Invasion at Bald Eagle

by Kris Ashton

  “How can I be hungry at a time like this?” he muttered to himself.

  You were always thinking of your stomach, Dana said kindly.

  Bert smiled at that and switched on the radio—not the communications one, but the regular one. He came in on Louis Armstrong singing ‘What a Wonderful World’.

  10:59 p.m.

  The first approaching jet sounded like static and Bert reached to fiddle with the radio’s tuning knob before he understood what he was hearing. He checked his own watch, which he could just make out in the starlight. “You guys are early,” he said.

  The jet came like thunder rolling across Kansas plains, the boom of its thrusters rising to a whistling scream as it passed overhead. A second and a third jet followed, and a moment later the rest of the squadron arrived, a sky-shattering swarm of hornets. Bert wanted to plug his ears but came up a limb short.

  The first bomb drops came to Bert only as noise. It was like being in a basement and listening to someone drop sacks of potatoes on the floor above. He studied his mirrors but could see nothing of the incendiary explosions Richard had promised. He figured they were concentrating their early firepower on the nest, no doubt obliterating Brolin’s commune in the process. He couldn’t quite believe it when this thought brought up feelings of sorrow and regret. He tried to assure himself it was the destruction of Bald Eagle Hill’s history he felt for, but it wouldn’t wash. The present, after all, was just newborn history—and Brolin and his friends had put sweat, labor and heart into the old Jenkins property. Whether they had been growing cannabis there or not seemed a petty concern now that it had surely been reduced to cinders.

  The jets circled around, keeping to the outskirts of town, and then came through for a second pass. This time the explosions were much louder and they seemed to be coming towards him, like a giant’s footfalls. He also saw the detonation flashes in his mirrors. Had he not known better, he might have passed them off as sheet lightning. He wondered whether one of the bombs had landed on Bald Eagle’s small graveyard, wiping out its residents—including Dana—in the time it took for a man to clear his throat. He also wondered which bomb had ended the life of the thing that his daughter had become…or that had become his daughter.

  Time lost its meaning as the onslaught went on. Bert could not detach his eyes from the scene as much as he might have wanted to. In fact, what he wanted was to turn the car around to get a broader look, only declining to do so because he would have to drop his detonator. A flaming light began to climb up the sky, dying the smoke and clouds orange. It put Bert in mind of his early married years, sitting at the kitchen table with Dana during yet another blackout, the battery-operated radio speaking softly and candlelight staining the wall a flecked citrus color.

  Memories. Soon Bald Eagle County would consist of nothing else.

  12:31 a.m.

  When Richard emerged from his trailer, so much of Bald Eagle was aflame that it looked like late afternoon, albeit with a strange, dark sky and guttering shadows. After the air strike, the jets had flown back to whatever air force base served as their home—probably a secret facility, Bert reasoned. Guns popped and men shouted from time to time, although screams—human or alien—were few and far between now. The American military had vanquished its enemies, just as the movies promised. Richard absorbed the same sights for a second or two but did not appear to feel any joy or satisfaction. He looked, in fact, like a businessman, one whose work is never done.

  He walked over to Bert’s cruiser and put his hands on his hips. Bert had seen this posture a time or two before, although not for many years. Richard had often assumed such a pose when a JD decided to give him some lip. Bert surprised himself by smiling—he had thought it would be months before he smiled again. He held up the detonator so Richard could see it, then put it aside.

  “If you want to kill me now, Richard, you just go right ahead.”

  Richard’s face twisted up in a sneer of disgust…and then he did draw his weapon, his hand flicking up and out as fast as a whip-crack. Bert felt an icy cocktail of disappointment and terror sluice into his veins. The man he called friend for thirty years meant to take his revenge and do it in cold blood, without so much as a word of discussion or farewell. Bert cowered back in his seat—he couldn’t help it—but he refused to break eye-lock. He would stare down the gunman as he took his life.

  But the gunman wheeled around ninety degrees and began capping off round after round in the direction of (the former) Bald Eagle. Stunned, Bert blinked two or three times and then looked up at his rearview mirror. A creature stood in the center of Main Street, one side of its body melted to a silver slag and its hide burnished black. It dragged its gimp leg along behind it, its remaining useable arm reaching out and its pointed fingers snapping like teeth in Richard’s direction. Bert saw the sparks of one, two, three bullets ricocheting off its chest and neck, but then a fourth pierced the black glass egg of its last good eye and it fell back, blood squeezing out of the wound like pus from a boil.

  Bert continued to watch the creature’s trembling death throes until he realized Richard’s Baretta was trained on him. He gave the gun a sidelong glance, now an old hand at this friends-and-death-threats game, and faced forward. If the bullet came, it came. It would end the pain—in all its myriad forms.

  But the gun fell away and Richard opened his jacket, shoving the Baretta back in its holster. His hands returned to their stern headmaster position on his hips. After a while that softened too and his hands fell to his sides.

  Bert looked up now, a question hot on his tongue. “Would you have done it, Richard? If the President hadn’t taken the decision out of your hands, would you have roasted the lot of us like hambones in an incinerator?”

  Richard said nothing, only looked back at him. That complex expression said many things, but paramount among them was that Bert should not ask questions to which he did not want answers.

  “Huh,” Bert said.

  Other things occupied their eyes for about twenty or thirty seconds, although their minds did not once disentangle.

  Finally Richard switched his eyes back down to the car window, to Bert’s carefully expressionless face. “So…what now?”

  “Now we do what friends do. We do each other a favor.”

  Richard did not seem to know what to say to this, so Bert went on. “None of your men saw that school bus leave Bald Eagle. So you have a stern talk with the soldiers and impress upon them how important it is that they tell no one. And if you agree not to bring any action against me or Barkley or Brolin for our little jailbreak tonight, I guarantee you no one will ever hear about it. Not the media, not your superiors, no one.”

  Richard shook his head. “One of those kids could be infected, Bert. You don’t know for sure.”

  “Nothing in life is for sure, Richard. If you’d spoken to me in 1964 and asked me what my life would be like in five years, I’d have been sure I’d still have a wife and a daughter and a home and a town to look after. But that’s not how it works. Life’s a goddamned poker game and you can’t be sure what hand you’re gonna get, not even if you cheat. So you’re just going to have to sit back and hope a couple of aces come your way.”

  Richard lit a cigarette. He took a single puff and then ground the ‘butt’ under his shoe. He took two backward steps and clasped his hands behind him. “Goodbye, Bert,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Richard.”

  Bert started his car and left Bald Eagle County forever.

  Monday, August 10, 1969

  The night sky lightened, moving from dense black to charcoal and then to grey. A silver vein edged the horizon, celestial alchemy turning it gold a few minutes later. As Derek drove the school bus over a rise, a signpost put Denver ten miles distant. Most of the children were asleep, curled up on the seats like kittens or their heads lolling back on any available rest. A few gazed out the windows, watching the nothing-much highway scenery unfold. Barkley sat on the front-most seat, his legs stretched out
and his fingers interlaced over his belly. His eyes were shut but his face did not look at peace.

  As for Derek, he had been driving for nearly four hours, not daring to remain on the i70 any longer than he had to and anticipating a roadblock around every bend and over every crest. None had materialized, but the endless anxiety had left him both wired and weary, as if he had drunk one cup of coffee too many. Apparently Grayson’s insane scheme had worked, though—and as they coasted past the Welcome To Denver! sign, he felt a tired admiration for the cop. He even found himself hoping Grayson had gotten out unscathed.

  “Hey Barkley, wake up. We’re there.”

  When Barkley opened his eyes and sat up, his face smoothed out. He seemed happier to be awake than asleep. “Denver? What time is it?” He looked at his watch to answer his own question.

  “Can you remember what exit Grayson said we were supposed to take off the i70?”

  “Pecos Street—a few miles past the North Valley Highway turnoff. Then left at West 39th Avenue. ‘Keep your eyes open and you can’t miss it,’” he concluded, imitating Grayson’s matter-of-fact tone.

  Derek laughed, more out of sleep deprivation than Barkley’s impersonation skills. Now that they had arrived, he wanted to make like one of the kids and just curl up on a padded bus seat. The morning sun, peeking over the Denver city skyline, stung his eyes. He thought about asking Barkley to drive the remainder of the way, but somehow that struck him as a cop-out.

  While his eyes were only half open, Derek had no trouble locating the building. It was the lone Victorian architecture on West 39th, a tall structure with a short flight of stairs leading up from the sidewalk and a chiseled column either side of the entranceway. Its shape and regal stonework put Derek in mind of a miniature state library. He guided the bus to the side of the road, put it in park and switched off the engine to a chorus of kids asking, “Is this it?” and “Are we there?”

  “Do you want me to go in?” Barkley said. “You’ve been driving all night and—”

  “No, man, if I stay here this rabble is going to give me a headache. You look after them and I’ll come get you if it all goes to plan.”

  Derek opened the bus doors and clanked down the steps onto the pavement. He stretched for the heavens, bones clicking and muscles expanding, and then took the stairs one at time. It almost felt good not to be in a hurry, not to be under threat from an enemy, human or alien. Half a smile crept onto his face before Sharna’s image floated up before his eyes, like a corpse floating to the surface of a lake. A hot flare of grief—repressed until now—ignited in his chest. The half-smile wilted into a frown and then the rest of his face collapsed, as slack as a stroke victim. Unable to do anything else, he fell onto a nearby bench and let the sorrow engulf him, let the tears course out and dampen his hairy cheeks. A mean hand squeezed at his heart, its fingers as hard as forged steel. Every time he thought he had his sobbing under control, this hand would clench again, wringing out more tears—for the citizens of Bald Eagle, for his friends, but most of all for Sharna.

  Only when a real hand pressed against his bare neck did the internal hand loosen its grip around his heart. The external hand felt friendly, soft and warm. A comforting touch. He feared to look up for spoiling the effect, but did so nonetheless.

  Through tear prisms he saw a nun in full habit. Her face might have been cherubic in her younger years, but age had shriveled it so she now looked like a kind, smiling pomegranate. She was also small, not much taller than most of the children on the bus outside.

  “A problem shared is a problem halved,” she said. Derek’s grandmother had often imparted this same wisdom during his childhood.

  “I’m sorry,” Derek said. He wiped away more tears and his throat hitched twice.

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” the nun said. She sat beside him and switched her comforting hand from his neck to his arm. “Tell me what troubles you.”

  Derek sniffed and tried to regain his composure. “I didn’t come here to unburden myself. It’s not really about me. Well, it sort of is. I mean…this is an orphanage, right? You take in orphans?”

  The nun smiled. “We usually only take in children.”

  “No, not me—there’s…oh, you were joking.” Derek huffed a laugh. “No, there was an incident in a small town east of here. Bald Eagle. Do you know it?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s just a flyspeck on the map. But something happened there.” Derek glanced down at his half-naked body, with its scratches and its coating of grime. “I’d rather not say what, but some children were orphaned.”

  The nun drew her hand back and her face darkened—just a shade, but noticeable. “You weren’t responsible for—”

  “No, no! Oh, God no. Oh, shit, sorry! Oh, man…maybe I should just shut my mouth before I dig myself any deeper.”

  The nun laughed. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry. I had to ask, though, you understand?”

  Derek nodded.

  “So where are these orphaned children?”

  “They’re waiting right outside. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The nun followed him out onto the street, where a clean sun gave everything a transparent yellow wash. Curious children’s faces peered through the school bus’s windows, a row of living portraits. Most, Derek realized, had probably never seen a nun before. Barkley walked to the bus’s bottom step and smiled, as if receiving a visitor to his home. Derek raised his hand to the bus and then looked at the nun.

  She followed the sweep of his arm and then looked back at him. “Which ones are orphans?”

  “All of them,” Derek said.

  “Oh…oh, my. We’re not equipped to handle such a large number of children. You need to visit the Department of Child Welfare. They have—”

  “That’s a government organization, right?”

  “That’s right. But I don’t see—”

  “It was the government that made these children orphans,” Derek said. He glanced at Barkley for verification. Barkley obliged with a nod. “If we take these children to the Department of Child Welfare, they won’t be orphans anymore. They’ll be corpses, just like their parents. Us too, maybe.”

  The nun considered this. “But why would the government kill their parents?”

  “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Barkley said. “But if you want proof, try to drive into Bald Eagle County. I think it’s going to be cordoned off for a long time to come.”

  “I don’t drive, I’m afraid.”

  “Then try making a phone call,” Derek said. “Ring any number in Bald Eagle. You won’t get through to any of them, because by now all the telephone poles will have been bombed flat.”

  “Bombed?” the nun said, putting a hand to her chest.

  “The less you know, the better,” Barkley said. “Believe me.”

  The nun scanned the row of portraits again, the girl with the blonde pigtails and dark-smudged eyes, the boy with carrot-red hair and a scratch across his forehead, one taking a fingerful of something from a tin and poking it into his mouth, another who had fallen asleep with his cheek pressed against the window glass. Derek knew their faces spoke a truth his and Barkley’s words never could.

  “Come back inside with me,” the nun said. “I’ll make some phone calls and see what I can do.”

  The Denver Post, August 11, 1969

  EXPLOSION AT NUCLEAR REACTOR

  Dozens feared dead, town evacuated after bomb blast.

  Terror descended on the Colorado community of Bald Eagle County early yesterday morning when a bomb was detonated in the town’s nuclear reactor.

  More than 30 people are believed dead and hundreds more were injured in the explosion, which originated inside the facility.

  Concerns over radioactive contamination saw all Bald Eagle residents compulsorily evacuated in a huge operation involving a convoy of military transport trucks.

  A spokesman for the FBI, which is inve
stigating the incident, said it is too soon to determine an exact cause, but foul play is suspected.

  “Given the nature of the explosion, it seems unlikely that it is in any way related to human error or faulty equipment in the reactor,” the spokesman said.

  The president of NuTech, the parent company responsible for operations at Bald Eagle’s nuclear reactor, issued a statement that said, “We are assisting the police with their inquiries at this time and will comment further when details of the incident become clearer.”

  The community, which lies approximately 150 miles east of Denver, has been quarantined while experts investigate any potential radiation risk, however Bald Eagle’s remoteness means surrounding towns will not be affected and authorities have seen no cause to close down the i70 highway, which runs along the southern edge of the county.

  While the manager of operations at the Bald Eagle reactor could not be reached for comment, local resident and survivor, Redmond Jacobs, believes the explosion could be an act of terrorism.

  “Some hippies had been casing the place for weeks,” Jacobs said. “You know, protesting. Things got pretty heated and it wouldn’t surprise me if they did decide to blow the place up.”

  Story continued on page 4

  Wednesday, August 12, 1969

  A waitress came across to Bert’s booth and asked if she could refill his coffee. Bert thanked her and turned his attention out the window, where he could see the precinct across the road. Once—what now seemed like two lifetimes ago—he and another young officer named Richard Warland had haunted this diner like two restless ghosts, pulling in for coffee or whatever meal happened to be closest. When he had last sat in this seat its upholstery had been a subdued green; now it was a shouting red. Back then a bottomless cup of coffee had cost a dime (or nothing at all if you were a cop) and now you had to hand over a quarter. Things changed, Bert mused as he sipped his fresh coffee, and you either took them in your stride or you tripped over them. He had done his best to do the former in recent days, but he had barked his shins a few times and his legs were tired. He thought he might trade every dollar he had in the bank for a dash of predictability or an official status quo.