I also felt sad to realize that a part of my life was gone forever. That whatever had happened, that four men I had called my friends, close friends that had been with me for most of my life, were now gone. I suddenly felt alone, and in many ways afraid of what the future held.
But Wilson had always been crazy with his government conspiracy theories and UFOs. I planned on going home and trying to pick up my life where I had left off before joining the Army. I was going to leave handling of the unknown to Wilson and his Professor Johnson. I didn’t know what else to do. I could only hope that it had all been a bad nightmare.
Chapter 18
Six months later in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
I had arrived home that afternoon after my visit with Wilson. Every day since, I would power up the phone that I had given Wilson the number to call if he ever wanted or needed to call me. I charged the phone each week so it would be ready in the event I ever received a call, but so far, I haven’t heard from Wilson or anything about him.
I visited Joe’s mother every Friday to see if she had heard anything from Joe, but the visits were becoming depressing. Joe’s mother would start to cry whenever she would see me coming up her walkway, and she would continue to cry until I left. She had received only one letter from the Army. The letter stated that Joe was missing in action and that they would inform her if and when they had anymore information, but that had been months ago.
She was worried that something terrible had happened to Joe. I was certain, but I didn’t want to tell her that, so I continued to visit and try to keep her spirits up, despite the fact that the visits were painful and kept reminding me about things I was trying to forget and move on with my life.
I recently had my six-month visit with Doctor Lester. He was happy to hear that I had taken a job at Speedy Mart and that I had recently bought a new car. A new Honda hybrid that got fifty-four miles per gallon.
I was still having pains in my head, at least once a week now, but of course I didn’t tell him about that. I did my best to make him feel that I had returned to living a normal life and had never thought about my time in the Army any longer. He of course was happy with my life as I presented it to him, and he scheduled another visit in six months, a final check up he said, and then sent me on my way.
I didn’t need the money, but I took the job down at Speedy Mart as something to occupy my time.
It mostly kept my mind from thinking about the last year, except when I had to restock the Tracfone display. That made me think about Wilson and our meeting. I wondered if he ever made it to New Hampshire.
Today as I was reading the paper to kill time, as I often did when there weren’t any customers to wait on, I saw something on the back page of the news section in USA Today that told me that Wilson did indeed make it to New Hampshire.
The headline read, Dartmouth Professor struck by a car and killed. The Professor, in possession of new information from Wilson had probably began to talk about things that someone didn’t want talked about in public. I read the article, but it didn’t say anything about anyone else being killed or injured. It made me wonder where Wilson was now. Did he move on after his visit with Professor Johnson, to find another UFO expert to pass along his findings, or had he been discovered and quietly eliminated. Just in case, I kept the cell phone charged and with me every day and continued to wait and hope.
Other than my trips down memory lane every Friday and every time I walked past the Tracfone display, life had settled into an uneventful routine. I often thought about my friends, about our times in high school and felt sad about how things turned out. I also thought about what I could have done to have made things turn out differently, but I was never able to think of anything that would have changed the outcome. I also wished that there was something I could do about what had happened, but I was just one person. Anyone that I knew that had strayed and dared to talk about what had happened were dead, or at best, missing. I was considered certified unstable, but I knew if I ever opened my mouth, another article might appear on the back page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about a man from Overbrook being hit and killed by a car while attempting to cross the street. The best I could hope for was to try and live a quiet life and hope that what I had seen in Roswell continued to remain in Roswell.
As time moved on, I thought less and less about the past. I started dating again, but for some reason, I had never moved out of my parent’s house. I guess I enjoyed the comforting feeling I always had when I was there.
It was another six months before reality hit me square on the jaw, reminding me that I could do anything I wanted to forget about the past, but that didn’t mean that by doing so I could change the future.
One night after getting home from work, I was sitting on the couch watching the eleven o’clock news.
The news played a clip from Mexico that showed hundreds of dead bodies spread across the desert in Mexico, twenty miles from the U.S. border. The reporter explained that it was believed that poisonous gas had made its way to the surface of the desert and had killed three hundred refugees that were trying to make their way to the United States. He also explained that he was receiving other reports about refugees succumbing to some sort of poison gas along other locations, all approximately twenty miles from the U.S. border. An investigation was being undertaken to find the source of the poison and confirm the reports.
To me, the situation had Roswell and desert heat pockets written all over it.
Two days later, a report from Syria told of a Syrian town located in the desert south east of Damascus. The facts were still coming in, but it appeared that the people in the town of seven hundred people all turned on each other. Twenty-four hours after the first report, all the people in the town were dead. Someone said that it looked like they had been all been ravaged by wild animals. Most of the bodies appeared to have been half eaten and left lying in the streets. Various terrorist groups had claimed responsibility, but I knew better. Roswell was apparently again testing their new toys and I was sure they had been thrilled with the results.
Each day, I found more and more reports that reminded me of what I had seen in Roswell.
The past was not going away.
Chapter 19
Two years later in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
It had now been three years since my experience in Roswell, New Mexico.
Each day, since the first reports of unusual events happening around the world that I became aware of two years ago, I have scanned the newspapers and late night world news reports on the TV for other signs of events that I thought could be related to what I had learned in Roswell and from Wilson.
What have I seen over the last couple of years?
I’ve seen evidence of many so-called unexplained events around the world, but I have tried to remain neutral in my opinion as to what the cause of these events were. I often felt that Wilson saw evidence of alien involvement behind every questionable event he saw. To Wilson, Roswell was the Holy Grail of alien information, proving every suspicion and conspiracy about UFOs and alien visitation that had ever been reported.
I didn’t want to be blinded to other possibilities, like Wilson had been. To me, Roswell was more about government secret ops, secret weapons development and testing. It was about government corruption and abuse. That is what I saw in Roswell, but I also saw many things that I just couldn’t explain or attribute to government actions. Wilson had been very convincing with some of his alien theories. After everything we had seen, I felt there had to be other earthly explanations, but I also tried to keep an open mind about the possibilities. But I also found myself, over the last year, visiting UFO and alien abduction websites. I made sure to purchase and use a VPN (virtual private network) so no one could see what I was looking at and decide that it was time for me to have an accident.
I found much of the information to be confusing and farfetched, but occasionally there was something useful.
One day I found two people talking on a
blog.
I swear that it was Wilson talking as I read the blog. The scary thing was that this person was talking about something I had only ever heard about one time before, and that one time was the day I had met with Wilson at Ohiopyle. Wilson was telling me at that time about the brain implants that Roswell was investigating. He had said that they were unable to determine what the alien reason was, what their end game was, but Roswell had determined by carbon dating when the implants would begin to activate. He said the implants would begin to activate in three years.
I had forgotten all about that information, until now, but here was someone on this blog talking about it. Not only was he talking about it, but he was warning anyone that read his blog that an alien attack was imminent. His exact warning was, “Aliens to destroy the Earth on April 21st.”
To me it sounded like some religious fanatic on the streets of New York walking around with a sign that said to repent, the end of the world was near.
I would have just laughed and moved on, except a few things about the warning started to bother me.
First, Wilson and I had been in Roswell, three years ago on April 21st. According to Wilson, the first of three groups of implants were to activate in three years. I had never heard that fact or theory anywhere else.
The final fact that had me a little unnerved was that today was April 18th.
Wilson had been right about the desert heat pockets, or at least the news reports about what had happened in northern Mexico seemed to indicate that he had been correct. The mysterious gas had been so frightening in northern Mexico that illegal immigration along our southern had almost completely stopped.
Wilson’s claim about the scientists at Roswell being able to duplicate the blue liquid that turned people into something resembling zombies also appeared to have some validity. Syria and Iran had over the last two years had a number of 24-hour crises, Roswell’s research had only been able to duplicate the effects of the blue liquid for a duration of twenty-four hours. The crises had been so terrifying that terrorist activity and Iran’s sabre rattling in the Middle East had stopped. The Middle East had never been so peaceful. Terrified countries turned their attention inward, trying to fight the devil was too overwhelming to leave them time to fight with their neighbors.
I tried to post a response on the blog to the warning, using our “Code Five” to ask the writer if he was Wilson, but I couldn’t post the response without registering with the website and giving my name and an email address. I considered that to be too dangerous and was going to just forget about it. Then I remembered that I could create a fake email address on G-mail and make up a phony username. So I created the email address, [email protected] and my fake name was Roselyn Well. If the writer of the blog was Wilson, I’m sure he would get a kick out of the email address.
I posted my response and hit send.
I waited for a few minutes, but the owner of the blog was obviously not online or wasn’t able to unencrypt my message. I decided to check back later.
The next few days I felt nervous. On April 21st, before I went to work, I told my mother that she should stay inside because I heard there was a stray dog with rabies that had been reported running loose in our neighborhood. I told her that I didn’t want her to go outside until the dog had been captured. I knew my mother was afraid of dogs and felt confident she wouldn’t go outside.
Of course, there wasn’t any rabid animal in our neighborhood, but I told her that story to keep her inside, just in case there was anything to the warning about April 21st.
Since her memory had been getting progressively worse, I wrote her a note to remind her not to leave the house and left it on the table when I left for work.
I started my Honda and left for work. Brownsville Road was only a few blocks away and I usually walked to work, but today I wanted to have my car with me in the event that I needed to get home quickly.
When I reached work, I signed into the computer, verified the money in the cash register and began my shift.
Every time the date, April 21st, showed on the computer or on a customer’s receipt, I could feel the butterflies in my stomach get active. Between customers, I flipped through all the papers on the news stand rack, focusing on the back pages to look for any clues that anything had started elsewhere in the country to forewarn the possibility of things to come.
I didn’t find anything of any interest in the papers, but for the rest of the day I couldn’t shake the nervous feeling of dread that seemed to hang over me.
My shift ended without anything unusual happening.
When I arrived home, I found my mother sitting on the end of the couch with the drapes pulled to one side, watching for rabid dogs. The look of concern on her face made me feel guilty that I had scared her.
I went to my room and signed on to my computer and logged on to the alien discussion blog. There hadn’t been any additional posts to the blog since I had first read the blog three days ago. I also checked my email to see if I had received a response from my email to the owner of the blog. Again, there wasn’t anything.
How many times have wackos blocked the streets, screaming that the end of the world was near? How many times have these wackos yelled out the date the world was going to end? How many times had the world ended?
None!
“I guess another doomsday prediction had come and gone,” I said, feeling myself begin to relax.
That night after dinner, I turned in early and went to sleep.
Sleep came easily, a lot easier than it had the night before.
I tried to push the thoughts of the last few days out of my mind and write my fears off as having just been paranoid after my past history.
I should have just taken the warning with a grain of salt as I would have if I had heard it when walking the streets of downtown Pittsburgh, there wasn’t any shortage of wackos in the world today.
I reminded myself to stay off wacky websites, my life had been crazy enough without me looking for help to make it even crazier.
Chapter 20
The next morning my mother had a pancake breakfast prepared when I woke up.
“Did they catch that dog yet?” she asked as I walked into the kitchen.
“I think I saw something on my computer this morning that said they got him,” I replied. “You don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“Good,” she said. “Betty wanted me to come over yesterday to help her make cookies, but I told her that it wasn’t safe to go out until they got that dog. I think she called me four times yesterday to ask about the dog. She probably didn’t sleep a wink worrying last night. I think I’ll call her after breakfast. You’re sure they caught it?”
“I’m sure,” I replied, still feeling guilty. “You can tell her it is now safe for you to come over.”
“Good, Betty makes the best chocolate chip cookies,” Ma said, “I usually don’t get too excited about someone else’s chocolate chip cookies, I usually prefer my own, but for some reason, eating one of Betty’s fresh hot chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven was all I could think about yesterday.”
I laughed.
“I guess that proves that old saying that people always want what they can’t have,” I smiled.
“I guess so,” Ma smiled as she scooped three hot pancakes off the griddle, put them on a plate and set the plate down in front of me.
“Thanks, Ma,” I said and poured Maple syrup over the pancakes and began to dig in.
As I ate, I could hear my mother on the phone with Betty, making plans to go over around noon to bake cookies.
I smiled to myself as she explained to Betty that the dog had been captured and her life was no longer in danger.
Betty was also happy that she could now let her little dog, Bob, go outside to go to the bathroom. Apparently, Bob had a bad day yesterday, going to the bathroom three times on Betty’s carpet.
After finishing my breakfast, I put my plate in the dishwasher, interrupted my mother’s
phone conversation with Betty long enough to tell her I was leaving, and then headed outside and my car to go to work.
As I walked out the back door and started for the garage, I noticed how quiet it sounded in the back yard. The birds and squirrels were usually making a racket out here every morning when I went to work. Halfway to the garage I stopped and looked around to see why it was so quiet this morning.
The only reason I could find for it being so quiet was that I didn’t see any birds or squirrels. Why? I didn’t know or think about it for long and just continued to the garage to get my car. Why wasn’t there any birds or squirrels? I didn’t really care, I guess birds and squirrels are entitled to take a day off just like the rest of us. Maybe today they had something better to do, whatever it was that birds and squirrels did. Maybe the apples on the Bailey’s apple tree were finally ripe and all the critters decided to visit the Baileys today. Too bad the Bailey’s apple tree didn’t have ripe apples on it all year round.
I finally got my car started, closed the garage door and pulled out onto Overbrook Boulevard.
I had driven only two blocks when I again noticed something strange. There wasn’t any traffic on Overbrook Boulevard, I would usually pass six or seven cars before reaching Brownsville Road. Brownsville Road was also deserted. Now that was really unusual because Brownsville Road was always crowded, bumper to bumper at this time of the day as everyone made their way to work each morning.
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