“You, too,” I say to Jacob.
“I know you’re pretending to want me to leave.” When I groan internally at the accuracy with which Jacob has dissected my emotions, he adds, “Sorry.”
Accepting Jacob’s place in this mess, I give Lindo my most intimidating stare and ask, “Where are they? Where are the Others?”
He pauses, perhaps rethinking whether or not he should answer, maybe for his own protection, maybe even for mine. Then he sighs and says, “Dulce, New Mexico.”
28
Lindo stares at me, waiting for a reaction, like I’m a volcano that’s a thousand years overdue for an eruption. “That supposed to mean something to me?”
“Dulce. Really? You’ve never heard of it?” He’s so flabbergasted that I want to slap the look off his face. I glance at Jacob. The kid’s as clueless as me.
“I’ve heard of it,” says a muffled voice from behind the closed door. A slightly dazed-looking Wini enters. “You’d think this place would have thicker doors.”
I’m on my feet and wrapping Wini in my arms before realizing the setting might make my affection a little awkward. “You okay?”
Wini returns my squeeze and pats my back. “Takes more than a little bitch with knock out spray to put me down.” When we separate, she points her finger at Lindo. “In case you missed the context, you’re the little bitch.” Then to Jacob, who’s smiling. “Excuse the language.”
“I’ve never heard the language before, but I do enjoy the way it made everyone feel,” Jacob says. He’s been sheltered in a fundamentalist Mormon home. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘gee willikers’ was considered foul language. “It was an insult, I think, but it made all three of you happy.”
Jacob stabs a finger at Lindo. “Little bitch!” When we all start laughing, he lights up. “You see!”
Wini and I take seats on the round bed. She takes in the room around us, her amusement lingering. She leans in close to me and whispers, “I woke up with a dildo in my face.”
Part of me wants to apologize, but she’s not actually complaining. This is a return to our status quo. A normalization after some truly weird shit, which we’re about to be steeped in once more.
“Not the first time,” I tell her, gently ribbing her with my elbow.
“What did you just say?” Jacob asks, eyes alight with curiosity.
“Never you mind,” Wini says. “You might have an all access pass to how we feel, but not everything we say is for your ears.”
“Because you don’t trust me,” Jacob surmises.
“Because you’re a child,” Wini says, “and you deserve to have a childhood for as long as you can. If that’s even still possible.”
Jacob leans back as he absorbs that.
“Dulce,” Wini says, putting the conversation back on course. “It’s a subterranean military base, right? A secret facility that might or might not be there. I think I read a novel where Nazis had set up shop there.”
“Nazis?” Lindo sounds almost offended. “What? No. Who would believe that?”
Wini shrugs. “I remember it being a good read.”
“And it’s not a base. At least, not in the way we think of them.”
“But you don’t really know,” Jacob says. “You’re not confident.”
“Well, no,” Lindo says. “No one has been inside.”
“No one?” Jacob asks.
“No one who’s come back out,” Lindo says. “It’s where Chimera thinks they take the people they collect.”
“Why are they collecting people?” I ask.
“Honestly, we’re not sure, or the people who are sure haven’t told me. But I think it’s safe to say it has something to do with hybridization.” He glances at Jacob, but the kid doesn’t miss a thing.
“You think?” Jacob says, rolling his eyes.
“Chimera,” I say. “What does it mean?” Something about this conversation is triggering the fragment of a memory.
“It’s a merger of different creatures,” Lindo says, and then the question seems to sink in. “Or…”
“Or cryptoterrestrials and humans,” Jacob says. “Have you really never considered this before?”
“I’ve always thought it described the merger of human and nano-tech. That’s how it was described to me. It’s been so long that I’ve stopped thinking about the name.” He turns to Jacob. “Even when I found out about people like you.”
“Thanks,” Jacob says. “For calling me people. Harry never did.”
“I’m sorry,” Wini says. “But I think I’ve missed a lot. What’s a crypto-whatchamacallit?”
Between Lindo, Jacob, and me, we paint a picture of the day’s events that she missed. The EMP, the spheres, and more importantly, the information Lindo revealed about Chimera, the Others, and Aeron.
When we finish, she leans back on the bed. “Well…shit.” After staring at the ceiling for a moment, she nudges me with her knee. “I suppose your grand plan is to rush in guns-a-blazing and rescue everyone?”
While I hadn’t actually come up with a plan, her assessment isn’t too far from how I feel. “Something a little more subtle than guns-a-blazing.”
“Subtle or not, we’re talking about an advanced non-human civilization, right?” She turns to Lindo. “Right?”
He nods.
“And they’ve been around how long?”
“Longer than homo sapiens,” Lindo says. “Probably longer than our primate ancestors. We don’t really know how long. There’s no trace of them in the fossil record.”
“And you think you can traipse into their subterranean not-really-a-base and waltz back out?” Wini breaks out a collection of verbs when she’s really upset. She looks calm on the outside, relaxed even, but traipsing and waltzing reveal her discomfort. I’m sure Jacob senses her true emotions, but he remains silent.
“Of course not,” I tell her, “but our options are limited.”
“We could take the ones we’ve saved and not look back,” she says.
Lindo puts the kibosh on that plan, saying, “I think you might have misjudged the value of Jacob and his siblings.”
“Not really my siblings,” Jacob says.
“Aeron isn’t going to just stop looking for them.” Lindo looks uncomfortable for a moment and then says, “And neither will Chimera. I’m not aware of any genetics program, but I’ve seen enough to know it’s possible, and once they have the kids, probable. But they’re not the worst of your problems. The Others deal in people. That’s their business. They go to great lengths to collect very specific people, and if their arrangement with the Mormon church traces back to Joseph Smith, we’ve just interrupted a very long, very successful program.”
“You think they’ll come for the kids?” I ask.
“And I think they’ll be pissed,” Lindo says. “Yeah. But we can’t just wage war against these things. Wini is right. We’ve known about the Others since World War II, in the sense that everyone agreed that phenomena like foo fighters were real. Technically we’ve known about the Others before, but never got past their mythological disguises. The narrative for us, especially after the crash in Roswell, became ‘aliens from outer space.’ And the U.S. government, along with certain corporations in the know, were happy to let people believe that, relegating the UFO phenomenon to society’s fringe. If no one took aliens too seriously, they could deal with the problem on their own terms, which in 1979 meant direct confrontation.
“A mining operation in Dulce ran into trouble when their equipment started malfunctioning and day after day they made no progress. There was also a string of UFO sightings in the area. A team from the FBI, who were clueless about what they were up against, visited the site and disappeared. A second team went looking for them, and—”
“Poof,” Wini says. “Idiots.”
“Up until this point, the Others had concealed themselves masterfully. In 1961 the UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill became known worldwide. And it kicked off a string of UFO abductions, all with the s
ame M.O.: abduction, experimentation, revelations about the Earth, about our species, about the cosmos, and memory loss.”
Elbows on my knees, a more complete and frightening image starts to resolve. “You’re saying all of those people were—”
“Part of a smokescreen,” Lindo says. “Yeah. Aliens became the new narrative, and the Others put on a show that had people pointing to the sky, instead of the Earth, and made it all just ridiculous enough that truly brilliant minds wouldn’t give the subject serious scrutiny. By 1979 everyone knew that when UFOs abducted people, they brought them home. Sometimes naked. Sometimes confused. Sometimes with no memory of what happened. But they always brought them back. So when people disappeared and never came back, no one blamed aliens. They weren’t idiots, just ignorant. But that changed at Dulce.
“A platoon of Green Berets descended on the mine, catching the Others off guard. A mine worker who witnessed the events described killing two seven-foot-tall grays when they emerged from the caves near the mine. He was later saved by a Green Beret, who later died fighting the Others as they overwhelmed the soldiers using futuristic weapons. Sixty men died during the confrontation. While there were reports of Others being killed, there were no bodies. No traces left behind. Not even blood. And the sixty dead soldiers…they were recovered…”
Lindo is a lot of things that I’m not fond of, but he’s not squeamish. But he looks fairly green as he speaks. “They were found naked, and fused together, their bodies arranged in an X.”
It’s a hard story to believe, but after the things I’ve seen and experienced, I can’t think of a reason to not believe him. And if it’s true, the Others’ message was clear: come here and die horribly. It was a display of sobering power that has kept interactions with human beings limited to the occasional mishap.
“Isn’t there still a town at Dulce?” Wini asks.
“Three thousand people,” Lindo says. “And they have no idea who they’re living above. The whole thing was covered up. The miner told his story, of course, but without evidence, he’s just another crackpot. Even most UFOlogists write him off because—”
“Aliens come from space,” Jacob says. “Their manipulation of humanity is impressive.”
“Not the word I would use,” I say. Jacob isn’t really admiring the Others, and he’s right, it is impressive…in the same way Hitler’s conquest of Europe was impressive. It’s a power left unchecked that someone needs to stand up against. That someone needs to stop. But how do you stop an ancient civilization that makes the Nazis look as threatening as diaper-wearing baby koalas?
After rubbing my temples, considering our options, and coming up with nothing solid, I ask Lindo, “What can we do? You have resources. Access to tech. There’s no way Aeron, Chimera, and the U.S. government haven’t been preparing for a time when confrontation becomes unavoidable. There has to be a way we can take the fight to them.”
The lights flicker, drawing my eyes to the ceiling for a moment.
Lindo opens his mouth to reply and then stops. Turns his eyes to the lamp. Watching.
The light slowly dims, fading to a dull yellow before strobing and going dark.
“Looks like they’re beating you to it,” Lindo says from the darkness. “They’re bringing the fight to us.”
29
“How do you know it’s them?” I ask.
Before Lindo can answer, brilliant orange light cuts through the edges of the room’s drawn shade.
“I don’t feel anything,” Jacob says, his eyes on the ceiling, a stripe of orange light dividing his face. “There’s no one up there.”
“Another drone?” I ask.
“Trust me,” Lindo says. “It’s not a drone, and it’s not Aeron. It’s them.”
“What do they want?” Wini asks.
Lindo answers by looking at Jacob. “All of them.”
I draw Wini’s pistol. “That’s not going to happen. Hey…” I look Jacob in the eyes. “That’s not going to happen.”
The look in his eyes reveals he can feel my lack of confidence, but instead of calling me on it, he nods. Gun in hand, I head for the door. “Keep an eye on him,” I say to Wini, and then to Jacob, “And you her.” Then to Lindo, “You’re with me.”
After entering the hallway with Lindo, I ease the door shut and hear the door lock behind me.
“That’s not going to help much.” Lindo motions to the gun.
“They’re living creatures, right? That means they can die.”
“A platoon of Green Berets got their asses kicked by these guys. The U.S. government is afraid to pick a fight with them. You’re just a dude with six shots.”
I glance down at the revolver. It’s far from my first choice of firearms, but it packs a punch. If my aim is true, I can drop six of these assholes. And I’m not trying to defeat them all or undo hundreds, if not thousands of years of subjugation and manipulation. I just want to open a window through which we can escape.
A nagging voice in the back of my mind asks, and then what? If they found us here, they can find us anywhere.
A vibration moves through the large house. Light fills the stairwell from the windows lining the front door.
“Remember, you’re not protected from them, but you can resist them. Think of something important to you. Lock it in your head. Focus on it as much as you do moving, and no matter what happens, control your fear. They’ll use that shit against you. Might even make you use that—” He motions to the gun. “—against me.”
A shadow moves into view at the bottom of the stairs. The back of my neck tingles, hair standing on end. My heart thumps against my ribs.
“The hell is going on?” Sheba asks from the bottom step, a shotgun clutched in her arms.
So much for controlling my fear. I nearly shot my friend.
“Get the girls to the shelter,” I say. Sheba has a bomb shelter built beneath the brothel. In addition to being a purveyor of questionable services, she’s also something of a survivalist. It’s capable of surviving a nuclear blast and keeping a dozen occupants alive for a good year.
“Already done,” she says. “And they have the kids. Door’s locked behind them. No one’s getting in there. Now what kind of shit are we expecting?”
I’m about to tell her the truth, which I’m sure she won’t believe until she sees it for herself, when the screams of two men billow from the room across the hall. Young and Godin are awake, and it doesn’t sound pleasant.
Below, muffled by two floors and a metal bunker, the muffled sounds of six screaming children reach my ears. The house seems to rumble in response to their anguish. They’re not waking up. They’re being woken up.
Godin stumbles out of the room, stunned and clutching his head with one hand. Then he sees me, gun drawn and terrified, and holds his ground. “What’s happening?”
“Safer if you go back in your room, man,” Lindo says. “Keep the preach in there, too.”
The house shakes as though being subjected to a localized unceasing earthquake. “Feels like the house is coming apart.”
“It’s just a distraction,” Lindo says. “They’re coming.”
Sheba pumps the shotgun and points it at the front door. “Anyone coming is going to get a face full of buck shot!”
I start down the stairs, handgun raised at the door.
“Yo,” Lindo says, fear drawing out old speech patterns. “I feel like this might be a good time to point out that they don’t really need doors.”
“The fuck you say?” Sheba says, glancing up the stairs.
“They can move through shit,” Lindo says, and I notice he’s watching the walls around us for the first time.
With widening eyes, I shift my view away from the door and to the lounge’s exterior wall. I nearly scream when I see a pair of black eyes peering at me from the wall. The dreamlike image fades out of sight, leaving me bewildered.
“Daniel,” Sheba says, her voice a forced calm. She’s staring at the same patch of wall as me,
her shotgun still pointed at the door. “Was that…”
“An alien,” I finish for her, redirecting my aim toward the wall where a pair of neon bra-clad breasts is hung. I’m about to warn her to guard her thoughts when a flash of movement to my right spins me around, too slow.
I catch sight of a large, featureless gray face and black eyes before I’m thrown back. I don’t feel any physical contact until I hit the far wall and crash down atop a card table, which gives way under my weight and dumps me onto the floor.
Two shotgun blasts rock the lounge, but each is followed by a “Shit!” and then a shout of pain. When I recover enough to look, I find Sheba on the floor, clutching her head and grinding her teeth, the shotgun dropped beside her.
Above me, I hear thumping and a grunt.
“Lindo!”
No reply.
My body says to stay down, but I push against the pain, recover my dropped handgun, and take two steps toward the stairs.
That’s when they get in my head, picking up right where they left off at the ranch.
What’s in the envelope?
The question with no answer cripples me.
While every part of me is screaming, Get up those stairs, I find myself stumbling back in a kind of stupor, like I’m just a passenger in my own body. They’re doing it, I think. They’re taking control.
Not taking control. In control.
Fight it, I think, but that’s all it is. A thought.
Don’t fight it.
It’s not worth the trouble.
Wini will be safe.
The others, too.
They’re just here for…one?
A moment of confusion washes over me and I wonder where the others are.
These aren’t my thoughts, I realize. They’re looking for all the kids, but can only find Jacob.
He has no name, the voice in my thoughts that are not my thoughts says. Where are they?
I try to clear my mind. The answer would be so easy to give.
You can end this.
Protect your friends.
That’s all you want.
That’s everything.
The Others Page 18
