Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series

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Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series Page 18

by Michael Herman


  The men carrying me are running across the tarmac behind four other men who carry Samuel. Ahead of us waits a small jet with its steps down. I hear more gunfire in the distance. When we arrive at the plane, a heated argument ensues between the marine leading us and one of the people waiting at the plane. It ends when two marines pull their pistols from their holsters and point it at the man from the plane.

  In only a few minutes, both Samuel and I are loaded on board into cramped conditions and the door behind us is shut. There is no waiting as we taxi down the runway and then immediately take to the air. One of the people on board attends to my wounds even before we become airborne. I lie back and close my eyes. Whatever had ensued between me bumping my head and now doesn’t matter. We are in the air and taking Samuel to a safe haven. That’s all that counts. I feel a needle in my arm and then there is nothing.

  Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 15

  Fourth Reading Continued

  Nothing is ever what it seems, I am convinced.

  Our safe haven was less than safe, to put it mildly. When we landed, both Samuel and I were rushed to an impromptu hospital where I sense great unease from the Chosen who run the facility. Samuel is worked on first by the staff that is standing by. Once they finish with him, they wheel me into the same operating room where they put me under anesthesia.

  When I awake, I am alone on a gurney in a deserted hallway. I sit up and look around, wondering how everything had gone with me. I feel no pain, but when I check myself, I find I am naked under my blue-green hospital robe. My left shoulder is wrapped where I had noticed the spread of blood when I was being taken from the car. I’m sleepy and lay my head back down on the gurney where I doze off and on, for who knows how, long until my eyes open and I stare at the ceiling, waiting for someone to come and get me.

  “Hello!” I yell after waiting in the hallway for over a half hour. No answer. I feel drugged and wonder if this is just a post-operative dream; just my luck to have a stupid dream where I am the last man on the planet. I sit up and yell, “Hello!” once more. No answer again. I lie back down and doze once more for some indeterminate time period. When I wake again, I am shivering and still alone. My first thought is I need a blanket. I sit up and look around. No one is in the hallway with me so I crawl off the gurney and drop to the cold floor. My shoulder emits sharp pain when I move around.

  “Hello!” I yell again to no one—and no one replies. Using the gurney as a crutch, I pull myself up from the floor to a standing position. I look up and down the hallway and decide to head towards the nearest door. Dragging the gurney along to prop myself up, I make it to the first door and find it locked. I continue along until I find one that is unlocked and push it open. Inside the room is a bed with a blanket. I push off from the gurney and stumble to the bed, falling onto it in relief. I lie there for a minute or so, exhausted from my short trip, and then push the blanket and sheet on the bed aside to climb under them. The pillow that I lay my head on feels like home. Quickly, I fall asleep again.

  When I wake up, my mouth is dry and my bladder is talking to me. I sit up in bed and see I’m still alone. Unworried, I walk to the bathroom and relieve myself. After I flush and start to walk out of the bathroom, I stop at the mirror. The face that stares back does not boost my confidence. I look pale and haggard. My hair is bed head. I need a shave. I turn the cold water on and cup my hand below the faucet to catch water. I bend to it and suck cool liquid while listening for sounds of life beyond my little room. I finish, dry my hands on a towel, walk back to the bed, yank the blanket from the bed and wrap it around me like a toga. All hail Caesar David, I think to myself in sarcasm. Now, where is the rest of our entourage? Where is Samuel? I don’t sense any Chosen nearby; this is an immediate concern for me and leads me to wonder if the facility is abandoned and I’ve been left behind to forage on my own.

  I step to the window, part the curtain and see I am three or four floors above ground. The landscape beyond the window is covered in snow. Gray leafless trees surround the grounds. I guess I am either in the mountains or in some northern wooded state. Wherever I am, being dressed in only a hospital robe precludes me from going outside for an extended period.

  I leave my room and enter the hallway to explore. My instincts tell me to be wary, that I may encounter people or things that are not friendly. I remain silent and cautious as I slowly move down the corridor. At the first door I come to, I gently push it open and find a room like the one I slept in. The bed inside is undisturbed. I walk into the room, find it empty and then grab the blanket from the bed. I drape it over my shoulders for added warmth. I continue my inspection of the hallway and rooms that adjoin it and find everything abandoned. I walk to the end of the corridor where an elevator waits for me. There is no button to go up so I press the down button and wait in suspense. When it arrives, will I be staring some hostile person in the face? I brace myself.

  After a few moments, the elevator dings and the doors open to reveal an empty cabin. Inside, I see I am on the third floor and could choose the second or ground floor to continue my exploration. I press the ground floor button and then lean back against the wall as the doors softly close. What will greet me when they open again, I wonder?

  The elevator makes a slow drop down to the first floor and the doors open onto a lobby area. I step out of the elevator and stop to listen for sounds of life. There are none. In short order, I see I am in an urgent care center with its own pharmacy. The directory lists the various departments I could explore, but judging by the absence of life on the third floor and the lack of people on the ground floor, I decide the facility has been abandoned and I am alone.

  I decide finding my clothes is the first priority. The toga look just isn’t me. I find what appears to be the surgery room, but nothing of my clothes. Where would they put them? I search room after room, closet after closet, drawers and more drawers. Nothing! Finally, I walk into a room that has baskets set into shelves. The baskets have placeholders for names, but there are no names. Yanking one after the other from the shelves, I finally come to a basket filled with clothes. When I pull them from the basket I am relieved to see they are mine. I strip off the hospital robe and blankets and slip into my clothes, ignoring the bloodstain on my sweatshirt. At least it’s warm. I carefully pull my socks on and then slip my shoes on one at a time. Just as I finish tying the laces on the second shoe I notice something out of the corner of my eye. When I look up, I see three large men in full winter gear are staring at me. Each man is carrying an assault rifle. They are silent and still and about twenty feet away. How did I not hear them?

  I sense nothing from them so I know they are not Chosen. I have no idea what to say in this circumstance so I say nothing and sit still, waiting for them to speak first. After a minute, the biggest of them says, “You sick? Is that why you’re here?”

  I shake my head and say, “No. Gunshot wound. Just woke up. No one around. Where is everybody?”

  The one speaking starts to walk towards me but is pulled back by the guy next to him who says, “Don’t get too close. He may be contagious.”

  The big one turns to his buddy and says, “Last time I checked, gunshot wound wasn’t contagious.” He pulls his arm away from the man and walks up to me while his more cautious buddies hang back. He stops in front of me, stares at the blood on my sweatshirt and says, “You get that treated here?”

  I nod.

  “Who shot you?”

  I shake my head. “Never saw them.”

  “Why would someone shoot you?”

  “Accident, I guess. Some stupid hunter missed their prey and hit me, maybe. I have no idea.” I’m making things up as I go along. “I’m walking along and next thing I know I’m on my back with a bullet in my shoulder. That ever happen to you or someone you know?”

  “Where you from?”

  I have no idea where I’m at so my next answer is a giveaway if I blow it. I decide the best defense is an offense. “Where’re you and your two bud
dies from and why is there no one here except the four of us? Are the three of you infected and maybe you shouldn’t get any closer to me?” Shifting into the role of the aggrieved, I say, “Why don’t you open up that jacket and show me that you’re not a Rosie?” I lift my sweatshirt up to expose my chest and stomach. “I’m clear. No rash. How about you? Maybe you should step back away from me a little. I got no interest in becoming a Rosie.”

  A small smile breaks from the corner of his mouth. “You need to show some respect for the afflicted. We don’t call them Rosies like other people do. Not polite. We...” His words are cut off by the sound of voices from behind him and someone yelling, “Buster, where the hell are you? I told you to wait for us.”

  He turns and faces the direction of the sounds. “I’m here, Carl. Got one straggler here.” He steps back a few paces and casually levels his rifle at me.

  Beyond him I see a group of people in snow gear come around the corner. All of them are armed with assault rifles. My body pumps adrenaline and I am instantly fidgety. This is not going to go well unless I can convince these guys I am unselected as I sense they are. I remain seated waiting for Carl and his band to approach and question me. But they don’t. Instead, they stop where Buster’s two friends are standing.

  Carl turns to face the other direction and yells, “Bring up the dog.” Seconds later, the group of men part to either side. A smaller person, a kid I guess, being led by a German Shepherd on a leash passes through them. Carl points at me. The kid continues on past Carl and past Buster to bring the Shepherd to within a few feet of me. The dog stops, sits down and gives me his paw. Thinking this is just a dog being friendly, I reach out to take the paw. Before we make contact, I hear Carl yell “Shit!” just as the kid yanks the dog back away from me. Buster raises his rifle and aims directly at my chest. The kid drags the dog away while three men break from Carl’s group and come running at me with guns trained on my body.

  “On your knees,” Buster yells. “Now!”

  When I hesitate, one of the charging men fires a few shots into the wall behind me and yells, “Now! Now or you’re dead!”

  The shots startle me into action and I slide from the chair onto the floor onto my knees. I hear a commotion from the group of men still holding back with Carl and then I see that the kid is returning, this time without the dog. He has a cellphone in his hands. He hustles up to about three feet away from me and then stops, holds the phone up to me and a small flash comes from it. He turns and races back to the group of men. In less than a minute Carl swears again and is on his phone. Buster doesn’t take his eyes off me and neither do the other three men who are standing about ten feet from me with guns raised and pointed at me.

  When I first saw the dog, I assumed I was going to be outed. I had heard of dogs that were able to distinguish the unselected from the Chosen. But when the dog became friendly, I thought I was exonerated. Relief swept over me in that moment and I was more than happy to shake with a dog that saw me as one of them. Obviously, I had it backward. It was friendly to the Chosen, not the unselected. I didn’t see that coming.

  After a nerve-racking five minutes, I see figures in yellow biohazard outfits coming up behind the armed men. This is a different approach than what I expected. They can see I’m not a Rosie, and they know I’m Chosen and yet they treat me like an infectious hazard. These people are more sophisticated than the average unselected and I know this is bad news for me. My choice is to turn and run, which means I die in a hail of bullets, or I wait and see what they have in store for me. I decide to wait.

  Four yellow-suited figures trot towards me and then surround me once they reach me. One gets behind me and kicks me in the back, knocking me to the ground, face down. Another straddles me and yanks my hands behind my back while a third lifts my head and pulls a bag over it. The fourth drops down next to me places a knee on my neck and I feel the sting of a needle in my neck. I black out a few moments later.

  Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 16

  I break from David, who is still asleep, and look over to Messenger and Forbes who are staring at me. “How long was I in?” I ask them.

  Messenger shrugs and says, “Maybe six or seven minutes. Not long. How long for you?”

  I stretch and yawn wide. “Years. I was jumping around. The last thing I remember was being captured by men with assault rifles.”

  “Still no time frame?” Forbes inquires.

  “I never saw anything with a specific date on it, if that’s what you mean, but the vehicles were not recent.”

  “So should we worry about our man being infectious?” Messenger is frowning.

  I can tell it has been preying on his mind, and rightfully so. We have more than ourselves to consider within our household. I do not want to put our children, Zed and Sonnet, at risk.

  “He has been touched and changed while others who have been touched remain unchanged. It boils down to the changed and the unchanged.”

  “He can project himself,” Messenger adds. “Forbes experienced that.”

  “He projects pain. You are correct. There is something else. I think the Chosen, in addition to getting immunity shots, also have an innate ability to resist disease and maybe that is part of what the selection process involves. They are selected because they are already immune to a variety of deadly diseases. They work among many different kinds of afflicted without getting sick.”

  “So the infection is a mark of being a stronger breed.”

  “Exactly. In his time or era, disease is rampant. The world you and I live in has over seven billion people. His world, at one time, carried over three times that many, but disease is swiftly reducing that number. His group calls it a ‘collapse of the ecosystem,’ Mother Nature doing a massive correction.”

  Messenger grins as a thought strikes him. “So is he the first of a flow of refugees from that era who are going back in time to less crowded times? Instead of hopping on some boat to another country, they hop the time boat to another era? Now that’s novel. Of course, as they populate the past, wouldn’t that speed up the overpopulation period?”

  I’m shaking my head. “You read too many sci-fi books, Messenger. Next, you are going to be asking me if he is back in our time looking to save Sarah Connor from the Terminator.”

  “That would be my next question.”

  Forbes snorts. “Can’t you ever take anything seriously, Messenger? This isn’t a joke. Listen to Soliloquy. She is only verifying what I felt when I first made contact with him.”

  “In answer to your ‘Doubting Thomas’ line of questioning, Messenger, there are things about him I feel certain make him an anomaly. Yes, I believe he is from our future, but something about his being here feels wrong. I get pieces of things that seem like he was delivered here by accident or against his will or... I don’t know. I need to know more about him or maybe when he wakes up he can tell us himself.”

  Messenger turns his focus back to the man. “I am not sure how much we’ll be getting from him. Who knows what coming back here did to him. He may end up being the virtual vegetable we see in front of us.”

  Forbes breaks into the discussion. “No. He is here for a reason. I felt it. He will recover, I’m sure of it. When I touched him, I felt intelligence, an awareness that we just haven’t seen yet. His suffering hasn’t disabled him. He’ll talk to us. I know it.”

  Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 17

  One Week Later

  A tired-looking Messenger is at the kitchen counter finishing his morning breakfast of two eggs on a piece of toast. A glass of half-finished orange juice sits next to his plate. His hair, still damp from his morning shower, is barely combed. Two-day-old growth on his face accents his sullenness. Unhappy with having David in our guest home and having to care for him, he glances over to me, makes a halfhearted smile, slowly shakes his head and then lets out his dissatisfaction.

  “The only reason this has worked so far is because Forbes is still on Christmas break. As soon as he g
oes back, we have just you to watch over him and that’s not going to work, Soliloquy. I’m at the diner so I can’t be much help until nighttime. You have the kids and your work. Just because you work from home doesn’t make it any better. He needs to go, Soliloquy. He’s a vegetable and I’m tired of being the one who bathes him and cleans up his mess every night when I come home from work. I’m not cut out to be a nurse.”

  I give him my best look of sympathy. “Forbes says David is making progress. He was able to get him to use the bathroom by himself today.”

  “Praise the Lord and pass the wine!” Messenger says sarcastically. “It’s like having an Alzheimer patient in the house. We are not cut out for this kind of responsibility. There are care facilities out there for people like him. We are not one of them.”

  I’m about to attempt a soothing comeback to his complaint when the back door swings open and then I hear footsteps. Coming from the guest house and leaving the back door open, Forbes sweeps into the kitchen and heads towards the refrigerator. “He’s talking,” he announces excitedly. “Says he wants a beer.” He opens the refrigerator and moves things around.

  “In the bottom drawer,” Messenger says.

  Forbes slides the drawer open and I hear the sound of bottles clinking against each other. He slides the drawer closed, closes the refrigerator door and announces as he exits the kitchen, “You might want to join me. He seems pretty coherent.”

  Messenger jumps up from the bar stool. He smiles and his eyes sparkle at the good news. “This should be interesting. Maybe now we can get rid of this guy, send him back to whatever institution he escaped from,” he declares before following Forbes out the door.

  I’m as interested as everyone else, but before I leave the house to join them I check our kitchen monitor that is linked to the cam in Zed and Sonnet’s room. I see Zed is asleep and Sonnet is playing with one of her favorite toys. I slip on my wireless headset that is linked to their room cam, push one earphone onto my left ear and shove the other back behind my right ear, give the kitchen a visual once-over for lit burners and then head out of the house to visit with David. Knowing David through his memories is only part of the picture. I look forward to our interaction with him.

 

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