Followed East

by Andre Gonzalez

  “Fuck you!”

  “We’re all so proud of you. You sparked the change we needed, but there’s just one more little step to take, although it may turn into a bigger mess. We’re going to need you to appear as your human self and stay that way until I take back over.”

  “And I’m going to need you to stay out of my head.”

  “Well, I can’t. If I could trust you to do this dirty work on your own, then I’d have no problem watching from the sidelines. But you’ll never do it on your own.”

  “Do what, dammit? Just tell me.”

  The doctor flashed his wide grin, his teeth black as his skin had turned a shade gray. “Let’s take this story back to the beginning. In 1988, the lovely Susan Wells murdered my son. We were exploring that day, not even looking to cause trouble. Spent the day at the National Museum of Natural History, figured that would be as good a place as any to learn about your culture. We had a great day together, lots of laughs and memories.

  “When we left that evening, we were walking along the National Mall, discussing everything we learned that day. It was winter and the sun was already setting. It was apparently cold—not that we knew—but it left us alone outside. And that’s when she attacked us.

  “She shot at us from a distance, the first bullet caught my son square in the chest, and I started running. This was before we knew we were being tracked on those fancy devices they have. I had no idea we were being watched all day, Susan just waiting for a moment to get us alone to take us out.”

  The doctor shook his head, staring into the distance as he recounted the story, and looking more human than he ever had over the last four years. He had never shown emotions aside from his lunatic laughter toward violence, but Brian caught a glimpse of his pain.

  “So you’ve been here since then trying to get revenge?” Brian asked. “But Susan is dead.”

  The thought of killing his best friend’s grandmother while mentally sitting in the back row of his mind and watching it play out sent shivers up his back.

  “It’s bigger than her. She was the personal revenge, but there is so much more at play.”

  “If it was personal, why did you make me do it? Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

  His evil grin returned. “Oh, I did. Who do you think jumped into your mind and took over the wheel? That was me. And I enjoyed every second watching her die.”

  Brian shook his head. “So what are we doing here?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t know. I know you’ve sent out calls for help to your friends—I can hear your thoughts, you know. Haven’t you wondered why none of your messages get through to Kyle?”

  Brian’s jaw hung open as he processed the reality of having his private thoughts listened to by a mental stalker. All the times he had longed to go home, debated running away, and as mentioned, called out for help to whoever might listen. Every bad thing he had ever thought about the doctor had been overheard, or at least he assumed.

  “I’m not sure what to say,” Brian said, terrified to say or think anything.

  “Nothing to say. I hear your thoughts, but I know your true intentions. You’ve had plenty of opportunities to run away during our time together, yet here you are, just outside the nation’s capital, days away from the ultimate showdown.”

  “Showdown?”

  “We’re here for my species. This group of Crew people have gone on with their nonsense long enough. When we arrived on this planet, we had the intentions of learning your ways and adapting to blend in. Our home is gone and we live on a spacecraft looking for somewhere new to call home. Everything was meant to be peaceful, but a couple of our own got carried away, thought it’d be fun to torture humans for the sport of it. Those handful of us gave our entire species a bad name. Now, none of us can be trusted.”

  “But you’re one of the most violent people I’ve ever known.”

  The doctor smiled, as if proud of this. “I wasn’t always. Watching your son die can change you for the worse. There had been talks of the humans starting to kill us, even if we posed no threat. I didn’t believe it, so his death is just as much my responsibility. We’ve tried abandoning this ugly world of yours. The human race is a disgusting bunch that we’d rather have nothing to do with, but there are no other nearby worlds with infrastructure in place, or large enough to fit us all. This planet would thrive if we can just eliminate all of the humans and have it to ourselves.”

  “You’re still not telling me what this has to do with us being in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Two reasons: The Crew lives in Washington D.C., underneath the Pentagon building. We want to eliminate them all. There will be some clean-up work to do on the others who are out on missions, but nothing we can’t handle. Once they’re gone, who can stop us? Also, we’re going to kill your friend, Kyle . . . you’re going to kill Kyle.”

  “No,” Brian said flatly, trying to close his mind off from the doctor. He would fight to not let anyone infiltrate his mind and control his body, and certainly not to kill his best friend.

  “Yes,” the doctor said with a wide grin. “Yes, yes, yes. And you’ll enjoy it, and we can all live happily ever after it’s done.”

  Brian sat on the ground, all feeling leaving his legs as his stomach sunk. More than ever he wanted to return to his former life. The events that led up to this moment played through his mind. From the moment he was attacked in the woods on their camping trip, to the hospital in Golden where he became infected with Exall blood without knowing it. It had all been an elaborate plan to bring them to this very moment. Did the Exalls have an ability to see the future? How else would they have known to align the situations perfectly to have him be the one to kill both Susan and Kyle?

  He felt helpless knowing the doctor would slither into his mind and take control without even asking, using his body as a machine to go out and kill Kyle. Brian was shackled to his own body, unable to escape. Even if he tried, the doctor would just take control and make him return. A prisoner in his own body, Brian lay down on the ground, staring to the blue sky, praying for a way out of his lost life.

  23

  Chapter 23

  Kyle stepped into the doorway, his body shaking as his throat tensed shut. The entry was pitch-black despite the adjoining panic room being lit with what felt like a million fluorescent lights. A musty smell oozed from the darkness like a cave, and Kyle wondered if the voice calling his name had been trapped in this room the entire time since Susan’s death.

  It had to have been. Who else would know about this? The message was clearly written to me.

  Kyle sensed the uncovering of a major secret. Could you actually know your life was about to change within the coming minutes? He sure felt it creeping up his spine.

  “Kyle?” the voice croaked, asking, yet expecting it to be no one else.

  For a momentary flash, Kyle wondered if it was somehow his grandmother trapped in the dark room, but the voice didn’t quite sound like hers.

  She already told you its name is Sandra, he reminded himself. He thought he had been walking, but looked down to realize he hadn’t moved more than one step from the room’s entryway.

  Forcefully, Kyle moved his legs forward, leaving the light behind, and pulling out his cellphone to use its flashlight. If he hadn’t, he would have bumped into a wall as the pathway took a sharp right. The set up reminded him of the dark room from his final exam to join The Crew. He followed the path right where he took another ten steps before it made a left, and that’s where a new light became visible, a soft orange-yellow glow that dimly illuminated what looked like a small laboratory.

  Kyle froze again, seeing the table in the middle of the room with a woman tied down to it with thick ratchet straps, flat on her back, staring to the ceiling. Her head rolled over and revealed black eyes that looked like two rocks of coal, meeting his bulging stare.

  “Kyle,” she said confidently.

  Everything in Kyle’s body came to a halt with the exception of his raci
ng heart trying to leap out of his body. His jaw wouldn’t open to speak, his legs wouldn’t move to run away, and his eyes refused to look away from the living Exall.

  He remained fifteen feet away, studying every inch of her and the room. The Exall wore what looked like a hospital gown, her gray legs and arms bare. Four straps tied her down to the table, one over her ankles, knees, waist, and shoulders. The table was a black slab with a dozen drawers underneath. Black counters ran along the entire perimeter of the rectangular room. To Kyle’s immediate left was a miniature stove with an oven below, next to a small refrigerator and sink. Rounding the corner stood a filing cabinet and other desktop organizers with folders and binders filling them. A dormant computer waited in the furthest corner, untouched for at least four years. To Kyle’s right the countertops were bare, but he noticed they had more drawers underneath. Somewhere above him, birds sang tunes from the trees while the sun shined over the Earth, unaware of an alien creature held captive twenty feet underground.

  The Exall never looked away from Kyle, but seemed content giving Kyle a moment to soak in his surroundings. The fact that she wasn’t trying to break free and lunge toward him, or even say anything else, made him feel a little more at ease, the tension slowly leaving his tight throat.

  “Who are you?” he asked in a shaky voice.

  Her black eyes remained on him, and even though they appeared as pits of death, a certain gentleness carried across the room.

  “If you’re in here, then you know my name is Sandra.”

  Kyle took another step closer. “I know that, but why are you in here? Like this? Is that your real name?”

  “We don’t have names where I’m from. Your grandmother named me Sandra after a childhood friend. The straps are so I can’t leave. I don’t plan on leaving here, but that doesn’t mean it’s under my control.”

  One more step closer, and Kyle was now a short lunge away from being able to touch this alien. Everything he had just learned in training rushed through his mind about how to combat an Exall, and how he must always be alert. Could the handwritten note actually be from this Exall and not Susan? Was this some sort of trap she had laid out where Kyle would never be found underground?

  This is your grandmother’s underground hideout, he reminded himself, despite feeling 3,000 miles away from Larkwood, Colorado.

  “You knew my grandma?” he asked, one smaller step closer and deciding to stop now that he was within arm’s reach of “Sandra” the Exall.

  Sandra grinned, her face like rubber as it made no wrinkles, her lips parting to show the black fangs that Kyle had only seen up close in textbooks. “Knew her? We were the best of friends. She used to come down here every day and we’d share stories. I know all about you, and she knew all about my lost family.”

  “Lost?”

  “You call it murdered. My family was all lost in an attack by The Crew. This was many years ago, but I played dead when they started firing their special guns at us. She was with five other Crew members, but they all left once they thought we were all dead, except for Susan. It was like she knew to come check on me.”

  Kyle decided this couldn’t be a trap. Why would an Exall go through all this small talk when he was already hypnotized by her mere presence? And the story sounded exactly like something his grandmother would do.

  “What does any of that have to do with you being here?”

  “Well, I have an ability to read spirits. I think you have people like that here on Earth as well – I forget what they’re called, though. But as soon as Susan came over to me, I sensed the strength and beauty in her spirit. I knew right away she was one of the better ones on this planet, even if she was a part of The Crew. She tied me up and that’s when I started talking to her. We learned about each other, and she told me she was looking for a way to end the war against us. That’s when she brought me here to her house.”

  “When was this?”

  “I don’t know how your time works, but she told me you had been born only a few weeks earlier.”

  “You’ve been down here for seventeen years?!” Kyle gasped, unable to hide his shock.

  “If you say so. We don’t measure time because there is no end for us, unless we are lost, of course.”

  “What have you been doing the last four years?”

  “If that’s how long Susan has been gone, then I’ve been doing exactly this, looking at the ceiling and waiting for you. She told me it could be anywhere from five to fifty years for you to find me, and I told her I would wait.”

  “So what did my grandma do with you down here?”

  Sandra looked into the distance as if reminiscing on her life’s fondest memories. Did she even realize she was being held captive against her will? Kyle wondered if she had developed an intense case of Stockholm syndrome toward Susan. It was certainly possible after being held down here for so long, and she even seemed to miss Susan.

  “We wanted to change our worlds,” Sandra said. Kyle took another step closer and truly examined the Exall’s body. He had never even heard of a female Exall in his courses at the Pentagon, and he still wasn’t sure if that’s what Sandra was. She had long black hair that pooled underneath her head, but she had no breasts. He thought at first that maybe the straps had kept them flat, but as he was now close enough, noticed her chest was as flat as his. Yet, she still had softer facial features like a woman.

  Sandra must have read his mind or had a keen sense for body language.

  “Your grandmother looked at me the same way when we first met,” she said. “Yes, I’m really a female. Did you know your grandmother was the first female member of the Crew?”

  “Yes. Everyone knows her name.”

  “Well, I’m the first female Exall to come down to Earth.”

  “Why?” Kyle asked, not sure what else to say.

  “For us, the females run everything on our spacecraft to make sure we keep moving. We navigate it, but also keep the peace among each other. You see, there is a lot of panic between the Exalls. Everyone has an idea on how we can find a new planet to live on. We are the rulers. What we say goes in any dispute.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “I couldn’t tell you now, but before I came here I’d say about forty thousand of us.”

  “Forty thousand?! How big is this spacecraft?”

  “Slightly smaller than the planet Mercury.”

  “Planet? I was picturing something much smaller, but it’s your own little world.”

  “Yes, and it’s a lovely place, but it’s not a home.”

  “So why did you come here?”

  “I demanded it. I insisted that I could provide a fresh perspective for our research, and I forced my way onto our exploratory team.”

  “I guess I don’t understand what you and my grandma did down here all the time.”

  “All we did was learn about each other. We traded stories about our lives and about the worlds we’re from. Susan told me she was working on a secret project to find a planet safe for us to inhabit. She wanted to help us and said if your planet were to take on another species that would be the end of it—it can’t sustain any more life than it already has.”

  “Did she find somewhere?”

  “She found Mars, but said there was too much activity. It could work, but apparently the humans have found ways to get little robots to Mars. She said it would be catastrophic if a different living species were ever discovered.”

  “Why do you come back every thirty years?”

  “We’ve studied this planet and the humans on it. We’ve seen the way humans treat the planet and each other. It’s only a matter of time before the humans kill themselves, and then we can peacefully transition our life to this beautiful place you call Earth.”

  “How do you know English?”

  Sandra grinned as if she had heard this question before. “We’ve been on this planet for hundreds of years. We have a very high capacity for retaining knowledge, and language is one of th
ose things. We can speak every language on this planet.”

  “What is your actual language when you speak with each other, though?”

  “When we’re in private we speak to each other in our native tongue. We don’t have a name for it, as we never understood there could be different languages until we arrived here on Earth.”

  Kyle nodded, intimidated by the Exall’s vast knowledge of Earth. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure why you’re waiting for me or what I’m supposed to do with you. Did my grandma give you any sort of an idea?”

  “Susan has many files about our discussions; they’re underneath this table and the other counters. All she ever told me was that you would do the right thing. I don’t know what that means, but I trust her. She had a sense for things, even knew that her death was coming, and wished me farewell.”

  “She knew she was going to die?” Kyle took one final step and now hovered over Sandra, staring down into the black pits of her eyes.

  Sandra nodded. “I wouldn’t say she knew, but she definitely had a sense it was possible. She told me she might have to sacrifice her life to save her family, primarily you. She thought very highly of you, not just as her grandson, but as a future key to The Crew and all of her research.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look around?” Kyle asked, feeling more like a guest in this secret laboratory. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and not even sure if this is real or of I’m dreaming.”

  “This is real, Kyle. Just as real as Susan tried to kill me, then saved me after learning who I was.”

  Kyle nodded before crouching down to pull open the drawers and start reading through thousands of files from nearly two decades of documented research about Sandra and the Exalls. Judging by the amount of drawers he assumed were full of papers, Kyle would need a lot more than the week he had left in Denver to read through everything.

  Am I supposed to tell the Colonel about this? Does he already know?

  The thought rushed Kyle’s mind, overwhelmed by keeping such a heavy secret, one that went beyond simply keeping his mouth shut about the existence of Exalls and The Crew.