Trinity

by Kristin Dearborn

  25

  What the fuck was Felix doing here?

  Val opened his mouth to ask that very question, but Felix, sporting a nasty gash on his face and wearing an official Homeland Security windbreaker, winked at him. Val forced a quick cough but remained silent.

  Felix stuck out his hand and Spence took it. “I’m Albert Vargas with USCIS.” It was a forceful handshake. Val suppressed a laugh. Felix and Spence would get along great. He had no idea why Felix was here under this guise. He trusted his friend. All would be revealed in good time.

  “I want to take a minute of your time, Mister,” Felix checked a folder, “Slade.” Felix was good.

  “Okay,” Val said. This felt a bit like the role-playing activities the prison shrink tried to get him to do. He couldn’t get over himself enough to pretend to be someone else.

  “You need me for anything else?” Spence asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  Spence nodded and stepped out.

  “What are you—”

  Felix put a long finger to his lips. He touched his ear then gestured around the room. It was bugged.

  “Gabriela Correa had quite the little racket going. I need you to come with me to her apartment and look at a few things, see if anything jogs your memory.”

  “What?” This was stupid. Was Felix doing this to get him out? Because if Felix hadn’t done whatever he’d done, saying he was with Immigration, Val could have already been home by now. This wasn’t helping.

  “I’ve gotten clearance to take you to her apartment, with your consent, of course.” Felix winked again and Val smiled a queasy smile. “It’s downtown, then I can run you home.”

  “Okay.”

  Felix strode over to the door, looking like a government type. It made Val’s head spin, didn’t seem right. This was his prison buddy, for heaven’s sake. At his knock, Spence opened the door for them.

  “You feeling all right, Val?” Spence asked as they passed him.

  “Yeah, it’s been a rough day. I’m going to sleep all afternoon.” As soon as I hide the body festering in my girlfriend’s trunk.

  Spence clapped him on the back. “Get out of here, man.”

  “As soon as I can.”

  Val followed Felix to the car.

  It was a navy blue Crown Vic with USCIS decals on the doors and government plates. Oh Jesus, did he steal this car?

  Val got in on the passenger’s side, and buckled in. He didn’t want to get shushed again, so he waited to speak until he was spoken to. At least the hum was gone.

  “You look like shit, Val-ey boy.” Felix started the car.

  “I am beyond confused, man. What the fuck are you doing? Did you steal this car?”

  “Nope.”

  Val waited a beat, but Felix didn’t elaborate.

  The car accelerated, pushing Val back into the plush seat. Buildings blurred outside. The cops wouldn’t stop a government car, even if he whipped through stop signs.

  “Felix, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “I’m really quite sorry about this.”

  Val looked at his face, intent on the driving. They left the little downtown behind and sped out of Lott.

  “Sorry about what?”

  “I have to take you in.”

  “In? I was in. What the flaming fuckbuckets is going on?”

  Felix chuckled. “You’ve always had a way with words.”

  “Yeah, it’s why you like me. Where are we going?”

  “Home.”

  “What?” Something in Felix’s tone suggested “home” didn’t mean Val’s trailer.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Whose home?”

  “Mine. It’s gonna be a long trip.”

  Panic trickled in. This was Felix, his trusted friend and confidant for years. He talked like a crazy person—and drove like one. They took the corner near the National Forest much faster than the recommended speed. If Val didn’t ask any more, he wouldn’t have to hear any more. Maybe Felix was bringing him home the long way. Maybe this was a joke. He opened his mouth to ask if it was, but when a bump made his jaw snap shut with a clack, he left it closed.

  Whatever. He would hunker down, and he’d make it through. He’d survived jail with his humor intact, he could survive this.

  Unless...

  The dam holding back his panic burst. What were the chances he would be in the same cell with an alien?

  None. The chances were none. But it had happened anyway, because they’d planned it.

  His seatbelt wouldn’t come undone. The button depressed under his mashing fingers, but didn’t give.

  The door handle worked the same way, even when he unlocked the lock.

  And Felix was smiling.

  Val elbowed the window, unsure how that would help even if he got it open. At such speeds he’d be ground burger if he made it out of the car. The contact made his funny bone hum, sending vibrations up and down his arm. He cradled it, panting and sweating.

  “You can’t get out,” Felix said. “And I am sorry. I liked you. You’re an interesting guy.”

  “What are you?” Val asked, pretty sure he knew exactly where this was headed.

  Felix turned to look at him.

  “Watch the road!”

  “We’re fine,” Felix said, keeping control of the speeding Crown Vic even though he faced Val. “I know these roads like the back of my hand.”

  Val had to break the eye contact. Too weird, too intense. He tried the seatbelt and the door handle again, even though the ground outside was a purple-brown blur in the building dawn.

  “You’re very special to us.”

  “Why?” Val was drenched in ice-cold terror…special…why? He was sure he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “You and your sister have some pretty impressive genes.”

  “Sister? I don’t have a sister.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I checked. There’s no record of my mother having a second child. No one can even prove she was pregnant. I checked all the hospitals within a hundred and fifty miles of here.”

  Felix’s grin widened, stretching the edges of his face and reminding Val of a snake detaching its jaw to swallow its prey whole.

  “You would have had to look a lot farther away, buddy boy. You know how you’ve never known who your father is?”

  He said nothing, would not rise to the bait.

  “It’s me, you fool. It’s my DNA that knocked up your drunkard mother to make a pair of freak babies like you and your sister.”

  Val’s heart stopped. It felt like it took a second to get it started again, for him to breathe. It was nice the hum was gone, but the sound of his pulse pounding at his temples was worse.

  He tried to speak but only a whimper squeaked out. He tried again. “Really?”

  Felix exploded with laughter, spittle catching the rising sun and splattering the steering wheel.

  “No. Not really.”

  Val felt punched and abused and torn apart. He wanted very much to leave this car, wanted to wake up. Kate. Kate would have to notice he wasn’t back, after a while.

  And what would she do?

  “Things didn’t really go so well with your sister. Something went wrong. The enzymes didn’t bond entirely right. I think—and I’m no scientist, mind you—it has to do with a lack of gravity and the artificial atmosphere.”

  Val’s head spun. Wake up, wake up, wake up. This could not be real life. Felix was his friend. Why would he take his mother’s side?

  His mother was dead.

  He couldn’t get out of the car, but he could get Felix. He stared at the steering wheel, really saw it; examined the faux leather grain. And he pushed it.

  At this speed it should have sent the car careening in another direction, but Felix fought it easily.

  If anything, Val’s demonstration seemed to please him. “I knew you could do it. When did it start?” Felix asked.

  “Last night.”

  It seemed
to surprise Felix and he turned to look at Val again, still keeping the car on the road without even a wobble. “Last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re, like, the latest of the late bloomers in history.” And Felix laughed again. “I always wondered, hoped, you could do it all along. That you weren’t telling anyone.” He paused, and turned back to the road. “And that was all you had? That little tug?”

  It was like his worst fears of living in his mother’s science fiction movie were being intermingled with some weird male performance high-school metaphor thing.

  The car snapped to the left, down a dirt road camouflaged with the desert. The back end barely fishtailed.

  “When did this start?” Val asked, knowing he set himself up for more mocking, but needing to know.

  “When did it start?” Felix echoed. “Val-ey boy, this is your life. You were born with it.”

  The whir of tires on dirt road was the only sound.

  “It’s in your blood.”

  Contaminated.

  Something wiped the smirk of Felix’s face. Val looked behind and saw something in the car’s dust, something tan and running.

  Felix said something under his breath that sounded like a cross between a curse and a sneeze.

  Ahead of them were chain-link fences, loops of concertina wire along the top. Val’s chest constricted. It looked like a prison.

  A monster behind and incarceration ahead. Was this even possible?

  As the Crown Vic hurdled towards the wall, Val cast another look behind him. The creature was gaining ground. He silently spurred it on.

  Ahead of them, the gates ground open, sliding on a track. The passenger side mirror folded in as they passed, and the opening snapped shut behind them. Val watched as the creature skidded to a stop, avoiding contact with the gate.

  “Did it hit?” Felix asked.

  “Hit what?”

  “The fence!”

  “No,” Val said, very glad it had stopped in time.

  “That fence would cook a rhino.”

  “The Space Puma is alive and well.”

  Felix let out a braying laugh. Val used to like his laugh. “It’s called a Lharomuph. But that’s as good a name for it as any, I guess.”

  Another fence loomed ahead of them, this one a tall cement wall. Another set of gates rolled open, smooth on their tracks. Inside sat a long, low building, single story, that at first reminded Val of his elementary school. Schools were welcoming, though. At least they tried to be. This one, the closer they got, reminded him more and more of the edifice where he’d spent those six years.

  “You don’t remember anything, do you?” Felix asked as he parked the car in a parking lot filled with similar nondescript cars, all sporting government plates.

  “What do you mean, anything?”

  “Us. Them. Any of your contact” Felix framed the word with air quotes “with extraterrestrial beings. Talk about close encounters. Yours is of the seventh kind, buddy boy.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?

  “Those gray fuckers took you on their ship.”

  “Sorry, buddy, but you’ll have to start at the beginning.”

  “I know we gave you false memories, but I didn’t know they were that good.”

  Val bit down on the inside of his lip. He didn’t want to play anymore, this was stupid. Why was Felix teasing him.

  Felix’s smile reminded Val of the face a dog makes before it’s about to throw up. Felix began to speak.

  26

  In the state of New Mexico, well-mannered prisoners are allowed to work on the state highways. Val fit this bill, and in September 2005, he and several other men had been assigned to a stretch of highway 380, about halfway between Roswell and Alamogordo. Felix Nasiverra was not a part of this road crew. Val remembered this, all except the part where Felix wasn’t present. Were one to have asked Val about it, he would have assured you he and Felix did it together. That they’d sat together on the old converted school bus, painted white with the mesh windows.

  Val worked the night shift. In all actuality he sat on the bus with a young Mexican man named Al who’d shot his wife after catching her with another man. Prison records stated Al was released in October of 2005, though if anyone had bothered to check the records, they would have seen he wasn’t scheduled for release until 2016. And even though Al and Val, who thought it was hilarious their names rhymed, sat in the very back seat of the bus and wisecracked on their way to work every night, were you to ask Val about his buddy Al, you would have received a blank stare. Val had no memory of the man. He would tell you—or at least he would have told you—it had been Felix himself with whom he’d sat on the bus.

  October fifteenth started out like any other night. The eight prisoners went through security and joked around, business as usual, Val got his place in the back, like he liked, and the ride to the site was encompassed by a con man telling racist jokes. Everyone laughed, even the Mexicans. They all had to stand lined up in their leg irons and listen while Assistant Warden Smiley explained the drill, his big German Shepherd, Zeus, at his side. His assistant, a deputy named Smith, stood off to one side.

  He discussed how Zeus could—and had—bitten a prisoner’s finger clean off while the man was trying to escape. Val stared off up at the sky, happy to be outdoors, somewhere other than the prison cell. The warden’s words rolled off him like rain.

  The work wasn’t very complicated. They couldn’t be trusted with backhoes, or sledgehammers, or things like that, so they mostly moved fill from one point to another. During the day a state crew did most of the work, and at night the prisoners came and shuffled dirt and rocks around. Val had a green wheelbarrow, and couldn’t walk very fast due to his leg irons, so he sauntered around at a casual pace, whistling old punk rock songs to himself. Being out here and listening to the sounds of night birds made him happy.

  But around three, the birds and crickets all fell silent. Val only had a second or so to notice before the sky opened up with light.

  For the night work—especially since they were dealing with felons who hadn’t yet been rehabilitated—they used massive banks of sodium halide lights hooked up to loud industrial generators. Those lights were bright.

  The light that swallowed the site whole was even more radiant.

  Everyone froze, blind. Hands went to shield eyes, and Zeus the dog began to pace and bark—a troubled, high-pitched sound.

  Val’s feet went out from under him. He started to fall, but he wasn’t falling down. He fell up, into a dark circle which appeared in the center of the sky. The prisoners rose slowly, disoriented by the light until they were above it, and a floor appeared under their feet. The men tried to speak to one another, but there was a solid, steady hum that drowned everything out. Zeus looked like he belonged in a silent movie, mouth moving over and over again, no noise.

  Everyone move in, closer together.

  Val would never remember what happened next, not even under hypnosis. A large red arrow appeared on the blinding white floor, and the men and the dog followed it. Where else was there to go? What else was there to do? They stayed close, in a clump. Between the blinding white of their surroundings and the powerful low tone, touch was the only communication they had. The chains from the men’s leg irons jingled noiselessly.

  They followed the arrow, and a white door closed behind them. The white space in which they stood was smaller now. The humming became unbearable, one of the older men’s noses started to bleed. The orange jumpsuits and the red blood looked strikingly out of place here, even more so when first one drop of blood, then another plopped fat onto the white floor. A rectangle opened in one of the walls. The rectangle was a door, and there was blackness behind it. The men imagined cool, quiet darkness. Zeus kept shaking his head, the way dogs do when they have ear mites. He kept his tail tucked between his legs.

  A smallish gray shape filled the door, and each man knew what it was. Some of them, Assistant Warden Smiley especially,
believed until the very end this was a test by the U.S. Government.

  The gray shape was naked, smooth gray skin stretched across a humanoid body. Where its legs met was smooth and sexless; more gray-on-gray. Its head was large, as were its shiny black eyes. The nostrils were two slits in the center of its head, the mouth a little black smile. It held up a three-fingered hand and its words arrived in each man’s mind.

  Welcome. Please line up for testing now.

  The door closed behind it. The return to the unblemished white walls sucked away at the morale in the room.

  No one moved.

  Welcome. Please line up for testing now. This time the men lined themselves up.

  Not a one of them had the clarity to acknowledge that they’d been abducted by aliens, just like the cover of the Weekly World News. Instead, the collective thought, which the Sangaumanian doctor could hear quite well, was an agony over the hum. It started off annoying, but managed to eventually drive out all other thoughts. Just the way the Sangaumans liked it.

  The doctor walked up to the first man in line. Evan Ringrich, a physician from the northeast corner of the state who’d had his license suspended for drinking but still continued to practice medicine, who was only four months away from a parole hearing he most likely would walk away from, stood tall under the scrutiny. He was a proud man, and had rehabilitated himself in prison. The little gray doctor pointed to him, and pointed off into the whiteness. A red arrow appeared, and a black rectangle slid open on the wall. A doorway. Ringrich looked at the other men with a questioning gaze.

  Go, please. The being’s mouth was an unnerving black line.

  More than to any of the others, Ringrich looked to Smiley for his assurance. Perhaps because they’d all spent so long looking to Smiley for everything—when to eat, when to shit, when to work—the habit remained ingrained in the men. Smiley gave a little half-shrug. He didn’t care what happened to any of these lowlifes, so long as that fuck-forsaken noise in his head stopped.

  Ringrich followed the red arrow, and vanished into the black rectangle. This went on for seven of the eight men, pausing for a moment as Zeus dropped in a heap of black and tan fur, blood oozing out his ears. Smiley lunged for the doctor. They could do what they wanted with the men, but fuck with his dog, and that was the end. The doctor sidestepped as pretty as you please, and Smiley went down on his face. In the humming silence Val couldn’t decide which bore more watching, Smiley and the doctor, or Zeus and the pool of crimson forming around his triangular head.