Harry Truman vs the Aliens (2 page)

“Unknown,” Starke said.

Deputy Chief of Staff Musgrave cleared
his throat, and all eyes turned to him.

“Mr. President,” Musgrave said. “We
should consider the possibility that the aliens are friendly. For
all we know it’s a diplomatic envoy.”

Every time that little tit Musgrave
talked, Truman wanted to punch him in the mouth. “And when do we
get to find that out, Musgrave? When they’re sitting in the White
House eating human brains off the good china?”

Musgrave went red but wisely said
nothing.

“I want the entire military and civil
defense put on alert,” Truman said. “Inform governors to call up
all their National Guard units. God in heaven knows how we’re going
to do this without panicking the public, but we can’t
wait—”

A grating buzz on the wall interrupted
the President. In four quick strides, Starke across the room to the
squawk box on the wall. He flipped a switch, talked into the
speaker. “Starke here. What is it?”

“This is Edwards control
tower,” squawked the speaker. “We have radar contact coming in fast
out of the northwest, and it is
not
answering our radio calls.”

The blinking red light was beeping
frantically now, like a rabbit having a heart attack.

“Oh, my God,” the control tower buzzed
through the speaker. “We’ve got a visual, you should see this
thing. It’s coming in like—”

The squawk box went to
static.

The beeping red light was now crying
one, long continues note.

Starke turned his head slowly to the
others gathered in the room, his face pale. “They’re
here.”

Rocky Hardmann was the first to react.
He took Truman by the elbow and began ushering him toward the door.
“Time to go, Mr. President.”

At the sound of Hardmann’s voice the
rest of the agents sprang into action, forming a circle around the
President as they all moved through and past the crowd of
scientists. Musgrave followed as an afterthought, his mouth hanging
open.

“Damn it, Rocky,” barked Truman. “Is
this really necessary?”

There was a muted rumbled, a distant
explosion. The floor shook, and Truman would have lost his footing
if Hardmann hadn’t had hold of his arm.

Hardmann turned his steely gaze on
Starke. “Is there another way out?”

“Service tunnel. Runs the length of
the base,” Starke said. “Back to the platform lift and down two
levels.”

“Right.” Hardmann was moving for the
door again. “Follow me.”

They were back out in the gleaming
hallway when the next explosion hit.

This time most of them did go down, as
smoke rapidly filled the corridor

“Son of a bitch,” yelled
Truman.

“Stay
down
, Mr. President!” Rocky had a
hand on the President’s back.

Truman didn’t resist. He
stayed down, and there was a sudden pregnant silence in which the
only sound was the cocking of automatic pistols, the
telltale
click
of
safeties flicked off. Dimly at first, they heard the shuffle of
feet.

“Damn it, Rocky,” whispered one of the
other Secret Servicemen. “We’ve got to get the hell out of
here.”

“Eyes forward, Jenkins.” Hardmann
sighted along his pistol at the dark figures coming through the
smoke.

“Don’t shoot!” came a frantic voice.
“We’re coming through!”

A half-dozen Rangers came through the
smoke, two-dragging an unconscious man between them. They were
bloodied and battered.

“It was a massacre!” yelled a tall,
wild-eyed sergeant. “My God, they went through us like snake oil
through a nun! We don’t have a chance, man. We’re gonna die. WE’RE
ALL GONNA DIE!”

The President stood, grabbed the
sergeant by the collar and slapped him across the face so hard that
the sound made everyone flinch. “Snap out of it, man!”

The sergeant went to his knees, face
in his hands, and wept.

Truman put a hand on the sergeant’s
head, like a priest giving absolution. “You’re relieved, soldier.
You relieved. Who’s next in command?”

A bugged eye corporal clutching his
Thompson to his chest stepped forward. “Me, sir.”

“Report.”

“We managed to get one of ‘em,” said
the corporal. “But the other two are hot on our trail. We closed
that big metal door behind us when we got off the elevator platform
but—”

“Wait just a damn minute,”
Truman said. “The other two? There were only
three
of them? There was an entire
company of Rangers up there!”

“You weren’t there,” sobbed the
sergeant. “YOU WEREN’T THERE!”

Smack!
Truman slapped him again.

“If they closed the big vault door, we
should be in pretty could shape, Mr. President,” Starks said. “The
vault doors on each level are meant to seal us in case of a
nuclear—”

The next explosion was the biggest
yet, and everyone in the wide hallway went to the floor.

Truman blinked, his ears ringing, a
throbbing bruise under his left eye where he’d hit the deck. He
lifted his head, coughed and blinked through the smoke. All the
Rangers except the sergeant had taken up defensive positions,
Thompsons pointed back down the hall. The Secret Service agents
took their cue from the soldiers.

The lights flickered , blinked, and
went out.

“Shit,” said a scared
voice.

“Hang on!” Starke’s voice. “The
emergency lights will kick in soon.”

Even before he’d finished saying it,
the red lights along the ceiling flickered to life. Bathing the
hallway in a hellish glow, the smoke like some evil fog rolling in
from the lakes of hell. Truman saw them, the hulking figures moving
lithely through the smoke toward them, and suddenly time
–

—slowed.

The President of the United States
watched as the first ever aliens from another world that he’d ever
seen came to kill him.

In the slow motion reality unfolding
before the end of Truman’s life, he got a good look at them. Seven
feet tall wearing armor of dark overlapping scales, spikes on the
shoulders, arms and legs longer and more gangly than a human’s. In
spite of their size, they moved with sinister grace, almost
floating through the smoke as if their feet didn’t touch the floor.
Their helmets completely enclosed their heads, faceplates
reflecting copper. They drew long swords which glowed suddenly with
electric green energy.

“Fire!”

The Ranger’s opened up with the
Thompson machine guns, the air suddenly thick with lead, the Secret
Service agents pouring it on too. The bullets bounced and sparked
off the alien armor.

The first alien suddenly accelerated,
ran forward, veering running along the side of the wall, seeming to
defy gravity, flipping and swinging his alien sword. The heads of
two rangers flew off their shoulders. The alien was a whirling
dervish of death among them, cutting down another Ranger, gutting a
Secret Service agent on the back swing.

Screams and blood and death and smoke,
punctuated by the humming sound of the alien’s energized sword.
Truman watched the alien cut through his men like it was harvesting
wheat. All he could do was stand there and wait to die.

The Secret Service agent called
Jenkins bent, snatched a grenade, pulled the pin and ran straight
at the alien.

“I love you, Rocky!” he screamed
before throwing himself on the alien, wrapping one arm around the
aliens helmet and holding on for all he was worth.

There was a brief moment where the
alien tried to pry the agent off its head, but a split second later
the grenade went off, exploding the head from the alien’s shoulders
in a spray of purple blood. Jenkins exploded himself along with
it.

The next alien stalked forward more
slowly, and Hardmann lifted his .45 automatic. If he was disturbed
in any way Jenkins’ ill-timed confession, he didn’t show it. He
fired until the automatic clicked empty, but the alien kept coming,
hacking down another Ranger and two more agents in the
process.

Musgrave screamed like a woman and
tried to dart past the remaining alien. It casually flicked it’s
sword out and beheaded the deputy chief of staff, the head flying
in the air.

Truman glimpsed the shocked
look frozen on Musgrave’s face and giggled.
No. Stop it. That’s not befitting the
President
.

Hardmann picked up two Thompson
machine guns, and with one in each hand, charged the alien, both
guns blazing lead at the invader, the bullets sparking and forcing
the alien back a step but otherwise doing no harm.

The alien hacked with the sword, and
Hardmann’s right arm went flying, an arc of blood following the
appendage through the air. Hardmann flew back, landing at the
President’s feet.

“Rocky!”

With his remaining arm, Hardmann
pulled up his pants leg, drew the snub nose revolver from the ankle
holster and handed it to Truman. “Run, Mr. President.”

Truman looked up, saw the last few
agents and Rangers gang-piling the alien. The invader would cut
them to pieces in seconds.

“No Time!” shouted Hardmann with his
remaining strength. “Run!”

Truman felt like a coward. These men
had died protecting him. They’d been slaughtered like animals in
front of his eyes as he’d stood there helpless. But he didn’t
hesitate.

He ran.

The sound of screams and gunfire
followed him back down the corridor. He didn’t look back, sprinting
as fast as he could, clutching Hardmann’s revolver in his hand. He
ran back into the huge workroom with the alien spaceship, slamming
and bolting the door behind him. A quick scan of the place told him
what he already knew. No other exits.

The President of the United States
needed a place to hide.

It took longer than he thought it
would for the alien to arrive. Truman hoped those who’d remained
had put up a good fight.

The door exploded into the work room,
and the alien entered, slowly turning its head, looking in every
direction. It saw the spaceship, the blinking light still whining
its noise, and the alien went for it immediately. He bent into the
cockpit. It was clear this ship was why the alien had come here in
the first place. But at that second, Truman didn’t care
why.

The war cry, Truman realized, had been
foolish. Giving away even a second of surprise was a bad idea. But
as the President ran full speed, pushing the steel girder in front
of him, sliding along on the cable above, he just couldn’t help it.
All the pent up rage and fear welled up inside him, fueled his hate
and outrage. How dare this thing come to his world and kill
Americans!

So he screamed and screamed
and ran, the girder at top ramming speed when the alien turned
around. The girder hit the alien’s faceplate with an
ear-splitting
pop-crunch
. The alien left its feet,
flew backward, landing on the flat of its back.

Truman had seen the alien in action
and doubted it would be stunned for long. He ran to it, pulling the
snub nose revolver from his pocket. He’d knocked a hole in the
faceplate about the size of a baseball. The alien was already
stirring, trying to recover.

Truman knelt, jammed the revolver into
the hole in the faceplate.

“Eat lead, you son of a bitch from
another world!”

The President pulled the trigger six
times, the .38 caliber slugs bouncing around inside the helmet as
the alien shuddered next to him. When he’d emptied the revolver, he
pulled his hand away, saw that it and the gun were covered in
purple alien blood. He stood, staggered back and threw the gun
away, wiped the blood on his pants.

He stood for long moments, watching
the alien. But it didn’t get up. Unbelievably, Truman had killed
it.

He staged back out into the hall,
couldn’t bring himself to look at the faces, stepped over the
bodies. He reached the platform elevator, and the controls on the
podium were self-explanatory. He went up and out.

The hanger was full of bodies and he
slipped once in the lake of blood on the way to the exit, stumbled
back to his feet again, hands covered in the red blood of the
fallen.

Outside the hanger, it was worse, the
Rangers lay all around, bodies overlapping, many beheaded. The
half-tracks and jeeps were smoking husks where the aliens had
blasted them to smithereens. Beyond sat the parked alien spaceship,
gleaming clean and untouched. Three of them had done this. What
happened when more came?

What happened when an army
came?

In the distance, he saw jeeps coming
and raised a hand. “Here! I’m over here!”

He went to his knees, fatigue and
grief overwhelming him, and he cried.

It would be six weeks before the
President could sleep through the night.