Gloom Town
Page 17
I knew there was a world beyond the main gates of the Air Force base, where men with guns stood at attention all day long and checked cars coming in, but I’d never been outside of it, except for family trips. It was huge out there, with crazy highways and giant stores and parking lots. Kids got kidnapped all the time. But here on the base we were safe. Safe from the outside world. And the Grays. The Air Force had weapons that could probably defeat them if they ever attacked.
One time I asked Dad if he knew anything about aliens, or if any of his pilot friends ever talked about them. He said the only alien he knew was a man named Danny Bones, who once drank thirty-three beers in one night.
I don’t believe him, though. The Air Force is known for keeping secrets. All you have to do is look up Roswell.
This is what happened:
A UFO crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. The Air Force quickly covered it up, and said it was a hot air balloon. But that was a lie. Before they sealed off the area, several farmers found some wreckage—shiny pieces of silver, like metal or steel. There was something strange about it, though. You could ball it up in your fist like aluminum foil and then it would just uncrumple back into shape, as smooth as a sheet of paper. And there was writing on it, too. Alien writing. All those pieces are stored away now at Area 51, a top secret military base in the Nevada desert. And you know what else they found?
Bodies.
Alien bodies.
Grays.
One of them was still alive, but really messed up from the crash. They took him to see the president, a man named Harry Truman. The alien didn’t speak, but they were able to communicate through reading each other’s minds. That’s called telepathy. They made a deal: The aliens would share their super-duper advanced technology if the government allowed them to take humans every now and then for their experiments. They were a dying race and needed to find ways to continue their species.
But the aliens broke their promise.
They started taking more and more people.
And there was nothing we could do about it.
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About the Author
Author Photo by Erik Kvalsvik
RONALD L. SMITH is the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award–winning author of Hoodoo, The Mesmerist, The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away, and Black Panther: The Young Price. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Visit him online at strangeblackflowers.com
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