And then the crate…
He pulled back the curtain to see if it was still there. Yeah, right where he'd left it under the counter. A woman disappears, a strange box appears. Any connection? And if so, how?
The hot water relaxed his tight muscles, but did little to ease his mind.
Feeling as if the walls were closing in, he quickly dried off, threw on a flannel shirt and jeans, and called Lew.
2
Jack met Lew outside the coffee shop where they found James Zaleski waiting with a guy in a cowboy shirt and boots he introduced as Tony Carmack. Tony had a more-than-generous nose and wore his hair in a long-banged Caesar cut. He looked like the old Sonny Bono from the '60s, but when he opened his mouth he was pure Dallas-Fort Worth. Zaleski had shed his suit for a long-sleeved red shirt and a dark blue down vest.
The receptionist led them to a rear booth. Jack got stuck on the inside, which he never liked, but decided not to make an issue of it. Lew was next to him on the end. Carmack had the other end; Zaleski was directly across from Jack.
The young, dark-haired waitress with an Eastern European accent left them with menus and a carafe of coffee. Jack jumped on it. Caffeine…he needed caffeine.
So did Zaleski and Carmack, apparently.
"What a fucking night," Zaleski said, brushing his hair off his forehead. "Worst dream of my life."
"You too?" Carmack said. "I dreamed I was in a cornfield being crushed by a landing UFO."
What is this place? Jack wondered. Nightmare city? He didn't mention his own.
"Are you a ufologist too?" he asked Carmack. He couldn't resist using the term.
The Texan shrugged. "Of sorts. Actually I'm what they call a 'cereologist.'"
"An expert on crop circles," Lew offered.
"Crop circles?" Jack said as he added sugar.
"Yep. Never thought too much of this UFO stuff," Tony said. "Then one day I woke up and found the corn in one of the back fields of my farm crushed flat in three big ol' circles—concentric circles, all of 'em perfect. That made me a believer. I just—"
"Yeah, yeah," Zaleski said, jumping in and waving Carmack off. "You and Shelby can trade sheep-humping farm stories later." He stared at Jack through his thick horn rims. "The reason I wanted to talk to you was to find out if Melanie mentioned anything else when she called you."
Carmack grimaced and sighed. Looked like he was used to being cut off by Zaleski.
"Like what?" Jack said as innocently as he could.
"Like about what else she might be working on."
Jack shook his head. "She just asked me to come out to her place to discuss my 'experience.' I was pretty shocked, seeing as I hadn't mentioned it to a soul, and I asked her how she knew. She said, 'I just do.' And that was pretty much it."
This didn't seem to be at all to Zaleski's liking. "Come on, Shelby—"
"Jack."
"Okay, Jack. There had to be more to it than that. Hell, she talked everybody's fucking ears off"—a glance at Lew—"no offense, man." Lew shrugged and Zaleski went right back to Jack. "You're sure she didn't say anything else?"
"That's what I told you, isn't it?" Jack said. This guy had the personality of a piranha. "I can make something up if you like…"
As Zaleski frowned, Jack noticed Carmack grinning and giving him a secret thumbs up.
What's the score between these two? he wondered.
Jack added, "I'd really like to find her so I can ask her how she knew."
"Just what did happen to you?" Carmack said.
Jack told his story.
"Typical alien abduction," Zaleski said when he was through.
"I wasn't abducted."
"Hell you weren't. That's what happened during those missing hours. The Jersey pine barrens are notorious for big-time alien activity. You notice any pain up your ass afterwards?"
"Any what?"
"Let me rephrase," he said with faux delicacy. "Rectal pain. The grays like to use anal probes on their abductees." He made a twisting motion with his hand. "Right up the old wazoo."
"Not to me, they didn't," Jack said, squirming at the thought. "And who are the grays?"
Zaleski rolled his eyes. "The gray aliens, man—you know, with the oval-shaped heads and the black almond-shaped eyes, like you see on T-shirts and bumper stickers? They're known as grays."
"Oh, like in Close Encounters." .
Zaleski's expression at the mention of the film would have been right at home on someone who'd just bitten into a wormy apple.
"I think I'd remember them," Jack said.
"Not if they wiped your memory, dude. And if you start to remember anything, keep mum, otherwise the Men in Black will come calling."
Jack smiled. "Yeah? You mean like Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith?"
Zaleski's face darkened. "Trust me, you won't be visited by some wisecracking clowns like in the movie. That travesty was produced for the sole purpose of making the real Men in Black look benign, to hide the fact that they're ruthless agents of MJ-12."
"What's MJ-12?" Jack remembered hearing mention of that at the reception last night.
Zaleski stared at him. "Christ, you really are a virgin, aren't you."
"Easy, Jim," Carmack said, leaning forward. "Not everyone knows what we know."
"I just can't believe how ignorant people are."
As Jack was debating whether to laugh or break Zaleski's nose, the waitress reappeared.
She took their orders, and hurried off. Jack poured himself more coffee and glanced at Lew where he sat on the end of the booth cushion. He was staring off into space, his gaze fixed somewhere out near the grays' home planet maybe. He had to have heard all this a zillion times before. Probably bored out of his skull. Or maybe just missing Melanie.
"Okay," Carmack said. "Here's how it is: I've got to assume you've heard about the Roswell crash and Area 51 and all that."
"Sure," Jack said. He'd figured how he could get Zaleski's goat. "I learned all about that in Independence Day. Saw it twice."
Zaleski slapped a hand over his face. "Oh, Christ!"
"Cool it, Jim," Carmack said. To Jack: "Then you know that a saucer crashed and members of an alien race were found in the wreckage. But the real skinny is that we've been in Ongoing contact with that alien race since Truman was president. All the rapid technological advancements since the fifties didn't come from the billions of dollars spent on the arms and space race: it was donated. By the gray aliens."
"How generous of them," Jack said.
"It doesn't come without a price," Zaleski said, "but nobody's reading the small print."
"Just let me finish," Carmack said, showing a little annoyance. "We're going to need all that help—all the help we can get. When the grays arrived in their saucers in the 1940s, they warned us of a flesh-eating reptilian race called the Reptoids that's been roaming the galaxy in a spacecraft that looks like an asteroid. When they find us—not if, when—they'll turn Earth into a giant cattle ranch, and we'll be the cattle."
Zaleski was shaking his head in disagreement. He said nothing but looked as if he were about to explode.
"The grays made us a deal," Carmack continued. "They'd supply us with some of their advanced technology in return for allowing them to experiment on animals and abduct people now and again."