The Chief and I only spoke about what happened once. Before I collapsed on the ride home I asked her, "How did you find us?"
"I followed the music at first, then the lightening, and finally the pieces of the building. I saw your hand just as I came up and while I was running over there I saw your face. What was inside that building?"
It was the only time she ever asked me. Before I could answer, fatigue and adrenaline dump overcame me and I passed into dreamless sleep.
Brown slept until the next day and never showed any memory of the evening, except she once asked the Chief about the dog. Chief Mac's silence somehow told her all she needed to know.
I've since managed to steel myself to look up the site on Google Earth. Ha, Earth. That one place, if no other, is not Earth. The ball of bricks is still there, they seemed to have made no attempt whatsoever to repair that particular corner.
It's just as well really. If you look at it at night you can see the bricks glowing slightly in an indescribable, otherworldly hue.
There is one other thing I saw as we drove away, something that haunts me to this day and ironclads my resolve to never return to New Orleans, something I almost can't bring myself to say, except that it may help us all to work against them is this: as the building was collapsing and throwing things off, I saw figures, alien and human walking away.
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