Eclipsing Vengeance

by Jeremy Michelson

  The aliens took him out to the moon where they had a bigger ship. They hooked him up to a machine–Not in my damned butt! Stop asking that–and kept talking to him. After a while, their words started making sense. The asked him questions about what he knew about Earth. He fed them all kinds of crap like how the rivers were made of chocolate and how elves mined candy canes in South America.

  It didn’t seem to matter none, the blue aliens just watched their machines and asked him more questions. After a while they finished and then they took him to what looked like a boss alien. This one was dressed in a dark gray business suit, like he was the CEO of some company on Earth.

  The suit looked at him and laughed. This is what rules this planet? I can step on this like a–the alien said some work that Buck guessed was akin to “cockroach”.

  The alien pulled out something that looked kinda like a gun. It hummed and lit up.

  You shall have the honor to be the first of your kind to die by our hand, the suited alien said.

  He pointed the gun thing at Buck’s head.

  Now, here the next part was hard to believe, but Buck swore it was true, so I believed him.

  Three

  I huddled my ten year old self in the corner of the porch by Buck’s cot. The breeze brought a bit of cool river air up, scented with sweet grasses and cottonwood leaves. Buck leaned forward and looked in the narrow window of our shack. Pappy was still sitting on his old rocker. His brows were down in a shallow V as he watched reruns of Magnum P.I. His fists were clenched on the arms of the chair. I didn’t doubt that he was thinking of taking the belt to one or both of us. I’d gotten licked more than once just because I’d been standing beside Buck at the wrong time.

  Look out for your brother…Yeah, that was like looking out for a tornado. You see a tornado coming, you get yourself in a hole and hide.

  Buck leaned back against the wall, head tilted up to the ceiling. Or to the stars.

  My stomach growled. I could still smell them biscuits and gravy. I woulda asked for seconds, but I didn’t wanna risk gettin’ pappy’s attention. If I was lucky, I could sneak a little something after momma and pappy went to bed.

  So what happened? I asked. The blue alien guy was gonna shoot you with his ray gun. What happened next?

  Buck got a grim smile on his lips. He cracked his knuckles, then clenched his hands into fists. Lot like the way pappy did when he was mad.

  The alien with the suit stuck this ray gun in my face, Buck said, I didn’t even think. I ducked down and grabbed the gun.

  The alien had apparently been scared of Buck touching him. He jumped back. ‘Cept he let go of his ray gun at the same time.

  Buck grabbed up the gun before it hit the floor.

  Other blue aliens came at him. Buck spun around and blasted two of them. They went down, alive or dead, Buck didn’t know or care. He ran out of the room and down some corridor.

  He blasted open a door at the end of the corridor and found hisself in a hanger sorta place. There were three smaller ships in a row. Buck shot at a couple other blue aliens that was in the hanger. Then he jumped in one of the ships.

  Now, Buck didn’t have any idea how to fly aliens spaceships. But the alien dude sitting in the cockpit did.

  Buck put his ray gun to the alien’s tentacled head and told him to fly him to Earth pronto. The alien started to tell him off, but Buck yanked the tentacles on his head and told him he wasn’t in no mood for sass.

  The alien started up his ship and was getting ready to fly out the hanger door when Buck stopped him. He asked if the little ship had any guns. The alien guy hemmed and hawed until Buck yanked them tentacles again. He pointed out a control panel and told Buck real quick how to use it.

  Buck said them alien guns was really easy to use. A little picture came up on a screen, then you put your finger on what you wanted to shoot and POW!

  Buck took care of them other two little ships, then took a few pot shots at the inside of the big ship. The alien pilot was almost crying by now, begging him to stop. Buck just slapped him upside the head and told him to fly him back down to earth.

  When they was leaving the big ship, Buck took some more shots at it. He said it was hard to see the ship’s shape, but it was kinda like some funky shaped bird of prey, mostly black.

  He hit the ship pretty good, but the ship also fired back. The pilot managed to get away from most of it, but one shot clipped them. The pilot was babbling on about how the stealth shields were down, whatever that meant. But Buck told him to move his ass back down to Earth.

  He found out what the alien was babbling about when they got down closer, back in the air. All of a sudden Air Force fighter jets were after them, firing missiles. Buck told the alien to go faster, but the blue dude said the ship wasn’t good at flying around in the air. Buck told him to aim for where they picked him up and he’d just jump out. The blue dude looked at him like he was crazy, but down they went, zipping along the big river.

  It was about fifteen miles from home that one of the fighter jets got a good hit on the space ship.

  Smoke filled the cabin and Buck told the alien guy to get down low and open a hatch. The blue dude didn’t waste no time. Next thing Buck knew they was down, and he was tumbling on the ground in the tall grass near the river.

  Then the alien ship zoomed away, USA fighter jets hot on its tail.

  Buck got up, dusted hisself off, then figured out which direction home was and started walking. Few hours later he walked in the door of our little shack and made momma drop the biscuits on the floor.

  I listened to the whole thing with my mouth hanging open. I could almost see the blue aliens and the spaceships and the ray guns. And I believed every word of it because Buck didn’t lie.

  I don’t know if he couldn’t, or if he never wanted to. All I know is that Buck got a lot of whuppings growing up that he coulda avoided if he’d made something up. But that wasn’t him. He was always straight out honest. He’d tell a person how he saw things, whether it was polite or not.

  Them were the times when I was better at looking after him.

  Hurt feelings I could smooth over with some words and some awe-shucks. Or sometimes sticking my finger to my head and making a twirly motion. People always acted more understanding if they thought Buck was a bit touched.

  It was easier than trying to convince them of the truth.

  And it was the truth. Buck didn’t have to, but the next day, he took me out to one of our secret spots out in the cottonwoods out back of the house. From the rotted out hollow of a tree he pulled out a cloth wrapped bundle. He set it on the ground and unfolded the cloth.

  Lying there, black and looking like death waiting to happen, was the ray gun Buck stole from the blue alien boss man.

  This came from the stars, Buck said, This was what them alien sum-bitches brought us. They ever come back this way, I’m gonna give it back to them. Barrel first.

  Four

  Hunkered down on top of that rumbling oil train, I wished that alien ray blaster still worked. It ran out of shots a long time ago, and Buck never figured out a way to put a fresh charge in it.

  The train was slowing down. The big diesels thundered and the generators whined as the big electric motors took on the load of pulling the train up toward the crest of the pass. The metal under me vibrated with it all, near about to shake the fillings from my teeth. I took another look at Buck, standing at the end of the car with his shotgun cradled on his arm.

  Buck got into the military because he heard the rumors the government had captured some alien ships.

  This was right before the Blinkies and the crazy scary lookin’ Stickmen arrived and let the world know we wasn’t alone in the universe. It wasn’t too long after he enlisted that they showed themselves.

  He joined the Marines, where they found out he was a crack shot with nerves of ice. So they sent him to sniper school, then after that they sent him to Afghanistan.

  Which wasn’t anywhere near no s
ecret government alien warehouses or whatnot.

  After his tour in that ass-crack part of the world was over, he managed to get himself stationed at a secret base down in New Mexico. Something big happened there. Something he still wouldn’t talk about. But he came out of it madder than ever. So mad he quit the Marines.

  That’s when he started talking more about aliens in public. And folks started avoiding him more.

  Not that Buck ever had much in the way of friends. He had a few buds from the Marines, but when he got that look in his eye and he started talking aliens…well even his Marine buds stopped coming around.

  Buck didn’t care. By that time he’d started hunting aliens. And, ‘course, I got dragged along. Most of the time it wasn’t nothing. But then, sometimes, it was something. I’d never actually seen one of Buck’s blue, tentacled aliens. There was stuff that happened that I couldn’t explain, and aliens was as good a reason as anything else.

  And it’s how Ken Corbin, the oil baron of North Dakota came to Buck, hat in hand.

  Five

  “There’s a break in the trees at the top,” Buck said, “Solid rock on either side. Perfect place to ambush us.”

  I near jumped out of my skin. I’d been so lost in thinking, I hadn’t heard Buck come back over. He was crouching down, a cinnamon smelling silhouette in the driving snow. The train rumbled and clacked over steel rails. A vibration that went down to my chilled bones.

  “Better get ready,” Buck said.

  “Still don’t know what you think you’re gonna do against aliens with spaceships and ray guns,” I said. My teeth chattered so bad in the cold I could barely talk.

  “I’m gonna keep ‘em from stealing this train,” he said.

  Plain and simple, like it was already a fact and not wishful thinking.

  Buck was tougher than anyone I’d ever known. But I didn’t see how this was gonna end any way but with us dead. He stood up and went back up to the front of the car. How he was not slipping off I couldn’t figure out. The top of the car was slick with crude and snow, and he was walking back and forth like it was an old country dirt road.

  Sometimes I wondered if them aliens didn’t put a little something extra in Buck after all. That maybe he was part alien hisself. There was a time we come upon this thing in the dark and Buck was able to understand its language. Even able to talk it back to it. And Buck healed fast. It seemed unnatural.

  I never said nothing like that to Buck, though. I had a feeling he’d get mad enough to do something he’d regret. There was times when he’d get a look in his eye. Like he was keg of powder and any spark might set him off. Times like that, I stayed quiet, and a couple steps back.

  Reminded me a bit too much of old Pappy.

  I took my eyes off Buck and his flapping zebra stripe duster, and followed the engine’s headlights up to the mouth of the pass. The snow was thinning now. Just tiny, dry, driving flakes that stung more than ever.

  Snow-flecked rock rose up on either side of us. The big headlights picked out little evergreens and chunks of rock and threw huge, twisty shadows against the falling snow. The rails were little more than mounded lines leading through the gap. I imagined the engineer had the sanders going full blast to them steel wheels just to keep moving the train forward.

  Direct ahead of us, the gap between the rocks loomed black. Wasn’t hard to think of it like some giant mouth, waiting to swallow us up. My chest tightened and the hair rose on the back of my neck. We was about as far from any civilized place as we could get. Weren’t no roads close by. No burger joints or fire stations or army bases. Just us and the bones of the mountain against the cold and the snow.

  I squinted at something up ahead. Kind of a blue sparkle.

  All of sudden, Buck was running back my way. “This is it! Git to the box!” he shouted.

  He leapt off the end of the car and disappeared. It made my stomach twist, seeing it. I took one last look at the sparking thing in front of us. It was like blue fireflies dancing in the snow. Then I pulled myself along the hand rails and slipped over the edge of the car.

  Buck was crouched down in the steel box welded to the ass end of the tanker car. I dropped down beside him, my boots clanging on the metal. Buck snapped his cinnamon gum. I couldn’t see much but the barest shadow of him. I got the impression he was grinning, though.

  “Gonna get me some alien tonight,” he said.

  Lordy, the man liked this stuff. Lived for it. Me, I kept wondering why I wasn’t home with my feet up, watching Duck Dynasty reruns with a beer in my hand and a roaring fire in my wood stove.

  Because momma made me promise, that’s why.

  Buck slapped my arm. “You got the thing-a-ma-jigger?” he asked.

  I patted the front of my coat. The flat, oval thing was still there. Not that I had any doubt of it. Buck almost made me sew the dang thing in.

  “Yeah, still here,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, “Now don’t you use it ’til I give you the word. Not even if I look like I’m in trouble. You wait for the word, hear?”

  “I hear,” I said.

  The oval thing was another alien thing he’d gotten somewhere’s along the way. Maybe from that business in New Mexico. He never would tell. I wasn’t quite sure what it did, other than it seemed to mess with other alien techno stuff, like some kind of jammer.

  So we crouched in the steel box that Buck had them weld onto the tanker car and waited for the blue sparklies to fly over us. The boys at the rail yard had looked at Buck like he was crazy when he described what he wanted. And it took a call from the big boss, Ken Corbin, to make it actually happen.

  Buck and me had stood in the office while the foreman took the call. Man’s face got redder than a baboon’s butt. Then it got pale. Almost as pale as the snow flying around us. He held the earpiece a little ways from his head, and I could hear Corbin’s voice telling that foreman just what was going to happen to him and his pension if there wasn’t some immediate cooperation coming Buck’s way.

  So Buck got his box. It come with a lid, too. And now that we was down in it, Buck pulled the lid closed with a thump and clang. He slid the little bolt home and we waited.

  “What’s gonna–”

  Buck shushed me. Maybe he knew what was gonna happen, but I didn’t. The whole thing may of scared me near to crapping my britches, but I still was kinda curious to see how these aliens were gonna snatch the oil train. We’d been after them for a month now with nothing happening. I was starting to think we were on a boondoggle.

  Hell, I’d been thinking that ever since Ken Corbin showed up at Buck’s single wide a couple months back.

  Six

  It wasn’t chance I happened to be there at Buck’s old single wide trailer the day Ken Corbin showed up. Corbin was the one who called me looking for Buck. I don’t know how I got to be Buck’s secretary. But there I was, putting down my turkey and roast beef sandwich, and picking up my phone. I reached for the pen and well-thumbed spiral notebook I kept on the little wood table by my easy chair. A gruff, male voice on the other line had asked how to get a hold of Buck.

  Who’s looking for him? I asked.

  I’m Ken Corbin, the guy said, in a tone that said I should know just what the hell a Ken Corbin was. I scribbled the name on the notebook. I sat up from my easy chair and thumbed the remote to turn down the Duck Dynasty boys on the boob tube. My cabin was just a couple miles down the graveled road from where Buck’s single wide overlooked the big river.

  Buck was lucky I had a head for business. Otherwise he’d be camped out in a tent instead of that run down single wide of his.

  Not that he cared. Man woulda carved a hole in the river bank and lived there if he needed to. Material possessions weren’t much to him.

  Fortunately for him, momma told me to look out for him. I made sure his little adventures got paid for. Folks go asking him to risk his neck, I hold a hand out for the money beforehand. I kept most of it in a trust for Buck, in case something eve
r happened to me. Which was always possible, given the places Buck dragged me to. I took a cut of the proceeds to set myself up with my little cabin and a satellite dish. And a nice truck that kinda belonged to both of us, but was mostly mine since Buck didn’t drive much.

  So anyway, this Corbin guy dropped his name, then waited a few beats, like he was waiting for me to start groveling. Maybe I’ve picked up some attitude from Buck, but I didn’t drop to my knees.

  Right, Ken Corbin, I said after scribbling the name down, So what you want Buck for, Ken?

  Old Ken seemed a little miffed that I wasn’t gasping for air over the fact that he was on the line with a nobody like me.

  I have an urgent matter for Mr. Buck, he said, An urgent and private matter. Are you able to arrange a meeting with Mr. Buck?

  Mr. Buck. That cracked me up. It’d crack Buck up too, if I told him. Might actually see the corners of Buck’s mouth go up slightly. That would be laughing out loud for him.

  Depends, I said, What the hell you wanting him for?

  This Corbin guy, he kind of hurumphed like he was offended I’d ask such a thing.

  I need to speak directly to Mr. Buck on this matter, Corbin said.

  I gave a big sigh. I gave a longing look at my TV. Sure, it was a rerun, but I’d been enjoying it, along with my beer and the turkey and roast beef sandwich I’d made for dinner.

  Listen, Ken Corbin, whoever you might be, I said, Buck don’t just speak to nobody. I’m guessing you have some problems that have to do with little green men, if you get my meaning.

  Corbin started to sputter something, but I cut him off.

  So how about you tell me what your problem is, and I’ll tell you if it’s worth bringing Buck in on it.