by David Boyle
Finally with his back to the boulder, Ron peeked slowly around, rifle ready. The bear was still clawing the log. “Wind’s in our face… and dumbshit hasn’t a clue,” he whispered. “This has got to be like the perfect setup.”
Ron chambered a round and quietly latched the bolt.
“I’m goose bumps all over,” Charlie said, clots flying as the bear raked the ground. “Better take ‘im soon Ronny or I’m gonna….”
He found himself searching when a movement caught his eye. A shift in the forest? A glimmer maybe? Charlie leaned out and searched the trees bordering the far end of the marsh.
Something wasn’t right.
Ron brought the rifle up and propped his arm against the outcrop. Not two weeks ago he’d been at the range and zeroed the sights at 150 yards, which, give or take twenty, was right where the bear was sitting. Slightly downhill. And not so much as a twig in the way.
The bear hunched and twisted, ripping powerfully with one arm, then the other.
The sights settled on the bear’s right elbow. Ron tipped the safety off, his finger poised on the trigger. The next time it reached forward…
The bear raised its head, sniffing, the animal then quickly up and onto its feet. It stood for a second, Ron still wondering whether to pull the trigger when it dropped and bolted across the pond, spray flying while Ron tried frantically to draw a bead. The startled huff reached his ears, his would-be trophy splashing from the marsh and into the woods seconds later.
Ron jerked the rifle up. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he snarled, glaring at the forest. “That can’t have happened. Not again….” It had, of course, and at the very last instant. Ron wanted answers, and he wanted them now. “What the hell could possi… bly…?”
Charlie’s face was pasty white, his eyeballs bulging half out of his head. The guy swallowed. Tried to talk. Speechless, he pointed a twitchy finger up the valley.
Ron had never seen anyone so frightened. Another bear? A cougar maybe? A grizzly! He stepped away and snapped the rifle to his shoulder. Reeds swayed in the distance. Wind-blown ripples raced across the pond. There weren’t any bears. Or cougars for that matter. Just an empty shoreline and a whole lot of marsh. He let down, his pulse still pounding, and was about to turn away when he noticed an odd green-yellow glow in the pines. He focused, searching for smoke, then watched in awe as the glow grew in size and intensity, the forest at the end of the valley soon enveloped in the glare of a miniature sun.
Ron stumbled back around the outcrop, shaking his head, blinking, the brilliance lingering on his retina. “What the hell is that?” Charlie didn’t answer, and seemed not to have budged. “Damn it, Bull, snap the fuck out of it!”
The eyes flickered… the mouth opened. And again nothing came out. Charlie swallowed and tried again. “You, you… you see it?” he sputtered.
Ron nodded, his head bobbing like a yo-yo. His hands were tingly. His arms too. And once he realized the tingles were spreading, forcibly slowed his breathing.
He looked again when the tingles subsided. No hallucination. The thing, the it, was still there. He’d known in an instant what he was looking at, but his mind refused to go along. Like the night he’d gotten the call about Bonnie, the one with the detached voice saying: ‘I’m sorry, Mr. McClure, but your wife is dead.’
Still brilliant, though less than before, the thing in the trees was frustratingly indistinct, its twin sparkling off the surface of the pond. But the light was fading, and soon a shape began to emerge from behind the pines. Squat and not quite oval, the thing in the trees came to resemble an enormous egg, the light shrinking until all that remained was a green-yellow glow at the bottom rear of what was none other than a spacecraft.
“Holy shit….”
Whether seconds or minutes later, the ship flared again, the cycle less brilliant and shorter than before. The forest was silent save the wind in the trees, and Ron flinched when Charlie tapped his shoulder, then pointed. There were three men, or what appeared to be men, walking the edge of the forest near the ship. Two were outfitted in green, the other in blue.
Charlie was trembling. “Wha… what do we do now?”
Ron pressed against the rocks. “I don’t know… Get the others maybe. At least get Tony’s camera.” He swiped a hand across his forehead. “Nobody’s going to believe us, you know that don’t you? I mean, hell, I’m here and I don’t believe it!” His head seemed barely able to contain the thoughts flying inside: the bear, the marsh, a spaceship that glowed, the men—if that’s what they were—the sheer impossibility of it all.
He peered around the outcrop, and not sixty yards off spotted one of the crew, the he, she… the it walking the shoreline and pointing something at the water. Ron blinked back around, his breath nearly caught in his throat. “There’s one of them right here!”
Charlie leaned… and snapped back nodding. He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath, his fists unwinding as he let the air drain slowly between his lips. He wiggled his fingers, checking near the ship, then reached and loosened the clasp on the holster.
Ron grabbed his arm. “Are you crazy!?” he whispered.
“Fuck you mean, crazy? That thing’s a walkin’ fortune… dead or alive.”
“Fortune, hell. You think his buddies are going sit on their asses while you blow the fucker away?”
“They gotta see us first. And look for yourself, they’re all back in the woods somewhere.”
“They don’t need to see us. You shoot, and the noise will carry for miles!” Charlie slumped on his heels, his eyes panning the marsh, the trees whistling softly in the wind when at last he secured the clasp on the holster. Ron sighed. “Just watch, okay? And keep your head down. We’re lucky, maybe we can figure out what this thing is up to.”
Ron looked away, exasperated with Charlie, his only desire to get his brain wrapped around whatever it was he was seeing. The creature was small—four feet, maybe a little taller—and the arm and leg lengths off somehow, which was possibly due to the uniform, though maybe not. There was no seeing the thing’s face, but by the way the wind fluffed whatever was covering its head, he was certain it wouldn’t look at all human. The thing did something to the device it was holding, then knelt at the water’s edge, lights flickering when it swept the device across the water. Tense and on edge, his suspicions rising, Ron was focused on the alien when he noticed a pebble skipping down the rocks.
He looked to Charlie, but it was already too late. The arm whipped forward and a rock went sailing, Ron staring in abject horror as the missile struck a glancing blow to the alien’s head. The blue-suited creature fell like a kewpie doll at a carnival and smacked face down into the water.
It lay there, unmoving. Charlie had killed it.
And in that moment Ron knew he was dead too.
Hell, they were all dead.
“Gotcha!” Charlie whooped, cheers fast filling the stadium. He’d made some nice passes, his best a 57-yarder at the Baldrich game, the one Raleigh High won 24-7, but never this good. This one was to a lot smaller target.
He skidded along the slope—“I got ‘im, man! I got ‘im!”—never hearing Ron, and realizing only later that he hadn't checked the ship either. He splashed out in a daze, reality there to slap him in the face when he rolled the thing over with his foot. He skipped back, staring, the eyes staring back reminding him of an alligator. Eyes that didn’t belong in anything shaped so much like a human. Scary almost. And lifeless. Charlie had no regrets whatever about killing the thing.
A slimy bubble grew from the thing’s lips. He nudged the head with his toe and was searching for where the rock had hit when Ron threw one of his own.
“Get out of there, you idiot!”
Charlie glanced at the forest. No one by the ship, no movement in the trees. He picked up the body and draped it over his shoulder, the device the thing had been using falling from its hand… a hand that had two thumbs! No shit, not a human!
Startled by his latest discovery, Cha
rlie plucked the gadget from the water and hurried up the slope and over, Ron quick to follow as they raced downhill through the forest.
*****
Hayden skipped a stone across the water. “Take a look, Bennett. Looks like they got one.”
Mark frowned. “Can’t be. We would have heard the shot.” Charlie had something over his shoulder, Ron waving his rifle as soon as he cleared the trees.
“Maybe so, but Ron sure looks excited.” Tony stubbed his cigarette on a rock. “Think one of them is hurt?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Still, let’s not take the chance. Prentler, take Ron’s boat. Tony, you okay with the barge?”
“I think so… Sure. You guys get going. I’ll catch up.”
Mark had a queasy feeling about the way Ron was pacing, that and staring at the forest every other second. Like something was following them.
Something bad.
Mark steered between the rocks, watching, searching the trees. Ron hadn’t said anything earlier, but maybe there were cubs. “That’d do it,” he mumbled, then twisting to pass along a warning. “Keep your eyes peeled, fellas. We could be in a shitload of trouble if they shot a cub and momma finds out.”
Mark homed on Ron’s position, rocks soon nicking the hull.
Ron waded knee deep into the river. “Took you long enough.” He caught the boat and swung it around so fast that Mark had to throw a leg out to keep the thing from going over.
“The hell you doing, McClure? Can’t you see there’s—”
“Just get to shore. Van Dyke killed an alien, and if we don’t get out of here, and I mean fast, we could end up dead too.”
Mark sat blinking as Ron stormed away, the words eventually registering. “Stop for a second, will you? What are you talking about, dead?”
“Check with dumbass. You’ll see.”
He got to shore, then dragged the Discovery high enough out of the water so the current couldn’t carry it away, all the while trying to make sense of what Ron had said. Alien? What the hell did that mean…? A chill tickled his spine when he realized that what he’d meant to say was illegal alien.
This far from the nearest road? Not likely, but possible.
Charlie waved him over.
Mark hurried off, a crumpled bit of blue soon visible through the weeds, the arms and legs showing a few strides later. He pulled up, gasping. “My god, Charlie, how could you guys…” The body that at first glance belonged to a child most assuredly wasn’t Hispanic, and he slumped to his knees when he realized it wasn’t even human. He picked at his chin, stroking his beard like a furry udder while Charlie rambled on about a ship.
From a distance the thing could well have been mistaken for a human, the truth apparent only on closer inspection. The skull, for one, had little if any forehead, and rose into two prominent lobes, a narrow ridge running down the front of its face. There were two paired slits that likely were nostrils; a wide mouth, if not excessively so. Thin lips. Mark wiped a gooey blob from the thing’s face. Taffy colored and crossed by fine creases, the skin was soft as fine suede. He raised one of the eyelids… and jerked back on his heels.
“Weird, huh?” said Charlie. “Last time I saw eyes like that was in Florida at one of them alligator farms. Fuckin’ things give me the creeps.”
Mark tried again. “Yeah, the pupil does kind of grab you by the throat. But get past it and it’s actually kind of pretty. Maybe even beautiful. Like emerald almost.” The oversized eyes were situated beneath thin but prominent brow ridges, the combination of features strongly suggesting a reptilian or similar ancestry.
The creature was endlessly fascinating, including its uniform. Held tight as if somehow bonded, the material covered all but the creature’s head, forearms, and a section behind its knees. Mark did a quick once over, but found no sign of an insignia. There were small, if barely noticeable, bumps in its collar, and two curiously shaped bulges, one right and one left on its thighs. They no doubt were pockets, but like the suit itself, neither showed any sign whatever of closures. Beaded throughout, the uniform possessed an anti-reflective surface that had the strange and disconcerting feel of plasticized flesh.
Mark glanced momentarily at the screech of aluminum scraping rock; Charlie busy pacing circles in the grass when the others came running over.
Hayden had already gotten an earful, Tony apparently less so, both yet staggered by the body Mark was examining. “It… it really is an alien!” said an astonished Tony.
Mark was busy examining the thing, the body at a glance showing features so unique as to leave no doubt about where it came from. “I didn’t really believe you, McClure. Fuck, I’m looking at it and I still don’t." Hayden turned to Charlie. “You put us in a really ugly situation here, you know that, right? I mean, what the hell were you thinking anyway?”
“You mean with a fuckin’ spaceship in the trees and this… whatever the hell it is, walkin’ toward us and pointin’ that gizmo of his at the water? What would you be thinkin’?”
“I’m not going to play that game, Charlie, because I wasn't there. But you had to know—”
“Had to know what, Prentler?” Charlie glanced when he heard the shutter click. “And what I was thinkin’ was that I needed to put a bullet in it! I mean, shit, I was starin’ at a fucking alien! And I would have too, except for McClure.” He glanced at the body. “You had to be there. This thing gettin’ closer and closer. And me without my damn compound….
“And the fucker stops, like right below us. I look… and there’s nobody by the ship. I reach back, gettin’ settled maybe… and here’s this rock. And I just… I just threw it.” Charlie stared off for a second. “Was kinda weird how that happened…. Anyway, the rock goes skippin’ off the side of his head. And bam! It was game over.”
“No shit, game over,” Ron snorted. “And whether they know it yet or not, once his buddies find out he’s missing they’re going to sweep this whole area until they find him. So finish up with whatever you’re doing so we can get the hell out of here.”
Mark came around, Tony snapping another picture. “You’re not thinking about leaving him are you? Don’t you realize what we’ve got here?”
“You didn’t see his ship, Bennett. I know exactly what we’ve got here. A death sentence!”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Tony said, advancing the film. “You did say when they find out he’s missing.” Ron stood grinding his teeth. “I say it’s worth the risk. We’d make—can you imagine?—the headlines of every paper in the country.” His eyes skipped across invisible tag lines. “Probably the world!”
“Headlines?” Charlie scoffed. “Who cares about headlines? We’ll be rich! I mean like really rich. Millionaires even. You hear about UFOs all the time. But nobody, and I mean nobody believes in aliens. They sure as fuck will now!”
The clock was ticking on a bomb that everyone knew would go off eventually.
Hayden noticed a twitch in the alien’s fingers. He stooped beside the body and felt along the arm for a pulse. It wasn’t a reflex. “It’s alive.”
The risks hadn’t changed, but the rewards had suddenly skyrocketed.
Ron could feel them staring. “One condition. We see any sign of his ship and we dump the son-of-a-bitch.”
The others traded glances. “Agreed,” said Hayden.
“All right then. Delgado, Bennett, get some rope. Prentler, how far to the truck?”
“I’m not sure. Twenty, maybe thirty miles.”
Tony could barely contain himself. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s move!”
With tasks assigned, they scrambled for the canoes. Ron cased his rifle and jammed it alongside his seat. Charlie gave thought to repacking the revolver, but a look to the alien convinced him otherwise. The clothes they’d unpacked and the alien’s gadget were jammed in a dry bag, the task thereafter to decide which boat was best able to carry their new cargo. Ron hated to admit it, but with less of a load to carry than yesterday, the Tripper did have room to spar
e.
A painter was used to bind the alien’s ankles and wrists, the rope then looped around the body to secure the hands to its chest. Charlie positioned the alien none too gently into the boat, he and Ron then working to tie the creature to the thwarts.
“Hold on guys,” said Mark. “You turn the boat over and he’ll drown. Be safer to use bungee cords.”
“Safer. Yeah right. Like I give a damn. It’s like Bull said earlier: he’s worth as much dead as alive.”
“This is not some dumb animal,” Tony said, glaring. “Letting him drown, and whether intentionally or not isn’t only unethical, it could be considered manslaughter and possibly murder.”
Charlie blinked. “You’re kiddin’, right?”
“He won’t drown if the boat stays upright,” Hayden was quick to point out. “But look at what you’re doing. Tie him the way you are and you’re going to end up top heavy.”
Ron and Tony considered the Tripper, the explosiveness of their situation hanging like spilled gasoline. To paddle a canoe out of balance was one thing, and to do it through rapids quite another. Tony threw up his hands. “Then we’ll have to repack it.”
“Bull shit!” Charlie said, glancing at the hillside. “We don’t have time for that.”
Mark snapped his fingers. “The raft! Let some air out and you can shift what you got there against the hulls. Should give you plenty of room.”
“Yeah… Yeah, that’ll work.” Ron loosened a few knots and peeled back a corner of the tarp. He located the valve, though not without effort, pinched between the hull and the thwart.
Charlie stood with his knees quivering, searching the sky. “Can’t you hurry it up?”
