Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02 (27 page)

This time I didn’t take the long route.

A few minutes later, we wandered into the big meeting room in B1. The Sharmas, Riley and the rest of Jeff’s people were already there. I didn’t really spend too much time looking at the newbies, and took a seat near the front of the room.

When I reached out across the seats to touch Bajali on the shoulder, he bounced in place.

“It’s me Baj. Nothing to worry about.”

“I feel as though I am able to understand your resentments better,” he whispered. “I hope you will forgive me for earlier today.”

“B, I’m the one that needs forgiveness. I was incredibly cruel to you both, and I am sorry you learned about...” I couldn’t find the words.

“The price we must pay to live as we do?” Jayashri said, as she turned her face to me.

“Yes. I’m sorry you learned about it by living through it.”

“I forgive you, Frank.”

“Thank you Baj. I forgive you, too.”

“Well, that’s precious,” Major Kenney commented. “I don’t mean to interrupt your social group repair process, but you have plenty of things to tell me.”

“I’ll start, Major.” Omura raised his hand a few seats away from us. “The civilians are still mostly civilian, regardless of their participation in combat situations. I’ve got the protocol and precision. They can add comments as we go.”

“Fair enough, Mr. Omura. Begin.”

He began all right. I’ve seen the man at work, but I’d never heard his skills of description before, and it was an impressive thing to sit in on. He got details about things I’d missed or just plain didn’t notice and reported them with the ease of a veteran CNN anchorman.

The Major nodded, and looked towards us.

“Do you three have anything to add, beyond your brief experiences with the wreckage, pilot, and new varieties of undead?”

“I noticed, as did my husband, a visceral dread of touching or being close to the pilot’s body, once it became clear she was not human.” Jayashri rubbed her hands together as though she needed to clean them off. “I must echo what Mr. Omura has already said about how the zombie we captured reacted to ‘Sumira.’ It was fetishistic.”

“Indeed. I will assume that you do not have a theory regarding any of these behaviors. Would I be correct in that assumption?”

We all nodded in agreement.

“Have either of you examined the wreckage beyond collecting the material for transportation?”

“No, sir. We have not.” Bajali was the one to field that question. “I do look forward to studying the craft in greater detail, and will begin laying out the wreckage in the garage in the morning. I need to see how it fit together, as much I need to subject the materials to every possible piece of scanning equipment at our disposal.”

“I plan to perform an autopsy with the assistance of Dr. Bottsford,” Jayashri added, “in the morning as well.”

“Mr. Stewart? Do you have anything you would like to add?”

“No, sir, but I will echo what Jayashri said about feeling the need to get away from ‘Sumira’ as soon as that helmet came off.”

“You have no reaction to it calling you a ‘traitor’ as Omura reported?”

“No, sir. My guess is that it took issue with me killing off my own family.”

“You feel it recognized you?”

“Shit.” The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. “I have no idea.”

“Please consider that issue and report any thoughts to me, Mr. Stewart.”

“Yes, sir.”

He unlatched his helmet, removed it and massaged his buzz cut with a free hand. I’d say he looked tired if I were one to speculate. It was an absolute certainty that he needed a shower. I guess the fancy, powered exoskeleton armor didn’t come with equally fancy sweat-wicking undergarments. Leave it to the cost cutters to snip from somewhere.

“Dismissed,” he said and waved us all out of the room.

I was grateful and wasted no time heading toward the exit. Riley, Jeff Andrews’ truck driving commando, held up her hand as I approached her on my way out.

“You’re Warren Hightower’s son?”

The look in her eyes was not friendly, not that it really surprised me after being queried in that way. I stopped, took a good look at her posture and facial expression, and made the decision to keep my answer short and to the point. She might have been armed, and a fight wasn’t the way I wanted to end my day.

“Yes.”

“If I thought you could die, I’d kill you. None of you deserves to live after what your father did to the world.” Her words came out like menthol rub feels on mucus membranes, cold and burning at the same time.

“I’m sorry for what you’ve lost.”

She came up out of the chair, ready for violence. We were almost nose-to-nose, and I could hear the creak of leather as she clenched her fists. Great. I can’t even be sincere and get a decent reaction anymore.

“You have no idea what I’ve lost! Your fecking family destroyed the world!”

I made note that none of her companions bothered trying to hold her back. There’s no way to know if Charlie could have diffused the situation, but I wished she’d been there to try. The choice in front of me was to meet aggression with more of the same, or channel the Dalai Lama or Pema Chodron for a more balanced response. My guts told me she wouldn’t take any of those options well.

So be it.

I allowed technology to do the talking, because I wouldn’t have been strong enough to dead-lift another human being without it.

I hoisted her up by the front of her Molle harness, over my head, and dropped her onto her back in the aisle between the chairs. Her companions backed up as far as the chairs would let them... not far, even with stadium seating. While they were moving, I straddled Riley’s hips, leaned down, and stuck my index and middle fingers in her nostrils.

She bucked, but couldn’t get me off.

She hit me, tried to gouge my eyes, grip my larynx and even pulled the hair on my chin. I didn’t move.

“Listen to me, bitch,” I let the words settle before I went on, “I do not give a salt and pepper fuck what you lost. You will settle down right now, and listen to what I have to say.”

“Fuck you!”

“No. You’re going to settle down,” I said, pushing my fingers a little deeper, “or I will drive my fingers through your nasal passages and into your pissed off little brain. Your friends can even try to stop me. I’ll just kill them, too. If you’ve managed to run away, then I’ll hunt you down. You are not even an afternoon of annoying paperwork to me, and a little jog would suit me fine.”

“Mr. Stewart?”

“Major Kenney, I appreciate your concern. I would also appreciate you not interfering with this conversation. After all, these people are proposing to become part of our community and I think a little orientation is in order.”

I looked up at him from across the room and we locked eyes. I don’t know what he saw, but his hand came away from the holstered gun on his hip.

“Now then, Miss Riley, I would like you to understand the following things. Number one, I am not my father and I did not personally fuck the world. Number two: I gutted my brother, the zombie, to save my friend Bajali. Number three: I killed my father with my own two hands a few minutes later. Bashed his brains out on the fancy carpet of his offices. Number four: my girlfriend killed my mother in the course of that rescue mission, too. Number five: I could not care less what you’ve lost, but if you get stroppy with me or any of my neighbors, I will kill you without a second thought.”

I unplugged her nose, stood up, and backed away so she could move if she wanted to. No one moved, not even Riley herself.

“You newbies, get the fucking hell out of my sight. Stay out of my sight. Abuse our hospitality and you will answer to me. I promise that. I’ll go right through Jeffry Andrews if I have to. Keep this in mind: I’m a man of my word.”

I turned around and walked out. There wasn’t much else I could do after making a statement of that kind, and I didn’t want to hang around and be proven wrong. I already had the sinking suspicion that I’d be hearing about this from a number of people for a good, long while.

It was dark and cold outside, really dark. The moon was shining, and I could see more stars than before civilization started to crumble. There was something melancholy, mournful, or some other emotionally descriptive word starting with the letter “m” in that moment. I didn’t dare try to immortalize it with poetry. I just stood there in the street between B1 and my store, breathing.

Truthfully, I had forgotten being called a traitor. Soon thereafter I was in the middle of a bum rush of low-brain power zombies and it served to totally redirect my attention to basic survival. After that, we were all gathering, packing, stuffing and loading wreckage into the trailer from which the low-wattage creatures emerged.

Yeah. No time to really mess with my feelings and I couldn’t tell you whether it was a good thing or not.

“Frank, is there any reason why you’re just standing there, staring at nothing in particular?”

“Huh? Oh, Chunhua,” I replied, looking up at her as she walked down the street in my direction. “Not really. My brain is full of stuff after my little international incident earlier today.”

“Yes. I heard a little bit from Shawn, who heard a little bit from Charlie.”

“Have you seen her recently?” I could have poked my brain for her location, but I didn’t think to.

“She’s with Shawn, your friend Jeff, his mustache, and a bottle of Scotch. They’d just started a poker game in the cafeteria when I decided to take a walk a few minutes ago.”

I nodded and blinked. When my eyes opened again, I saw lights in the sky moving towards us both. It was a tight group of five blue dots.

“Chu!” I yelled and reached out to her, but I didn’t beat the arrival of the lights.

The world went light blue and soft focus. Everything stopped, including the wind, and the only thing in my head was how incredibly fucked I was to be in the sights of a UFO.

Chunhua didn’t look surprised or frightened. In fact, she didn’t even look up to see the lights overhead. She reached out and took my hand.

“Sometimes things happen that we can’t schedule precisely.” She smiled softly.

I felt the world fill up with a creepy hum, and became aware the two of us were floating up towards the middle light of the group. I couldn’t move, but Chunhua appeared to be swimming in slow motion, sculling up and down with her free hand. She was smiling.

The light consumed us.

When I could see something other than blue light, I was standing on both feet. My brain was still moving in slow motion, but my emotions were operating at full speed. I could see Chunhua standing four or five steps away from me. We were not alone.

The art director for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was not far off. The six figures standing in front of us were about four feet tall and spindly. I feel uneasy saying this, but they were strangely elegant and beautiful, not sinister looking, like the bug-eyed green thing you see on “It Came From Roswell” posters.

Alien #1, on the far right, raised his hand to point at me. I heard him in my head.

“Anal probe?”

“Negative,” the one closest to the center of the room said. “Unplanned attendance.”

A bigger, heavier voice appeared in my head.

“Frank is here by accident. I will wipe his memory before it becomes an issue.”

“We are grateful,” Alien #2 from the right said, “you were willing to meet with us.”

“Of course. We share an interest in humanity and their world.”

I realized that the huge voice was coming from Chunhua, and my emotions cranked up to 11.

“The Progeny have appeared on this world.”

That communication came from Left Alien #2.

“We are aware,” the giant voice in my neighbor’s tiny body responded.

“They will overrun this planet and repurpose the dominant species,” Alien Right #2 said.

“Yes. That is what they do.”

“We are abandoning operations,” one of the remaining Grays said. “We do not have resources enough to defend the humans.”

“As you know, our policy is non-interference.”

“Your species is powerful enough to save them.” All of the Grays shrugged and held up their hands.

“We are aware. Have you contacted the Pleiadians?”

“Yes,” Right #2 answered, “and they will do nothing. Instead, they are withdrawing to bolster their defenses against possible incursions in the future.”

“The reptilian species?”

“We contacted all of the factions. They, too, have withdrawn.”

“We are unsurprised,” the voice from Chunhua commented.

“Attempts were made to contact the Annunaki as well.”

“Indeed? We are surprised you dug so deeply into humanity’s history.”

The troop of Grays seemed to shuffle in place. They seemed ill at ease, and exchanged fleeting glances among themselves before more words were spoken.

“The Annunaki are no more.”