each other psychically! You want proof?”

Eric lunged again and wrested the gun from the new interloper and again, faster and more professionally than anyone expected, they were disarmed, separated and let go again in the blink of an eye. The man who had been armed just stood there and dumbly accepted the empty gun back, the clips on his belt taken at the same time as the gun in this instance.

“Holy shit. Did that just happen?”

“Yeah, and that's like the third time, you see what I mean?” Eric threw up both hands and pointed at the man from the plane, watching as he stepped forward again.

Philip put a hand on both the new man and Eric but frowned and then stepped back again, the failure of the action whatever it was plain to see.

“Uh right, that might explain what's going on then. There's like a thousand people marching on the airport right now, they're not doing anything but just walking up the road, they sent me to come and get you guys... to bring everyone to the Arrivals area, that's where they are heading, and we can make a defence.” He looked at Philip and then at Eric, shrugging again. “I don't know what to do now.”

“Like any of us do?”