The Third Rescue

by Jay Mackey

  “I’ve heard them, and CJ has been complaining about headaches all week. He’s hearing them too. They’re coming. We have to get down there.”

  “But this is different. With Ann, she was pissed. She had to go see, call them to her. CJ doesn’t know anything.”

  “No, but what if they find him?”

  “If he’s in trouble, that could be a good thing.”

  “Get your computer and look for flights. I have to be there, Gus. I can’t let this happen again.”

  The past was coming after them. All of it.

  47

  Newport, Kentucky, August 2001

  No one likes to get a knock on their door from a law enforcement officer. It seems they’re almost always delivering bad news: they’re either coming after you for something they think you did, or coming to tell you that something bad happened to someone you love. Gus was pretty sure it was the latter that brought the two highway patrolmen to his door that Thursday morning.

  The previous night, he had returned home from the restaurant to find Violet in tears while trying to comfort a crying baby—their grandson, Christopher. She seemed frantic, which was probably the reason Christopher was upset.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, taking the baby from Violet’s arms, gently rocking him, trying to calm him.

  “I told her,” Violet said, flopping onto the couch and holding her hands over her eyes, sobbing. “Ann came over here, in agony. She was clearly hearing the voices. If anything, she’s more sensitive than I am. She thought she was going crazy. I decided it was time she knew the truth.”

  “About your parents?”

  “About my mother. Who she was, and where I came from. All of it.”

  “Oh, Christ. I thought we weren’t going to tell her all that. It would be confusing, she wouldn’t . . . Did she believe you?”

  “I don’t know. She called Tom, and then gave me Christopher. Told me to watch him, and said she had to go. They were calling her, she said.”

  “And you couldn’t stop her.”

  “No. I tried. But you know Ann. Once she sets her mind to something, there’s no way to change it.”

  “What can we do?”

  Christopher started crying again, probably sensing that Gus was now as upset as Violet.

  “I don’t know,” she said, standing to take him, patting the baby softly on the back. “I’ve tried calling, but Ann won’t answer her phone. Tom won’t either.”

  “Do you know where they’re going? Are they in danger?”

  “No, I don’t know. I’m getting a sense that someone’s in distress. It’s not like a telephone. It’s all images, abstractions.”

  “And you’re getting these abstractions now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck.”

  “It’s not like they’re going to hurt her. They care about her.”

  “Well, we don’t know who ‘they’ is, do we, or what will happen? Things didn’t go so well for your mother when she came here.”

  “That was different.”

  But Gus wished she’d put more conviction into that statement.

  They got Christopher to bed eventually in the crib they kept upstairs for him, and both Gus and Violet soon crawled into bed too, although neither fell asleep for a long time.

  Gus rose before the sun was up to find Violet downstairs in the kitchen, wrapped in a well-worn robe, sitting at the little table in the corner of their kitchen, sipping at what was probably not her first cup of coffee. Judging from the haggard look on her face, she’d been up for a while, and hadn’t slept much, if at all.

  “Something bad happened,” she announced without looking up from her coffee.

  “What?” he asked. “What happened? How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just the feeling I have, the sense that I get.” She looked up and smiled at him. But it wasn’t a happy smile. It was a “sorry to have to tell you this” smile.

  Gus shook his head and went for coffee of his own.

  They had little of substance to say or do that morning, at least until Christopher woke about an hour later, and then they got the knock on the door an hour after that.

  The highway patrolmen were polite at first when they delivered the news that Ann and her husband Tom had perished in a car accident. They even stood calmly silent while Violet broke down and Gus tried to comfort her while feeling devastated himself. But then they seemed less than kind as they pressed the two for information: the family backgrounds of Ann and Tom, what they did for work, where they lived, but mostly about why they would be driving through the back roads of central Kentucky in the middle of the night. Gus, and to a lesser extent, Violet, answered as truthfully and fully as they could.

  At least, they were truthful until Gus asked exactly where the accident had occurred. Then one of the patrolmen, the smaller, younger of the two, pulled out a map and pointed to a spot southeast of Lexington. To Gus, it made no sense why Ann would be in that area. To Violet, though, it gave her an idea.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the map. “That’s not far from Red River Gorge. They went . . .” She stopped and wiped her eyes, before continuing. “. . . They had one of their first dates there, hiking and, you know.” She had to stop again to regain her composure. “They’d been having a fight—I don’t know about what, only that Ann seemed really upset. Maybe they were going down there to bring back old memories.” She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know.”

  Almost all of that was a lie, of course, except the part about Ann being upset. But Ann hadn’t been mad at Tom—she’d been upset with Violet.

  The patrolmen seemed to buy Violet’s story and backed off a bit on the questioning. They agreed to take Gus and Violet to the crash site so they could see for themselves. The car was still there, they were told, but the bodies had been taken to Lexington.

  That made Violet cry a bit louder. But they found Christopher a babysitter, signed a form to allow Ann and Tom’s dentist to provide dental records—for identification, they were told, bringing more tears—and were driven over two hours to the accident site.

  When they arrived, they found a tow truck ready to pull a car out of the ditch on the side of the road, just past a sharp bend. The car was almost certainly Ann and Tom’s, although it was badly burned. The patrolmen told them that the car had apparently gone off the road, rolled, and caught fire. The occupants were probably killed instantly and were dead before the fire burned them beyond recognition.

  After many more tears by both Violet and Gus, they returned home. When they were finally alone, Gus asked Violet what the story about Red Rocks Gorge was all about. She answered that she wanted to give the patrolmen a reasonable story so that they would stop digging into Ann’s family background.

  “Also,” she said, “they said the accident happened last night around two. That’s about when I got a strong feeling that something bad was happening. It was horrible. At first, I thought maybe the car accident was what I was feeling. But then I remembered I was still feeling that distress early this morning when I got up for coffee. It was not as strong as it had been earlier, but it was well after the patrolmen said the accident happened. I don’t know. The timeline doesn’t seem right.”

  48

  Nevada, April 2018

  Jack woke with a stiff back and sore shoulder from sleeping on the floor. Groggy, it took a while before he realized where he was. But then the bare office came into focus; he saw CJ and he remembered. Looking around, he next saw what had wakened him—the two men had come back and were now standing just inside the door.

  Stringy Hair said, “Come on, wake up. Now!”

  Another man came through the door. He was older, with a round, fleshy face, the few hairs on his head silhouetted against the light streaming in from the hallway. Wire-frame glasses sat on his puffy cheeks.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” said the man, smiling, “Ah, you must be Christopher,” he said to CJ. “And good to see you, Dr. Omdahl,
” he said to Jack.

  Jack looked bewildered at first, clearly not recognizing the old man. But then it came. “Blankenship?” he said in amazement. “From what the DoD told me I thought this might have something to do with the drugs you developed, but I didn’t know you were still alive.”

  “A little the worse for wear, I’m afraid,” the old man said, still smiling. “But I’m much younger than you, surely. What are you, ninety-five or ninety-six?”

  That got Penny’s attention. She turned quickly and made a face at Jack.

  “I was born ninety-six years ago,” replied Jack. “But I’ve lived for about eighty-one years.”

  “What?” said Blankenship, looking confused.

  “It’s all about space travel. Speed of light. Check your Einstein.”

  “Yes, you were always the smartest guy in the room. Or at least you thought so.”

  CJ looked quickly at Penny. She was grimacing.

  “No, Blankenship. I never thought I was smarter than you. But I was more ethical. More honest.”

  Blankenship grinned again at Jack. “I’d love to reminisce with you, Doctor, but we have others here who don’t share our history.” He made a wide wave of his hand. “Please, can we get you something? Water, coffee? Our options are limited here at the labs, but we aim to please.” His smile had turned into something nasty.

  Jack shook his head. “Really, we appreciate your hospitality, but I think we’re going to have to be going. Got a lot on our plate, you know. Busy, busy, busy.”

  Now Blankenship’s smile looked real. “Ha. Well, you are my guests, but I didn’t mean to imply that you’re free to go.”

  Jack was flabbergasted that Blankenship was still alive. After his release from the mental hospital, Jack had searched for everyone he’d known or cared about before he left, but most were either dead or had disappeared. He knew Blankenship had started up a drug company—or joined one, he wasn’t sure—but thought that he’d left the company or retired years before. And yet, here he was.

  “So,” he asked, “Are you still with that drug company? And who are your friends?” He nodded toward Stringy Hair.

  “We take care of excess inventory,” answered Stringy Hair.

  Blankenship laughed. “You know that I started the company with the findings from our time back at Groom Lake, right? And we had a good run—no thanks to you, taking away our most valuable resources.”

  “You mean like Aphrodite?” asked Jack. “That’s the resource you’re talking about?”

  “Yes, your girlfriend and the others.”

  Jack was upset. He leaned forward and pointed at Blankenship as he spoke. “One, she wasn’t my girlfriend. She became my wife. And two, how dare you refer to any of those people as ‘resources.’”

  Still with the fake smile, Blankenship said, “That all depends on how you define ‘people,’ I guess.” He paced around the room. “I don’t remember you getting married, Jack.” Seeing that Jack was about to stand and come after him, he waved his hand and said, “It doesn’t really matter.”

  He turned quickly, facing Jack directly, the smile gone. “I thought you died with the rest during that so-called escape attempt,” he said. “The one that effectively wiped out any chance I had of bringing more miracle drugs to the public.”

  Resuming his pacing, Blankenship went on, “Oh, we did pretty well with the blood coagulant we derived from alien blood. And the blood thinner we had to develop to counter it. But there was so much more we could have done, if only you hadn’t run off with them and gotten them all killed.”

  Now Jack smiled, and said, “You know that they weren’t killed, right? That they, and I, escaped.”

  Blankenship frowned. “That’s not what I was told. I saw the burned truck, the one you tried to use for your escape. Where you were all burned beyond recognition.”

  “Obviously, I wasn’t burned beyond recognition,” said Jack, feeling just a little smug.

  Blankenship shook his head and sat down in a chair Skinny Kid brought in and set down by the door. “I can’t believe . . . but I threw such a fit at Ernst. I was so mad that they let you even get out of the building. That’s when we parted ways, and I never heard anything . . .”

  He looked off into space, like he’d lost his train of thought. Turning to Skinny Kid, he said, “Bring me a bottle of water from the fridge in the front office.”

  Jack said, “So you really thought we’d all died in the escape?”

  “Yes, of course,” answered Blankenship, shaking his head. “How did you get away, then?”

  “We had help,” said Jack. “Aphrodite’s people came for her, and for the others. At least, the ones who were left after you got done with them.”

  Blankenship ignored the insult, and asked, “You’re telling me that some spaceship just happened by as you were racing away through the desert, and picked you up. That you flew off to their planet somewhere?”

  “They didn’t just happen by,” said Jack. “They have some way to communicate with each other. So when they neared Earth, they let Zeus and the others know they were coming. That’s why they staged the breakout when they did.”

  “With your help.”

  “With my help.”

  “And you went with them.”

  “I did.”

  This was a little much for Blankenship. He stood and paced the floor. The kid brought his water in and handed it to him. He took a long drink, and asked, “So when did you come back?”

  Jack said, “Oh, I’ve been back for years. But your old buddies kept me at Groom Lake for much of the time, and then they sent me to a mental hospital, so I’ve only been back, really, for about three years.”

  Blankenship shook his head, trying to absorb all that Jack had said.

  Jack said, “All these years, and you didn’t know any of this?”

  “No. I didn’t. I can’t believe they did this to me. I was . . . I was important.” He swallowed down the rest of his water, but he looked like he was now furious.

  “So what are we doing here?” asked Jack. “Hate to keep asking, but what the hell?”

  Blankenship smiled again. His temper seemed to run hot and cold. Still, it was clear this was not a real smile. He said, “So to get back to your original question about my company, I did pretty well for a while with the two drugs we had. But then patents ran out, and we struggled after that. Had some painkillers, some generics. Did okay, but not great. And then my son took over for me, and he managed to drive it right into the ground.

  “That’s what got us all here, basically. Well, really, it was my grandson’s idea. He felt like he’d been denied the opportunity to have his own little McMansion in the hills, so to speak, and he and I always believed that there must be more of these alien creatures around. They’re just hard to identify, since they look just like us. But if they landed—or crash-landed—once, why not more than once? There might be hundreds, thousands of them, living among us. And each of them has the potential to give us medical breakthroughs.”

  Jack now stood, upset again. “First of all, there aren’t hundreds or even dozens of them here. Second, they’re not creatures. Third, none of that explains why we’re here.” He motioned at CJ, Penny, and Oval.

  “Sit down, Doctor,” said Blankenship. “It was Trey, my grandson, as I said. He came up with the idea of doing the DNA testing to discover them. So we set up DNA testing labs for use by law enforcement, for medical researchers, and others. And then, bingo, a sample at our client FamilyHeritage struck gold.”

  He stood and walked over to CJ, who was still sitting on the floor next to Penny. He pointed at Oval, and said, “I know it’s not the African-American boy, because that’s not what the DNA said.”

  Next, he glanced at Penny. “And I know it isn’t a girl.”

  Turning back to CJ, he continued, “So it has to be you, doesn’t it? You’re the one who sent in the DNA sample.” He looked pleased with himself.

  CJ nodded.

  “I t
hought so. And are you from here, or were you born on some far-away planet?”

  Jack said, “Leave the kid alone. You know damn well where he’s from.”

  Blankenship wheeled and moved toward Jack. He said, “No, actually, I don’t. I know he lives up near Cincinnati with an older couple. If we’re lucky, one or both of them could be a star traveler.”

  Smiling again, he said, turning back to CJ. “Fortunately, we’re going to find out. This is where Trey’s hard work might pay off. See, he’s the one who went to your school, slipped the GPS tracker in your wallet. Before he came back here to see what you were up to, he even found your parents—or grandparents, I don’t know. But one of his people has been shadowing them. And guess what. They’re on their way.”

  49

  Nevada, April 2018

  CJ couldn’t believe this old man was the one behind all this—kidnapping them, running them all over Nevada in the back of a cruddy old van, holding them in an office in some remote lab. He recognized the name from Jack’s stories: Blankenship was the doctor who experimented on Aphrodite and the others. And now here he was, a crazy old fart, bent over, wrinkled, rubbing his hands together like he was so excited about all this. CJ watched as he left the room, followed by those two bozos, Skinny Kid and Stringy Hair, who locked the door behind them.

  CJ was alarmed that his grandparents would be coming here. They should be at home, working in the restaurant. What happened? Surely, they couldn’t know that he was in trouble already, could they?

  If only the pounding in his head would stop. He couldn’t think. Not with the screaming he heard: Help, help! Only maybe that was him screaming. He couldn’t tell. Nothing made sense.

  He, Oval, and Penny all had many questions for Jack after Blankenship left, but Jack didn’t seem able to give them the answers they wanted. In fact, he seemed as confused as CJ.

  And then Oval asked CJ, “What’s this about star travelers and DNA? Is he saying you are an alien? Because I think that’s what I heard.”