Roswell Fanatics

7:20AM US-50 Eureka Nevada

Their day had started seven hours before, 42 miles from Caldwell Idaho. It was a very rural area, with a lot of agriculture. The lab was on a wheat farm, one of the old outbuildings long since converted from the raising of pigs to the creation of methamphetamine. It actually was a working farm, and the vast quantity of anhydrous ammonia they bought from the farm Co-op was easily explained by the wheat that was produced and sold, the large combines letting the farm be worked with a minimum of people. Two of those people were in the car now.

Most runs were done by just one guy, but this run was a big one, so the driver had a guard, ostensibly to keep watch and give him a little more firepower, but in reality there just as much to stop the driver from just driving off with the product. The street value of 800 pounds of crystal was over 2 million dollars, but the farm would sell wholesale, realizing about $750,000 from the transaction. It wasn’t exactly that the owners of the farm didn’t trust the driver but…well, drivers HAD been caught stealing a lot less than that. The second person in the car was only prudent.

They were both a little stiff and sore. They had driven throughout the night, after carefully packing the cargo into the trunk. It had completely filled it. And yet their day had only started.

It would be almost thirteen hours before they would have their cargo safely in Los Angeles…a drive broken only by the occasional quick meal purchased from a drive-in, and a few stops at gas stations along the way. They’d overnight in LA and then drive back on Monday. Thursday the trip would be northwest….to Seattle. It wasn’t the most exciting life, being a drug runner, but the pay was good. They each pocketed $5000 a week…..tax free, of course.

0830 Bioscience Section. Det. 24 Area 51, Nevada


The briefing was to be given by an attractive young Lieutenant, apparently the junior officer and one of the few military personnel in the section. There were no more senior researchers in attendance. Slammer recognized the pattern. It was the same as the first two sections.

The attitude of the civilians had ranged from haughty indifference to mild annoyance. Many had seen commanders come and go, all promoted out of the ranks of military researchers who had worked at Area 51 for years. None had been particularly effective….hell, considering the money spent on the place, the whole place was pretty ineffective. But as a ‘black world’ outfit, there was precious little oversight. They could trumpet their meager advances and intimidate a few people on the small black world oversight committees with threats about the potential for xeno-technology, and easily keep the black-world dollars flowing, enough to fund a dozen fighter wings.

The young Lieutenant looked uncertain, nervous…..new enough herself to know that the place wasn’t very military…had never been military, but also recently enough graduated from her ROTC program to know that commanders ought to be accorded a little more respect than the senior people in her department were showing him. She knew, he could tell, more than they…that things were going to get very interesting shortly.

Slammer didn’t hold it against her, that she was tasked to give a briefing the chief of her section ought to be giving. Besides, as he caught his young execs face looking at the young lady, he was pretty sure young Captain Hawthorne would take personal affront, were he to give the young Lieutenant too hard a time in the briefing. Slammer wasn’t born yesterday, he knew well how to take charge of civil service employees, even supergrade employees like those who headed the department. His plans for those were already in motion as they would learn in a few days. Area 51 had been screwed up for decades. That would wait. But as he looked up at the wall, his irritation started to slowly turn to rage. For there were things that wouldn’t wait.

Tactical aviation is a dangerous job, people frequently died doing it. Since the fighter community was small, many of those people had been squadronmates at one time or another with the Slammer. He’d been on three fatal mishap boards, two as pilot investigator, the last as board chairman.

The first had actually been the easiest, in a way. He’d known the pilot, but not well. He’d made a rookie mistake…but then it was his first night bombing range mission, the man WAS a rookie. Pulling off the target he’d looked back to see his bombs hit, become disoriented, perhaps somewhat flash-blinded by the explosions. He’d continued his turn, just ten or fifteen degrees too long, on his low level egress. The night vision goggles had little peripheral vision, and he’d likely been looking to his left, trying to get back on course, when he’d impacted the mesa. The flight surgeon had handled the body…if you could call it a body. Somehow, looking at the ten or fifteen pounds of JP-4 soaked flesh they had been able to find in the smoking hole….somehow it hadn't been all that bad…hard to equate the lumps of meat with the young fighter pilot he’d once shared a beer with.

The second time had been harder, a midair during a practice dogfight. They’d both been maneuvering, but one had lost sight…and pulled hard trying to get away. The planes had hit, one pilot safely ejecting, the other also coming down under a parachute after the crushed cockpit came apart, but lifeless even before he floated to the ground. The body was so VISIBLY human, but obviously mangled. Much like four of those before him.

The third mishap board….he didn’t even want to think about. The pilot had done nothing wrong…nothing but have bad luck. A defective oil pump part, manufactured a decade earlier, when she was still in junior high school, had finally given out, and the single-engine fighter had suddenly become a glider. And fighter planes would glide…although only marginally better than a crowbar. But the young Lieutenant had stayed with it..because her aircraft was over a city…she’d stayed with it until it was past the neighborhood and past the school and headed into the one empty construction site in the whole area, ejecting only in the last second. And she should have made it…would have, if not for the building she hit as she landed. She had looked just asleep, on the slab in the morgue, like sleeping beauty. The broken neck was visible only on the x-ray. Her name, he remembered, was Lieutenant Beverly Peterson.

The five beings floating behind the glass wall reminded Slammer of those mishap boards. Individually they could have passed for human, the heads and eyes a little oversize, the fingers a little too long, but if you only saw one you might think him or her only a little odd. But taken as a group, yeah they looked a little alien alright, but not unlike ordinary humans really. One was female, the fractures to her arms and legs and the damage to her abdomen from the impact of the crash clearly not enough to leave any doubt as to her gender, the Y-incision from the autopsy cleaving her sternum between her breasts. Three of the males were in similar condition. The fourth looked like Lieutenant Peterson, not a visible mark….except for the Y-incision.

But to Slammer, these beings weren’t really alien…they were like him. He could imagine them wrestling the controls of the crippled spacecraft….and they’d almost succeeded….they’d come so very close. Because at anything like normal flying speeds, all you got when you hit the ground was that lump of unrecognizable flesh. For them to be in this condition…..all they had needed was a few hundred feet of altitude, more or less, a little more power, a little more control…and they would have walked away….flown away perhaps.

“That one….what did he die of? What did they find killed him, when they did the autopsy. A broken neck?”

Lieutenant Laurie DelGado looked at Jim Hawthorne before answering. They had met six months ago on their first plane ride from McCarran to Area 51, he coming from his astrophysics program, her from the Molecular Biology program at Harvard. Her parents weren’t particularly prosperous, and the college ROTC scholarship had been her ticket to college. She’d excelled there, and the Air Force had deferred her to get her PhD at Harvard, before winding up here. She wasn’t exactly happy to be here, at least not working for Dr. Blaukopf. Her occasional meetings with Jim were the only real bright spots in the last six months, and even those Dr. Blaukopf had criticized her for. He didn’t really approve of her fraternizing with people out of the department…although she wasn’t too sure Dr. Blaukopf had even wanted her assigned there. He had given her this job like it was an annoyance to even be bothered with the commander.

She knew the answer to the Commander's question, of course. Since they treated her like a flunky, she’d had plenty of time to read the old records, the work done by Dr Blaukopf's father, back in the early days.

She’d read those papers..and been sickened by them. One of the original ‘paper clip’ scientists, the man had scarcely been a humanitarian. She knew the answer alright, but was afraid to say it. But Jim’s eyes seemed to give her silent encouragement. As she opened her mouth, she wondered briefly if the new commander was the type of guy that would shoot the messenger.

The fear and disgust in the young Lieutenant’s eyes was not lost on Slammer, nor the quick looks at Hawthorne for moral support. The seconds dragged on as he waited. Finally the young woman spoke.

“Sir, ..as near as I can tell from the papers I read….well, that one died OF the autopsy.

He was recovered alive, with a severe concussion. As he started to get over the concussion…well the records say his hands would sometimes glow…that he’d sometimes pull objects to him in his delirium, just with the glow in his hands. They were afraid of him…kept him heavily sedated with scopolamine for almost six months. Finally Dr. Blaukopf…that is, the father of the current department chief, …Dr. Blaukopf decided they needed to see what made him so different…..and they…vivisected him. They never found out so they just kept going deeper…finally he died on the table. They never did find out what caused the glow."

A wave of nausea swept over Slammer. “At least the poor bastard was sedated, didn’t feel it.”

Slammer saw the terror in the young Lieutenant's eyes, his nausea deepened, even before the words came out.

“Scopalamine is just truth serum. It doesn’t really keep you from having pain…just destroys your will. At least that’s how it works in humans, From the description of the autopsy…well, it must work that way in aliens too. They kept trying to question him….even through his screams.”

Slammer had over 2000 fighter sorties, yanking and banking, without ever once getting airsick. But he was fighting the nausea now. The only reason he didn’t vomit was that the rage was siphoning all the energy away from anything else. He’d had the rage once before, in 1993, watching television images of bodies being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. He hadn’t been able to do anything about that rage then. He could now.

“Captain Hawthorne, I want you to go directly from this meeting and order five coffins from Dover AFB. Send one of the 737s to get them. Lieutenant DelGado, this room is to be closed to all personnel until those coffins arrive. Once that happens, the remains will be placed in those coffins. Jim….We are going to bury these people just inside the base perimeter, over on the little hillside to the East at sunrise on Wednesday. Get out the word. It’s a mandatory formation, and God help the person who is not in a correct uniform or doesn’t show.”

Laurie’s eyes widened, and went to Jim. Dr. Blaukopf would have a fit about this…he called it his ‘freak wall,’ bragged about it to the occasional high level visitor.

She started to tell the commander that, but as her mouth started to move Jim’s eyes widened, and he slowly shook his head ‘no,’ the exchange lost on Slammer who was looking at the wall with unshed tears causing his eyes to sparkle and his jaws tightly clenched.

Deep down, Laurie was afraid of Dr. Blaukopf……but Jim’s eyes were telling her that it was safer to cross Blaukopf than the new commander. She hoped he was right. She owed the Air Force three and a half more years service, and she’d likely spend them all at Area 51.

"Yes sir,” said Captain Hawthorne.

“I’ll see to closing off this section immediately, sir,” said Lieutenant DelGado.

Slammer didn’t respond. He just looked at the bodies, his face growing red with barely restrained rage.




0915 Det 1 126th Medical Company (Air Ambulance) Operations, Reno-Stead Airport, Nevada.

The briefing was a quick one. The two UH-60 Blackhawks would depart at 0845 for the trip down to Nellis Air Force Base. One aircraft would be left there to replace the aircraft whose remains now rested in a hangar at Nellis, being picked over by the maintenance member of the mishap investigation board. The other aircraft would replace a similar Blackhawk that was being returned for a phase inspection and upgrade of its tail rotor assembly. All personnel on both aircraft going down to Nellis would return on that aircraft.

At the end of the briefing the flight lead asked is there were any questions. The crew chief on the second helicopter asked if there would be medical personnel on board.

“No,” said the young Lieutenant. “They have a full complement of personnel already deployed. Our job is just to get the aircraft down there and bring the one running out of phase time back. Any other questions?”

“Any stops along the way?”

“Well, we have plenty of fuel. Still, we may make a potty stop at Tonopah, …get out….stretch our legs a little…….gee, you look disappointed Fred….what did you want…the Chicken Ranch?”

“Well, yeah…maybe.”

Everyone else laughed. The Lieutenant just shook his head. The Chicken Ranch was a legal brothel, about 60 miles west of Las Vegas.

“Sorry Fred. That’s a little west of our heading. Of course, we could leave you at Nellis and you could walk…only take you about three or four days, if your water held out.”

“That’s OK. My wife wouldn’t understand it if I went there anyway.”

The lead aircraft flight engineer couldn’t let it go. “Oh, Margie would UNDERSTAND IT alright Fred,…approve of it…well, that’s a different matter.”

“Getting BACK to the flight briefing, gentlemen….you too Fred….., any further questions?”

9:15 AM Highway Six East of Tonopah

In the wide open spaces of the west it’s fairly common for police officers to take the police car home with them, and especially so in places like Nye County where the spaces were wide open indeed. His wife and daughter were down south near Pahrump, visiting his wife’s parents, so there hadn’t really been anyone to share a breakfast with. If he hadn’t had the weekend duty, he’d be with them….but someone had to work weekends, and it was his turn. That being the case, Deputy Sheriff Michael Walker had driven the patrol car in toward town early, planning on getting breakfast at the restaurant, and maybe bullshitting a little bit with his fellow officers at the table that was almost reserved for them at the restaurant.

He saw the Jeep turn off at the entrance to the old airbase housing area, just before he reached it. It was towing a small trailer loaded with furniture. He’d heard that Betty Ann had let a couple of her girls live out there. Betty Ann and her rehab projects….well she was a kindly soul…and it was probably better for her to have all her little social projects than to have twenty cats or something.

Deputy Walker was pretty sure that was the new waitress in the passenger seat, the one who never looked him in the eye. He’d gotten through California last night, and was about to start Idaho. That shouldn’t take too long. Then Oregon and Utah. It was in there somewhere…he’d find it. And now, when he did, he knew where she would be.

The bumps on the old housing area road notwithstanding, Max thought this was a great day…the kind of day that made you glad you were alive. He smiled as he looked over at Liz, the wind blowing through her hair. God, she was gorgeous….gorgeous and…all his. She’d made THAT clear enough this morning…and really all week. And it wasn’t just the sex with Liz, although the words “just,” “sex,” and “Liz”, clearly had no business whatever being in the same sentence,…it was far more even than that. He’d spent a decade watching her from afar, all but about a year of the time since he’d crawled out of that pod, and had never really believed she could accept him, let alone love him. It would have been easy to feel remorse for the times they could have had…not the sexual part, they’d been too young…their parents no doubt still believed them to be too young. But the closeness they might have had. Yeah, she was his lover…but she was also his best friend.

Max looked again at her, and she looked back smiling. Max wasn’t going to waste time on regrets, he decided. It just wouldn’t be right….not when he was the happiest guy on Earth.

They had barely touched their gambling winnings, although they’d need a little to pay their motel bill tomorrow. Old Frank at the museum seemed to know everyone in Tonopah who had furniture they either wanted to get rid of, or that they would sell cheap. Betty Ann had contributed a few pieces too, although Max thought she’d already given out a lot of her old stuff, helping Anna furnish her part of the duplex. The rental trailer had really helped, and they hoped that two more loads after this would allow them to bring everything.

The interior of the old duplex really looked pretty good. They’d painted a lot, although Max had manipulated a fair amount too, making sure that Anna was nowhere around. They’d bought a few tools to put up blinds…at least around the master bedroom. They called it the master bedroom because it was the one they’d decided to occupy…it was no bigger than the other two, but they liked the view to the small mountain range to the Southeast. The other small bedroom Liz called their "guest bedroom," although admitting it wasn't like they could really have the folks come to visit. The third she'd laughingly called the nursery....Max was pretty sure that was just a joke...although the look in her eye when she said it had been kind of unnerving.

There was only the one bathroom..but the big old shower now worked. The water was rusty red for the first few seconds of course, but even that was getting better. Max had already planned to replace the propane hot water heater with one considerably bigger. He’d pick that up today too.

Max enjoyed shampooing his wife’s hair..although at first he’d feared she’d wind up red-headed from the rust. Funny, he’d never really appreciated how nice a shower could be…when he’d taken them alone.

Liz loved this. Riding by his side, the wind blowing through her hair from the open window. Funny about that…she ought to be cold. She didn’t get cold much anymore…not that Max often gave her the chance. But the time was when she’d have been cold riding in the high desert with an open window in the winter. But not anymore. Maybe it was an inner warmth, just from the thought of being near Max….of sharing her life with him. And that was part of it. Maybe it was that she was still flushed from the warmth of the mornings activity.

It was almost certainly not from the retrovirus that infected her. Like HIV, the alien virus placed itself into the host’s DNA, but not just any DNA, only the mitochondrial DNA. And tempered by millennia of symbiotic existence, the virus didn’t replicate aggressively, unlike HIV. Older mitochondria, as their cells were about to die, would form a few tens of infective particles, as the last act of their existence. The infection would grow only very slowly. Despite an exceptionally active honeymoon….only a few tens of thousands of Liz’s cells were now infected, far less than the number of blood cells in a single drop of blood. And even in these, only one or two of the many mitochondria in each cell would be affected.

No, Liz didn’t have the ability, like Max, to manipulate the air around her, to put energy into the air molecules around her skin, to heat the air and keep herself comfortable without even thinking about it. Not yet.

But if you could look deep within one of those few cells, find the one mitochondrion among the multitude in the cell that did harbor that retrovirus, if you could somehow look down at the atomic level, where the water molecules were being stripped of their hydrogen, their cold fusion to helium catalyzed by the enzymes of the alien virus….if you could have somehow looked in that much detail…you would have seen a lovely silver iridescence as they produced their energy..not much…not yet….just a few quanta.

But the infection was making slow steady progress, numbers increasing almost geometrically…and probably would continue to do so…if she didn’t wear her poor husband out.

In fairness, though, he wasn’t complaining.

10:15 AM Highway 6, Seven miles east of Tonopah Nevada

The flatbed truck was doing 60 mph, and had been since leaving Ely Nevada. There were twelve large blocks of compressed scrap metal chained to the flatbed. The block furthest back had once been two cars, a 1965 Chevrolet BelAir, and a 1957 Studebaker Hawk.

The Studebaker, once owned by a farmer near Salt Lake City, had been its owners pride and joy until 1970, when it had been in an accident. Since Studebaker had closed its doors and no parts were available, the car had set in the garage for a couple of years, then in the barn for a couple of years, and finally in the back field. Eventually a few windows were broken, and one summer a female pheasant had raised a brood on the front seat.

The reason the Studebaker was not still in the field had to do with China turning to a market economy. That would have been unthinkable when the Studebaker had been new…Mao would have never stood for it. But eventually he passed on, and under a free market economy growth in China was burgeoning…and that meant they needed steel. With scrap metal at a record high, the junk yards and farm fields of the US were being emptied of junker cars which were being compressed, put on trucks, and transported to Long Beach California to feed the steel furnaces of China.

The chain holding this block of scrap had been loose since it was loaded, and back around Ely there had been some construction. As the block rocked against its restraints, a large piece of what was once the left side rearview mirror had been knocked off. Propelled by the wind and small bumps in the road, this lump of metal had slowly worked its way to the back of the flatbed. Six and one-half miles east of Tonopah Nevada, the chunk of fender with the attached mirror fell from the truck.

1018 hours Three miles north of Tonopah Nevada

(Over the intercom)

“Okay people, we are coming up on Tonopah Airport…anyone got to pee?”

“I could use a break”

“Fred, you are such a weenie…If your brain was as small as your bladder, you’d have an IQ of 18”

“Yeah, will if I had an IQ the size of my dick, It’d STILL be a 18. “

(Over the radio)

“Uh…flatiron two…let’s land at Tonopah…and anyone in your aircraft got a ruler, I can see a bet coming here.”




10:18 AM Highway 6, Seven miles east of Tonopah Nevada.

It had been a long drive from Caldwell Idaho. One man was asleep, the other was trying not to be. It was a wide straight road, with nothing but desert around it, and it would have been easy to fall asleep. When he saw the helicopters, he was briefly alarmed. But they were only military choppers, out on some routine patrol. His eyes were on them only a few seconds, before returning them to the road. It was enough.

BAMMM!

The car swerved wildly as the left front tire blew on the scrap of metal, and the driver fought for control, as the passenger came suddenly and frighteningly awake. Fortunately there were no oncoming cars, because the car swerved from shoulder to shoulder until the driver finally fought it to a stop on the right shoulder facing east toward Tonopah. Both men were shaking, it had seemed certain the car would roll at one point. But they were safe now…and it wasn’t like they didn’t have a spare. It wasn’t much of a spare, the driver remembered suddenly…one of those little things you were only supposed to drive on for fifty miles…until you could get the real tire fixed. But at least they had it.

Suddenly the driver said. “Oh shit….!” as he remembered that the spare was nestled into the hollow in the top of the fuel tank, .....it and the jack…under 80 ten pound bags of crystal meth.

10:19 AM Scott Road, in the old military housing area of the Tonopah Airport.

Max and Liz were in the Jeep pulling the little trailer, going back to town for another load of furniture. In the back seat was Anna. She was working the 11AM to close shift tonight and Liz had said they’d be glad to let her ride along with them, and pick her up at closing. They would likely be making a lot of trips to Tonopah today anyway.

Even through the closed windows, they heard the engines of the big military helicopters. As they turned onto Highway six, Liz and Anna were watching the aircraft touch down and taxi in toward the old base ops building, one man running toward the portapotty as soon as the door was opened.

10:19 AM Highway 6, five miles east of Tonopah Nevada.

Deputy Sheriff Michael Walker was smiling as he headed out toward the airport. He almost hadn’t made this trip. There was a lot of REAL crime that went on in the world, and somehow two underage kids running off and lying about their ages…getting married, well that wasn’t much of a crime.

They actually seemed like nice kids, but when he thought of his own daughter…he couldn’t let it go. That waitress obviously was scared to death, not really mature enough to be doing this. That’s undoubtedly why she couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with a cop….afraid he’d see the fear lurking back in there. ‘Liz Parker and Max Evans, huh?’ he thought to himself. ‘…or Mr. and Mrs. Max Evans….although probably not for very long.’

He kind of had sympathy for the boy too, it’d taken his father-in-law a little time to warm to him as a son-in-law. But sixteen year olds just weren’t mature enough to be married, not that he didn’t wish them well.

But it was his job to go pick them up…to let their own parents sort this out.

Hopefully his little Alissa Sarah would never do anything this dumb, but if she did, he’d sure want someone to pick her up and send her back home. He hoped the parents didn’t go overboard with the punishment…they had really seemed like nice kids.

As his police cruiser crested the hill. Deputy Walker's eyes were drawn to the skid marks ending at the car on the shoulder, the one with the very flat tire. The occupants only now were opening the trunk. It must have just happened.

‘Hell, the kids aren’t going anywhere…they’re just moving in. I might as well give these guys some help.’

He pulled across the highway and parked in front of their car….

Like many police departments with single-officer cruisers, the Nye County Sheriff’s office had real concerns about their isolated deputy’s ability to get help in an emergency. For that purpose, the officers were provided with a two way radio that they wore to keep in contact with dispatch when they were not actually in their car. The deputy was 15 feet in front of the blue Crown Victoria with the Idaho plates when that radio came to life.

• “Attention all units. We just got a fax from the DEA. They are looking for a blue Crown Victoria with Idaho plates. It should be passing through Nye County sometime this morning, most likely with a male driver and one male passenger. Approach with extreme care, they are armed and dangerous.”

Immediately he reached to his microphone and depressed the button to send a short message; “This is Walker on highway six, one mile east of the airport road. Send backup”

As usual, Deputy Walker was wearing his police radio on the left side of his equipment belt with a wire leading up the left suspender to the microphone near his mouth. It was convenient for a right handed person, the other side being too close to the right elbow to allow the mike button to be depressed easily. Unfortunately it put the right hand diagonally across the body from the 9mm automatic in the holster at his belt. His hand had barely touched his pistol when a half-dozen rounds hit him full in the chest.

The Mac-10 is an awkward weapon with a short sight radius, and even a far heavier weapon fired in full automatic mode was difficult to control. It was surprising that the gunman was able to control the rise, which on full automatic fire normally would have walked the stream of bullets up into the officer's head and face, but the gunman was a pretty big guy and often practiced with the ugly little automatic. That fact kept the deputy from being instantly killed by that first burst.

Six rounds hit in the anterior torso, three into the area of the titanium breastplate of the body armor covering the sternum, the other three in the more flexible Kevlar along the rib cage. Each round brought with it 300 foot-pounds of energy, in the aggregate it was like the officer was hit by a truck…but as the Kevlar was deformed by the bullets and in turn deformed them, the impact was spread out over a greater area and while ribs were broken and pectoral muscles were deeply bruised, no bullet penetrated from the initial salvo and no lethal injury ensued.

The second gunman opened fire as well, his handgun round also being stopped by the Kevlar vest, not without further damage to the ribs below though. Walker answered with two rounds of his own, aiming at the center of mass of the second gunman but with his adrenaline level too high for accurate firing. The first round was high..missing the chest altogether…passing through the trachea just below the Adams apple and continuing on between the vertebra of the neck and passing through the cervical spine before exiting the back of the neck. The second shot missed altogether…not that it mattered.

The second burst from the Mac 10 came, and while most rounds landed on the Kevlar vest one was low, hitting him in the upper left leg..severing the femoral artery, the impact twisting his body as he fell, exposing the opening in the vest for the right arm. The final bullet of the burst went unimpeded into his right ribcage through the edge of his lung and back out to embed itself on the inside of the Kevlar vest near his back. He got off two rounds while he was falling. Either his aim was better, or perhaps it was just luck. Both hit in the center of the chest of the Mac 10 gunman, ripping through his heart.

Michael Walker’s injuries were relatively simple….but that’s not to say they wouldn’t be lethal.

The body has only about five quarts of blood and it was gushing from the femoral artery as he lay there. A pint was gone already and he was well on his way into shock from the blood loss, just in the few seconds he’d been lying there looking up at the blue Nevada sky…and he knew it.

And that wasn’t even his most immediate problem, he could barely breathe. He was a young man, only in his mid twenties. He could survive just breathing on one lung, if that had been his only problem…but it wasn’t. His right lung was collapsed, but it still had a tear through it. With each inhalation, more air would leak from that tear, pressurizing the right side of his chest. As that happened, the heart would be pushed further and further to the left. This gave the left lung even less room to expand, and worse yet, it was slowly kinking the large arteries and veins that delivered blood to and from his heart, making it harder and harder for the heart to deliver blood…even if he hadn’t already been bleeding to death. It’s something called a tension pneumothorax.

But Officer Walker didn’t know the specifics, didn’t actually NEED to know the specifics. What he did know was enough. He knew that he was dying…dying alone out under the desert sky. And even that sky was starting to fade as his blood pressure dropped, his vision shrinking…like looking up from the bottom of a well, just seeing that circle of blue sky surrounded by blackness….and watching the blue circle shrink and the blackness grow as unconsciousness approached….as death approached.

He didn’t recognize her at first..when she appeared suddenly in the blue circle…but he heard her words,….. “Hang on, Deputy, ..my husband and I won’t let you die..”

They were foolish words, spoken by a foolish little girl, someone barely old enough to drive, too young to speak words like that and certainly to speak them with such conviction. The young deputy knew better, and he didn’t even get his hopes up. He just thought about his wife and little Alissa Sarah, praying to God to take care of them when he was gone.

Still, the young girl’s face wouldn’t leave the circle of blue, so he looked up at it and looked for the first time into the eyes of Liz Evans.

They weren’t the eyes of a child. They were incredible eyes…you could see eternity in those eyes and you could see confidence and determination and…even though he knew it was irrational, Michael Walker felt himself suddenly grow calm. She said it would be alright, not just with her voice, but with her soul. Perhaps it really would be alright.

The BRAPPP! of the last burst from the Mac 10 was followed by two quick shots, and that brought three pairs of eyes immediately to the two cars, and the two falling bodies. Max accelerated continuously until hitting the brakes hard to skid to a stop beside the fallen officer. Liz was out of her seat before the jeep had quite skidded to a stop, and ran to his side.

As she looked back at Max, an unspoken thought seemed to flash between them. Liz had seen the ring on the deputies hand, knew he had a little girl somewhere…he’d show her pictures to the other deputies at the table….they would not let the young man die. Even if they had to reveal themselves, start all over on the run…they would not let him die.

She looked into his face, seeing the terror, the fear, and worst of all, the growing resignation there. She took his face and turned it toward her shouting, “Hang on, Deputy, ..my husband and I won’t let you die..”

Liz had taken an advanced First Aid course in the summer between seventh and eighth grade because she thought it might help her learn more about biology for her studies. Max had enrolled for that course then as well, admitting a few months back that he’d done so simply because it had let him be near a certain eighth grader by the name of Liz Parker. The bleeding groin wound was immediate and obvious. “Max, put pressure there.”

Max pushed his hand down on the gout of blood. Blood pressure really isn’t very high, just a few pounds per square inch, and if you can apply pressure directly over it, you can stop it. It slowed greatly but some small bleeding was continuing. He looked at Anna, her attention riveted by the deputy’s struggle for breath, and added enough telekinetic power to stop the leak altogether. He knew he’d heal the deputy before he’d let him die, but with Anna there as well, backup likely on the way, and two dead guys…apparently drug runners from the stash in that trunk, there was going to be a lot of company soon….too much company for an iridescent handprint to go unnoticed.


Liz and Anna had peeled the shirt away and were working on the Kevlar vest, their eyes grown wide as they saw the mass of slugs flattened along the outside.

The wound under the right arm was easy to spot, the sucking-gurgling noise and the bubbles of blood leading their eyes to it quickly. Liz looked quickly at his Adam’s apple, which was deviated to the left. “He’s got a tension pneumothorax,” she announced to no one in particular, seemingly lost in thought as she struggled to remember that first aid course. She looked at Anna and grabbed the ballpoint pen from the pocket of her uniform, unscrewing it and taking the barrel portion in her hand. Liz always carried a penknife, a habit she’d picked up at the Crashdown after she had broken a nail getting the seal off a bottle of Tabasco sauce….they seemed to go through a lot of that stuff. It’s blade was only a couple inches long,,,but long enough.

She knew she could have never done this if Max wasn’t there….because no matter how badly she fouled this up….Max could fix it. Him being there gave her the courage to do it. She cut the tip off the barrel with the blade and then reached over below the wound near the right armpit…felt the space between the ribs, and plunged the knife between them, twisting it. There was a quick blast of air, and the deputy seemed to breathe better. She put the pen barrel in to hold the lung cavity open, to let the air out as it leaked from the lung. Almost immediately his breathing eased and his color got better. He needed medical help. A medical center that could fix that artery..and put in a real chest tube. But Liz was trapped by having to hold the tube…Max by putting pressure on the leg.

“Anna.” Liz said, “…go get those helicopter guys.”

1105 University Hospital Helipad, Las Vegas Nevada

It’s funny about emergency situations. Even in the military, it’s not necessarily the one with the most rank that becomes the leader. It’s sort of like newly hatched ducklings, they just sort of line up behind the first thing that appears to show purposeful motion, and follow it. The young girl hadn’t hardly looked old enough to drive, and Lieutenant McEvoy was surprised to see the ring on her finger, but when she’d given orders…well, hell, they didn’t have any of their medical personnel with them and she’d seemed to know what she was doing.

The Blackhawk normally cruised at 130 knots….they’d done 160 the whole way, skimming the Joshua tree cactuses to get more speed out of the ground effect. The Deputy had recovered consciousness briefly about 20 minutes ago. He’d looked up at the young girl and smiled, then drifted back to sleep. As they unloaded the litter the young lady and her husband went with them, still not taking their hands off of the young deputy.

For the first time since seeing the other girl driving wildly toward them in that blue jeep, they could relax. They’d need to contact the other helicopter crew they’d left guarding the drugs…hopefully the other police were there by now.


1107 University Hospital Emergency Room, Las Vegas Nevada.

It had been a slow morning and Blackjack, the Nellis Range Control, had relayed the helicopter’s radio message almost 40 minutes ago. The ER crew was waiting.

Dr. Jeffries knew you could never really tell by the initial call what you were going to find when the patient got there and as this one was brought in from the helipad he was a little irritated that the two teenagers were underfoot…at least until he saw the bloody foam coming out of the end of the pen barrel.

“We need a chest tube setup…..stat!” he called out.

The crew had already gotten two large bore IV lines running in lactated ringers solution to replace the patients lost volume, and the vital signs seemed stable. He looked at the other teenager…the message had claimed a lacerated femoral artery but it didn’t appear there was any active bleeding.

“Kid, move your hand there….so I can see how bad….JEESUSS just put it back…keep doing whatever you’re doing….Bev, call the vascular surgeon on-call, tell him to get his ass down here pronto.”

Thirty minutes later Deputy Michael Walker was in surgery, his blood pressure stable, his new chest tube well on the way to inflating his lung. He’d be hospitalized about ten days, but his survival was no longer in doubt.


Liz and Max sat in the surgery waiting room. Neither had anyplace else to go just now, and they wanted to make sure everything went OK.

The young woman came in ten minutes later, with her mother and father at her side and a three month old girl in her arms. They had started at the emergency room and the doctor there had told them what happened...and that the deputy was in surgery.

The two teenagers looked...kind of bedraggled. They had blood on their clothes...and the clothes had been work clothes to begin with. They had been kneeling in the desert dust and they had been windblown by the helicopter. Under that grime, they were actually a couple of good looking kids. But you'd never know it. It didn't matter to the three adults...they came over and hugged them, tears falling as they did so. The three month old girl just seemed confused, but smiled when Liz talked to her. Liz asked to hold her for a minute...they both seemed to enjoy that. Max wasn't too sure if that was a good idea or not.

It was two hours later when they wheeled the young deputy into the hospital room. He was in and out of consciousness, heavily medicated for the cracked ribs and bruising, but he was stable, and his leg would be fine too. He looked up at his family and smiled, looked at the two teenagers huddled in the corner of the room...and smiled again.

The Nye County Sheriff came in, looked at the deputy, spoke to his wife and her parents...expressed his concern. Almost as an afterthought he appeared to notice the two teenagers. He walked over to them. "I think you two need to come with me."

The Sheriff opened the back door of the police car. Max and Liz looked at each other nervously, then got in. The Sheriff got in to the passenger seat and the driver drove them away from the hospital. Both teenagers were certain of what would happen. They'd only been married a week, not time enough for them to convince their parents they were mature enough, that they loved one another enough, that the marriage should be continued. But that didn't matter. They held hands. Whatever trouble they faced, they'd face it together.

But as they approached the guarded gate they really expected to see a sign that said Nye County Sheriff's Office. That wasn't the sign they saw.

1430 Det 1 126th Medical Company (Air Ambulance) Operations Detachment, Nellis AFB, Nevada

The helicopter crewmembers started congratulating the two as the Sheriff brought them in to the squadron ops. The second aircraft had arrived an hour ago. Even with both crews going back together, the Blackhawk could carry a pretty good payload. They’d told the Sheriff they’d be glad to take the Everett’s back home on their way back to Reno. The Sheriff had asked to go along too, he wanted to see the crime scene himself, not that there’d be any trouble for the young deputy at this shooting review, the Army personnel had seen the slugs flattened into that Kevlar vest.

The Detachment Commander, Captain Fitzpatrick, started to offer the kids each a beer…looked at the Sheriff and thought better of it, handing them instead a couple of sodas. After a short passenger briefing, the heavily loaded Blackhawk took off and turned northward, toward Tonopah and Reno.

1530 Tonopah Airport, Nevada.

A Deputy Sheriff was waiting with a vehicle when they arrived. They waved goodbye to the Blackhawk crew and the aircraft pulled itself back into the air and headed northward. The Sheriff turned to the deputy and said, “I think it’s time we took the Everett’s home, Roger.”

It seemed like an eternity had passed since they’d last been at the little duplex. The Jeep was there, with the trailer still attached.

“We took Anna down to the station to get a statement from her. She’s back at work now. We are going to need statements from you too Beth…, Marty”

“OK, Sheriff. We’ll drive in right now.”

“Oh, take your time, clean up a little if you’d like. I don’t think those two guys are going anywhere very fast.”

The Sheriff looked out at the mountains…the small range to the southeast that Max and Liz liked so much.

“You know, the West has always been too big for lawmen, it was that way back a hundred years ago when a few marshals and sheriffs tried to ride herd on the whole frontier, it’s too big now. I lost a deputy three years ago when he responded to a domestic disturbance. It ended up with the deputy getting killed, and then a murder-suicide, a guy and his estranged girlfriend. I had to deliver the news to the deputy’s wife, and their two kids. I’ll never forget that day…never want it to happen again. It almost did today.”

He looked back toward the two teenagers.
“The West is really too big for anyone. We only get by because we help one another..like Betty Ann taking in Anna…and like the two of you, coming to help Deputy Walker today.”

“We only did what anyone would have done,” said Max.

“That’s nice to say…but not true. You find out when the chips are down, who is responsible….who is mature….who your real friends are. Nye county is big but the Sheriff’s department is not. It’s small enough that I know all my men…and their families,….even little Allisa Sara Walker. And little Allisa will have a daddy when she grows up, because the two of you were mature and responsible enough to come to help him, and nobody in our department will ever forget that.”

Max could see the tears in the Sheriff’s eyes, in the deputy’s eyes too, as they turned to go back to the car. He said softly, “We’ll be in as soon as we get showered, Sheriff, to fill out those reports.”

The Sheriff turned back and looked at them, a smile on his face. “No hurry, Max…Liz,…take as much time as you like. Were all friends here.”

1630 Commander’s Office, Det. 24 Area 51, Nevada


It actually had taken longer than Slammer had expected for the explosion to happen. The two senior civilians had almost shoved there way past his secretary, dragging the unhappy Lieutenant along. But that was OK. He’d been a Lieutenant, once, and he was willing to bet that if it came to a fight, the young lady could more than hold her own against the two civil servant supergrades.

He had already reviewed their files. Dr. Hubertus Blaukopf and Dr. Kurt Emil Schreiber. Both were second generation at Area 51, their fathers had been early researchers here, both part of the “intellectual capital” that the US had harvested from the Nazis at the end of WWII.

It had been years since the Civil Service system had developed the Senior Executive Service ranks, the pay equivalent of general officers. These were Senior Technical Services personnel, Blaukopf an STS-3, Scheiber, his deputy, and STS-1. But even though their pay grade was superior to that young Lieutenant, and even to his, they obviously had long since forgotten something. This was a military base.


Dr. Hubertus Blaukopf was enraged. Schreiber had been an idiot to request the assignment of the military woman, and he’d told him as much 6 months ago. It didn’t matter that she had a PhD, she was after all, merely a woman..and a military one at that. Certainly, a few military personnel had been fine, to do the menial work, to be available if one needed a blood sample, or perhaps a liver sample, although you almost had to threaten them to get them to ‘volunteer.’ But to actually expect them to have intellectual capacity? To advance the quality of the race? And a female, at that!

She might better serve somewhere on her back, providing babies….or at least amusement, for the brilliant men that did have the capacity for superior thought.

But now, this….., the colossal arrogance of the bitch, to instruct her betters what to do….and in particular, to destroy the wall that showed the superiority of the betters of the human race over the alien spawn. He looked at the new commander. Perhaps even this military man could understand the stupidity of having this woman assigned here. He wanted her gone….today.

Dr. Schreiber looked angrily at the young woman. This was his reward? For giving her an opportunity of a lifetime? Blaukopf was right…., he had to admit it. He had gone out on a limb, hoping he might find intelligence in her head. He was bitterly disappointed. Now he just wanted her …gone.



“Colonel Randolph,” said Dr. Blaukopf. “We need to speak to you at once about this…this person.”

“Yes,” said Schreiber, “Most definitely.”

“Lieutenant DelGado,” said Slammer. “I believe you are the senior military officer in your section. Are YOU requesting I meet with these men?”

“No, no…you misunderstand,” said Dr. Blaukopf, “I am demanding this meeting.”

“Lieutenant DelGado,” said Slammer to the young lady with the open mouth, “I find it difficult to believe that you have so little understanding of military protocol as to permit these two to barge in to my office as they have. I expect better of my officers.”

Laurie DelGado had been scared to death 60 seconds ago, under personal attack from two of the three icons of Area-51, and the two senior doctors in her section. Then had come 5 seconds of bewilderment, before she figured out that this was really Slammers way of supporting her, of informing her bosses that he considered HER, not them, to be in charge.

She dug back seven years to her earliest training in ROTC summer boot camp, did her best to stifle a smile, and brought herself into her best military brace before shouting out her response.

“Sir! No excuse, sir.”

“You’re damn right there’s no excuse, Lieutenant. Get your troops out of here, and get them out NOW! You can talk to my Secretary as you go out. If you are convinced that your personnel here actually NEED to see me, schedule an appointment for the first thing in the morning. I don’t have time for this sort of nonsense right now.”

As he stormed out of his office he turned to his secretary and asked, “Maggie, give the barber a call and tell him I may be just a little late for that trim, would you?”

After the two civilians left with their mouths wide open, a giggling young Lieutenant asked for a half hour on the commander’s schedule for the next morning.