“How long have you been watching us?” I ask, not expecting a reply.
“Long enough.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding and putting on a fake smile. “So not that long at all.”
It’s bluff, counter-bluff, and counter-counter-bluff.
As they’ve confused me for one of the aliens, I doubt they’ve been watching Sharon and Mark for more than a week. Perhaps they had an inkling. Perhaps someone slowly pieced together the clues, but they’ve only just begun any real surveillance, of that I’m sure, or they wouldn’t have been fooled by me. I wonder if the shooting was a snatch-and-grab gone wrong. I guess they didn’t expect Mark to be packing heat. Once one bullet was fired, everyone got jumpy. That’s what happens when you go in with your finger on the trigger.
“You’re spies,” he says, trying to justify his position. “Initially, we thought you were working for the Russians.”
Well, that explains why they were so heavy handed and clumsy with Mark.
“We’re tourists,” I say, trying to hose down any notion of hostility and wanting to represent Sharon as best I can in a non-threatening manner.
“So you just came here for the sights?”
“Yep,” I reply. “You’d be surprised how popular the Statue of Liberty is in Andromeda.”
I did it. I remembered a star. Well, I remembered around four hundred billion stars, as in retrospect, I’m pretty sure Andromeda is an entire galaxy like the Milky Way. I wonder if aliens take offense to us naming our particular galaxy after the secretions of mammals?
“Who the hell are you?” he asks.
“Who are you?” I ask in return. I don’t have any answers other than those I’m making up on the spot, so I turn the question back on him to get some breathing space.
The officer is silent, so I clarify, “I don’t mean personally. I’m not asking for your name. I’d like to know who you represent.”
“DARPA,” he says. "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
“Oh,” I say. That explains a lot, but I don’t tell him that.
“We’re going to leave you in here for the night,” the officer says, apparently not wanting to answer any more of my questions. “There’s a toilet in the corner. I’ll have a guard posted outside—for your protection.”
“For my protection? Oh, that’s sweet, but you really don’t have to.”
“I insist,” he says with a smile.
They’re leaving me in here alone? Are they nuts? Hell, if I was one of these guards, I wouldn’t so much as blink, let alone take my eyes off ET. Haven’t these guys seen The Thing or Alien? You never leave a xenomorph alone. Never. Bad things happen. I could be an alien shapeshifter. I’m not, but they don’t know that. They could walk back in here in the morning and I could have transformed into a coat rack, or a suitcase, hiding in plain sight. Now, that would be cool.
I’m left wondering about the scope of this covert action. It reaches the President. That’s impressive. But it’s an absurdly small team. I make four of them—the three in here and whoever told the guard about the delay. Maybe there are more soldiers in the other hut, but I doubt it if there’s only going to be a single guard outside. Perhaps they’ve got reinforcements ‘en route,’ as the military is so fond of saying. More than likely, they’re trying to balance numbers against the threat of exposure. Loose lips sink planets.
If these guys are from DARPA, there’s a good chance no one else knows about this. That would explain the absence of the broader military muscle. For some reason, Sharon and Mark appeared on DARPA’s radar, probably quite literally, and even though it’s a fringe possibility, DARPA took the idea of First Contact seriously and investigated. Perhaps they took it a little too seriously. Initially, they thought they’d stumbled across a Russian spy ring, but at some point they realized Sharon comes from slightly further afield, and they nabbed me by accident.
The unnamed officer reaches out and unstraps my left arm as the two guards keep their guns trained on me. I’m not sure what type of firearms they’re carrying. Like the soldiers’ clothing, the guns are black. They’re not handguns, but they’re not rifles either. They’re something in between, being stub nosed with a long magazine poking out from beneath the block of the gun. Lots of bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.
“Do I get to keep the banana?”
“Hah, not likely,” the officer says, tossing the banana back in his black duffle bag.
I was going to eat it.
“How about something to drink, at least?” I’m not thirsty. I’m looking for concessions of any kind, anything to soften my captor’s attitude. Somewhat reluctantly, he retrieves a plastic water bottle and tosses it on the bed. It’s half empty and could have been bought from the nearest gas station.
“And it’s Nathaniel,” he says. “My name. It’s Nathaniel Jacob Lill.”
“Not so nice to meet you, Nathaniel,” I reply.
“Sweet dreams,” he says, grabbing his bag. The three men back out of the room, being sure not to turn their backs on me. I catch a glimpse of a red taillight glowing through the falling snow behind them as someone touches the brakes on what appears to be a truck or a Humvee. The truck is easily fifty yards from the room. An outer cordon? Maybe that’s it. Maybe they’ve got layers around me, and these three are the close-contact team.
I work with my left hand to unstrap my right arm, but the leather is stiff. It would have been nice if they’d freed both hands, but I’m happy with a little paranoia on their part. They’re treating me with the respect you’d afford a Great White shark.
Once my other arm is free, I grab my jacket and walk around the tiny one-room cabin trying to get warm. What a dump. This place must have been built decades ago. It’s a hunting lodge of some kind, although lodge is too generous a term, and with only a single bed, it’s not exactly hunting party friendly.
There’s a portable toilet in one corner, but the bluish water in the bowl is frozen solid. No cameras or hidden mics, but that makes sense given the comments about Sharon and Mark manipulating Earth technology. The soldiers must have felt naked without a radio piece in their ears, although I did notice a pair of night vision goggles in the black duffle bag.
I peer between the slats of wood nailed over the lone window. As I suspected, there’s another hut next to this one. A soft yellow glow flickers from the far window, marking a gas lantern. Action Man wasn’t kidding about low-tech and not taking any chances.
My feet are freezing. I’m wearing boots, but it’s as cold as a meat locker inside this cabin.
I walk quietly to the door. There’s a peephole with a small bead of glass affording a fisheye view of the snowstorm outside. It’s getting dark, but there’s a lone streetlight on the far side of what looks like an empty parking lot buried in snow. I can make out the boots of one of the soldiers standing beside the door.
I try the door handle. It turns, but the door is locked. The lock is old, with a large keyhole accessible from both sides. I haven’t seen a lock like this outside of a B-grade 1950’s movie.
I grab the blanket from the bed, wrapping it around my shoulders and trying to stay warm. I might as well wrap a sheet of ice around myself for all the good it does.
“Think. Think. Think,” I mutter to myself. “What would Sharon do?”
Aside from strip down and lather herself with soapy water, I’m not sure.
“Be serious,” I scold myself, pushing my mind to notice the details around me. Sharon would use the everyday, ordinary things in here to escape, but how?
The mattress is covered with a white fitted sheet. I peel the sheet back and find a a white plastic cover beneath that. The mattress itself has started to rot with age, tearing easily beneath my fingers. Great.
I turn on the tap over the sink, but nothing comes out. The water has been disconnected, probably to stop the pipes from freezing and bursting. Huh—who would have thought something as sloppy and squishy as a water could split open steel pipes?
> There’s a medicine cabinet behind the mirror above the sink. I open it. Inside, there’s a jar of vaseline and an unopened condom.
“If only Sharon were here,” I sigh, joking with myself. Picking up the condom, I mumble, “What would Sharon do?”
Chapter 05: Dreams are free
I’m not sure how long I spend pacing back and forth huddled under the blanket, but it’s so stupidly cold I have to keep moving to stay warm. I establish a pattern, walking around the edge of the room, stopping briefly to glance through the fisheye peephole, and then over to the crack in the wood barring the window.
What the hell am I going to tell the President?
I’ve got to get out of here. Sooner or later they’re going to figure out I’m as human as the rest of them, and then what? I’d rather not wait to find out. But how can I escape?
Every hour, the guard changes, disappearing into the other hut before swapping. At a guess, they’re staying out there as long as they can stand the cold, and then switching to get warm again, but that gives me an opening to escape. If I can get the door open, I could make a run for it in the minute or so between guard postings.
But run where?
One step at a time, Joe. Just get outside the hut.
What would Sharon do? She’d use whatever she has around her to her advantage. Okay, so I’ve got a condom and some lube. Condom and lube. Condom and lube. At times like these, I have to treat my mind like a dog. Mind, stay. Don’t go there. No. Stay. Staaaay. Be serious. Condom. Lube. How can anyone be serious with a condom and some lube?
I toss the lube slightly in the air, feeling the weight of the jar as I catch it. I’m racking my brains for a way to escape. And as for the condom. It’s laughable. This is as crazy as rubbing Sharon down with soapy water.
Damn, it’s cold.
Think. Think. Think.
Condom. Lube. Cold. Soapy water.
Lube won’t freeze. Water will, but lube won’t. How can I use that to my advantage? I vaguely remember something about water expanding as it freezes from my high school physics class, or was it chemistry? When water freezes, it expands, exerting thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch. An idea forms in my mind.
I tear open the foil packet and unravel the condom. Rolling the end of the condom over the opening of the bottle and fill it with water. What seemed like a simple idea is actually quite difficult. There’s no pressure, so the water doesn’t inflate the condom. I’ve got to stretch it and then pinch off the condom as though it were a water balloon. I tie off the end of the condom, but I can’t help spilling water over my numb fingers. The lid on the lube is stiff and unyielding, which in any other context I’d find humorous, but my fingers are so cold they hurt.
The guard is outside. I take pains to be quiet, not wanting to attract his attention.
After rubbing lube over the condom, I work it inside the antique lock, being careful not to pinch the rubber and cause a leak. It takes a couple of minutes to squeeze the condom inside the door lock, being careful to avoid puncturing the thin latex. Patience, Joe. Slow and easy. The lubricant makes my hands greasy, but eventually the condom slips completely inside the door.
I wipe my hands clean on the white bed sheet.
White sheet.
Once I get outside that door, DARPA is going to close in on me pretty darn quick, especially as they’ve got night vision goggles. I’m going to light up like a Christmas tree in the infrared spectrum. Maybe. Just maybe I could use the mattress for cover. It’s thick which should absorb any body heat I’m giving off. Hopefully the plastic cover will reflect any infrared radiation making it through the mattress, plus the white is going to be practically invisible against the snow.
I like it.
Sharon would be proud.
I pull the mattress off the bed and stand it beside the door. The mattress material tears easily, allowing me to reach inside and hold onto the inner springs, using them as both carry holds and as insulated gloves. This is going to look insane, like something out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, but it just might work.
In the silence, I hear a soft crack from the door.
I peer through the peephole. The guard is still outside, but he hasn’t heard the crack within the lock.
I pull gently on the door, testing my condom-lock-destroying idea.
Still locked.
Damn.
Wait a minute.
Locked or stuck?
There’s a difference.
With a little pressure, I can feel the door moving slightly.
There’s a silver-plated ashtray with a thin, beveled edge on a ledge over by the toilet. I tip out a bunch of cigarette butts and use the ashtray to pry softly at the lock, slipping it between the door and the jamb. My fingers are so damn cold I can barely feel them, but I can just make out the bolt jiggling in response to my touch. It’s loose, it just needs to be pushed back inside the lock. But the lock is full of ice.
Grrrrrrr.
Okay. Think. Think. Think.
I need to melt the ice. I need warm water. Where can I get warm water from in the middle of winter? To be effective, I need water that’s at least a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, if not more.
Oh, no.
No.
Really?
Come on, Joe. Any shred of dignity you had departed when you started dating an alien. Actually, I haven’t been on a date with Sharon. I wonder what she likes to do in her spare time? Pool in the asteroid belt? Ice skating on Enceladus?
I know what needs to be done. I unzip my fly and let nature take its course, urinating into the lock. Oh, cold hands. Cold hands. Freezing cold hands.
Gross.
So gross.
But steam rises. It’s working.
A quick peek through the peephole in the door, and I catch a shadow moving as the guard walks back to the other hut to get warm and swap duty.
It’s now or never.
With the edge of the ashtray, I dig into the doorjamb, flicking the bolt to one side, pushing it into the slush and mush inside the lock. There’s a soft click and the door eases toward me.
Yes.
There’s time for a quick fist pump to celebrate, and then I grab the mattress, holding it awkwardly under one arm as I clamber out the door. I rest the mattress against the outside wall and pull the door shut. Snow swirls around me like embers from a dying fire. The door won’t close all the way, but the gap is tiny. This is going to work.
Crap. There he is.
The replacement guard walks toward me through the blizzard. I can just make out his black uniform through the heavy snow.
Damn it. No.
I’m busted before I made it ten feet.
No, no, no.
I can’t run.
There’s no time.
Any sudden movement and he’ll see me.
As silly as it sounds, I grab the mattress, holding it vertically and turning the side with the white fitted sheet so it faces the oncoming guard—it’s all I can do.
Standing behind the mattress, I cringe, waiting for the soldier to come barreling into me and crash tackle me to the snow. I half expect to see bullets tearing through the flimsy material on either side of me.
After roughly thirty seconds, I realize he can’t see me.
This is crazy. I’m no more than five feet from him on the far side of the door, and I’m wearing a goddamn mattress.
Slowly, I creep away. I have my hands low, grabbing at the exposed inner springs and allowing the mattress to lean on my back as I inch across the pristine white snow. I want to run. I feel stupid. I feel as though the soldier is about to stick his head around the side of the mattress and ask me just what the hell I’m doing? I already have a big cheesy grin on my face in preparation for my mea culpa. My shoulders hunch in anticipation of being caught, but somehow I sneak further and further along the side of the hut without him noticing.
The wind picks up. The mattress is like a sail and flexes with the wind, threatening to to
pple backwards with me on top of it. Well, that will look just dandy. Alien drops out of nowhere onto a mattress in the snow. Film at eleven.
I hunch forward, fighting against the snow flurries swirling around me, desperate to escape.
Once I clear the corner of the hut, I shuffle sideways, hopefully disappearing from his line of sight. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s simply humoring me, walking along quietly behind me and watching with stunned curiosity, just waiting to say, “Boo!”
Peering out from behind the mattress, I’m genuinely surprised there’s no one there. Damn, that actually worked.
Okay, time to put some serious distance between me and DARPA.
I hunch over with the mattress leaning against my back and start jogging through the knee deep powdery snow, moving off between the trees.
I’m not lost. I know precisely where I am and where I’m going. I’m between two trees over here, and I’m heading over there, between another two trees. I’m horribly lost. I could be wandering toward the edge of a cliff and not know it in the dark.
A gentle lope has me covering a hundred yards in roughly ten minutes. Still, no one’s raised the alarm. I don’t think the boys from DARPA have cottoned on just yet, which is good. Could anything prepare them for the wiles of an alien on the run, hiding behind a mattress? I can’t help but laugh at myself. Spielberg’s ET never had it so good.
I’m tempted to junk the mattress so I can move quicker, but I don’t for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a dead easy clue to stumble across, giving away my direction of travel. At night, with the blizzard in full swing and snow drifts forming against the trees, my trail won’t last long, so I don’t want to leave any obvious clues. Already, a dusting of snow is covering my tracks.
The other reason to keep the mattress is it should shield me from anyone that gets too close with night vision goggles, and to hide me from helicopters using FLIR. I’ve seen the TV show Cops. I know how this shit works. And besides, the mattress could come in handy as a shelter if I find some rocks and can get out of the wind. I must look silly as hell hiking through the snow with a mattress leaning across my back. The Sherpas of Nepal have nothing on me. For now, it’s all about distance.
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