“You flew the coop months ago. We’ve had agents tailing you since you left the Army. Then you magically show up in an alien infected neighborhood, talking to the man in charge of hunting down and destroying Operation Raindrop. Where have you been, colonel? What have you been doing the last few months?”
Ryan took a deep breath. In his mind, he wanted to believe that intelligence had scooped him up and whisked him away to safety. Maybe they were fighting the aliens in secret just like he was. But it couldn’t be true. If the White House was infected, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be.
“Let’s make this simple guys,” said Ryan. “Just tell me what you want to know. I’ll tell you to fuck off. And then you can start lopping off fingers and hook some jumper cables to my balls until I talk. Sound good?”
“Once a ranger, always a ranger,” muttered the blonde one.
“General Gibbons is staying here in town, colonel. I just want to know what he told you.”
“He told me to give up on my country and head back to Montana. Right before one of his minions tried to stick me with a needle.”
“What does that mean? How would you be giving up on your country?”
“Because I’m not going to sit here and let you damn squids take over my planet without taking a few of you fuckers with me. Yeah, you look human, but I know what you are. You can control these stupid people mannequins, put on your little song and dance. But I’m not telling you shit. You want to find Operation Raindrop, then you’ll have to do it alone.”
“I got it,” said the smaller one. “You owe me twenty bucks.”
“Quiet,” said the other.
“A word? We’ll be right back, colonel.”
The burly one nodded, and they left the room. He wondered who in the hell was running this outfit. It was almost a disgrace to the standard practice of interrogation. If he were in charge, he’d be in a hot box by now.
Ryan cleared his throat and flipped the page in front of him. There were detailed reports about his property in Montana, and his sudden disappearance. It looked like the FBI and the NSA had been tracking him for quite a while. Probably concerned that he might vent his frustration to the press. The last thing the current administration needed was another whistle-blower.
The next page of the file almost angered him. It was a report of suspicion that he was the cause of the city bombings, and that all of the explosions and chaos were part of a congressional cover-up to hide a failed military biological weapons test. The last page of the file indicted him as an alien sympathizer, using his military and criminal connections to help lay the groundwork for an invasion. Apparently, the NSA felt the same way about him that he felt about the rest of the government.
The door opened again with another loud crack. This time only the larger of the two men entered. “Colonel Ryan Crisp. You’re part of Operation Raindrop. Tell me. Were you guys actually behind the city bombings, or was that part of the president’s little conspiracy?”
“I didn’t bomb those cities. You did.”
“Me?”
“Your new bosses. Those squiddy aliens.”
“I don’t work for aliens, colonel. I’m trying to protect my country against a new biological hazard before the problem escalates. Why is the general trying to hunt down Operation Raindrop? Are you fighting the alien threat?”
“If I say yes, will you take these damn things off my wrists?”
The man smiled again, and removed a handcuff key from his pocket, holding it up where it gleamed in the soft glow of the overhead light. “One thing first. Can you tell me why the aliens are infecting people with a virus that doesn’t seem to do anything to harm them? Just trying to mellow people out, or what?”
The colonel winked.
“Alright. Let’s get these restraints off and get you to a more comfortable conference room so you can brief us on what you’ve discovered. You can call me David. I’m overseeing the task force on this.”
“Sorry to call you so late, but I got your number from a friend of mine and I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to see what you had to say. I was told that if I wanted to open a jewelry store, you were the man to talk to.”
It was the voice of that goof ball who always wore a fedora hat. “I am. I can get you beads, wire, supplies, or you can purchase the jewelry already made. Anything you need to get your business rolling. Can I ask who exactly referred you?”
“My friend Ryan.”
“Crispy? He’s such a good guy. Always sends me business.”
“He’s in a bit of a financial bind at the moment. Is there any way that we could meet up to discuss what kind of purchase I’ll be placing. The store I plan to open is a little bit, different.”
“Sorry to hear that about Crispy. What happened?”
“Shop burned to the ground.”
“Shit.”
“It’s important that I talk to you right away. Can we meet somewhere?”
“I’m not in town at the moment, I’m on a business trip. I can have one of my associates contact you. I don’t suppose you’re in Albuquerque?”
“I can be there by morning.”
“Okay great. There’s a wonderful little antique store called Betty’s Boutique. Tasteful stuff. You guys can meet over coffee, say, eleven o’clock?”
“Sounds good.”
“Great. He might be running late, so maybe you can buy him a cup. He likes a lot of sugar.”
“Got it.”
“Alright. Well I hope we can help you get your business off the ground. Tell Crispy if he needs anything to let me know. Maybe we can get him back on his feet.”
“Right.”
He disconnected the call. Stark eyeballed him from the driver’s seat. “What the hell was that?”
“Code.”
“For what?”
“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. Damn spies and arms dealers and their silly mixed messages. This is why I preferred being a soldier. I can’t hardly follow along with these retards.”
“So where are we headed?”
“Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’ll leave the trucks at the backup location and take off from there. You up for a long night of driving?”
“I’m good.” Stark smiled. He was probably happy to be a part of something other than staring at a computer screen all day. “As long as there’s coffee.”
“This is a goddamn nightmare,” said the colonel.
David sat at the head of the conference table. “There’s been a rash of alien activity in the area for some time, but after last week, the increase has been exponential.”
“Right after we took down their base in Utah.”
“Could be a connection,” said David. “The important thing is that they’ve been running their operations at night. Police were called out to the first landing site. We think they were reprogrammed somehow. They were kidnapped and something was done to them. They came back as alien supporters. We knew about the virus from the St. Louis incident, but it wasn’t until we captured one of the officers that we found out the truth. Soon as we put him in a room, he started to get sick. Growing spines, his flesh turned white. That kind of thing. Then he turned into a vegetable and stopped answering questions, no matter how many volts we hit him with.”
“Wait. He was normal when you brought him in?”
“He was carrying this.” David slid a small black plastic box across the table. “Doesn’t look like much, but it’s loaded with some kind of electronics. Our research guys shorted it out when they tried to open it. The battery pack uses very high voltage circuitry, and it basically destroyed itself before we could get it out. Have your guys seen any of these?”
“None. The virus was still in a test phase.” He was becoming more comfortable with these guys all the time. It was easier without the restraints, but he remained cautious to mentioning the location of the base in Arizona. “We found these big cylinders that we believe to be controllers of some kind for the squiddies. None of the ones we captured
were carrying little black boxes.”
“I’m not sure. All I know is that citizens are being turned into alien robots, and that’s going to make it impossible to fight a battle. I suspect these boxes are all over congress, the senate, and the Oval Office. The president controls the launch codes, so we can’t nuke a mother ship if it shows up. Our hands are tied.”
“Mother ship?”
“The aliens are planning something big, and they are ready to act. There hasn’t been a single drop ship in the last forty-eight hours. Whatever their mission was here, they seem to have completed it.”
“Checkmate.”
“Indeed. So the general recruited you to fight the alien menace in secret?”
“He did.”
“And then he turned on you. If that’s not proof of alien corruption, then I don’t know what is. And if he’s carrying one of these boxes, it’s a good bet everyone around him is as well.”
“The box doesn’t work indoors?”
“It seems to have the same limitations as any other transmitter. Stick it in a room with concrete and steel walls, and it stops working. Then the infected person mutates.”
“They. I’m trying to wrap my head around this. The officers you brought in didn’t show any sign of infection until after they got here?”
“That’s right. The officer we intercepted was still on patrol for a week after he was called out to the site. His police report recorded the sighting as a hoax, and the perpetrator was arrested. We found one of those boxes on him. The virus and the box go hand in hand. Soon as we had him isolated, he stopped talking and started to decay.”
“Jennifer was wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“The viral mutation doesn’t turn people into zombies. The virus and the signal do. We saw a color change in the alien as well. It became more pale after capture. My doctors were trying to keep it alive, and assumed that the environment was damaging it. Being cut off from its chain of command made it stupid. Not the virus.”
“Stupid?”
“We captured several. Interrogation went just like your infected police officer. All higher thoughts ended up erased, on our human casualty also. If the transmutation is only a result of the. . .holy shit.”
David stood tall. “Spit it out colonel.”
“I think it works like this. They infect the victim, victim becomes a robot, as long as it doesn’t get cut off from the control signal. Once the line is severed, the virus mutates and instead of controlling the poor infected sap, it messes up their DNA and turns them into a vegetable. Vegetable? Food. Soldiers and food. That’s what they want.”
“Colonel?”
“I have to get back to my crew. There might be a way to save them as long as the virus doesn’t have a chance to start the mutation. Just like the blogger from St. Louis when this whole thing started. He didn’t get sick until days after the aliens dropped him back on earth. The virus wasn’t done yet, because his body fought of the secondary infection. They aren’t trying to develop the control code, they already have it. They’re trying to fix the second stage, so that the infected degenerate into cattle once the feed is cut. That’s what they were doing in Utah.”
“You still don’t trust me, do you?” asked the suit.
“I can’t.”
“I understand your paranoia, colonel. But we don’t have a lot of time. If you’re right, and the virus is ready, they are going to start using the sympathizers to build an army. Hell, they’re already doing it. That’s why the movement spread so fast. All they need is a crate of those black boxes and a delivery system.”
“What do you have on a cure for the virus?”
“There’s a lab working on it.”
“Do they know about the black box?” Ryan asked.
“We can’t risk exposing them if there’s a tracking device in these things.”
“We can’t risk not curing the virus. My scientists all agree, once the virus starts the mutation, there’s no saving the human. Curing it while the person is active might be our only hope. You have to figure out some way to test their ideas for a cure, on active infected people. The box and the virus together, otherwise it’s pointless. I need to get back to my team. If Amarillo is where the infection is, then this is where we need to strike. Give me a meeting location and a way to contact you, and I promise I’ll be back. In the meantime. Get your best cures ready. It’s time for live tests.”
“How?”
His mind was running circles around his brain. He pictured a black-ops spy-game to capture and test infectees, and then he nailed the solution. “Load any test cure in those darts, alongside your nerve poison. Start taking prisoners. Give them whatever time they need for the antiviral agents to act, then stick them in one of your bunkers and take the box away. If their skin fades, it didn’t work. Hopefully you’ll find something that can kill the virus fast, and they might return to normal. We can save these people.”
“It’s going to take time for any kind of medicine to act, colonel. And if these boxes have trackers, and I’m sure they do, the other slave soldiers are going to overrun wherever we keep the sick.”
“Then keep them out with rifle fire.”
David’s gaze drifted north. His breaths became deep and heavy. “They’ll need recovery time somewhere with an open line of communication. We’ll need restraints. And no matter what the case, the medicine will have to act fast. The aliens must have a backup system in place to cut the feed in the event of capture.”
“I might have a solution for that. I have to get back to my crew. Get the medicine ready, and set up a bunker as a health facility. We can’t fight the squiddies without fighting the virus. Curing these people needs to be a priority. We’re going to need a lot of captives, and we’re going to need a lot of test cures. I’ll worry about keeping a programmed feed active. Just make sure you have a really good power supply ready.”
John left Stark in the car and entered the tiny boutique. The rest of the crew and the helicopters weighed on him. They were parked at a sandy spot many miles away from the actual compound. He wondered if the draped netting over the vehicles would be enough to protect them from the eye in the sky.
The store didn’t look like any antiques place he’d ever stepped into. There was a long bar to the left where a few waitresses drank coffee and talked about the day ahead. A scattering of picnic tables stood between himself and the counter. An old man sat reading the local paper.
The rest of the building was normal enough, except instead of having islands of random junk, steel shelves supported layer after layer of cardboard boxes. A few trinkets were scattered about the lower shelves, but nothing worth noting. Most of these places were filled in useless old crap, but the actual selection in this one barely existed. They must have gotten most of their real business from the café, but for the moment it was dead.
Another waitress emerged from a door behind the counter with a plate of bacon and eggs, and rushed them toward the awaiting customer. “Here you go, Frank. You sure you don’t want any toast or jelly this morning?”
The elderly chap levitated his shaking hand from the tabletop, and quivered for a moment before speaking. “No, no, no, little lady. Doc says I need to cut down on my sugar.”
“Okay, baby,” said the waitress. “Well, if you need anything else, you just let us know. Okay? Thank you Frank.”
She approached with a sly grin and grabbed a menu from a podium near the door. “Table for one?”
“For two,” John corrected.
“Right this way, baby.”
John’s eyes rolled as she spun an about face and marched toward a picnic table near the window. It was almost eleven. The thought of breakfast food at this time of day baffled him. The guy was obviously a regular. His eyes followed John across the dining area. He had to be a regular. The waitress didn’t bother dropping a check on his table, unless he already paid.
He took a seat, noting strands of silver mixed with the golden highlights of
the waitress’s hair.
“I’m Betty, and I’ll be making my rounds. So if you need something you just give me a holler, okay sweetheart? Did you know what you wanted?”
“Two coffees. Um, one of them with a lot of sugar, the other black.”
“Sounds like the lunch special around this place. I’ll have it right out.” Her paper dress flared as she spun toward the counter. “Girls. Two black coffees for the gentleman please.” She twirled back. “They’ll bring it right over, hot stuff. And there’s plenty of sugar in that little tray right there.” She pointed. “Did you need anything to eat this morning?”
“Just the coffee.”
“Okay, sweetie. Well if you change your mind, just holler at me.” She marched off, dipping toward the old man as she passed. “Everything okay, Frank?”
“Just fine, deary,” he replied.
“All right, well holler if you need something.” A moment later, she was gone, and someone else appeared from behind the walls of boxes. A skinny man in a dark trench coat and a felt hat. Those bony cheeks and that pointed nose could only belong to one man. He tipped his hat while approaching the table. It was Mark, the colonel’s personal gun runner.
“Crispy didn’t make it yet, huh?”
“He’s gone. Left yesterday morning and never came back. Did you think he was going to be here?”
“He’s on his way.” Mark turned toward the counter. “Make it three coffees please.”
Mark sat on the opposite bench, and placed his hat on the table between them. He turned toward the window, grinning slyly. The light from outside accented his sharp facial features.
“I thought you were going to send an associate.”
Mark nodded and pursed his lips. “I usually do. But there’s a hell of a hailstorm blowing in, and I didn’t want to miss this one. Especially after Crispy gave me the news. Sounds like the NSA and the CIA are playing nice, and ready to throw down some cash now that they need me again.”
“The CIA?”
Mark stared at him. “Crispy didn’t tell you?”
“I haven’t spoken to the colonel since yesterday. I figured he was dead.”
Invasion Page 4
