Red the First (14 page)

The vehicles had sat idle for several
years. Plugged O-rings, loose cracking hoses, and evaporated fluids
were common problems. Red’s mechanical talents allowed him to zero
in on what was broken and fix it right the first time, saving a lot
of time, but missing fluids could only be fixed with actual fluids.
Nate was his gopher guy.

The town’s people joked about the
mayor’s growing collection of vehicles—especially about the fleet
of buses. He’d even selected members of the community for bus
driving lessons. People were left scratching their heads, wondering
if the mayor was losing it.

“
Remember the show
Hoarders
?” Veronica repeatedly warned her best friend. “Red
is becoming one. You have to nip this in the bud,
Elizabeth.”

“
Don’t worry,” Elizabeth
tried to assure her. “The vehicles will be gone before the first
snowfall.”

Despite the pressure from the city
council to clean up his growing junkyard, Red decided to add even
more vehicles. He was going to do his best to include Last Haven in
the evacuation as well. Last Haven was larger than Hewego. Its
government had taken on a totalitarian slant. The mayor there was
an autocratic dictator, his citizens cowed, unused to being
questioned.

Red visited the mayor of Last Haven in
secret, hoping to convince him to ready his people for a possible
evacuation. After talking to him for a mere five minutes, and he
learned that the that Last Haven’s mayor didn’t believe men had
ever landed on the moon, Red decided not to broach the subject of
an alien invasion. But he couldn’t leave the residents of Last
Haven to the Celeruns.

He walked the streets of Last Haven,
hinting about it to those he met. The conversation usually went the
same way:

“
Hello, I’m Red Wakeland,
the mayor of Hewego.” He would shake their hands, smile real big,
like he used to do to customers when he was a car salesman. “I just
want to let you know that there’s a rumor going around about a
rogue band of soldiers sweeping through the United States, big
dudes.” Red held his hand way over his head for emphasis. “All in
green from head to foot. They’re so ugly you could swear you’re not
seeing right. Some say they don’t even look human. I think there’s
something to this rumor, so stay alert. And if you see anyone that
fits that description, run as fast as you can toward Hewego. Come
straight to my place and I’ll show you what to do.
Okay?”

“
Uh, okay.” He could tell
they thought he might be a little off his rocker, but they weren’t
totally dismissing him either.

His motivation wasn’t totally pure. The
bunker, for the long haul, needed a lot more people than the
numbers that Hewego alone could provide. The ideal population,
according the general’s notes, was twenty thousand. Hewego and Last
Haven together numbered less than six thousand. Every person
mattered.

Red planned to have enough vehicles to
carry all of them, plus a little extra, just in case. He popped the
hood of a Dodge Caravan, and focused his thoughts onto the engine
and its surrounding parts. His mind traveled through tubes and
coils, running along the inside of the grimy engine like a maze.
His thoughts were drawn to the neglected and deteriorated parts
like metal shavings to a magnet. That’s when he saw the sparkplugs,
worn to nubs.

“
Easy fix,” he said. “That
is if I can get to them.” Damn cab forward designs made everything
difficult to access, but working with his hands had a way of
clearing his head, and as long as he kept busy, it felt like
nothing bad would happen. It was those idle moments at night, when
he stared at the ceiling in the silence, that the darkness escaped
from its cage to ravage his mind. Just knowing those Celerun were
up there somewhere, plotting humanity’s death, caused him to pace
around the house at night like a madman. He would obsessively check
all the locks on the doors and windows. If only keeping them at bay
could be that easy!

He’d peer through the age-rippled panes
of glass in the windows, searching the night, imagining that every
movement was an alien scout, watching and waiting, ready to storm
the house.

He and Elizabeth still hadn’t come up
with a way to convince Hewego that the danger was real. Last Haven,
the people on their own without a real leader, was heavy on his
mind.

Even if he managed to get both towns
into the bunker, how would he convince them to stay there until
Armageddon?

Red and Elizabeth consulted Father Bob
on the matter. Even though the priest was still agnostic about the
aliens, he agreed that IF they were real, considering all the
general’s data, the only feasible plan was to evacuate as close to
the countdown as possible. It was reassuring to have another person
agree, but Red hoped that the aliens would give a sign of their
presence sooner than that. Fear of the invasion would be a strong
incentive to follow anyone with a survival plan…enter the
Wakelands.

Blanche and Nate drove up in a Ford
pick-up truck. Michael jumped out of the truck bed, carrying a
Roughneck storage container.

Red pulled his head out from beneath
the hood of the van. “It’s about time. Those better be guns in
there.”

“
Nope,” Michael said
brightly. “Something even better.”

“
Not more
jewelry?”

A sheepish look crossed Michael’s face
and he tried to hide behind Blanche.

“
This is getting out of
hand. The house already looks like Smaug’s lair. No more junk,
Michael. Do you understand?” Michael glanced down at the ground,
embarrassed, and murmured something about ‘dreams of needing money
that wasn’t money’. Red sighed. “Oh, all right. Take that pail of
pretty pebbles home.” Michael grinned as if he were on the verge of
tears

“
Don’t worry,” Blanche told
Red. “We made it educational—stopped at a museum.”

“
How about the
guns?”

“
The gun shops were picked
clean,” Nate informed Red. “So we went to the National Guard
Armory. The place was a bitch to break into, but Blanche used her
superpower to lift me over a fifteen-foot fence.”

“
Don’t call it a
superpower,” Blanche said, her face reddening. “The term is so, I
dunno, comic bookish.”

“
Nothing wrong with
that.”

“
Maybe if you’re a
twelve-year-old boy…”

“
Then what am I supposed to
call it?”

“
Others are calling the
power
charisma.
”

“
Charisma?” Nate replied.
“That sounds lame. Like, what? We’re supposed to be charming the
world to bend to our needs?”

“
No, I mean charisma as in a
divinely conferred power or talent—an extraordinary
ability.”

“
You call it what you want,”
Nate said, rolling his eyes at the term. “And I’ll call it what I
want. Mine is definitely a superpower.”

“
That cheapens it,” Blanche
said.

“
How so?”

“
You two can call it the
Howdy Doody as far as I’m concerned,” Red interrupted. “All I want
to know is how the search went.”

“
Well,” Blanche started.
“Since I lifted that bale of hay off of Mr. Brown, I haven’t been
able to levitate anything heavier than a brick. About five pounds
is my max. I didn’t think I could manage Nate, but he convinced me
how important it was, and I did it.”

“
Good job,” Red said, trying
to imagine Nate floating over the fence; he was far more impressed
with Blanche’s ability to levitate objects, thinking it more
valuable than fixing a broken engine in this post-mechanized world.
“You ought to practice using your, er...
charisma
more
often,” he suggested. “There’s no telling what you could do with
it.”

“
Yes, mayor,” she said,
nodding as if considering his words a command.

“
Now, what about the
guns
?” Red repeated in impatient exasperation.

Nate laid the guns out neatly on the
hood of a nearby Volvo station wagon. “We didn’t know what
ammunition belonged with which gun,” Nate explained. “So we took
everything.”

“
Place the ammo next to the
gun you think it goes with. I’ll make any necessary correction.
Then do me the favor of equipping each vehicle with a gun or
two.”

“
Who are we invading?” Nate
asked enthusiastically.

“
We are not the invaders,
but the invadees.”

The two young people exchanged
questioning looks.

“
People say you’ve lost your
marbles, Bossman.”

“
People say a lot of
things,” Red replied. “And I say that before the leaves begin to
fall, every man, woman and child will need to leave Hewego in a
hurry. Keys are in the ignitions.”

“
Mayor Wakeland,” Blanche
said worriedly, peeking underneath the hood of the van into which
he’d been pouring transmission fluid. “Do you know something that
we don’t?”

“
Yes, I do, but you wouldn’t
believe me if I told you.”

“
Does this have anything to
do with the lights that we saw last night?”

Red slammed the hood shut. “What
lights?”

“
You mean you haven’t
heard?” Nate seemed surprised. “The whole town is talking about
it.”

Red furrowed his brow
inquisitively.

“
A huge silver UFO…” Nate
said.

“
Shaped like a wedding
cake,” Blanche interrupted. “With layered tiers….”

“
Appeared about right
there,” Nate pointed to the eastern horizon. “And hovered there in
the sky for at least an hour.”

“
Before shooting straight
up into the stars.”

Red felt every muscle tighten. Dare he
hope this was enough to convince everyone of an impending alien
invasion?

“
People are saying the air
force is operational again,” Blanche said, optimism dancing in her
bright green eyes. “And that the government has reorganized. Do you
think it could be true, Red?”

He swallowed his inclination to say
hell no, it’s the beginning of an invasion, you ignoramuses
,
but he didn’t want to feed false hopes either. “The government’s
gone. That I know.”

“
Then what could it
be?”

“
A UFO, that’s what,” Nate
said.

This time Blanche was the one to roll
her eyes.

Red bit his tongue, deciding to let
her enjoy the delusion of security a little longer.

“
Going to the National
Guard was a brilliant move,” Red commented as he sorted through the
guns. He spied an automatic weapon similar to one he had used in
the service. Finding the matching clip, he clicked it into place,
and fired a couple of practice shots into the woods.

“
Cool,” said
Nate.

He chose a heavy rifle for Nate and
another lighter one for Blanche, and automatic pistols for both,
taking several hours out of his day to give them a crash course on
loading, handling, shooting and carrying their weapons safely.
Blanche was a natural; she didn’t flinch at the noise of the
gunfire, and her shoulders and wrists were stronger than Red had
guessed at first, so she could brace against the recoil. He gave
her a heavier gun. Nate wasn’t half-bad either, but they both
needed more practice. Unfortunately, time wasn’t on their
side.

“
Listen, and listen good,”
Red said. “From here on out, you are to carry these pistols at all
times, and the rifles when you can, and if you should see someone
who is not a person, shoot first and ask questions later. Now get
to work.”

“
How can someone not be a
person?” Blanche asked, scrunching her face into a question
mark.

“
You’ll know when you see
them.”

“
Them?” she pressed
further. “Who’s them? Does this have anything to do with the
wedding cake everybody’s been talking about?”

“
Thank you for the
delivery,” Red said, his tone hinting strongly to them that it was
time for them to leave. Blanche looked back to Nate, who shrugged.
Red knew they thought his behavior odd, but he could live with that
for now.

“
Uh,
okay
, then,”
Nate said. Blanche climbed into the driver’s seat of the pick-up
and they drove away.

Chapter 15

Rumors flew about the UFOs, but Red
was disappointed because people were more curious than afraid.
Give it time
, Elizabeth assured him, but there were only two
more weeks until the 18th.

Red worked on the speech he was going
to give before the evacuation, practicing in front of the mirror,
and then in front of Elizabeth. Thinking about addressing Hewego
had given him more than one panic attack, but it wasn’t like he’d
never addressed a crowd before.

Back when he owned the auto dealership,
motivational speeches were a regular thing. He had been a big fan
of Zig Ziglar, so he tried to pretend he was just speaking at a car
sales conference. A sales pitch, but instead of selling knives, or
real estate, or cars—he had to sell his fellow villagers a new
reality, one that included hostile alien invaders, and once he had
convinced them of the aliens’ existence, he’d sell the Hewaygoans a
bunker.