Ranger Martin and the Alien Invasion

by Jack Flacco

  Much as Randy and Jon had done, Ranger and Matty slipped into the first bedroom finding it undisturbed. They soon flew into the second bedroom where, again, they hadn’t detected anything unusual. They ran across the corridor to the bathroom. It appeared clean and unused. Tracing the corridor, they came upon the third and last bedroom, which faced the back of the store.

  They slunk inside, turned a corner and saw Randy holding his gun.

  “Holy shit.” Matty said.

  Ranger pushed the bill of his cap away from his eyes to get a better look. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

  “It’s not what you think it is.” Randy said, “But somehow I don’t think saying that will help.”

  One of them had Jon by the throat with a knife stuck to his jugular. Them, being the same them who had met with General Grayson back at Logan Airbase. Four arms, two legs, big head and eyes, three feet tall with an attitude. Randy had it with its back against the corner of the bedroom, five feet away, nowhere to go. With Ranger and Matty in the room, it pressed the knife even tighter on Jon’s neck.

  Matty eased Ranger’s grip on his shotgun, and said, “Think about what you’re doing, Ranger. You have the shotgun pointed at both it and Jon. Not a good idea, don’t you think?”

  Ranger lowered his weapon, “Do you got this?”

  “I got this.” Matty kept her aim centered on its head.

  “It has four arms. Which one should we pay attention to the most?” Randy asked.

  “The one with the knife,” said Jon.

  “Right, the one with the knife,” Ranger repeated.

  Randy kept his aim at the thing, “Do you think it speaks our language?”

  “Let’s try a few sentences.” Ranger looked into its eyes and said, “Do you understand me? If you understand me, nod your head. Where are you from? What brought you here? How long are you stayin’?”

  “Why don’t you just ask it out for a date?” Matty said.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Shooting it in the head sounds reasonable. It’ll release the knife and Jon will be safe.”

  The alien pressed the knife closer to Jon’s neck.

  Jon said, “Not a good idea.”

  “So you do understand.” Ranger holstered his weapon.

  “What are you doing?” Randy asked. “Look at it, it’s got Jon.”

  “I know, but maybe what it needs is a little space.”

  “Yeah,” Matty said. “A little outer space.”

  “C’mon y’all.”

  “You’re being sympathetic to one of those who wanted to make me a walking cadaver.” Randy said.

  “Why don’t we put the guns away and give it room to pass, all right?” Ranger motioned to Matty to holster her weapon, then winked at her.

  That was all Matty needed to understand. She slipped her gun under her shirt and left a path free for the alien to escape their grasp. Ranger pushed Randy’s gun aside and had him holster it as well. Ranger and Matty then backed away from the door giving the alien space to slip by.

  The alien gazed at the three and released its grip on the knife to Jon’s neck. It dragged Jon between Ranger, Randy and the bed, then nudged itself backward as it headed toward the door. It made a fatal mistake, though. It had its back turned toward Matty, and she took advantage of it. She aimed her gun at the back of the alien’s head and said, “You understand me, right? My bullet will travel faster through your brain before your reflexes have enough time to stick the knife into my brother’s throat. Now, drop it.”

  It dropped the knife, and Jon got out of the way.

  Ranger placed his hands on it, but needed a moment to think. He said. “Matty, hold your gun on it.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere.”

  Looking around the room, Ranger’s face lit with an idea. He tore strips from a pillowcase to make a wad. He used the strips to tie all four of the alien’s hands together behind its back. Once he finished, he grabbed the creature from its clothes and threw it in the corner of the room where it fell with its shoulders against the wall and its rear on the floor.

  * * *

  The gun touched Abigail’s temple as she stared at her mother tied to the chair. All Sergeant Baskins had to do was pull the trigger and he’d lose his advantage over Olivia. He had to keep the girl alive for as long as possible, at least until the woman revealed what he needed to know.

  “Where is he?” Baskins asked her again.

  “Do you know where Katlyn County is?” Olivia asked.

  The sergeant didn’t answer. He knew, but he couldn’t hint what he did or didn’t know.

  “It’s in Arizona, a few miles from the Nevada border. Katlyn County Jail is where you last held Randall Samuel Morrow in custody. He later turned up at Worship Square, here in Temple City. You also had him in custody, but you all were too stupid to keep him from escaping. But that’s another story. Over at Katlyn County Jail, Warden Nathanael Edwin Davis had saved him from your doctors who had set up shop at the jail to conduct experiments with those unaffected by the conversions. Morrow was one of those unaffected. The saviors, as Warden Davis once called them.”

  Baskins slowly lowered his gun from Abigail’s head.

  “The Resistance knew of the experiments. We tried to stop them. With Warden Davis’ help, we were able to hide Morrow from your butchery until we knew what we were dealing with. Before we could get him out of there safely, one of the alien ships decided to convert the whole jail into what we now know as zombies. Why is that? Why would the aliens do that to an outpost dedicated to rid the world of people like Morrow?”

  “Leave us.” Baskins said to all the soldiers in the room. “C’mon, I said. Get out now. Close the door.”

  Abigail ran and embraced her mother, burying her head into the nape of Olivia’s neck. Once the door shut and Sergeant Baskins saw they were alone, he placed the gun on the table behind him and crouched in front of the woman with his hands leaning against his knees. He asked, “What else do you know about Katlyn County Jail?”

  The woman licked her lips but couldn’t swallow.

  Baskins reached behind him and unsnapped the canteen from his utility belt, untwisted the cap and eased water into Olivia’s mouth. Some of it dribbled from the corners, spilling the length of her neck to the collar of her top. She eased her head back, then edged forward. Baskins had quenched her thirst. He placed the cap on the canteen and twisted it shut and held it in his hand in case she needed more.

  “There was a sergeant in charge of the operation there. He allowed Warden Davis to hide Morrow for safekeeping until a later time when he would have the opportunity to return to the jail in order to rescue the boy from the clutches of the zombies. The sergeant became very good at hiding his true mission from his superiors, including the sadistic general who later would order the deaths of thousands by the sergeant’s hands. Only, what the sergeant didn’t know was the Resistance knew what he had done.”

  Holding on to her mother’s neck, Abigail eased from her to stare at the sergeant.

  Baskins smiled and rose to his feet. He opened the water can and took a swig, and asked, “How did you know it was me?”

  “I didn’t know until now. All the records were lost and the sergeant disappeared before the full conversion of the jail had taken place. We only knew he was helping us when Warden Davis had mentioned to Colonel Hendricks, our man on the inside, that he had secured lab test results with the sergeant’s initials stating they had yet to find anything. At the time, in order to have falsified the data successfully, he had Colonel Hendricks locked up for treason not realizing he was part of the Resistance. If it weren’t for the warden to help the colonel escape, Hendricks would have also become a zombie.”

  “We found Morrow had a rare gene mutation in his blood that prevented him to change into one of the undead. If I had allowed that information to get out, the aliens would have sent a hit squad to kill the boy. Instead, I attempted to suppress that inf
ormation for as long as I could.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “One of the doctors discovered the falsified documents and reported it to his superiors. Next thing I knew, an alien ship began converting the entire jail, including the doctors working on the project. That’s what I had assumed. I returned to Logan Airbase, but the news of my involvement had never arrived to paint me as a traitor.”

  “Why leave Morrow there? Why not hand him to the Resistance?”

  “Warden Davis guaranteed his safety. I trusted him. If I handed him to the Resistance, my friends in the army would have thought of me as a traitor and I would have lost my head.”

  Olivia eased into Abigail’s head for comfort from the pain on her face. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the warmth of her daughter’s skin on hers. Her daughter caressed her scarred face while Baskins watched them from a distance.

  At first, he had crossed his arms, but then he covered his eyes with his left hand while his arm rested on the other, which he still had crossed against his chest. He didn’t want them to see him during his time of reflection. Somehow, the affection they showed one another moistened his eyes. He felt he needed to say something. He removed his hand from his face, knelt on one knee before the woman and placed his hand on her lap. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. You have to believe me I had no choice. If I didn’t do it, someone else would have and we would have been dead. I’ve tried to keep you alive for as long as I could.”

  Abigail turned to him and asked with a weakness to her voice, “What will happen to us?”

  Banging on the basement door shook the sergeant to his feet. “What is it?”

  Private Witham entered the room, marched to the sergeant and gave him a message he’d received moments earlier. As the sergeant read it, Witham had his eyes on the woman in the girl’s arms. He noticed how the sergeant had allowed them to remain close to one another, not separating them. He thought it unusual, considering the sarg’s past with other prisoners at his hands.

  Having read the communication, Baskins ordered everyone into the trucks. General Grayson wanted to see him since he hadn’t provided a status that day. He had no plans of returning to the base empty-handed. At the same time, he couldn’t deliver Randy to the general either. His time had almost expired and he had nothing to show for his investigation. He had to come up with something, but he didn’t know what.

  He retrieved the gun from the table, slipped it into his belt buckle, untied Olivia and led her and Abigail through the doorway, to the top of the stairs and outside to his jeep. Then, he placed a call to the general explaining how he’d found a lead to Randy, and how his team was on their way to pursue it.

  Satisfied he was able to reassure the general, Sergeant Baskins placed Olivia and Abigail in his truck. He ordered everyone else to stay behind, to hide the trucks from view in case Randy came back to the building. He spoke with Witham giving him orders to check in with the general every twelve hours to ensure he keep him up-to-date. The sergeant said he would pursue a lead on his own given to him by the woman. If the lead proved false, the woman and the girl would not come back alive. That bit of information seemed to satisfy the private’s suspicions of the sergeant. Baskins was a good liar.

  Inside the vehicle, Baskins asked Olivia for help. He needed to know Randy’s general direction. He couldn’t ask her to tell him Randy’s location, but he could certainly ask for a general direction.

  Bound with a tie, Olivia couldn’t betray Randy’s location. Her mind wandered, looking out the jeep’s windshield to the empty buildings across the street where people once lived. She thought for a moment realizing she had to trust her instincts about Baskins. If his sincerity to help her and Abigail was genuine, then she had to believe him. The biggest mistake she could see was to tell him everything he wanted to know and finding out it was all an act.

  But she couldn’t risk not taking a chance. She nodded her head north.

  Chapter 19

  “What are you doin’ here?” Ranger asked as he stood over the alien.

  It sat in the corner of the bedroom on the second floor of McMally’s General Store with its big eyes peering out the window. The distraction by the afternoon’s glare shining through the glass kept it silent.

  “Are there others like you?”

  Again, no answer.

  Randy stepped forward, “Are you one of the ones responsible for the change?”

  It shifted on the floor, looked at Randy and blinked. It tilted its head and almost looked as if it had a partial smile.

  Ranger studied how the alien’s face had relaxed once it’d heard Randy speak for the first time. He said, “Say something else, Randy.”

  Randy faced Ranger, “What did you want me to say?”

  “Not to me, to it.”

  “All right,” Randy stepped back, and faced the alien. “Why are you here?”

  Again, its head hadn’t moved from its tilted position as it stared at Randy.

  “You recognize him, don’t you?” Ranger said to it.

  It raised its head upright and nodded.

  Matty and Jon looked at each other as if to ask, “Whoa, is this real?”

  “What are you?” Ranger edged closer not fearing an attack.

  Without prompting or poking, it spoke, “I am a friend.”

  The kids’ jaws almost unhinged from the bottom of their face. How could it speak? It spoke? How? What was it? Did it come from another planet? Did it understand the concept of family? Why did it attack earth? What are they?

  Had it never spoken, Ranger would have thought it was a stupid creature much like the undead, but it spoke and it said it was a friend. How could it understand what friendships were?

  “Say something else.” Matty said to it.

  “I am not like the others.”

  “Oh.” She rubbed her forehead and checked for a fever, “I need to rest. I think I’m hearing and seeing things.”

  Randy and Jon were standing next to each other, but soon they crawled on top of the bed and sat with their legs crossed. Matty joined them. The three kids had a glazed look on their face as if they had lost their puppy and didn’t know where to find it.

  “What do you mean you’re not like the others?” Ranger asked.

  “What is happening on earth is not what I agreed to do when I joined the mission.”

  “Mission?”

  “The renewal of your planet, of course.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The alien tossed the ties Ranger had made from the pillowcase on the floor and placed its hands on its lap. The kids on the bed slid the opposite side of the bed unsure of the alien’s intentions. It didn’t bother Ranger, though. He expected it.

  “Once every six thousand years, our ships travel here to your planet to bring about a renewal of your kind.”

  “You call what you’re doin’ a renewal? You’re annihilating us.” Ranger said.

  “I agree. The council decreed millions of years ago that it would utilize earth as the harvest center for our resource deficiency. It may seem humanity is dying, however you have to understand we do take precautions during the ingathering to ensure future propagation of your species.”

  Matty rose from the bed, then said, “I can’t take this anymore. I just can’t.”

  “Why is it so hard to believe?” Jon asked.

  “Am I the only one in this room who sees the weirdness in this whole thing? We’re talking to an alien. This should not be happening. Aliens don’t exist.”

  “But it’s fine that zombies exist?”

  “It’s not fine. That’s the point.” She pounded the wall with her fist. “What happened to Friday nights when mom would order pizza for everyone? We’d stuff our faces with food and wash it down with a gallon of pop. Do you remember? Then we’d play one of those long board games past midnight because we didn’t have to go to school the next day. What happened to Saturday afternoons when I could lock myself in my room and read? I wouldn�
�t come out until mom would call and ask if everything was all right with me ‘cause she hadn’t seen me all day. And what happened to walking home after school and stopping in at the burger joint at the corner of the street where all my friends and I would talk about guys who had the cutest smile and the most gorgeous hair.”

  “You were a groupie?” Randy asked.

  “No. I was ordinary, like everyone else.”

  “I find that hard to believe. You’re pretty extraordinary, if you ask me.”

  Matty rolled her eyes, then said, “Oh, boy.”

  The room had a moment where no one spoke. Perhaps what Matty said made sense, yet everyone’s mind wandered to the memories of when zombies and aliens did not rule the earth.

  Ranger remembered how he’d enjoy traveling from Las Vegas to Utah on a lonely strip of highway with nothing but desert and road on his mind. How he missed those days where he would stop at one of those small diners off the highway just as sunset hit so he could talk sports with the boys while waiting for a downhome country meal, too greasy for the average driver, but fuel for his soul.

  Jon’s head swam with images of those late October nights when everyone had gone to bed and he’d stay up until dawn watching classic horror movies. How much he loved grabbing a bag of chips from the cupboard to devour in its entirety by the time the movie was over.

  But as everyone indulged in their memories, Randy rose and left the room, leaned against the corridor wall and stared in the opposite direction. He had no memory of when he grew up, of what his parents were like or of the small things that made everyone smile when they recall the best day of their lives. No memories meant no experiences. Yet, it also meant no pain for past wrongs or slights. He stared without the waves of images that’d blanketed the minds of the others who were reliving their past.

  Matty joined Randy leaning against the wall, not saying a word but knowing how he struggled with his empty past.

  Inside the room, Ranger asked more questions to the entity with the four arms under Jon’s watchful eye. In his mind, other than how it looked, Ranger thought of the pale green alien as a source of information. For a while, he wanted to know as much as he could about the conversions, the renewal plans and about its attitude regarding humanity.