“You have until the sun rises to give her to us. If you do not, everyone here will die.” The red man yanks on the reins, pulling them hard to the side. The Wicked Briar is a stubborn mount, and reluctantly moves back the way they came, and just like that, the red army withdraws and disappears. It was as if they had never been there at all.
“They killed the big man,” says Rose, pointing at Leo’s impaled body.
Dr. Shaw gets up and runs to help Leo. Dr. Valentine helps Rose to stand. She can feel the woman running her fingers across the top of her head, and the feeling is inebriating, much like the first time she experienced the effect of the sun on her youthful body. Except… when Dr. Valentine pulled her fingers across her scalp, Rose could feel small threads where the woman’s fingers caressed the skin.
Rose had never felt that sensation when she would touch anywhere on her own body. She reaches up and touches the spots on her head. They are all covered by her hair. Small bumps; rash-like, have erupted from the skin and fibrous thin vines wind through her hair. She knew they were growing there, but she never said anything to anyone because she was afraid of what it could mean. The big man seemed to think that whatever is growing there is important.
The big man’s body is taken away, leaving a dark pool of blood where he fell. The colonel orders that the men double up on guard duty so that there are more people watching in case the Turn decide to pay them another visit. He orders snipers to take positions high up on the rooftops.
The Colonel reminds Rose of Major Connors in a lot of ways. They seem to be cut from the same cloth. Much like brothers would behave. The Colonel also reminds her of Dr. Shaw treated her before, at Camp Able; like a thing instead of a child.
“Private Lindsey, Corporal Peters,” the colonel calls, and two men come running up. “Escort the Turned to the brig. No one knows what that thing could do to us in here. I don’t mean to make myself comfortable with the thought of sleeping with a dragon runnin’ loose.”
“It’s okay, I’ll be fine. But, can you come visit me?” Rose says to Dr. Valentine, and she turns to Dr. Shaw. “Do you remember the picture you showed me of the thing over the city?”
“Yes, Rose, I remember. What about it?” says Shaw.
“I saw it again.”
“Where?”
“It’s hanging on the wall in the big man’s lab, but it’s a different photograph.”
Private Lindsey and Corporal Peters are leading her away when she turns back and says, “It’s laying on the ground. I think it fell from the sky.”
“Thank you, Rose. I’ll take a look at it,” Shaw calls after her. Watching the little girl being led away, he returns to Leo’s lab.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer-both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.”
“That was some block party,” says Connors, “I wish we’d known your neighbors were throwing a welcoming…”
“…We’ve never seen them before, and it’s not a coincidence, major, you were tailed, it’s just that simple” says Colonel Collier.
Connors can’t understand, no, he doesn’t want to face the fact that he was tailed, but how could it be. The spear in the tire? No, he thinks, that was days ago. Nothing could have followed them that far and kept pace on foot. Then he understands. “The spear.”
“What?” Dr. Valentine says.
“It was a spear that blew our tire. It can’t be a coincidence,” says Connors, he stops trying to rationalize away the obvious truth. They were followed.
“Hell, and high water. Have you ever seen anything as all fire scary as that bunch?” the colonel says, his nerves shaken. He wipes sweat from his brow.
“Gentlemen… and ma’am,” the colonel acknowledges Dr. Valentine. “Let’s take this inside.”
“Unbelievable,” says Connors, he dusts the seat of one of the meeting room chairs with his hand, even though it isn’t all that dusty, and sits down on it. He replays the tape in his head. He measures it out frame by frame, breaking it down so he can analyze it.
Dr. Valentine takes one of the available chairs in the meeting room. A soldier brings in a pot of coffee, not the insta-shit like back at Camp Able, but a real pot of steaming, black, carried on the back of a burrow’s ass, coffee. A little plate of food is brought in too, containing mostly fresh vegetables and something which looks like pulled-pork, and some stale crackers.
Moments later Dr. Shaw pushes into the room, and he’s holding something; a piece of paper, in his hands. He hands it to the major.
“What is his colonel?” says the major turning the front of the photograph to his old friend and now, a superior officer. The same man, that years before, he jumped in front of and took a bullet for. It wasn’t during a battle, but rather a bar fight, while on shore leave.
“It’s the alien ship. The one they shot down over L.A., what’s left of it. I’ve wanted to get up there and see what’s in that friggin thing. Was plannin’ on goin’, but frankly, this base doesn’t have the combined firepower of a bottle rocket.”
“I don’t know how us being here is going to change that. We only have half a shoebox full of things that go boom, ourselves,” says Connors.
“That’s what you think,” counters Collier. He grins like a schoolboy who got a good long look up a school girl’s skirt. “Private,” he says to a man sitting at the table. “Go out and have a couple of the others help you bring in the cases that the major liberated from Fort Worth.” The Colonel walks to a wooden roll-top desk and gathers several rolls of tattered maps. He searches them to find the one he’s looking for. He takes a thumb tack and pins one corner to the wall. He looks for more tacks to secure the corners to the cheap wall paneling. Not finding any more, he reaches for a roll of clear tape pushed to the back of the roll top and pulls enough tape free to secure the last three corners revealing the coffee-stained map of Arkansas. Someone had previously placed a large red ‘X’ to mark the estimated place that the spacecraft crashed.
“That’s a long way from here,” says Dr. Valentine, looking defeated. “We lost so many men just getting here. Oh god, it can’t be that far.”
“It is what it is,” says Connors. He glances in her direction. She looks ashen. She holds her injured hand and lowers her head. She looks as bad as he feels. He doesn’t disagree with her, it’s a long way away. But he keeps it to himself. Unless the colonel has a card trick or two up his sleeve, or a convoy of tanks sitting around somewhere, the chance of getting to the ship will be next to impossible.
The door to the meeting room opens, and a couple soldiers are carrying in one of the long crates the Major brought back. A few other soldiers are coming in behind them carrying other crates as well.
“What’s in those?” says Connors.
“Just you wait, Major, just you wait,” says the colonel, moving over to pry open one of the wooden boxes, but to his chagrin, the nails holding the lid on were pried out and bent, some missing altogether. “What… what,” he says, it’s not a question, but just words. He removes seven nails that are loosely holding the lid on. He throws open the lid, nearly hitting Dr. Shaw in the face. Inside there is an assemblage of rusty forks, spoons, paring knives, and other cooking utensils, they’re covered in blood which has dried to a deep red lacquer, and rust.
The soldiers take over and crack open the other crates. They open far too easy. Inside, the crates are stuffed with garbage, just like the first crate had been. A soldier nearest to the door says, “Hey, colonel this here box is nailed tight.”