by Fiona Roarke
“No.”
Wyatt pondered his options for only a few seconds. “Unshackled in this terrain for nearly an hour, assuming no one on the highway has picked up any odd hitchhikers, we’re looking at a five- to seven-mile radius from this location as a primary search area.
“The bulk of the search area is forested. That’s lucky, as it will slow them down, hopefully, but it also complicates things, as there are likely thirty or more cabins, homes, barns and various structures of all sizes, some abandoned, most not, within that same area.”
He pointed to Cam’s memory wipe device. “I suggest every search group carries one of those mind wipe things just in case any other civilians are involved.”
The familiar acerbic half smile shaped Cam’s lips. “Already set up. I like the way you think, Wyatt.”
“Well, you have a front-row seat on that score, don’t you?”
“True. But I’ll endeavor to stop.”
“We don’t have to shoot to kill, do we?” Wyatt asked, wondering if he’d have to shoot slimy aliens with tentacles, and what part of the creature he should aim for. Where were their hearts? Did they even have hearts?
“No, of course not. We aren’t barbarian aliens. We have rifles and guns with alien tranquilizer pellets. Sort of.”
“Sort of pellets? What do they do?”
Cam lifted the rifle off his shoulder by the strap. “It’s something new I invented for just this eventuality. The pellet is soft and when it hits the target it splatters the alien treatment, if you will, in a wide pattern. The drug must touch the skin to have any effect.”
“What does this treatment do?”
“It calms the prisoner and makes them suggestible. They must do whatever is asked of them.”
“So you can calmly ask them to get back into their holding cell and they go willingly. Right?”
“Exactly. My initial design was in the form of a sticker. We had to get close enough to attach the sticker to the skin of our target, and that can be risky.”
The slim shred of a memory came into Wyatt’s head. “Is that what you used on the wild dog you chased through the countryside a while back?”
Cam nodded. “Took three stickers to get that beast calmed down enough.”
“Did I help you track it down back then?” Wyatt asked.
“Yes,” Diesel said. “You did help us.”
“But I can’t remember because—”
“Because we shot you with the Defender afterward.” Diesel gestured to the megaphone in Cam’s hand. “And I’m sorry, but we’ll have to erase your memories after this adventure as well.”
Wyatt eyed Valene.
“Have you ever shot me with a…Defender?” he asked.
Valene shook her head.
“Something strange happened a few months ago, where I’m sure I lost time. You tried to explain, and distracted me, but it never truly made sense.”
Axel nodded. “Yeah, that was me. Sorry. The Defender was set for forty-five minutes. I didn’t mean to erase your memories for that long.”
“I lost forty-five minutes?” Wyatt looked at Valene, who looked even more miserable.
“No time for that now,” Axel said, handing Wyatt one of two alien tranquilizer rifles he held, along with two extra magazines of alien ammo. “We need to catch the alien prisoners. I already know you’re the best shot we have on this team.”
Wyatt’s head spun with data and questions, but he concentrated on the rifle. He pulled the weapon to his shoulder, flicked off the safety, looked through the scope to target a nearby oak tree and fired. The pellet that hit the tree trunk splatted some sort of slimy purple substance in a four-inch circular pattern.
“Why did you do that?” Cam sounded miffed that he’d wasted a shackle bullet on a tree.
“I needed to know how this weapon fires and what to expect when I shoot it. I figured you didn’t want me to test it the first time I fired it at a prisoner on the loose.”
Cam relaxed and nodded. “Right. Good. Sorry. That was a great idea.”
Wyatt felt completely comfortable in this scenario even with an alien weapon at his side. He slung the rifle over one shoulder by the handy strap and followed the brothers Grey—and his alien love, Valene, heaven help him—out into the forest behind the Big Bang Truck Stop to help stop a purported alien prisoner invasion.
Before they deleted his memories, he wanted to talk about the conditions that would be required to marry Valene and find out what Alpha-Prime was like. He just wished he’d be able to remember it after.
Maybe if he repeated the information over and over in his head as they zapped him a fragment of his love for Valene would remain. He couldn’t imagine ever forgetting her. Then again, alien technology had already caused him to lose time and other memories. A memory he had been worried about until he realized what must have happened at the lovers’ lane out at the bauxite pit.
Valene had tried to assure him they’d been kissing for quite a long time and then had fallen asleep, but he’d never shaken the idea something else had been at play. That he might have been unconscious, not asleep, but he couldn’t figure out how or why.
Now he knew what had really happened. At least until they wiped the knowledge away.
If only the answer wasn’t friendly aliens from another planet having repeatedly used a memory weapon on him to keep their secret.
Wyatt glanced back at Valene. She smiled, but was clearly distressed by this whole situation. And he realized he didn’t even know the full truth. Was she not allowed to marry a human at all, even if he agreed to move two galaxies away? Would something more dreadful than memory loss happen if they ran away together on Earth?
One way or another, he planned to find out and weigh his options.
If there was some alien ritual he had to perform in order to marry the love of his life, he’d do it.
Wyatt smiled at her with renewed determination.
Chapter Six
<^> <^> <^>
Valene followed Diesel, Cam and Axel into the forest behind the Big Bang Truck Stop along with her only love, Wyatt. Wyatt held his rifle at the ready, but pointed at the ground as he trailed Diesel.
Her other brothers, Wheeler, Gage and Jack, were already searching another area. Of the thirty prisoners aboard, five didn’t make it out of the cryo-pods at all. Four of the twenty-five convicts that did emerge from their cryo-pods were stopped before they got out of the ship. Jack apprehended two escapees who stopped only a hundred feet from the gulag ship to gawk at the tall trees, something that didn’t exist on Alpha-Prime. Four others had been quickly found in the woods nearby and returned. That left fifteen escapees still to capture.
Wyatt seemed surprisingly unfazed after finding out the Greys were aliens from another planet. He went quickly into escaped prisoner search mode, which as a sheriff he was good at anyway.
When the others weren’t watching, Wyatt sent Valene positively searing gazes. She had no doubt her looks bordered on despondent. She didn’t have the luxury of being able to return his loving looks. Once her brothers had what they wanted from him, Wyatt would be treated like every other human on Earth who discovered by accident or on purpose their extra-terrestrial origins.
Valene didn’t plan to watch when they erased his memories. The best she could hope for was a stolen kiss before they zapped him.
He likely thought they would only erase his memories of the search, but Valene knew they planned to go back a year. To before the day she and Wyatt had run into each other.
An event that had been a happy, but unintentional meeting. Something she should never have allowed to happen.
Valene had been casually following Wyatt off and on for almost two years before accidently plowing into him as he came out of his favorite restaurant. She considered it wishful thinking, as opposed to creepy and stalkerish. Or so she told herself.
She’d thought she’d lost him when he went into the restaurant. She’d moved to find a better lookout spot just as
he unexpectedly came back out to retrieve something from his vehicle. Valene slammed right into him, her face mashed into his chest, arms wrapping around his sturdy middle. Wyatt was tall for a human, and he felt great in her arms. She was half in love with him when that auspicious and unintended meeting took place.
He kept her from falling on her butt and invited her to join him for lunch if she didn’t mind eating with a member of local law enforcement.
She should have turned him down. She should have pretended to be affronted by their accidental slam into each other, but he felt so amazing in her arms and he smelled so incredibly good that whatever he’d said, she would have agreed to. She smiled and nodded before realizing what she’d done.
Luckily, he asked her to lunch instead of, say, inviting her to join his secret harem. By now she knew he didn’t have a secret harem. He’d only had eyes for her since the day they met.
“What kind of details do you have on these prisoners?” Wyatt asked no one in particular. They were well out of sight of the lights from the truck stop.
Cam frowned. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know if they have a propensity to stop and hide at the first place they see or if they will try and run to the ends of the Earth to escape.”
Axel pulled out his communication device and scrolled through several screens. “Looks like six of the fifteen will likely look for a hiding place, while the other seven will continue on.”
“Who else is out here looking and where are they?” Wyatt’s head turned left and then right as he carefully searched the area with each step he took.
Diesel answered this time. “Jack, Wheeler and Gage are with a team east of the truck stop. We’re headed west, of course. South is the truck stop and north is very heavily forested and, I hope, mostly inaccessible.”
Wyatt nodded. “Right. I expect your other brothers will find any prisoners hiding in that direction more easily, as there aren’t as many buildings to search. The direction we’re going has probably 70 percent of the structures in the entire search grid. The north is more accessible than you think, especially when you consider the motivation the average criminal will have to escape.”
Axel said, “If they finish checking their area quickly, they will head in our direction. If we have to go north, we’ll do it all together.”
Wyatt nodded. “Good enough.” They continued through the woods toward what Valene knew was a group of five cabins. They were the closest human structures to their landing field. The cabins were likely empty this time of year after the busy summer vacation season, but it was possible a few could be occupied in anticipation of the fall hunting season.
Diesel stayed in the lead, Wyatt followed close behind him and Valene was next. Axel and Cam, side by side, trailed the group, alertly scanning the trees around them.
The first cabin they reached was small and dark. A quick check showed no one inside. The next cabin was also dark, but larger. The back door stood ajar.
Wyatt took the lead, shining a narrow-beamed flashlight all around the frame of the back door. The light reflected off what looked like some sort of slime or resin on the frame near the doorknob.
He pointed to it. Her brothers nodded, as if they knew what sort of creature might be found inside. No one seemed particularly alarmed. Wyatt moved forward without asking any questions, gun raised and ready to fire as he slowly entered the cabin through the broken back door.
Just past the threshold, a staircase went directly up from a small landing. Wyatt slowly climbed the first few steps, gun up with the business end leading the way.
Valene knew her brothers planned to let Wyatt shoot the shackle bullets at the escaped criminals because he was the best shot in three counties, possibly in the entire state of Arkansas. He wouldn’t miss. If she asked whether he’d be able to hit an alien criminal with an equally alien shackle splatter bullet gun, he’d simply say, “Does a bear poop in the woods?”
The thought of Wyatt’s funny response popped into her brain. It was completely inappropriate for the current circumstances. She had to stifle a laugh by covering her mouth as though to stop a cough or sneeze, making an equally inappropriate snorting noise loud enough to be heard by everyone in the stairwell.
All four of the men on the stairs looked at her with varying degrees of annoyance. She ignored them and vowed not to think of all the funny, charming things Wyatt did. That would occupy a lot of her thoughts.
She noticed more slime on the handrail, a clear indication that one or more of the Moogallian criminals were either inside the cabin or had been. An alien that looked like a cross between an octopus and a human could be an amazing sight if a person wasn’t used to it. Earthlings were not at all used to it.
Perhaps they should have shown Wyatt pictures of the convicts they might encounter. The moment Valene cleared the half stairwell to reach the cabin’s main floor, a Moogallian with all eight tentacles raised as if in complete fright stepped into the room from a door on the other side of what looked like the living room.
Wyatt didn’t hesitate, firing the weapon and hitting the Moogallian in the chest through two of his raised slimy tentacles. The moment the projectile hit, it splattered a purple gel into a circular blob and all eight tentacles dropped.
“Great shot,” Diesel said, moving toward the now-subdued Moogallian.
“Wait,” Wyatt said in a terse voice. He took a quick step beside Diesel as a shadow flickered in the doorway. Another convict, this one a tall, burly humanoid with dusty greenish skin, burst through the doorway holding what looked like an Earth-style shotgun cocked and ready to fire.
Wyatt shoved Diesel to one side and stepped into the line of fire as he took a shot at the menacing second alien. The shackle bullet hit him square in the face. Unfortunately, as the shotgun fell from his seven-fingered hand, a crack of sound split the air. Wyatt grunted and bent at the waist. To Valene’s horror, she saw the shotgun’s blast had struck him in the belly instead of its intended target, Diesel.
Valene screamed as Wyatt dropped to the floor, the shackle weapon still in his capable, but motionless hands.
<^> <^> <^>
Wyatt woke after dreaming Valene was upset and shouting. She never screamed or shrieked, so it was rather disconcerting, even for an obvious nightmare.
His eyes opened to find Valene’s brother Gage, wearing a white lab coat, standing over him, face drawn in a serious expression.
“Where am I?” Wyatt asked. His eyes searched the room, which sort of looked like a scientist’s lab. He saw beakers and Bunsen burners on a table nearby. Gage Grey was reportedly interested in science, but Wyatt had never before seen him dressed for the part.
“You’re in the basement of the Big Bang Truck Stop.”
“What happened to me?”
Gage looked concerned. “You don’t remember?”
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed as he tried to recall what happened to land him in Gage’s mad scientist-esque lab.
Valene. Her brothers. The escaped criminals. Correction, the escaped alien criminals. The rash of recent information regarding aliens and their secrets came back in a rush of memories.
He thought he’d managed to conceal his surprise at seeing the half-octopus half-man alien quite well. He got of a clean shot with the alien weapon before spotting the menacing shadow of another presence behind the odd creature.
Diesel stepped forward as the second alien, a big green meanie with too many fingers, stormed into the room waving a shotgun. Wyatt moved without thinking. He heard the odd hollow sound of the shotgun blast and something that felt like a cannonball hit him in the belly. Valene’s piercing scream followed him down to the floor. Then nothing.
“I remember now. Is Diesel okay?”
Gage nodded. “Yes. And he’s very grateful. His wife is even more thankful and has promised to make you her famous kitchen sink cookies.”
“Kitchen sink cookies?”
“Yes. She puts all sorts of chips and nuts and other
good stuff in them. Everything but the kitchen sink.”
“Right.” Wyatt felt a little letdown. He’d half expected some sort of alien ingredient he’d never heard of.
“They are tasty. You might even be glad you took that beanbag round for him.”
“Beanbag round?” That’s why I’m still alive.
“Yep. But at close range I’m sure it felt like you got a thousand snake bites all at once.”
Wyatt started to put a hand to his belly, but didn’t touch it when the pain of the bruise registered. “Wow. That hurts a lot.”
“I’ll bet.” Gage used a needle to inject something into the IV line connected to one of Wyatt’s arms. “This is for the pain.”
“Some alien concoction?”
“Nope. Plain old human remedies for you.” Gage smiled. “But thanks for stepping in front of Diesel. If the bag had hit him in the head, it might have been really bad.”
Wyatt relaxed, taking pressure off the pain in his belly. “I didn’t even think.”
“That’s what they all said. You just shot the prisoner in the face with the shackle stuff and stepped into the blast. But I suspect you thought it was a shotgun.”
Wyatt started to shrug, unused to praise for doing what he would for anyone, but Valene entered the room.
“You’re awake,” she said, looking relieved.
“I am.”
She walked to the side of the bed and took his hand. “You scared me.”
“I heard you scream.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “I thought you got hit with a shotgun blast after saving my brother from getting his fool head blown off.”
“Ain’t nothing but a thing, Vee. Don’t worry,” he said in a soft, casual tone as if it were just the two of them. Gage had moved away and was pretending not to hear their intimate conversation.
“Still, I want to say thank you.”
He squeezed her fingers.
Diesel, Cam and Axel entered seconds later and their semi-alone moment was over.
“Hey, hotshot. Thanks for saving my life. A beanbag to the face might have altered my good looks.” Diesel marched over to the side of his bed, obviously ignoring Wyatt and Valene’s clasped hands. Cam and Axel rolled their eyes at the remark about their brother’s good looks.