Independence Day: Silent Zone

by Stephen Molstad

  Without turning his head, the old man raised his right hand, then slowly lifted his middle finger.

  “OK, that’s a sign. Listen,” he whispered, “I’m not really from the CIA. I just said that to get in here. And my name’s not Radecker. I work at Area 51, and I went AWOL so I could come and talk to you. I’m probably gonna be in VDJ, very deep Jell-O, when I get back, so help me out, man.”

  Wells turned and regarded his visitor, waiting for him to say more.

  “Hey, can you write? If I ask you a question, can you write out the answers? I brought a pern.

  “What’s Area 51?” the old man asked in a raspy voice. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  So he could talk. Okun started nodding. “Are you testing me or don’t you remember? You used to work there. You know, Groom Lake, underground labs, the crashed ship?”

  “Go on, I still don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Derrr. It suddenly occurred to Okun what was happening. The old man was waiting to hear some proof that he wasn’t some amateur UFO investigator. “OK, I got it. Dworkin. Lenel. Vegas every Friday. There’s a long table in the kitchen with two picnic benches. The tiles on the bathroom floor are mostly white, but some of them are purple, and the handles on the middle sink don’t match. Hey, what’s the matter?” He noticed tears welling up in the old man’s eyes. “Oh no, please don’t do that.” It was the second day in a row he’d made somebody cry.

  “I knew you’d come. I’ve been waiting and waiting. Why did you make me wait so long?”

  “I just found out where you were yesterday.”

  “Didn’t Dworkin send you?” He turned suddenly paranoid. “Who sent you here?”

  “Nobody sent me. Relax. Yesterday I talked to Mrs. Gluck, and she showed me a letter you wrote her. Dworkin and those guys all think you’re dead. That’s what we were told.”

  “So you came to break me out? You can’t do it alone; we’ll need help. We’ll go immediately into San Francisco. There are two television stations within a few blocks of one another. I’ve already written the press release, but it’s in my room. Everything has been planned. I’ll need one person to accompany me into the—”

  “Whoa. Hold your horses there, Kemo sabe. You’re losing me.”

  Wells started over and explained his plan. It was urgent, he said, that they alert the world of the impending alien invasion which, he said, could begin any minute. This was the same plan, presented to the members of Project Smudge five years earlier, which had led to his forced retirement and imprisonment. He pointed to the strings of barbed wire hidden in the foliage. He began explaining, in too much detail, the sequence of events leading to his ouster from Smudge, and expressed his deep loathing for the men who had opposed him.

  Without stopping, he segued back to his moment-by-moment plan for breaking the story to the news media. Every movement had been scripted in his mind, every enemy reaction anticipated. It was a chess game pitting himself—and a few assistants—against the worldwide conspiracy to keep the matter quiet. As he spoke, Okun realized that Wells was, indeed, crazy. He wasn’t the incoherent lunatic he had expected to meet, but he was obsessive-compulsive to the nth degree.

  “It may already be too late, but we’ve got to try. Every man, woman, and child must devote himself to the salvation of the planet. Once they hear, once they understand that we face annihilation, they will make the necessary sacrifices. Everyone working together. It will require the transformation of the world into a single, tightly organized war machine. Politics, economy, society, all must change if we hope to survive.” He said everyone who knew and didn’t tell was a war criminal worse than Hitler, the worst filth on the planet, and in the future he would call for their public executions. Okun himself was one of the conspirators, but wisely didn’t point that out to the old doctor.

  Obviously, once you were on this man’s enemy list, there was no getting off it. So Okun, who’d spent the last couple of days acting, assumed yet another role. “I’m going to help you. I’ll come back with reinforcements later, but right now let me ask you a couple of questions. The first thing is the addendum to your report. I read the part you wrote after the Roswell thing, but the part you attached later was missing. What was in it, your ideas about an invasion?”

  “Don’t belittle me, young man. These are not merely ideas. At the time of the encounter I believed I had been given a glimpse of the EBE’s home planet. Later I came to believe I had been shown the planet which had once belonged to the host animals, the ones they had gutted and used like a suit of clothing. Have you seen the photographs of the larger bodies?”

  “Yeah, they’re horrible-looking.”

  “Before the planet I saw was ruined, it had been a jungle, a lavish hothouse of dense plant life. Endless, stretching to infinity. Even below the surface, it teemed with vegetation. Think of the differences in anatomy between the two creatures. Which one would be better adapted to this planet? The tentacles would allow the larger being to climb and reach and grasp. The other one was all wrong. Its body was too delicate for an environment like that. I’m sure the little fiend didn’t show me his planet. I think he was explaining why he had come to ours. It’s because they’d slowly ruined that place he showed me, consumed everything on the surface until they were reduced to tearing shreds of moss off the walls of caves. I think they’re coming here to eat.”

  “Groady.”

  “Another thing. If this creature really was a scientist, then what was it doing hauling food around? That doesn’t make sense to me. Because I had shared a personal memory with it, I assumed it had done the same. It certainly felt like a personal memory, so immediate, so real. But how could those two animals be the same? Then it occurred to me: they share thoughts, they share a mind, they must share a memory.”

  “Exactly. That’s the same principle they used in developing their ships. They share an energy source just like they share mental activity.”

  “They’re a hive, my friend, and that makes them dangerous. Individually, they may not be as intelligent as you or I. But collectively, they may be more powerful than we can imagine. Did Sam ever tell you about my experiments with the bees?”

  Okun shook his head.

  “I kept a hive for about six months out in the old shacks next to the main hangar. As an experiment, I began hiding their food source. But every day they’d find it within minutes. I expanded the radius to about two miles around the hive, moving the food to random locations at random times of the day. Then the scariest damn thing started happening. After about three months of this, I’d go to the place I had decided to put the food and they’d be waiting for me! After that I tried as many tricks as I could think of to fool them. And they’d work for a while, but they never worked twice. This went on until it occurred to me that they had learned to anticipate me. They’d learned my moves well enough to predict my behavior. In the end, I set the hive on fire. Now if bees can do that, imagine what these other monsters are capable of.

  “And we’re not even making it difficult for them. We bombard space with radio waves advertising our position. That must stop at once. They’re out there right now watching us, studying us, waiting for the moment to strike.”

  “You’re absolutely right. So, you think there’s more than one ship?”

  “Are you stupid? Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? There are hundreds of ships like the one we recovered, and they are nearby. They come every few months and snoop around our military installations or experiment on people and animals. Don’t you know about all those bloodless cattle mutilations? Call the Pentagon and tell them to send you the files. Soon the time of study will be over, and they will attack. We don’t know how powerful their weaponry is, but our Air Force won’t stand a chance against the speed and maneuverability of their ships. In a few months all of our planes and missiles will be spent. Then they’ll start picking off our ground forces. There won’t be time to build the weapons we’re going to need. We must sacrifice now to
build a space defense network of our own. Satellite lasers, deep-space torpedoes, orbiting minefields of nuclear warheads. If we have time, we can put factories in space capable of building a fleet of warships, then launch an attack of our own. It may already be too late, but we’ve got to try. You have to get some good men and storm this place.”

  In a strange way, the more he talked, the more sense he seemed to make. Okun was tempted to ask about these other visits, but steered back to his original topic. “I’ll look for the guys later. But right now I want to get my hands on a second alien ship.” He explained the experiment which proved the captured saucer could only fly with a companion. “Do you know if the government has any more of them from another crash?”

  “What about Chihuahua, Mexico?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Have you seen the Majestic 12 documents?”

  “The thing they wrote up for Eisenhower? Yeah, I saw them.”

  “It’s in there.” Okun had read the top-secret documents but had concluded that they were fakes, just more disinformation generated by the forces of darkness. It had a description of the “seized flying disk” that was full of inaccuracies. There had been one paragraph in the document that had been blacked out.

  “So what’s this Chihuiahua thing about?”

  “Simultaneous with the crash at Roswell, another streak of light had been observed moving due south. The Army collected scores of ‘hard’ sightings from people on the ground all the way from Roswell to Guerrero, a town in the mountains of Chihuahua State. “A few days after the crash, we sent troops across the border. Just barged right in and surrounded the area where the local people said the thing went down. They searched for a long time, but didn’t find anything.”

  “But you think there’s one down there?”

  “I don’t know. I always meant to go down there and look around for myself, but I never did.”

  “And where was this exactly?”

  “Right outside of Guerrero.” Once again, Wells began to explain why he had to get to the television station, but Okun interrupted him immediately.

  “One last question. The Y. I saw it on one of the monitors inside the ship when we pumped some power into the system. I thought it was some kind of an SOS. Dworkin told me you had that same feeling.”

  This time Wells only shook his head. “I haven’t figured it out. You say you spoke with Trina Gluck.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “I don’t think she’s lying. Yeah, I guess I believed her.”

  “If she’s right, the aliens don’t know any more than we do what the Y is. For years I believed it was the alien equivalent of our SOS, but if so, why don’t they recognize it?”

  “Agent Radecker,” the nurse called from the doorway. “You have a telephone call, sir.”

  “Our reinforcements?” the old man asked eagerly.

  “Either that or VDJ.” Okun extended his hand. “Thanks a lot for your help.”

  Wells looked at the hand, horrified. “You’re leaving? You’re going to leave me here? NO! You tricked me! You’re with them, aren’t you? You never had any intention of helping. Get away from me, you filthy murderer.”

  All the way through the house and back to the office, Okun could hear the old man howling curses at him. And it didn’t look like life was going to get any better. He was fairly certain that once he picked up the phone he would be nailed by some internal security guy in DC.

  He took a deep breath and picked up the receiver. “Radecker here.”

  “I thought your name was Bob Robertson.”

  “Brinelle?”

  “Yeah. Listen, Secret Agent Whatever-Your-Name-Is, you are majorly busted. Two guys were just here from the FBI asking about you and, sorry, but we had to tell them where you were going. So you might want to get out of there.”

  “Thanks, Chief, I’ll get on that right away.”

  “Are there people standing there listening to you?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “And you want to sound like you’re on official business?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Cool. You better hit the road, but use that phone number I gave you, OK?”

  “Will do. Over and out.”

  *

  Okun started out the door, but thought better of it. Why should he run? What did it matter how he got back to Nevada? It might be a more pleasant trip if he had some company. So he sat down in the waiting room and looked through some magazines until he heard a car skid to a stop in the parking lot.

  11

  A Death in the Family

  Okun spent the night behind bars. As he’d guessed, the FBI guys who took him into custody drove him all the way to Nevada, to the main entrance to the Nellis Weapons Testing Range. They were very polite with him the entire time, even friendly. He was never handcuffed or treated as a prisoner in any way—except for them following him into the restroom when they stopped for lunch. But it was a different story when they handed him over to the Military Police waiting for him at the front gates. He was searched, handcuffed, and tossed in the back of a Jeep. The MPs drove him to the Military Intelligence building and locked him in a windowless cell. He was woken up in the middle of the night and taken to an interrogation room, where he was questioned by a pair of officers. They demanded to know everywhere he’d gone and everyone he’d spoken with during his twenty-seven-hour absence. They warned him, however, not to tell the whole story. If he had divulged any compartmentalized information, anything about the work being done at Groom Lake, they wanted to know to whom he had done so, but reminded him they were not cleared to hear such information and telling them would constitute a violation of the law.

  He told them the whole truth, but they acted as if they didn’t believe a word of it. They grilled him for two hours, subtly leaning on him to change his story. When the session was over, he was taken back to the cell. At 7 A.M., he was awoken once again, this time by Radecker, who stood on the other side of the bars looking like a high-pressure radiator hose about to split open and spray the room with dirty boiling water. He screamed at Okun for a long time, telling him what a stupid and dangerous thing it had been to disappear like that. When the enraged CIA man stopped for breath, Okun tried to lighten the mood.

  “Aren’t you even gonna compliment my haircut?”

  Radecker skewered him with a hard stare. “I trusted you,” he hissed, “and you double-crossed me. You stabbed me in the back. Now you’re going to pay the price. There’s going to be a court-martial. A legal team is preparing charges against you right now. You’re looking at some serious prison time.”

  “For what?”

  “Let me see. Being absent without leave, impersonating a federal officer, trespassing, violating the Federal Espionage Act. All together you shouldn’t get more than ninety-nine years. You’ll be eligible for parole in about twenty.”

  “I didn’t reveal anything,” Okun assured him. “I swear. The only person I talked to was Wells.”

  Radecker flashed him a wicked smile. “Wells no longer has a security clearance. He doesn’t have any official ties to this program. You blew it.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.”

  “The guys outside don’t know that. I guess I could talk to them for you, explain the situation, try to get the charges dismissed. But I’m not going to do that, and I’ll tell you why. Because you intentionally embarrassed me. I get sent out here to baby-sit your hippie ass, and you pull this stunt. Where do you think that leaves me? I’m finished at the CIA, I’m a joke. Even the friggin’ FBI is laughing at me.”

  *

  But Okun was never charged with any crime. Apparently, he had unseen friends in higher places. A phone call from the Deputy Director’s Office of the CIA instructed the base’s legal affairs office to drop the case and overlook the entire incident. Radecker was told to restrict the young scientist to the labs and immediate enviro
ns, but to take no further disciplinary action. He was furious, but powerless to strike back.

  When Okun returned to the underground labs, the mood was indeed somber. He wasn’t the only one in the boss’s doghouse. When Brackish had failed to rendezvous with them for the ride back from Vegas, the old men had tried one trick after another to stall the van’s departure. First Freiling wandered off, pretending to have a senile episode, then Lenel complained of chest pains and was taken to a hospital. At dawn, when Okun still hadn’t returned, they gave up and came home. Radecker was convinced they were in on the plot. The Vegas trips, he announced, were history. The old men would be allowed to drive into town only long enough to transact their banking business and fill their prescriptions at the pharmacy before returning to base. For Dworkin and company, being robbed of their only form of recreation was a crushing blow, and they couldn’t help blaming Okun.

  Spirits were low, and there was a poisonous atmosphere in the labs. Cracks began to appear in the block of solidarity shared by the older men. They began to quarrel with one another, and they made no secret of the fact that they were angry with Okun. Lenel confronted him one morning, asking if his “lark” had been worth it.

  “What was so important that you had to go talk to him?” When Okun tried blaming the whole thing on Radecker and his lies, Lenel asked him again. “We told you Wells was crazy. Now I’m asking you if you learned anything by going to see him?”

  Rather than answer, the young man with the crew cut retreated to his room. What had he gained by taking his trip up the coast? The onetime director of Area 51 had told him several interesting things, but nothing he could really use. The matter of the telepathic Y-message remained a mystery, and he had less freedom than ever to research the possibility of a second ship. Perhaps the only thing he’d really taken away from the meeting was the haunting vision of the earth being invaded by a conquering species from a distant galaxy. As preposterous as some of it had sounded at the time, Wells’s words were taking root in Okun’s imagination and growing stronger by the day. He tried to talk to the other men about them, but it was almost as if they were afraid of these ideas. Why else would they dismiss them so quickly when there was ample evidence to support them?