The Children of Roswell (Book One) The Swift Chronicle

by Alan James

  ‘Oh, perfect,’ he thought, and then, with a smile, he said “Thanks,” and headed for the bathroom.

  He stripped to his shorts, pulled his wallet and cash, and his name tag from the pants and ragged shirt, then tossed his uniform into the trash bin under the sink. He gave himself a quick military sink bath, and as he pulled paper towels from the dispenser to dry himself, he noticed his eyes in the mirror. The girl was right; his eyes were milky. He blinked hard and then rubbed them; splashed water on them, but each time he looked again, the cloudiness remained. He stepped closer, and with his nose almost touching the mirror, he could see that the covering over his eyes wasn’t a milky white, but instead; a pale silver. His eyes were starting to take on the sheen of a weak coating of chrome. He stepped back, refusing to believe what he was seeing. As he stood there in his shorts, he closed his eyes and raised both hands to cover them, but the vision remained. He could still see himself, standing there, nearly naked, his two eyes shining through the back of his hands.

  “How you doin’ in there?” the girl called from just outside the bathroom door, “everything OK?”

  Kelly had slipped his socks back on and was climbing into the coveralls, “Yeah, I’m fine, be out in a minute.” Zipping up the front of his new uniform, he took a last look in the mirror. His eyes were getting worse by the minute.

  As he left the bathroom, she was standing there waiting. He turned his head to walk past her but she grabbed his arm and then his chin to turn him to face her. “Oh man, your eyes aren’t lookin’ so good.” She turned to a spinner rack setting on the counter and grabbed a pair of sunglasses. “Here, you’d better wear these until you get them looked at; you’re gonna scare people if you don’t keep ‘em covered.”

  Yeah, I guess you’re right, thanks. What do I owe you for all this?” he pointed to the bag.

  “Oh, do you have to leave so soon? You sure you don’t want me to call somebody … you’re gonna need help … aren’t you?

  Seeing she was going to rattle on again, he raised his hand and smiled, “NO! … No thanks,” he said, throwing a twenty dollar bill on the counter, “that won’t be necessary. I radioed the base that I was having trouble. I’m sure they’ve got a chopper on the way by now. I’ve gotta get back to the wreck before they get there.”

  As he picked up the bag and shifted it to his left arm, he saw the paperback she had been reading. “Jules Verne,” he said spinning it so he could read the cover (and the one next to it), “and H.G. Wells,” he looked up at her, “you like this stuff?”

  “Yeah,” she smiled, “time travel, flying saucers ‘n’ all. That’s why I got so excited when I saw your plane coming down earlier. I thought for sure I was seein’ my first one.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then, seeing her name above her shirt pocket, “Peggy is it?”

  “Yes,” she smiled, “Peggy.”

  He stared again as a puckish thought formed in his mind. “Well Peggy, when you get to the part in this one,” he spun the copy of “War of the Worlds” back around to face her, “when you get to the part where he tells you what the Martians look like … don’t you believe it, not for a second. Martians don’t look anything like that.”

  “Oh yeah, and how would you know?” she said with a smile that quickly changed to look of bewilderment.

  As he held the door open to leave, he turned to her and said very matter-of-factly, “Because I stopped there first … on my way to your planet.”

  With a straight face he left, closing the door behind him. She watched through the large window next to the entry as he turned left and walked along the front of the building. He made no attempt to disguise the direction he was headed.

  ***

  He set the bag of groceries on the disc, stepped to the side, and putting both hands on the now familiar chrome, bent his knees slightly and vaulted aboard. He sat, dangling his legs over the leading edge, now refreshed; the warmth of the desert didn’t seem to bother his as much. He then turned to attack the contents of his brown paper larder.

  Enjoying his Moon-Pie and RC Cola, his thoughts wandered back to the store. Had the girl behind the counter run out back when he left? Was she standing at the edge of the clearing, behind the store, waiting to see the helicopters coming down to rescue the stranger with the glassy eyes, or, he thought, was she a different person altogether. Was she waiting out front for the sheriff she had called the second he was out of sight? Perhaps she had noticed, and then wondered why, an Air Force pilot would be flying in his blues, and not a flight suit, or, giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she really thought he needed help.

  It didn’t matter, either way, for tonight, the girl behind the counter (he smiled as he thought it) tonight, would see her first flying saucer.

  ***

  The next day the radio stations in Tucson, and the newspapers, first local, then national, would carry the story: “FLYING SAUCER LANDS AT STUCKEYS”. And Miss Peggy Ballard would be at the center of the excitement. She would tell how the beautiful chrome ship had flashed back and forth across the sky before (as she stated to the reporter) “It actually landed right here in the parking lot.” The front page picture would show her (Miss Peggy Ballard in bold letters below), pointing to the depressions left in the gravel by the three landing struts; that area now cordoned off so as to keep the now daily melee of cars and people from erasing those treasured mechanical footprints from local folklore.

  The newspapers and radios would not, however, carry the stories of the sightings and the battle that would take place, this very night, in the miles that lay ahead of Kelly.

  ***

  As he raised the disc from the parking lot, he could see Peggy’s eyes (themselves as big as saucers) peering through the lower corner of the big front window. He smiled and then waved, but she would not see either gesture through the chromed canopy. He wished she would have come outside, like the story in the newspaper would later say she did, and watch his grand departure. But, she was content to watch from cover, as the dust swirled in tight vortices from each wing tip, the disc moving away quickly, only a few feet above the ground. When he reached the highway, Kelly pulled back on the stick and the disc shot skyward, again spinning in a series of quick barrel rolls; wingtips again flashing in the moonlight.

  He leveled and took a heading west toward Yuma. He would go west at least that far, and passing well outside of town, his plan was to then turn north and approach the southern desert of Nevada from the south.

  Below him, he could see a man changing a flat tire alongside the highway. The traffic on these southwestern highways isn’t heavy, even during the day. At night they are downright barren. Kelly thought the tire changer might be the only human for at least five miles in any direction, except for Peggy back at the store. Busy, the man struggled with a rusty lug nut and paid no attention to what was happening above. Kelly smiled to himself and wondered how many people, since nineteen forty-seven, had wished for all the world to get a glimpse at a flying saucer, but never took the time … to look up?

  FISH IN A BARREL

  As he finished another RC Cola and candy bar, he threw the wrapper and empty bottle back into the paper bag and forced, with thought, a look as deep into the darkness ahead of him as he could. He had expected to see what he guessed would be nothing less than an armada of helicopters heading his direction by now. He was hoping to decoy them as far away from Marana, and his helpless friends, as possible.

  There in the distance, with a vision still beyond his complete understanding, he saw them. Vague helicopter shapes against a rose colored landscape. Four lines-abreast, maybe five choppers deep. ‘Twenty,’ he thought, and then hoped that was all they had for him.

  He had no idea how he was going to make himself visible to them, so he decided on the direct approach. Pushing forward on the stick he began a shallow dive that would take him passed them on their left side. The moonlight should still be bright enough t
o make him visible at that distance, but he would rock his wings, casting extra reflections, just to make sure.

  He stopped his acceleration at about four hundred miles per hour. He wanted to be slow enough that they could see him, but fast enough that nothing but the luckiest of shots would have a chance of striking his chrome charge. He knew that at least a few of these choppers would be gunships, and at this closing speed they would have to lead him by over twelve hundred feet. By the time they saw him, it would be too late to make the shot.

  He was now about fifty miles west of Gila Bend, just north of the Mohawk Valley. He remembered this part of the country as being full of nothing but emptiness. Nobody would be getting in the way of the stray bullets that the choppers would surely send his way.

  As he approached them, he remarked to himself that the moon, now in the western sky, behind and above the choppers, was in perfect position to make him as visible as possible.

  The helicopters now filled his rose colored vision, but they were still at least a half mile away. A second later, he saw the tiny flashes of machine gun fire from two of the choppers on the left side of the formation. Every fifth round showed the white hot trail of a tracer, making it easy for him to watch as they followed an ever increasing arc, passing harmlessly behind him.

  As he passed, he banked hard left and circled behind them. The guns were firing on the right side of the formation now, and he could tell that the gunners were adjusting their lead as the bright white tracers marched steadily toward him. As they came ever closer, he pulled back on the stick; climbing; leaving the formation far below. The thought of turning back to attack, flashed deep in the recesses of his consciousness, but he felt no great urgency to act on it.

  From the beginning, when he had left Marana, he had been thinking that his sole purpose was to find these people from Nevada (these men like Brandt) and simply blow them all out of the sky, but now, somehow, the threat had faded, and along with it, the wont to destroy them. Even though they were shooting at him, he could find no place within himself from which to pull the fear, or the hate, to do such a thing. He felt in control, yet, as he hovered, stationary above them, he envisioned just how easy it would be. ‘Fish in a barrel,’ he thought, ‘like chasing a Volkswagen with a Corvette.’

  He could feel something else now. Even before he had left Marana (although he didn’t realize it then) something else had been pulling him; pulling him north and west. It didn’t feel to him like a want, but rather a need. There was something he had to do up there, and it was pulling at him, hard.

  He spun the disc on its central axis and took a heading just west of north (for no particular reason he could think of). As he collected his thought processes and aimed them at the spot in his brain that would throttle-up the gravity drive and make his disc move (in any direction he might wish) he suddenly found his focus, his bundle of thoughts, fading from his mind. A familiar feeling washed over him as his hand fell from the stick. As he stared forward, the hills and valleys below him disappeared, and once again he found his mind filled with the vision of that beautiful, and he knew now, very distant planet (a real place, he was now certain).

  His Brother stood before him, and in the distance, far behind that image, over the spired city, six men (he thought them men) were coming ever closer. In a moment they had quartered the distance, in another it was halved.

  Kelly struggled with this vision. His Brother was again in trouble. ‘Why does he insist on speaking to me with pictures,’ Kelly thought, ‘why not just let me see, with my eyes, or his eyes? Why not talk to me?’ he questioned his Brother. ‘You’ve talked to me before.’

  As Kelly watched, three of the men, now hideous monsters (as in a vision before) moved ahead of the others and closed in on his pleading Brother.

  “Kelly, Ke__lly,” he cried, “They are here … help me my Brother … help me.”

  Kelly could stand the pain no longer. His heart felt as if it would explode. Tears poured from him as his vision changed from the soft rose to a bright crimson. As he watched in horror, the first monster, now only seconds from his Brother, raised his arms and began to spew long trails of fire from under each appendage. Its mouth opened wide, it issued hundreds of small black hornet like things that passed around all sides of his brother and continued on their inexorable journey toward him.

  He felt himself rocked, violently, his head careening off the side of the canopy. His vision cleared in time to see a tracer deflect off the canopy in front of him. The first Sabre jet had passed just a few feet above his port wing, its downdraft forcing his wing down violently. The second Sabre was on him now, Brownings blazing. Another tracer struck the canopy, just below where the first had left a small spider-web crack. With only the tracers visible, Kelly wondered how many more times he had been hit. As his attacker passed directly over him, the disc, without provocation from Kelly, spun instantly one hundred eighty degrees, corrected three degrees upward, and he felt the short shudder as it unleashed what was no more than a half second burst from its own fifties.

  Kelly played with the numbers in his head as he watched his tracers grow tiny in the darkness: the Sabre was probably doing six hundred miles per hour; that’s nine hundred feet per second; my rounds left at three thousand feet per second with my speed at zero; I fired approximately four seconds after he passed; so he was already two thirds of a mile away; the Brownings have a max range of four-and-a-half miles, one-and-a-quarter effective; “and he’s gonna be outside of that, a little,” he said to himself as he watched a glimmer of moonlight sparkle in the direction of the tracer. Again and again it flashed as the right half of the eighty-six’s elevator and part of its rudder fluttered in high speed spirals, slowing quickly to fall silently into the blackness below. He couldn’t see the Sabre as it lurched up and then rolled to the right with its tail section trailing far outside its turn radius. He did, however see the yellow flash of the ejection charge as it threw the pilot clear of what was now seven and a half tons of uncontrollable junk.

  Tracers were again streaking passed him, from the rear this time, as the third Sabre closed in from behind. This time he felt as if he would have a say in what was to happen next. He willed the disc in a quick slew to the right, leading with his head, stopping with his nose pointed directly at his attacker. Sparks flashed from his right leading edge across the front of his canopy and down his left wing.

  ‘This guy is good,’ Kelly thought, ‘painting me with lead by using a little rudder pedal.’

  The Sabre started to pull up and to the left about six hundred yards out. “Big mistake,” Kelly whispered under his breath. He raised the nose of the disc, corrected right, and at less than two hundred yards, sent a half second burst into the exposed belly of his monster. In a split second the sides and bottom of the Sabre sparkled with a thousand little wind fed flames as the compressor exploded and sent countless pieces of turbine blades flying through its skin. The fuselage failed in a final burst of flame and the two large pieces fell, trailing flame and burning debris toward the ground. Kelly followed it down, down … down, waiting for the flash of the ejection seat. It never came.

  He watched the ball of flame boil up from below as the fuel tanks on the Sabre exploded on impact.

  “Where in hell’s the first one!” he yelled at himself as his head snapped up and all around, “where has he gone?”

  Kelly scanned the sky, above and below, but he saw nothing. He thought perhaps the pilot had decided not to make another pass after seeing his wing men dispatched so easily (and especially after seeing what little effect their Brownings had).

  There were three more in his vision. “Where were they? Surely they wouldn’t quit? American pilots don’t quit … they never quit.”

  And he was right. Six small specks (trailing white smoke) closing at an unbelievable speed … “Up!” his mind yelled … and the smoke trails vanished below him. He had seen them before. They were FFAR rockets, ungu
ided. And then, right behind the rockets … something … a jet. “What in blazes?” He spun his head to his left as it passed him, no more than a blur. He braced himself by reaching his palms to the canopy as the double blast of a sonic shockwave struck the disc, sending it wing over wing in the opposite direction.

  He was falling. He needed bearings. Which way was up? Then, far below, he saw the remains of the burning Sabre, and to the west, there was the moon. Now a simple task: a couple quick moves of the stick righted the disc.

  “That guy was super-sonic,” he said out loud.

  Knowing full well there was two more coming behind that one, he pointed himself straight up and climbed. There was safety in altitude (he knew that). A greater foe is often taken down by the lesser adversary, when the latter has the sun or altitude on his side.

  From below, two more trails of smoke. He slowed his forward speed slightly. He needed to know if these two missiles would track him. He watched as they continued in a straight line, passing a hundred yards ahead of him.

  Now he knew: they weren’t tracking him on radar. They had fired two AIM-4 Falcons, guided by the radar unit in the firing jet. They were just using them as point and shoot missiles.

  ‘Well, that makes it a little easier,’ he thought, and now, wanting to have a look at this super-sonic foe that had just tried to punch him out of the sky, he laid the discs nose over and slid down to intercept from above and behind. As he picked up speed he could hear a sharp, high pitched, whistle starting to play loudly in the cockpit and the disc started to pull off to the right. He tried to correct with rudder and then ailerons, but the disc simply began to slide sideways.