Invaders From Mars (17 page)

“Yeah,” David agreed. But who? The only other people in the world he trusted—his parents—were no longer his parents. Unfallen tears burned in his head as he thought of his mother tickling him through the covers of his bed, growling like a bear . . . and of his dad getting excited about the brilliant meteorite in the night sky, laughing like another kid instead of like a—

Dad’s laugh. The way he always laughed when he said “Mad Dog”?

Mad Dog Wilson.

David jerked around in the seat and faced Linda, his lower lip tucked confidently between his teeth. He took in a deep breath and let it out through the hopeful words, “General Wilson!”

Linda’s mind was reeling. Her head was pounding and there was a shrill ringing in her ears. Suddenly nothing seemed safe. After what she had seen, her very own car seemed a possible threat. Having witnessed something that, earlier, would have seemed impossible, the word “impossible” lost all meaning and she dared not even guess what might happen next.

It had obviously been a living thing that had come up through the basement floor, but there had been something very machinelike about it. The bone-rattling whir of the blades . . . the amber eyes shining like headlights . . .

When she thought of how close she and David had come to meeting the same fate as the two policemen, Linda felt like vomiting.

“They killed two of their own people,” David said thoughtfully, fidgeting on the edge of the seat like a housefly, never holding still for a second. “As if they didn’t matter.”

“Maybe they didn’t,” Linda suggested.

David frowned and sucked his lips between his teeth. “It must have been after something, that thing. There was no reason to tunnel into the basement. Except . . . the copper . . .”

“What?”

“Didn’t you see all the copper in the basement? There were barrels of it.” He became distant and withdrawn.

“Well? What about the copper?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Just an idea. My pennies were stolen. And the smell in the ship . . .” He turned away from her and looked out the window. When he said no more, she didn’t press him.

Linda had passed Camp Puller several times. During the day, it appeared very official, a sterile and bustling complex. At night, however, it seemed forbidding. The chain-link fence seemed taller; the curved posts strung with barbed wire at the top seemed to frown discouragingly at anyone who might consider entering. Beyond the fence, well off the road, the base glowed with activity.

The needle was approaching seventy on the speedometer as Linda drove along the fence and she lifted her foot from the pedal, unaware that she’d been speeding. The tires screeched lightly over the pavement as she swerved onto the narrow road leading to the base.

The headlights fell on the guard station where two MPs, looking nervous and stiff, stepped to the center of the road and waved their arms for Linda to slow down. She braked and eased to a stop, rolling down her window. One of the young men came to the door and leaned his head through the opening. His neck was thick, his face hard and without expression.

“What’s going on here, ma’am?” he asked sternly.

“We have to see General Wilson!” David insisted, his voice ragged.

“It’s urgent,” Linda added, hoping David wouldn’t say anything that sounded crazy.
“Please!”

“Do you have clearance?” the MP asked.

“My dad, George Gardiner, works here!” David shouted. “Except he’s . . . he’s not my dad any—”

“David, please.” Linda tried to sound urgent, but calm. “I’m the nurse from Menzies Elementary School. There’s a serious health problem in town. You
must
call General Wilson.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

David threw himself toward Linda, toward the open window. “A spaceship landed behind my house!” he cried. “They got my mom and dad, the Willowbrook Police . . . the whole town! We tried to call the FBI!”

Linda squeezed his shoulder and tried to quiet him. “David, let me.” She turned to his rock-hard face.

“Ma’am,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises. Now.”

“No, no, listen. I know it sounds crazy. It sounded crazy to me, too. But a few minutes ago, I was almost killed. There are . . . well,
creatures
here. From . . . well they’re not from this earth, that’s for sure. And they’re spreading. Taking over the whole area.”

One corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk as he put a hand on the edge of the door. “Ma’am . . .”

“Please, just call General Wilson for us. Tell him what we’ve said.” As a last resort, she placed her hand on the MP’s and gave him her softest, most pleading look. “Please?”

General Wilson’s office was dark but for the glow coming from a bank of video monitors against one wall. The monitors displayed various angles of a rocket on a launching pad. Spotlights washed over the rocket as a countdown appeared in the top right corner of each screen. There was no volume; the office was silent.

General Wilson was seated before the monitors in a swivel chair, his thumb and forefinger tugging at his rock-hard jaw, craggy frown lines spanning his forehead. His cheekbones were looking sharper than usual with dark hollows below them. General Wilson had been losing weight lately. He always lost weight when he worried, and he’d been worrying a lot lately about the Millennium Project.

It was important and it had to go smoothly. Until the rocket was well on its way, General Wilson would wonder if something had been overlooked, if the smallest of details had slipped by unchecked. He had the utmost faith in the men and women who had worked so long and hard on the project, but there had already been a number of mishaps, and nobody was perfect.

That someone had failed at his or her job was not all that concerned General Wilson. He was by nature a worrier, but his imagination was working overtime these days. What if someone had leaked information about the top-secret project? Whether accidentally or intentionally—perhaps even for money—a leak could damage security and might increase the chances of sabotage. And if there were a major complication—an explosion or something—there would be publicity, which could taint the base’s otherwise spotless reputation.

General Wilson hoped that what
could
happen and what
would
happen would be two different things and that everything would move along without a hitch. But like rats within walls, his worries skittered and nibbled . . .

Captain Rinaldi stood at his side, leaning forward on the back of an empty chair, also watching the monitors.

Their faces glowed with bluish light in the silence.

Both men started when the phone rang.

“Base commander’s office, Captain Rinaldi.”

General Wilson turned to him, cocked a brow, and prepared himself for the worst, as always.

“Yes . . . who?” Rinaldi held the receiver to General Wilson. “Provost marshall’s office, sir.”

General Wilson stood and cleared his throat heartily. “Yes? . . . What?
Invaded?
Sounds like another crazy. Well, just—hm? . . . Gardiner’s boy, huh? Well . . . it just might affect security. Send them up . . . No,
no,”
he said sharply, “have them
driven.”
He hung up and turned to Rinaldi, frowning. “I hope I’m wrong,” he said softly. “I have been before. But something in my gut tells me that we’ve got trouble.”

The base was a nest of activity. Floodlights brightened some areas, while others were dim and alive with shadows. Everywhere there was movement; jeeps whizzed around with important-looking men in the back seats and Marines hurried this way and that, carrying boxes, calling out to one another. At every turn, there were sentries standing tall, straight and watchful.

After Linda’s Mustang was parked, an MP had escorted her and David to a Jeep. They got in the back seat and the quiet, stern man drove them across the base.

From the Jeep, David tried to take in everything around him. He’d never seen so much activity at the base. Something was happening, something important and, most likely, secret, since his dad had said nothing about it to him.

The MP drove the Jeep into a smaller compound enclosed by barbed wire. There were uniformed men rushing in every direction.

Steam billowed all around, giving shadows lives of their own, adding mystery to the compound as men disappeared and reappeared, passing in and out of the mist like ghosts.

David spotted several men bustling around a large liquid-oxygen fuel truck. David gasped and clutched Linda’s arm, blinking several times to make sure his eyes weren’t failing him.

Carrying a huge crate to the truck were the two technicians who had been sucked into the sand pit earlier.

“Look!” David whispered, pointing vaguely. “It’s those two guys . . .”

Behind them, two other technicians were loading spindles of copper wire into a NASA pickup truck.

“More copper,” David said.

Leaning toward his ear, Linda whispered in a quavering voice, “I don’t like this.”

As the Jeep drove on, a black Bronco crossed its path at the rear, slowing to a stop. George Gardiner got out and slammed the door. He wore NASA coveralls and carried a metal case. With cautious glances in every direction, he approached the two technicians he had lured to the sand pit that day. Nodding, he said, “Hollis. Johnson.”

They nodded in return, unsmiling.

“It’s wired,” he said confidently.

Taking the case, Hollis said, “Good. Then everything’s set.”

Gardiner turned and hurried back to the Bronco. Before starting the ignition, he turned to a blank-faced Ellen Gardiner, sitting motionless in the passenger seat, and said quietly, “It’s just a matter of time now.”

To David Gardiner, General Wilson had always been a bit of a joke. The man’s discomfort in the classroom and the nickname that David’s dad had given him had lent him a sort of fumbling air.

Now, seated at his big desk, his face dark, he almost seemed a different man entirely. On the wall behind him hung pictures of General Wilson and Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Ronald Reagan, all personally signed. In each picture, General Wilson’s face glowed with pride. All around the pictures, weapons were mounted on the wall: rifles, handguns, knives.

The man behind the desk was no longer just the deep-chested general who spoke in class once every year. He was no longer “Mad Dog” Wilson. He was David’s last chance.

Asking to see the back of the man’s neck before saying anything had been a nearly unbearable but necessary embarrassment to David.

“The back of my
neck?”
General Wilson had replied with a squint, glancing at Captain Rinaldi.

Linda had spoken up for David. “He’s serious, General,” she’d said. “Please.”

David had almost cried out with relief when he found nothing on the general’s neck. He’d seated himself before the desk beside Linda and, covering every detail, he’d told his story.

When he was finished, the general locked his big hands together on the desktop and leaned forward, frowning.

“That’s one hell of a story, David,” he said. “And honestly, I’ve heard quite a few in the Marine Corps.”

“I know it must sound utterly ridiculous, General,” Linda said. “But I can assure you that every word of it is true.”

Turning to Captain Rinaldi, the general said, “Get on the phone and check out that sighting.”

Rinaldi immediately picked up the phone and spoke in quiet tones.

“I don’t know,” General Wilson said to David. “People getting sucked under the sand . . . aliens running loose under the town. It’s all just a little hard to swallow.”

David’s head buzzed. Trying to sound convincing, he said, “But if it
is
true and you don’t do anything—at least look
into
it—something horrible’s gonna happen!”

The general rubbed his chin for a while, searching David’s face.

“Sir,” Rinaldi said, hanging up the phone, “NASA confirms a visual sighting during the meteor shower two nights ago. But radar reported no strike.”

David shot to his feet and leaned on General Wilson’s desk. “But what if their ship absorbed energy?” he asked frantically. “What if it could hang onto those energy bursts? It wouldn’t show up on your radar because no energy would bounce back!”

“You’re a very bright boy, David, but . . .”

“Sir,” Rinaldi said, “a search team was sent out to look for a sign of impact or landing. The two men who checked out the Copper Hill area gave a clean report.”

David spread his arms and gestured with exasperation. “That’s because they were sucked under the sand! They’re part of it now! General, whatever’s supposed to happen is gonna happen at midnight.”

General Wilson and Captain Rinaldi exchanged a forboding glance.

“Midnight,” the general said quietly with dread. He turned to Linda and smiled vaguely. “Ma’am, could you and the boy leave us for a moment?” To Rinaldi, he said, “Take them next door. Tell NASA that I’m doing a routine security check on their men. I don’t want to make an issue of this, but I want to speak with the two men who checked out Copper Hill.”

“Yes, sir.”

Before being ushered out of the office, David looked up at General Wilson and asked quietly, “Do you believe me?”

“I’m going to see what’s going on, David,” the general said, patting David’s back. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

But General Wilson knew that everything was not fine. Midnight was the time set for the launching of the rocket. Something was afoot, and it didn’t look good.

Rinaldi stuck his head in the office. “Shall I have Curtis send them in when they arrive, sir?”

General Wilson motioned for him to come in and close the door. “I want you to stand over there, behind the door. Just in case they try anything.”

“Do you expect them to, sir?”

“I don’t expect anything, but I want to be ready for everything.”

Rinaldi stood beside the closed door and they waited.

When Hollis and Johnson entered, they looked grim and stiff, as if tense about seeing the general. They stepped before the desk and waited for him to speak. The general was careful not to glance at Rinaldi.

“Gentlemen,” General Wilson said, “I have a few ques—”