Or maybe just because it was Wilson, there was no real reason for the three day wait, he just picked it off the top of his head.
I woke up early to a mixed feeling of excitement and apprehension. I wanted to find out what had happened to Wilson and what he had discovered since that last night, but so much crazy shit had gone down since that night that I was worried about what could possibly be the next step in this nightmare.
Regardless of what might happen, I had to take the chance and the next step to put my mind at ease.
The last few days had gone a long way towards restoring my self-confidence. I now firmly believed that everything I remembered about Roswell was the truth. That what had happened in Denver and back in Pittsburgh, was all part of some conspiracy to make me believe everything about Roswell existed only in my imagination.
I had mostly felt this way since day one, but now the self-doubts I had been experiencing were totally gone.
By meeting with Wilson today I hoped to discover something about the how and why this was happening, but I knew I would probably never learn or understand the entire story.
I told my mother that I was going to fishing for a few days.
I packed my fishing pole, tackle box, and some camping supplies. My mother packed me a big lunch so I wouldn’t get hungry.
I told my mother that I was going to Pymatuning Reservoir, a place that I had gone to fish many times in the past. The reservoir was a hundred miles away from Ohiopyle State Park, which I hoped would be far enough away that if my mother told anyone where I had gone, that no one would be able to find me.
Pymatuning was also far enough away that if I didn’t come home for a few days that no one would worry and send the police to find me. I expected that I would be spending the night exchanging stories with Wilson at Ohiopyle and depending on what he had to say, I would have a few days to spend with Wilson and relive old times.
I loaded everything into the back of my old Honda which I kept in the garage out in back of the house. I didn’t use the car much. Getting around in Pittsburgh, it was much easier to just take the bus. When I wanted to go anywhere else, I always used my car.
I also didn’t want a record of me buying a bus ticket to Ohiopyle. I wasn’t sure if it was even possible to buy a bus ticket to Ohiopyle, but even if it was, I didn’t want anyone to know that I had been there. The last I heard, Wilson had been reported as AWOL and I knew the military was actively looking for him. I didn’t want to lead anyone to Wilson and be responsible for him getting arrested. Maybe the fact that I was sent home instead of being made to disappear, was because someone felt that I would eventually lead them to Wilson. Once Wilson was caught, it was also possible that my usefulness would be over. I would then be considered a liability that needed to be dealt with. There were so many things that I had to consider before making a simple drive to Ohiopyle. I longed for the simple life like when I was a kid, but I knew in more than one way, those days were long gone.
I got in the car and started the engine. I looked down at the gas gauge to see that I still half a tank of gas, more than enough for the trip.
I backed out of the garage and hit the button to close the garage door. As I pulled out on the street, I waved to my mother who was standing on the front porch waving goodbye. It reminded me of the day I left for the Army, an eerie sense of Deja Vu crossed my mind making we wonder what was going to go wrong this time.
I drove down to Route 51, then turned south towards Uniontown. It was about an hour’s drive before I reached Uniontown. I kept looking in the rearview mirror, watching the cars behind me to be sure I wasn’t being followed. I also kept an eye out for helicopters. I only spotted one helicopter, but it was KDKA Channel 2’s traffic helicopter which flew overhead before I left the southside of town. The rest of the way clear.
In Uniontown I took Route 40 up over the Summit, then followed deserted back country roads the rest of the way to Ohiopyle.
When I got within a mile of the park, I decided to park the car behind a clump of trees and walk the rest of the way to the campground. I was certain that I hadn’t been followed, but I wanted to know what I was walking into before I made it to the campground. It could be a trap, but I felt that was very unlikely, but I felt not being cautious enough was probably what got me into this whole mess to begin with.
I walked slowly through the park, which was mostly deserted at this time of the day and week. I passed the launch and the big falls in the middle of the park, then took the path that took me up towards the campground.
There were only two tents set up in the campground, but the owners must have been out rafting because I didn’t see anyone around. I looked around until I spotted a place on the hillside overlooking the campground that I thought would be a good out of the way place to sit and wait.
After sitting down, I looked at my watch to see that it was now 11:00 AM. I made myself comfortable, figuring I could be sitting here all day, since Wilson didn’t mention what time we were to meet. Even if Wilson had given a time, I knew he was always late. I was probably going to be for a long wait.
I had barely made myself comfortable when a voice said, “What took you so long?”
I turned to see Wilson standing next to a tree behind me.
“You’re lucky I made it at all,” I smiled. “If it wasn’t for my mother thinking your chain letter was a good deal and her wanting to go out and buy three Pirate tickets, I would have missed your message completely. Then the way you hid the letters for Ohiopyle, if it wasn’t for the picture of us whitewater rafting above my desk at home, I’d be waiting for you under the Westend Bridge.”
“I didn’t want to make it too easy if the letter fell into the wrong hands,” Wilson replied. “I wasn’t sure if you were staying at home or not, so I just took a chance. To be honest, I didn’t expect to hear from you. I wasn’t sure if any of us would ever see each other again.”
I ran over and gave Wilson a hug, neither of us had ever been huggers, but it just felt like the thing to do at the time. In a way, I felt like the greeting was more of a farewell statement than a greeting, but I didn’t know why.
Then I looked him in the eyes.
“Wilson, before you say another word, tell me, when was the last time you saw me?” I asked, then added, “and, where were we?”
Wilson looked at me strangely, “We were in the bunker at Roswell, and it was seven months ago. Why?”
“Now tell me what happened to you in Roswell?” I asked. “After that heat pocket settled over the bunker and we all passed out, when you woke up, where were you?”
“Well, first of all, I didn’t pass out in the bunker,” Wilson replied. “When I saw you guys starting to collapse to the floor, I held my breath and made a mad dash for the door, hoping to get outside before I passed out too. I managed to run out the door, and holding on to the bunker, I staggered around to the front of the bunker before I collapsed and fell to the ground.
The cloud around the bunker was starting to dissipate and I was slowly able to get some fresh air in my lungs and start to recover my senses. For a while I thought I was going to pass out too, but I guess I got out just in time.”
“What the hell happened after that?” I asked. “I was told that you had gone AWOL, that Al and Bud had been killed in Afghanistan, Joe was at a base in Georgia and I had never been in Roswell. I was told that I had been in Denver and was injured in an explosion there, that I had amnesia and couldn’t remember anything, and that I was hallucinating.”
“So that is how they are trying to cover up what they did,” Wilson replied. “It is starting to make sense to me now.”
“What is making sense?” I asked. “What the hell happened to us at the bunker that night?”
“I was lying at the base of the wall in front of the bunker, trying to breath and clear my head, when I started to hear voices,” Wilson said. “I tried to get to my feet, and I was going to call out for help. I managed to hold on to the side of the bunker and was
leaning against the front corner. I pushed my head around the corner slightly, it was then that I saw three guys wearing gas masks walking towards the bunker. Before I could call out, I heard them talking. They were shouting at each other so they could hear each other through the gas masks. I heard one man ask, how long do we have to wait before we go in to get them? A voice answered him, it was Sergeant Mitchell’s voice. He said give it two more minutes and they, meaning us, will be out cold for hours and will never know what hit them.”
“Mitchell?” I asked. “It figures he would be involved in this somehow. Then what happened?”
“Yeah, that bastard Mitchell,” Wilson replied. “When I heard his voice, I knew something was up. I figured that they knew I had been in the hangar and if he found me, I had a feeling that I would end up dead. So, I took off my armband and tossed it up into the trench, then I circled around to the far side of the bunker and waited, hoping they wouldn’t see me.”
“So, you think that what happened at the bunker wasn’t an accident, this was intentional?” I asked. “What about that damn desert heat pocket we saw?”
“You bet your ass this was intentional,” Wilson growled. “First of all, there are no such things as a desert heat pockets, but I’ll tell you about that later. Second, they discovered that we had been snooping around in the Command Center, probably from reviewing the surveillance camera footage, and I believe what happened after they came to get us, was all part of their plan to cover up everything in case we had talked to anyone and told them what we had seen.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” I said. “But what happened after you crawled to the far end of the bunker?”
“I watched them from the far side of the bunker until I heard Mitchell order the men to go in and bring everyone out of the bunker. I watched all three of them as they opened the door and went inside. When they did that, I ran back towards the base until I found a pile of rocks to hide behind. From there I watched to see what they were going to do.
They carried you, Joe, Al and Bud outside and loaded you into the back of the truck they had. I saw them start to frantically search around the bunker with their flashlights. I guess it was then they realized that I wasn’t there. I could hear Mitchell swearing when the spotted my armband in the trench. They were only there for a few minutes after that before they went back to their truck and took off and went back to the base.”
“You’re lucky that they didn’t send a chopper out with a search light to find you,” I said. “There isn’t much cover out in that area.”
“They did that next,” Wilson replied. “I anticipated that would be the next thing they would do. A few minutes after the truck left the bunker, I heard a helicopter coming my way from the base. The helicopter didn’t have any running lights on, but I could hear it getting closer.
I knew that I couldn’t make a run for it, there wasn’t any cover or anywhere I could hide from the spotlight, so I ran back into the bunker. I figured they wouldn’t bother to look there again. The spotlight came on a few seconds later and the helicopter searched the desert and that end of the base for about an hour before they gave up and left.”
“Good thinking, then where did you go?” I asked. “How did you get away from the base?”
“I didn’t,” Wilson replied. “I figured there was no way I could escape out there in the desert, that someone would find me before I would get very far, so I just decided to hide and play it cool for a while until I figured out what had just happened and then wait for my chance to get away.”
“Where did you hide?” I asked. “Surely you didn’t try to stay in the bunker?”
“No, I found a better place,” Wilson smiled. “I just ask myself, where would be the last place they would go looking for me, and I hid there.”
“And where was that?” I asked.
“I went back and hid in the hangar,” Wilson replied.
“You’re crazy Wilson,” I said.
“Not really, if you think about it, it made sense,” Wilson replied. “Anywhere else on the base and I would have looked out of place.”
“But the cameras,” I said.
“I had better disguises this time, and I mostly just stayed out of sight,” Wilson replied. “I knew what to look for this time. Besides, they thought they had caught the two guys that had been sneaking into the Command Center, so no one was expecting me to sneak back inside.”
“How long did you hide out there?” I asked.
“I was there for about a month,” Wilson replied. “I was only going to stay for a day or two, then try to find a way off the base some night, but there were two things that made me stay as long as I did.”
Wilson paused and his lips started quivering.
I looked at Wilson, wanting to urge him to go on, but when I saw the tears well up in his eyes, I just waited until he was ready to go on.
“I stayed trying to find a way to save Al and Bud,” Wilson struggled to speak. “That night after they took all of you from the bunker, I heard two helicopters leave the base around 0300 hours. I had just made it up to the barracks by that time. At first, I thought they were sending two more helicopters out to look for me, but then I saw them just fly away. I later determined that you and Joe must have been on those two helicopters.
Anyhow, the next day as I was looking around down on the third level, I saw two men in white coats wheel a couple of gurneys in from the elevator. Al and Bud were strapped to those gurneys and they had tubes and wires connected to them. After the men left, I ran over to see if I could talk to them.”
“What about the cameras?” I asked. “How were you able to even get close to them?”
“I had taken a lab coat and a surgeon’s mask and cap from the lab on level two when I entered the hangar to make me blend in better,” Wilson replied. “My God, Mike, Al and Bud looked like hell, their heads had been shaved and there were stitches all over the top of their heads. I think someone operated on their brains. I watched them for days, waiting to see if they would regain consciousness. After three days they started to look like the poor bastards in the back of that level. After that, I knew there was no way they would ever be human again.”
“Why would they do something like that?” I finally asked after a minute of anguish running through my body.
“The second reason I stayed longer than I had planned, was to snoop around for some answers before I left,” Wilson replied. “The people at the base thought that Al and Bud were the two men on the security film that had snuck into the hangar. I think that’s why they decided to shut them up permanently and use them as part of their experimental research. I hadn’t been able to figure out how they were going to cover that up until now.
When you told me that you heard that they had been killed in Afghanistan, it suddenly seemed to make everything I’ve seen here make sense. I bet after they put out the story that they had been killed on assignment in Afghanistan, they sent their families empty sealed coffins with some unidentifiable remains inside. Mike, they will do anything, kill anyone, to keep what they have here a secret.”
“I wonder why they let Joe and I live?” I asked.
“I can’t answer that,” Wilson replied. “I had no idea what had happened to you or Joe until the day I decided to get off the base. I didn’t dare mess with any of the computers while I was there, because the computer logs would give away what I was doing. But on the day I decided to leave, I entered yours and Joe’s names into the computer, hoping to find out what had happened to you. It was then I saw your status was listed as discharged. Joe was labeled missing. What did happen to you after you were flown off the base?”
“The start of seven months of hell,” I replied. “When I woke up, I found myself strapped down to a hospital bed, I couldn’t move and with all the tubes down my throat I couldn’t talk. Every time I moved around too much I was given a shot that knocked me out.”
“What did you see?” Wilson asked.
“I couldn’t see or hea
r a damned thing,” I replied. “They had some kind of bandage wrapped around my head and I couldn’t see anything. I heard a lot of strange sounds through the bandages, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Finally one day they removed the tubes from my throat and I asked where the hell was I.”
“Where were you?” Wilson asked.
“They said that I was in the hospital, that I had been unconscious for over a month, that I had been injured by some large explosion, then started asking if I knew who I was.”
“Where you able to see anything yet?” Wilson asked.
“No, they didn’t take the bandages off for another day, then all I saw was the doctor and nurse that were taking care of me,” I replied. “The next day they got me a walker and the nurse helped me go for a walk. When we walked down the hallway and I looked out and saw that it was snowing, I said I didn’t know it snowed in the New Mexico desert. It was then the nurse told me that I was in Denver. When I questioned her, she told me that I had been transferred there six months ago and had been injured when a cart of missiles I was transporting exploded. It was then that I began to realize that something wasn’t right. I decided to pretend that I couldn’t remember anything so I wouldn’t say the wrong things until I could figure out what was going on.”
“That was a good move, maybe why you are still alive,” Wilson said.
“When I got back to my bed, I asked the nurse if she would find out what room you guys were in so I could go for a visit,” I continued. “But she came back later and said that there wasn’t any record of you guys being in the hospital. I asked her if she would find out where you guys were stationed and that is when she came back later and told me that you had gone AWOL, Al and Bud had been killed in an ambush in Afghanistan and Joe was stationed somewhere in Georgia.”
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