The Children of Roswell (Book One) The Swift Chronicle

by Alan James

  Kelly tucked his chin to check the position of his arm, “Looks like it’s moved to the front.”

  “Ah, good, good, that’s anterior. If you’re going to have a dislocation, that’s the one to have.”

  Kelly chuckled, finding humor at this unusual time, “Thanks Doc, I’ll remember that, next time I have an urge to dislocate somethin’.”

  Forest smiled and Matson quickly poked him in the ribs with an elbow, nearly knocking them both off balance.

  “Kelly,” the doctor called up, getting back to business, “can you unbutton your shirt?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Just the top three or four buttons … Oh, can you bend your elbow?”

  Kelly, with the help of his left hand, pulled his right hand upward. He stopped halfway, wincing in pain. “No Doc,” he gasped, as the pain subsided, “if you want me to bend it enough to get it in my shirt … it ain’t gonna happen.”

  Forest turned to Matson, shaking his head he mouthed, “Bad.” He turned to look up at Kelly, “Sorry Son,” he offered softly, “I’m afraid the only thing left … is to move it as little as possible.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” he said as he rolled over onto his back again, enjoying the cool desert breeze on his sweat and tear stained face. “Give me a minute to get myself together, and I’ll see what I can do about getting myself down.”

  He rolled away from his injured shoulder and pushed himself back to his knees. Carefully making his way around the open spots in the roof without incident, he found himself looking down the length of what he hoped would be his salvation. The rafter, the last in line, reaching a few feet from the floor, was attached to the top of the wall by a steel hanger. The hanger was a cradle with two flat flanges, one on either side. The rafter was held in the cradle with four large lag bolts, all of which were still in place, but, three of the carriage-bolts, holding the cradle to the top of the wall, had been snapped in two. The fourth bolt was bent and stretched by the force of the falling roof. He stared at it, moving his head to the side to let the moonlight strike it. He was about to put a lot of faith in that little bolt and he wanted to know it intimately. He reached his hand under the wall top-plate and felt for the bottom end of the bolt. ‘Good,’ he thought, ‘the nut’s still there.’

  With his right arm dragging beneath him, he turned himself around and backed slowly over the edge, gaining a foothold on the rafter’s first cross brace.

  “Easy,” Matson yelled from below, “this ain’t no race; we’ve got all night now.”

  Using only his feet and his good left arm, he slowly made his way to the second, then third cross-member. He used his forehead to brace himself while he reached underneath his body to reposition his limp right arm farther to his right side so as to make it slide along a piece of the corrugated steel roofing still attached to the rafter. He stopped often, to rest and to look down at the two men waiting patiently below. They said nothing, but moved closer to the end of the rafter, anticipating what little help they might be able to give with all four hands cuffed behind them.

  As Kelly reached the half way mark in his journey to the floor, he felt the rafter shudder. The single piece of corrugation holding his rafter to the next, was about ten feet above him, and he watched helplessly as the last four sheet metal screws holding them together, pulled loose, one at a time. He felt the lower end of the rafter, still attached at the roof line above, fall to the floor and then rebound, having bent in the middle under its own weight. When it hit the floor a second time, a loud crack echoed through what was left of the hangar. The rafter separated just below Kelly’s feet and he started a long arching swing toward the south side of the building. He threw his good arm over the cross member he had been holding, and hung on for all he was worth. Closing his eyes, he waited for the rafter to slam the wall. To his surprise, he never actually hit the wall. He looked below to see that the bottom of the rafter had struck against a line of storage lockers. Bending in the middle, it rebounded. After a slow arc back toward the center of the hangar, it reversed again and struck the storage lockers a second time. The last bolt holding the rafter-hangar to the top-plate could bare the strain no longer. It snapped in two, and the rafter fell the last six feet to the floor with Kelly still riding along with a one-armed death grip. It rebounded one last time to a point straight over Kelly’s head. Fearing the huge wooden rafter would now fall backwards, crushing him beneath it, he held on even tighter, willing it southward. It teetered a moment, then settled slowly, back against the wall.

  He was still about four feet off the ground when Matson and the Doctor got to him. There wasn’t much they could do to help without the use of their hands, so the doctor suggested they back up against Kelly’s legs for support. He was able to lower himself enough to sit on both their shoulders, and as the two men stooped to lower him to the floor, Kelly, finally, ran out of strength. His grip on the last cross-member failed, and all three men collapsed in a pile on the cold cement floor.

  HANDCUFFS AND HIPPOCRATES

  Kelly opened his eyes to see stars (real ones again). He raised himself as best he could on his left elbow to look around. He was lying on an old greasy packing tarp between hangars one and two, about twenty feet away from the Sikorsky’s engine. Matson and the doctor had decided to move him outside when the wind had died, causing the smoke from the burning helicopter upholstery to hang in a nearly unbreathable layer near the floor.

  He looked to the hole in the side of hangar two. The moon was throwing enough light through some of the upper windows to illuminate parts of the floor inside. He could see the plane sitting inside. It looked to be in about the same shape he was. She was laid over to one side, having tried to lower the landing struts as it crashed through the wall. It looked like it only got the port side strut down in time. ‘Sad,’ he thought, ‘the last time I saw her, she looked so … so, almost elegant … and now … so sad.’

  He thought it strange to be using a word like elegant to describe this plane, and strange to be feeling so terribly sad seeing her lying there, crippled. He should be feeling relieved, or lucky, even happy to have survived the ordeal just passed, and yet … this sadness … such deep sadness, was now rolling over him. It was not unlike the darkness that he had seen so many times before, when he looked down those ominous halls and alleyways that had challenged him all his life. This darkness, however, felt a little different. He did not fear it. It was just there, waiting.

  He laid his head back down and reached to his waistline with his good hand. There was an uncomfortable thing: something sharp and sticky, poking him under his belt. He pulled his shirt up. It was the piece of disc skin. It had cut him again and his fresh, and dried blood, had stuck it to his lower belly. As he pulled it free, Doctor Forest seemed to appear in front of him.

  “I must have passed out again,” he said, trying to raise himself to his elbow again.

  “No Son, just lie there,” Forest said as Matson sidestepped out from behind him, their hands still shackled.

  “What have you guys been up to?” Kelly said, tucking his chin to his neck to see them.

  “We walked to the edge of the runway, and yelled for Cory … but, well, we’re afraid we’ve lost him. He must have perished in the fighting over there.”

  “I told him to hide in the pump house. He could still be OK.”

  “We could see the pump house, or rather, we could see where the pump house used to be. It was gone, probably destroyed in that big explosion we heard. Things are still burning over there.”

  Kelly laid his head back down and again looked at his sky full of stars. ‘This doesn’t feel good,’ he thought, ‘I’ve sent Cory off to his death …’

  “I need to find a way to give you a good looking over, and set that shoulder, but I’m at a bit of a disadvantage,” Forest said standing sideways and wiggling his handcuffed fingers. “Do you know how to open these?”

  “Did you check
the bodies for keys?” he offered, tucking his chin to look at them again.

  “Yes, we did … no luck.”

  “Find some wire, check the workbenches inside. Any thing should work, piggin’ wire, stiff electrical, anything. If there’s none in there, go back down to hangar five, and get the piece of wire sticking out under the sill-plate … where the pallets are … out front.” He relaxed his neck muscles and let his head roll back.

  The two men walked away like a pair of beach-crabs attached at the rear of their carapaces.

  Holding the disc skin in his fingers, he raised it by bending his elbow. It was now completely covered in his blood. It took a few seconds, but he finally realized he was holding it in his right hand. The pain had lessened, and that felt better, but it scared him. As he relaxed, his arm fell to the ground, his fingers pointing in the direction of the hole in hangar two; the bloody piece of chrome resting in his open palm.

  Kelly could not hear as the small piece of metal pipe, just disturbed, rolled a few feet across the concrete floor, or the torn piece of siding, as it slid from the portside wing. He could not see, as the starboard landing strut, slowly began to lower itself.

  ***

  “Kelly, wake up … Kelly … Kelly … hey … ah, there you are,” Matson said, as Kelly slowly opened his eyes. “We’ve got some wire, what do we do?”

  Kelly raised himself to his left elbow again, “You guys come around here to this side, so I can see you better.”

  They went down to their knees, and then leaning against one another, they managed to sit, back to back.

  “OK, pick which one of you is gonna do the work.”

  “Go ahead Doc,” said Matson, “you’ve got the hands.”

  “Ha!” Forest exclaimed, “I haven’t had the hands for almost twenty years … but, I’ll give it a try.”

  “Let me see your piece of wire.”

  Forest held it up as best he could in the moonlight.

  “Perfect, that’ll be perfect.” Lying back down, he reached over with his left hand, and wincing with the pain, grabbed his right arm and hauled it across his body.

  “Careful Son,” Forest said, “you should move that as little as possible.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kelly replied with watery eyes. Then, moving again to his elbow, “See this skinny part, right here?” he was barely able to point at the cuff on his right wrist, his left elbow planted firmly on the ground, “this part with the teeth that goes into the little tunnel.”

  Forest leaned forward, not being able to see much in the moonlight. He squinted in frustration, and then, in recognition, “Yes … yes, I see the tunnel … oh yes, and the teeth.”

  “Good, now here’s what I want you to do. Slide the wire inside the tunnel, above the teeth. There is a little pawl that comes down from the top and engages the teeth. You have to hit the pawl square on, or the wire will slide right by it.”

  “That’s it?” asked Matson, “we just push the pawl out of the way?”

  “Don’t get ahead of me Ken,” Kelly grunted, almost smiling, “the next part is yours. When the doctor feels the wire against the pawl, you have to squeeze his handcuff a little bit tighter. That should take the pressure off of the pawl, and then he can push it up and out of the teeth. Don’t push too hard, or the pawl will drop over the next tooth. The cuffs will just keep getting tighter and tighter, until you can no longer move the pawl”

  Using Kelly as his eyes, the doctor eventually finagled the wire into the tunnel, and, after a few tries, he found the little pawl. Matson squeezed and the wire quickly slipped off its target. Again the doctor slid the wire in, and again he found the pawl. This time he held it in place as Matson pushed, lightly this time. Matson felt the pressure release as the pawl moved up. He pulled the toothed-half of the shackle a full three or four teeth out of the tunnel before the wire, again, slid off to the side.

  “We’ve got it now,” Forest exclaimed, a big smile on his face. After another try, the cuff was off.

  With their hands free, Matson set about removing the cuff from Kelly, while the doctor checked the wreckage of the Sikorsky for a first aid kit. With water they found in the toilet reservoir in hangar one, they cleaned and then dressed Kelly’s wounds. The gash in his chest had quit bleeding, but the damage done to his wrist was a different story. The handcuff had torn the skin open below his palm, exposing a tendon, and luckily, a still intact blood vessel. The doctor poured nearly the entire bottle of disinfectant over the opening, and then carefully folded what skin was left, back in place before wrapping it snuggly. Leaning back on his heels, he looked at Kelly, “There Son, almost good as new.” He managed a small smile.

  “Thanks Doc,” he said, tucking his chin to look at his dislocated right shoulder, “now, what about this?”

  Forest looked at the shoulder, then at Kelly, “Perhaps you should rest awhile before we move on to that.” As he started to stand he noticed the bloody piece of metal lying next to him on a small clump of grass. “Have you been carrying this with you all along?” he asked, picking it up and holding it in front of Kelly. He grabbed the cloth he had used to clean Kelly’s wounds and started to wipe the little piece of chrome.

  “No!” Kelly reached across his body with his left hand and grabbed Forest’s wrist, then softer, “No Doc, don’t clean it, please … don’t clean it.”

  With a puzzled look, the doctor set the rag down. He stared at the piece of metal, hesitated, then turned enough to look through the hole in the wall behind him. He could see that the disc had nearly righted itself. He placed the piece back in Kelly’s clean right hand.

  As they stared at one another Kelly said, “Don’t ask me to explain it Doc, but … it’s … it’s more than a good luck piece.”

  The Doctor rolled Kelly’s fingers closed over the little piece and pushed it softly down to his chest.

  As the doctor stood, Kelly turned to Matson, “Look, this whole thing isn’t over yet. There will be more people from Nevada. You can bet that when they don’t hear from these guys, they’ll be on the horn. They’ll turn that Colonel’s choppers around and we’ll have more company in no time.” Then to the doctor, “I think we need to do this now,” he moved his chin in the direction of his right shoulder.

  Forest looked to Matson who shrugged his shoulders, then back at Kelly, “All right, if that’s what you want.” He dug through the first aid kit and pulled out a small tin of aspirin. “Here, chew a few of these.”

  “Nah, my mouth is too dry, I’d never get ‘em down, and I ain’t drinkin’ none of that toilet water … besides, we ain’t got time to sit here and wait for them to take effect. Let’s just get it over with.”

  Forest sat fully on the ground at Kelly’s right side. He took off his right shoe and set it aside. “Pardon my smelly foot, he said.”

  “Don’t worry, it can’t be any worse than what you’re about to do to me.”

  Reaching for Kelly’s right arm, he slowly moved it out and away from his body. Seeing him grit his teeth with the pain, Forest asked, “You sure you don’t want to chew those aspirin?”

  “No Doc, but … how much farther are you gonna move it?… it really … hurts … what you’re doin’.”

  “I won’t move it any further than it is now, but you have to relax for the next part,” he said, placing the heel of his foot against Kelly’s arm pit, “do you think you can relax?”

  “I’ll try Doc, but … AHHHHH!” Kelly yelled as Forest quickly took up pressure on the arm, pulling out, then up with a slight twist; the movement ending in a crisp POP.

  “Jesus Doc!” he exclaimed, “what are you tryin’ to do, kill …?” he paused suddenly discovering that the bulk of his pain was gone. “Hey, that’s it? That’s all there is to it?”

  The Doctor smiled, lowering Kelly’s arm down and across his chest, “It’s nothing, really, hell, Hippocrates was doing the exact same thing over two thousand years ago.”

 
“Yeah,” Matson chuckled, “but I’ll bet Hippocrates washed his feet first.”

  Kelly smiled and managed to move his right hand up to his heart. He opened it and pushed the bloody piece of metal hard against his chest. His smile grew as he felt the warmth flow through his hand, to his arm, and then to his shoulder. He closed his eyes and, once again enjoyed his rose colored sky; his two dying red suns; and the vision of his brother; a brother, he was now beginning to believe, he actually had.

  HIM

  When Kelly opened his eyes again, the doctor was leaning over him, “It’s two in the morning Son. If company’s coming, like you said, well, we thought you’d want to be up … we need to know what you want to do.”

  Kelly recognized the subordinate tone in the doctor’s voice. Matson said nothing, he just stared. ‘Huh,’ he thought to himself, ‘I guess they’ve put me in charge.’

  Without thinking, he rolled to his stomach and pushed himself up to his knees, then to his feet.

  “Whoa, Kelly, take it easy,” Forest said, reaching for him, “you’ll dislocate again.”

  Kelly looked down at his hand. His eyes followed his arm up to his shoulder. He raised it out to his side to nearly ninety degrees. He moved it through a range of motion like the driver mechanism on a steam engine.

  “Feels great Doc,” he said, opening his hand. The little piece of disc skin had stuck to his fingers. It now tumbled to the ground and Kelly reached for his shoulder, grimacing.

  “See, I told you,” Forest said, grabbing Kelly’s elbow.

  Matson was watching from the side. He looked down at the blood stained piece of metal at Kelly’s feet, then back up at Kelly’s shoulder. He didn’t want to make this connection, but, it was becoming all too obvious.

  He reached down and picked it up. It was very warm to the touch. He expected the blood to be cold, hard and crusted, but, it was fresh and started to run as he raised it. He quickly leveled it, having a sudden feeling that he didn’t want to lose any of the blood to the ground. He placed it into Kelly’s now hanging palm. The hand closed around it and both men watched in amazement as Kelly raised his elbow in what seemed little, or no, pain.