Independence Day: Silent Zone

by Stephen Molstad

  He sat down on the sofa and let his life flash before his eyes. This chick is mondo diggable, he told himself. I haven’t known her an hour, and I’ve already lied to her a couple of times. If I keep working at Area 51, I’ll never be friends with her or anyone else. There are too many secrets to keep. Suddenly, he pictured himself at forty, still with long hair, still puttering around with the spaceship, still single. When Dworkin and the others were gone would he continue to work down there alone?

  Contemplating these matters, he reached into a bowl of nuts on the coffee table and was trying to open one with his teeth when another woman walked into the room. “And who might you be?” she asked.

  “Um, hello. Is your name Gluck? Trina Gluck?”

  “It might be. Who are you?”

  “Hello, I’m Bob. Bob Robertson. I work at JPL in the microcircuitry division. We do a lot of the electronic work for the space program. I was just having a very pleasant conversation with your daughter.”

  The woman, elegant, in her late fifties, was obviously Brinelle’s mom. From the way she was dressed, it looked like she’d just come back from a social function.

  “Are you a friend of my daughters?”

  “Sort of. I mean, I hope so. But actually, I’m here to see you. I recently read the report on your abduction and wanted to ask you some questions about it.”

  Instantly, Okun knew he’d said the wrong thing. The woman’s expression turned ugly- “Get out of this house before I call the police.”

  Okun tried to make her understand how important it was, but she wouldn’t listen. Brinelle came back in and tried to take his side, but her mom was irate, screaming at the top of her lungs, tears on her face. When he stopped in the doorway, she began pushing the door closed. “Dr. Wells sent me,” he blurted out, just as the door slammed in his face.

  He stood on the doorstep, stunned. How could he have been so stupid? Up to that moment, he’d treated it all as a game, the Great American Flying Saucer Hunt. But obviously, it was a deep personal wound for this woman. The instant he’d mentioned the word abduction, a wave of pain had broken across her face. For Trina Gluck, it wasn’t a game. Okun started off down the brick driveway when the door opened again.

  Mrs. Gluck stepped onto the porch and waved him back inside. “If Dr. Wells sent you, you can come in.”

  *

  The kidnapping, as she called it, had taken place about ten years earlier, shortly after her husband, a congressman, had declared his candidacy for one of California’s Senate seats. It was Memorial Day weekend, and Brinelle was away at her first slumber party. Trina’s husband was in bed reading. She was in the bathroom brushing her teeth when her arm suddenly relaxed to her side. A moment later, the toothbrush clattered into the sink. Although she’d never so much as imagined an encounter with aliens before, she somehow knew immediately what was happening. She was terrified and felt the impulse to scream, but couldn’t. She still had control over her eyes and tried to turn toward the door, but her neck would not cooperate. She felt the first one come into the room a moment before she saw its reflection in the mirror. She described it as being about three or four feet tall with a large head and shiny silver eyes, but it moved about the room so quickly she couldn’t get a good look at it. After the first one examined her hair and nightgown, others came through the doorway.

  One of them stood directly behind her, hidden from view, and identified itself to her as “the friend.” This creature spoke to her using her own voice for what seemed like a long time. The distinction between her own thoughts and those of the friend began to blur. She felt small hands touching her body in several places and heard them rummaging through the drawers and cabinets. She felt her shock settling into anger and struggled to regain control of herself. When the friend asked how they could help her relax and cooperate, she asked for her husband. Go get my husband out of bed. But a moment later she heard her own voice reply, “Your husband is asleep now.”

  She was taken outdoors and laid on her back in some of the bushes by the side of the house. The friend made her understand she had a skin disease, something contagious on her stomach and pelvis. Small hands lifted her nightgown while other hands lifted her head so she could watch the operation that would cure her. Silently begging them to stop, she watched a needlelike instrument slice into her skin. The blade opened a bloodless incision down the left side of her belly, from the rib cage down to the hip. A second instrument she couldn’t see was inserted into the opening. As it slid between her skin and stomach, the friend congratulated her on being clean again. Still listening to her own voice being used by another being, she was given a brief lecture of some sort. It might have been on hygiene, but she couldn’t be sure.

  When the operation was finished she was put into a sitting position, then lifted up into the sky. It was the sensation of sitting in a strong net and being lifted by a very fast crane. She watched as the lights of the city receded between her knees.

  Then she was in a gray room. She heard the soft rustling of their movements, like pieces of silk being rubbed together. She rolled her head to the side, and noticed she was lying on a platform or table a few feet above the floor. The room appeared to be circular, almost spherical in shape. A bank of windows was set low against the wall, almost part of the floor. Nearby she noticed a pile of clothing, old dirty clothes, and she had the sense that someone had been sleeping there. The friend came and repositioned her head so that all she could see was the blank gray ceiling. She was told that the examination would continue.

  Then a new creature stepped into her peripheral vision and approached the table. It was much taller than the others, but she felt that it was different in other ways as well. It seemed to be a leader of some sort. It leaned in and brought its face closer until she could see her distorted reflection in the bulging eyes. They reminded her of insect eyes although the face around them was nearly human in shape. She closed her own eyes, hoping that if she ignored this tall creature, it would back away. But it continued hovering over the table, studying her.

  Without using an audible voice, the leader began pronouncing a series of words or ideas, as if it were reading down a list. She knew she was being asked about each item, but did not understand her role in the exchange. The only one of these “words” she could recall later was the letter Y, and only because it had been asked of her repeatedly. Several times, the tall creature probed her thoughts for the meaning of this symbol. She tried to cooperate, thinking they might spare her life if she could give them the information they wanted. It was clear to her it didn’t mean the letter Y in the alphabet. It occurred to her that it might be a place, a landmark in a city perhaps. She thought of the Space Needle in Seattle and the arch in St. Louis, but the creature seemed dissatisfied with these answers.

  It stood up, and, as it moved away from her, she must have lost consciousness.

  *

  “My husband woke me up at two in the morning saying he’d had a dream someone was trying to break into the house. He went downstairs to look around and noticed the security alarm had been disarmed. It never worked properly after that, and we ended up having to have it replaced. I asked him for a glass of water because my throat felt dried out. When I sat up to take it, he noticed there were leaves and dirt all over my back and in my hair. We decided that I must have been sleepwalking and that I was the one who had turned off the alarm. We went down and checked the side of the house, because the leaves in bed matched the japonicas growing out there, but nothing looked unusual, no signs of struggle or anything like that. I told him about having this sensation that I’d gone somewhere, but at that point it was still buried at the back of my mind.

  “We talked about it the next morning over breakfast, and I mentioned to him again about this sense of mine that I’d been carried off somewhere. He wanted to call the police, but I wouldn’t let him. When he left for the office, I went up to the bathroom and took a shower. Then it all came back to me in a crash when I opened the medicine chest
and saw my toothbrush hanging in the rack next to his. I never put it there. I was always very meticulous about standing it in the little ceramic cup. That little detail caused an avalanche. I remembered the whole thing at once. I didn’t stand there remembering it piece by piece. It all came back to me in a single moment. I looked on my stomach and found a thin red mark, like a scratch, where I remembered them cutting me open. Later our doctor told me it was a scar. He said it was so thin that I must have had it since I was a child. But I know I didn’t.

  “We called the police, and that was a mistake. I felt utterly violated, like I’d been raped, and when I told everything to the police it was clear they didn’t believe me! Then the FBI showed up and the CIA and the Army. I was going through a severe nervous breakdown, and they behaved as if I were making the whole thing up to get some attention. That’s probably been the hardest part of this whole thing, being isolated and made to feel like 1 did something wrong. Dr. Wells was the first person who tried to understand what I was going through. He put me in touch with Dave Natchez and the survivors group, so I had some support, someone who believed me. Well, my husband believed me; without him I probably wouldn’t have survived. Does that answer your questions?”

  Okun felt a little overwhelmed by everything she’d told him. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “So how is Dr. Wells?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Still crazy, I hope.”

  “Unfortunately, Dr. Wells passed away.”

  “How awful. I’m sorry to hear that. Were you close?” Not knowing how to answer the question, Okun merely shrugged. She went on. “I wish I’d written back sooner. I got a letter from him about six months ago, and I just haven’t made time to answer it. Oh, I feel terrible.”

  “Six months ago?”

  “Yes, I know. I have no excuse. I could have found the time.”

  “Could I see the letter?”

  “Certainly.” It bore a postmark six months earlier. The envelope was printed stationery from somewhere called Sunnyglen Villa in San Mateo, a town at the base of the San Francisco peninsula. The letter was only a couple of sentences long and revealed nothing.

  “Do you have a phone I can borrow?”

  *

  He called Sunnyglen Villa and asked to speak with Dr. Immanuel Wells. The soft-spoken woman on the other end said Mr. Wells was ill and couldn’t take any phone calls. She offered to take a message, asking if he was “with an agency.” Okun said he was an old family friend and said he’d call back later. He stared down at the envelope, wondering what sort of mental institution would give itself a name like Sunnyglen.

  It was the middle of the afternoon. If he was going to get back to Las Vegas before the van picked them up, he’d have to leave soon. After he thanked Mrs. Gluck for sharing her story, Brinelle walked him out to his car.

  “Hey, what’s your hurry? Why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  “Gotta get back to work.”

  “You’re gonna drive to San Mateo right now, aren’t you?”

  Okun laughed. “I wish. No, seriously, I have to get back to Pasadena.”

  “I see. Paranormal investigator all day, jet propulsion engineer all night. Don’t you hate it when people lie to you, Bob?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact I do.”

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” she said brightly. “Let’s go visit Dr. Wells together. We can crash at my friend’s place in Palo Alto.”

  Okun couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.

  10

  Disappearing Act

  Yes, Okun hated it when people lied to him. He talked about the lies Radecker had told him as he drove toward San Francisco. And the more he talked, the angrier he got. “He told me my job was to make the spaceship fly. Fine. But when I tell him I need a second ship to make it happen, he tries to hide the information from me! What is that about? When I tell him I want to talk to Wells, he tells me the guy is dead! Screw you, Radecker!”

  Later, he would claim that this tremendous sense of anger was what motivated him to drive north that afternoon instead of east like he was supposed to. But even in the middle of his yelling fit, Okun realized there was more to it than rage. He was curious. He wanted to meet this Wells character, see what he was all about. And there was something else, a need to assert himself—to take control of his research and stop putting himself at the mercy of Radecker.

  Brinelle had talked Brackish into going to San Mateo, but not into taking her along. As groovy as the idea sounded, it wasn’t worth the risk. He didn’t want to read a newspaper article about her unfortunate collision with a postal truck. So he drove up the coast by himself, bought a map, and followed the address to an industrial area near the freeway.

  Sunnyglen Villa turned out to be a slightly rundown Victorian mansion sandwiched between a bus yard on one side and a warehouse on the other. The property was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with razor ribbon at the top. There were bars over all the windows, even on the top floor. When a security guard stepped onto the front porch and lit a cigarette, Okun put the car in gear and slunk away. It was a strange place for a mental institution. It looked more like a prison, and Okun had a feeling they weren’t too keen on visitors.

  He cruised around for a while until he found a suitable motel and checked in. It had been an unusually emotional day for him, and that night he did something he only did when he was feeling blue. He wrote lugubrious poems in the journal he reserved for the keeping of scientific notes.

  The next morning he walked into a barbershop and told the man, “I’ve got a job interview today with an insurance company. Make me look like a square.”

  “Crew cut?” the barber asked.

  Okun nodded—a pained nod. “A crew cut sounds perfect.”

  When he came out, his ears felt like twin jumbo radar dishes, and he felt the breeze on the back of his neck for the first time in years. His next stop was a department store, where he spent most of the money he had left on a business suit and a briefcase. He changed in the store’s parking lot, getting help from a nice old lady who knew how to tie a tie. He was ready.

  When he drove up, the front gate was open. He parked his car and walked up to the front door and tried the handle. It buzzed and clicked open. The inside of the place looked very different from the exterior. The entry had been converted into a waiting room like a doctor’s office, with a few chairs and old magazines. A video camera in the corner slowly swept the room. There was a counter with a sliding glass partition behind which sat a willowy woman with a soft voice.

  “Hi there. Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Dr. Immanuel Wells.”

  “And your name, sir?”

  “Radecker. Agent Lawrence Radecker, from Central Intelligence.”

  When the woman asked to see some identification, Okun glanced around to make sure no one was listening then whispered through the partition. “I’m on a special assignment, so I’m not carrying any ID. My instructions are to have you call headquarters, and they’ll confirm. I was told you had the number.”

  “Oh, sure. Have it right here.” She looked at him with big doe eyes. “If you’d like to have a seat. Agent Radecker, I’ll call right away.” She smiled and slid the glass door closed.

  Okun tried to act casual. He picked up a magazine, but soon tossed it aside and began to pace. CIA guys can pace if they want to, he told himself, nothing suspicious about that. He glanced out the windows every few seconds to make sure no one was closing the front gate. He was already plotting a quick retreat if she asked him for the word of the day. Every morning, Radecker had a two-second conversation with someone calling from CIA headquarters. They would tell him the identification password for the next twenty-four hours, he would repeat it and hang up. The code words, of course, followed no pattern. Monday would be ZEBRA, Tuesday would be UNIQUE, and so on. He knew he’d never guess, so if she asked him, he was prepared to tell her he had it written down in the car.

  “Thanks so much for wai
ting. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to Dr. Wells.”

  At the back of her tidy little office space was a thick glass door she unlocked with a key. They stepped through it into the home’s dark central hallway and walked to the living room, where three men and one woman were gathered around a television watching a soap opera. All four of them were ancient, well into their eighties or nineties, and barely glanced up when the receptionist said good morning. The paint was peeling in places, and there was a slight reek of cleaning products in the air.

  “Have you met Dr. Wells before?”

  “Not face-to-face.”

  “But you know he doesn’t talk anymore.” She could see by his expression he didn’t. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with him. To tell you the truth,” she said, opening a screen door, “it was a relief when he stopped. That man used to talk so darn much I had to wear earplugs.”

  They stepped outside onto the roomy back porch. A couple of deck chairs faced the backyard, which was a green riot of fruit trees, bushes, and weeds. A dilapidated gazebo was being strangled by heavy vines of wisteria. The lady walked up to a frail-looking man in a wheelchair and spoke as loud as her mousy voice would allow. “Dr. Wells, this is Agent Radecker. He’s with the CIA, and he wants to ask you some questions.” The old man didn’t stir. She shrugged and smiled. “Well, good luck.”

  *

  Okun pulled up a chair. He’d been expecting to meet a deranged and violent lunatic, but this guy, except for the wheelchair, looked like a member of the PGA’s senior golf tour. He was clean-shaven, well groomed, and handsome in a balding, bulldoggish way. He wore pressed white slacks and a powder blue sweater that matched his piercing blue eyes.

  “Dr. Wells? Dr. Wells? You can hear me, right? Look, if you can understand me, give me a sign. Make a movement or blink twice or something.”