by David Coy
The tech had photographed everything. Linda took her own pictures.
Bob and the deputies had little to say about how curious the evidence was. She couldn’t tell if they were naturally intolerant of the opinions of amateurs or just stupid. “There’s no blood,” one had said, “that’s a fact.” The technician said the tracks were odd, but he’d seen lots of odd things in his day. Linda didn’t doubt that at all. When he smiled at her she could see green stains on his teeth at the gum line.
Something out of the ordinary had happened to Phil, that was sure, the Sheriff had said, but they didn’t know that he was dead or even injured. They’d have to wait forty-eight hours to see if he showed up before they escalated it, even if the missing person was the Sheriff’s nephew. Linda listened to Bob and knew from his tone that he was totally at a loss. If he had any theories about what had happened that might be considered out of the ordinary, he wasn’t letting on. No telling what people might think, his being the sheriff and all that.
Linda had already started to formulate her own theory while they were there. She confirmed it later that day.
After Bob, the deputies, and the tech had left late Saturday afternoon, Linda had drawn up a pattern of the tracks with arrows going in the right directions. That little map told the whole story, just like the ant trail.
It was all as plain as day to Linda Purdy. When she’d first figured it out, she nearly choked on the horror of it.
She pulled the crumpled paper out of her jacket pocket, flapped it open with one hand and looked at it for the hundredth time. She could see clearly how the aliens had approached the cabin from where they landed their UFO in the wash—and flew away; where the two kinds of aliens had split up; where the one had been shot by Phil as it approached his position behind the truck; and where they’d picked up Phil after they’d zapped him with a ray gun or something. She could see clearly where they picked up the alien Phil shot on their way out and the direction they’d marched back to the UFO in the wash and flew off.
She knew she’d have as much chance as a snowball in Hell of convincing a single other soul of what happened. The tech had samples of alien blood and a patch of alien skin in those baggies, but they’d wind up in the trash before the week was out. The depression in the wash was a UFO print. It would be gone and forgotten and the mashed plants grown back up by spring.
She folded up the map but before she could get it back in her pocket, she started to cry again.
She closed the cabin and the truck but left both intentionally unlocked, just in case they brought him back from wherever they’d taken him. Then she got in her Jeep and headed down to Edna’s. She’d told Buddy she’d stop in before she left for Redondo Beach and have a bite to eat. She didn’t feel very hungry, but it didn’t matter. She took the shotgun with her.
She started to cry again after she closed the gate at the foot of the hill. About halfway down, she noticed she was thirsty and wondered if you could cry yourself thirsty. Stopping for food and drink at Edna’s, suddenly seemed like a necessary, if not a very pleasant, idea.
Edna had set out a nice plate of barbecued turkey and sandwich makings. Linda slapped together a plain sandwich like she was dazed; and when she took the first bite, was surprised by how hungry she was. Somewhere between the following hurried bites of sandwich and a long pull of iced lemonade, she realized she hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing since Saturday morning at daybreak.
While they ate, Ronny kept talking about how crazy it was that someone would try to kidnap Phil, his being such a tough customer and all. The talk just confused and frightened Edna and she cried again. Linda kept her mouth shut and full of turkey.
She left Ronny and Edna without saying much since there wasn’t much to say anyway. The only news any of them wanted was that Phil had been found and in good health. Everything else was trite, without meaning. They all promised to call the minute any of them got word. It sounded stupid to have to say it.
Driving down the 14, Linda let the bitter thought leak out that it wasn’t just possible, but highly probable, that she would never see Phil again. She had no idea what the chances of him showing up, except that they were slim to none. She knew nothing at all useful about alien abductions and all that crap, but she had never doubted that it could happen. She knew in her heart that when it really did happen, despite the alleged first-hand reports, the persons who were abducted did not return.
It just made sense.
* * *
The only plan they had was to go as far as they could, see and record as much as they could and not get caught. It was elegant in its simplicity.
The tube had three seams. One they called “the front seam”, one they called “the rear”. One they called “the middle,” although it was actually only about a third of the way up from the front and at the end of its own ten-foot long tube. It was this one that the goons used almost exclusively. The front seam led to the grocery and to another short tube that led to the dump. The seam opening to the dump was nearly always closed—that is, until they’d found out how to work the openers, and they’d already found several good reasons to make unscheduled trips to it. There was another seam that opened to the tubes beyond the dump, but that one, like most of the others, was off limits for now because it was used too frequently. Beyond the grocery were the soakers. There were two seams opening into the soaker chamber, one at each side of the thirty-foot-wide room. These were always closed.
That left the rear seam as the only likely port for exploration.
The idea was that the tubes beyond the back seam were not in active use for some reason. No one could remember a goon ever using the rear seam. Ned thought that the entire section was separate from the rest of the ship and maybe devoid of any accoutrements or features, just dead space like a bilge or empty hold. Why else would they not use it? Maybe it was under construction or some unfathomable alien repair. Whatever the reason, those tubes were the least traveled, as far as they could tell, and therefore the safest to explore.
They’d tested it earlier and discovered that the seam would open and close when just Phil and Ned put their hands on an opener at the same time, their combined mass providing just enough impedance, or aura or voltage, or whatever, to actuate it. They saw this as a big plus, since it meant the reconnoitering team could be smaller and hopefully less detectable. When Phil touched the opener this time, the pulse of repugnance that shot through his hand from the organ’s odd, rippled tissue made him want to jerk his hand away.
Based on what they knew about how they were being rotated, Mary guessed that she would probably be in the next group to be impregnated, and it wouldn’t do for her to come up missing so she’d stay behind on this first excursion. No one knew when the goons would show up in the tube for sure since spot visits for no known reason weren’t unheard of. They might detect the absence of Phil and Ned as well, but that seemed somewhat less likely unless they were looking for them specifically. There was just no way to know. Phil and Ned would
proceed without her. It had been Phil’s call.
They’d gathered up about a day’s worth of food and drink, a notebook, and a small flashlight from Tom Moon and put it all in a blue nylon day pack volunteered by Ned.
Mary stuffed another can of something into the pack on Ned’s back and zipped it closed. She patted it and smiled at them. “Tally ho,” she said flatly.
With that, Phil and Ned stepped through the open seam and closed it from the outside.
They stood at the juncture of the three tubes for a moment and considered which one to take. Phil picked the one on the right and walked into it. The tube was about ten feet in diameter, and the floor was slightly flatter than the walls, giving the feeling that it was collapsing somehow. Phil couldn’t shake the feeling that he was walking into an empty arterial structure or vein. He looked closely at the floor and sides of the tube, looking for any sign of recent passage. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he didn’t doubt that some clue, some
artifact of a goon’s passage through the tube might yet exist in it.
He found nothing.
They moved like cats at first, padding silently close to the walls and peering cautiously around the bends of the tube. Their confidence grew by the minute and it occurred to them, almost simultaneously, that it made little sense to skulk.
The tube bent to the right in a long sweep and Phil sensed that it had made a complete ninety-degree turn before straightening out again.
They passed three or four junctures with tubes going off in all directions, including a smaller vertical shaft, so deep it gave Phil a flush of vertigo to look down it.
Each step Phil took reminded him of just how large the ship really was. They weren’t going in a straight line, but even the possibility that they were walking in circles left an undeniable feeling of enormity of the alien vessel. The idea of a thing being alive and being that big stretched Phil’s imagination. He searched his memory for a reference to any natural advantage to such a physical mass and found little to support it. Whalers, he knew, loved the big whales because they had more blubber, but there was little advantage to the whale for its size. Enormous size in the Earth’s oceans was the result of plentiful food, an evolutionary perfect and efficient way to collect and consume it, and dense water to buoy up the mass on all sides. Large size wasn’t a guarantee against predation, either. Smaller killer whales in a pack could pursue and kill even the largest of Earth’s behemoths. Big size didn’t always carry an economy of scale— unless you were the whaler.
The tubes were generally the same size, color and shape and the dim light from the light organs lining them further homogenized their appearance. Phil dug a notebook out of the backpack and started to sketch as they went along, noting the distances in steps between major junctures and the angles of adjoining tubes. His rough map-making would get them back to the seam easily enough if he didn’t miss any major landmarks. “This place is a maze,” Ned said, his voice low.
“If you got lost in here, you’d starve to death,” Phil replied. Looking ahead, Ned suddenly grimaced. “What do you suppose that would be?” he said, pointing to a spot on the tube’s floor.
A scatter of human debris lay in the tube just at a point where it leveled out from a long incline from ahead. Most of the crap was empty cans and balled up packaging. One of the objects was approximately spherical and as they moved closer and the tube’s dim, brown light revealed more detail, Phil recognized it.
“It’s a head,” he said with a frown. “It looks human.”
It was clearly organic, but so distorted, it could have been almost anything made of meat and bone. He kneeled down to get a closer look and touched it lightly with the tip of his pen. The sickly scent of spoiled meat reached him as his got closer. “Look at the mouth structure. Those are human teeth.”
“If you say so,” Ned replied. “But where did it come from?” Phil looked down the tube in both directions, then pointed in the direction they were already headed. “The tube is on an upward slant starting from this point. My guess is it rolled down from somewhere up that way.”
They looked at each other and past each other, trying to decide whether or not to proceed. The head felt like some kind of warning, like a totem, left by some primitive tribe to turn away intruders.
“Christ, this place is somethin’,” Ned said running his hand over his head. “Who’d have ever thought that . . . ” His voice trailed off, and his gaze dropped to the head at his feet.
“Yeah, I know. Lets go take a look,” Phil said.
They headed up the incline of the tube.
About fifty yards up, Phil noticed a movement against the wall of the tube. He stopped and held up his hand to Ned to do the same. Ten yards up and on the left was a hole. It was small, perhaps four feet in diameter, and the source of the movement.
“What is it?” Ned whispered.
Phil put his finger to his lips. Phil knew what it was already. He’d seen enough in his peripheral vision to know that the movement was a very human-like head, this one ducking quickly back into the hole.
Whoever, or whatever it was must have seen us, Phil thought. So why the cat and mouse?
Phil approached the hole cautiously, keeping close to the wall.
“Hello!” Phil called.
No reply.
“Hello!”
Phil motioned with his hand for Ned to turn around, unzipped the flap of the backpack and dug out the flashlight. He checked the beam then turned it toward the hole. The thin beam drew a yellow spot on the wall, and Phil brought it slowly around. When the light found the thing in the back, the shock of it nearly knocked Phil down.
“Ah god . . . ” Phil said.
There was no fear in the thing’s eyes, only a forlorn emptiness like the eyes in a cheap painting. They were the eyes of a lunatic, and Phil could tell it had no reason or desire to make contact with them. It had obviously started out as a human, but with the exception of the head and arms, had little in common with homo sapiens. It stood hunkered and stooped like a wounded dog, as far from the opening as it could get. The chamber was strewn with cans, debris and waste.
“What is it?” Ned asked.
Phil thought about it with a scowl of disgust. “A lab animal. An escaped lab animal,” he said. He was sure the description was accurate.
Ned moved up and looked in.
“Christ,” he said.
The thing just stared blankly at the light.
“Leave it alone. There’s nothing we can do for it. Lets go.”
Phil turned off the light and left the thing to the meager comfort of the chamber’s darkness.
How did it get there, Phil wondered. Had it leaped up at the right moment and run through an open seam on those powerful alien legs, human arms waving. Had it sneaked away unseen? Had it been set loose for some unfathomable reason? Where was it getting food? Was someone or something feeding it like a pet? Was it snatching body parts to feed on them like a hyena?
God, get me out of here.
Phil was suddenly filled with such an overwhelming hatred for the things that could create that thing, transmute living flesh. He heard in his mind the combined anguish of the millions of living victims sacrificed to build this science, and the voices rose like a chorus of the damned. Phil was helpless to do anything about it and the anger and hate turned in and crushed him. The strength of will and steady confidence Phil Lynch had spent a lifetime building crumbled away like old bricks. He stumbled up against the tough, rubbery wall of the alien tube and vomited.
“You okay?” Ned asked, resting his hand on Phil’s back. “No,” Phil said, spitting bile. “I’m not. I’m not okay. Are you?” he added hatefully. “Are you okay?”
Ned patted him almost imperceptibly with his fingers. “No. I guess I’m not,” he said.
Phil spat up again and rested there with his hands on his knees. The smell of vomit filled the air and he longed to move away from it, but couldn’t just then. He felt Ned’s big warm hand on his back and envied the Canadian’s seeming insensitivity to the horror of it all. Ned didn’t seem especially fearful or concerned, though any human would in these circumstances. It has to be something in his background, Phil thought. Something makes him either the bravest or the dumbest man I’ve ever known. Phil took a deep breath or two, wiped his mouth and straightened up.
“What line of work were you in, Ned—before all this?”
“Sales. Car parts.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Hog farm up in Montreal.”
Bingo.
Phil led the way again. “Let’s go. I’ll be all right.”
As they moved down the tube, Phil felt the temperature drop suddenly, like walking into a meat cooler. A moment later it was cool enough to see their breath and Phil breathed out a noisy cloud of fog at Ned.
“What do you think?” Phil asked.
“Got me there,” Ned replied. “Looks like we’re at the end of this tube if that counts
for anything.”
The tube ended in a seam just twenty feet or so ahead. They’d passed several seams along the way and had tacitly agreed not to try to open them. They were covering good ground without the added complication of opening a seam into a nest of goons, or something worse. The seam ahead, though, invited them to test it. It was the terminating seam in this long tube.
“Well?” Phil asked.
“It’s cold here. What if it opens into space?” Ned replied. Phil thought about it. “Not likely. Possible, I suppose, but not likely. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
With that and a stiff smile, Ned stepped up and put one hand on the opener. When Phil added his, the seam parted with the sound of tearing meat.
Sticky threads of viscous material stretched across the opening like an amorphous spider web, suggesting that the seam hadn’t been opened in a while. On the other side were shelf-like racks lined with neat rows of jug-sized objects that shone like gray pearls. There were seven tiers or shelves going from floor to ceiling. Each shelf was six objects deep. Phil guessed that the chamber was about one hundred feet long and the racks lined each side of the chamber like mirror images. The objects were placed in the racks with such precision, Phil imaged they may have been placed there by a machine, or by the alien equivalent of a monk with an unerring, or even compulsive sense of neatness. Another seam could be seen at the far end of the chamber.
“How many of what-ever-they-are is there, do you think?” Ned asked.
Out of his own bag of stray compulsions, Phil had pulled out the one that caused him to count neat rows of things and was already putting it to good use.
