Enhanced

by Cosca, Paul

  Today is not one of the great days, Ronald tells me, but it’s good enough to sit for a bit and talk. He sits in a wheelchair near the largest window in the room. I pull up a chair to sit next to him. I do my best not to look at the bandages covering the spots where his hands once were.

  RONALD: They’re making a movie about us, you know. They told me about it maybe...six months ago. Maybe longer. I can’t quite recall. They asked if I’d like to be a part of it. Consulting. I was flattered, but I had to say no. I’m just too tired for all that. It was nice of them to ask me about it, though. Seems like they got all kinds of big movie stars in it. I feel sorry for the poor bastard who’s playing me.

  He laughs and winces a little as he shifts in his chair. He does his best to avoid

  touching anything against the bandages.

  I can’t imagine they’d use a real Enhanced fella for it anyway. I think the laws they got frown on all that. They’ll probably just use all those special effects. I’d hope so, anyway. I’d sure hate for someone to go through what I gone through just for some stupid movie.

  I’ve lost a lot of memories from back then. Had so many damn surgeries...I don’t know if that’s what done it, but I know I got a lot of things from the first half of my life that just ain’t there anymore. You know I don’t remember meeting my wife? I don’t want to sound all pathetic but...that’s tough. Not remembering something like that...that’s real tough. Linda’s told me over and over again all about it. So it’s almost like I remember it, but I know that’s not a real memory. I don’t remember anything about Fort Hood, either. If I did, I’d go track down the doctors that did this to me and kick their asses.

  He sighs and laughs a little, shaking his head.

  That ain’t the truth. Not really. They’d just be old geezers like me, if they’re even still around. I imagine most of ‘em are dead by now. Age is funny like that. Your friends, your enemies...you live long enough and you got nobody left to love or hate. But what are you supposed to do with all those emotions?

  I do remember the war, though. Most of it, anyway. That’s a cruel joke, taking away me meeting Linda but leaving me D-Day. Huh.

  Anyway, we were over in Scotland in training. Some of the training was regular Army stuff. The rest of it was figuring out how to use the powers we had. The Enhancements, though we didn’t call it that back then. I did everything I could to avoid doing that, since it hurt so bad. Hurt so goddamn bad I could barely stand it. But when you’re a soldier, you do what you’re told. That’s the job.

  The night before D-Day, they flew us up and over the coast. 100 of

  us went, hoping to cut off the Germans at their backs once the operation got going. It was real risky. If something went wrong, you could kiss any element of surprise goodbye. But we’d been trained as well as we could be.

  The weather was terrible. We had to fly a lot higher than what we’d practiced because of all the clouds. And, truth be told, none of us were paratroopers. We’d had a little practice in Scotland, but that’s it. Needless to say, we were all scared out of our goddamn minds.

  The men I trained with, my brothers, I watched as they stepped out of the plane and into the dark. I won’t lie, every fiber of my being was telling me not to do it. Not to jump. But when it came to my turn I did it too. Right into the open air. We only lost one man during the jump. I guess whatever good the virus gave him, it maybe made his blood thin. Poor kid passed out in the air. I didn’t hear it, but I saw it afterward. Kid left a hell of a dent.

  It took us a couple hours to all group up again. Ninety-nine brothers, all with a different talent. Or a different curse, depending on how you look at it. The Enhanced Special Operations Division 1. Makes me proud to think about it. Sad, too.

  We’d ended up about two miles inland of where we were supposed to be, so we had to march back into our drop zone. On the way there, we came on a cabin full of German soldiers. There were only twenty or so. But remember, the whole goal of what we were doing was about silence, and we had strict instructions on what to do if we came on someone like that.

  They had four guys outside. Keeler, he was a boy from Denver who’d ended up with some serious muscles, broke three of the soldiers before they could say anything. We grabbed up the fourth and pushed him inside the cabin.

  The rest of the boys were in there. And I say “boys” because I mean it. These weren’t men. They weren’t hardened soldiers or nothing. They were like us. Boys playing at war. Something had wound us all up like toys and now

  we were going.

  One of our guys...I can see his face but I just can’t remember his name, he was our translator. He barked something at ‘em. Told them to surrender, I guess. And I didn’t have to speak much German to know when someone tells you to shove it. The sentry we’d grabbed up got pushed to his knees, and then it was my turn. The goal...see the whole idea is that you make ‘em surrender. You take the fewest risks when you don’t have to fire any bullets. So if one of those boys had to be sacrificed, you end up saving a lot more people. We made them realize they were dealing with something way out of their league.

  I put my hands on that boy. Closed my eyes and focused, and I could feel the engines revvin’ up. Like a vibration. That’s not quite right, but it’s the best way I ever had to describe it. I could feel the heat rising, working its way to my hands. My hands...

  For the first time since we’ve talked, he looks down at the bandages.

  I could feel the heat coming. The Nazi boy could feel it too. He was speaking. Begging, I think. Everything was getting hotter. Temperature was rising faster. He started to scream, and I wanted to scream right along with him, but I just gritted my teeth and kept at it. I held my breath and gave one more...push. And then I could feel the flames. His face was on fire, and it had spread down to his uniform by the time I walked out the door to the cabin. I could hear our translator barking orders. Could hear all the Nazi guns hitting the floor as those boys all gave up.

  My hands were throbbing. They always did after doing that. I got asked back then, by media people, “Does it hurt?” And when you’re a soldier you just smile and say “No sir,” or “No ma’am”. But it hurt. Hurt every goddamn time I ever did it. And it got to the point where it never stopped hurting. But that was the price I paid. Penance, you know? I went over there and killed people. I figure the pain I ended up with was like saying Hail

  Mary’s every day.

  They tied up the Nazi boys. Gagged ‘em. Took the guns and ammo and told ‘em we’d be back for them later. As we all walked away, someone joked about burning the cabin down. People laughed. I just felt sick.

  By dawn was were in position. We couldn’t see the channel from there, too many trees in the way, but we could see our target. We waited for the sounds of gunfire, then made our way into the forests. Everyone had a job to do. Keeler and I worked together. I’d set one of the trees on fire and he’d push it over. Soon the whole forest was on fire, and so were the Nazis trying to hide in it. I don’t know exactly how effective it was, but I bet you anything we saved some lives that day. Some American lives, anyway. Softened up the Germans so our boys could get a foothold on the beach. We spent the rest of the day mopping up whatever messes we found. Taking out little bands of soldiers that had quit their posts, trying to escape the way they came, and intercepting reinforcements trying to get to the beach.

  Our division carried on through the war, marching all the way to Hitler’s doorstep. And we kept using those same tactics. It was terror. You know, when they tried to blow up the World Trade Center in ‘93, they called it terrorism. And I hadn’t ever heard it put like that before, but that’s what we did. Our goal was to scare people. We were terrorists. I watched Keeler squeeze a kid’s head till it broke like a melon. I set my hands on many men and felt the heat as they went up. I don’t know if I regret all the things I did over there...because what we ended up doing was bringing down a government that killed millions and millions of people. But I’m not too
proud of what I did either. I hope they don’t show all that when they make that movie.

  We were heroes though. They had us in the newsreels. Had a guy in from Hollywood who turned one of our medics into a goddamn superhero. Dressed him up all fancy and gave him a new name. Major Freeman. Shit, he

  wasn’t more than a private. But you could cut that kid and he’d heal up in seconds like nothin’ happened. Made for some pretty good footage for back home, I guess. Sold war bonds.

  Back then we were all heroes. Or more than that. We were gods. Coming back home, we were completely different than everyone around us. They loved us, but they were also scared of us. And though I tried real hard not to show it, I was scared too.

  March 14th, 1997

  Roswell, New Mexico is the county seat of Chaves county, home to the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, and it has an Army airfield nearby. It’s also the site of one of the world’s most famous UFO events besides The Invasion. The town has become a tourist destination ever since for those interested in our neighbors in the cosmos.

  I’m meeting my interview subject in a small diner called Little Green Men, which appears to have been built out of an extra-large, shiny Winnebago. The restaurant is appropriately alien-themed, with extraterrestrial merchandise available for purchase, and a large green alien (the owner calls it “taxidermy”) mounted behind the counter. My interview subject, Allen Dudyk, is also dressed in an alien theme. His ball cap and t-shirt both advertise “Beyond the Stars Alien Tours”. Our time is short because he has another tour coming up.

  ALAN: Hey, man. Do you have a photographer with you?

  I let him know I do not.

  Awww, shoot man. I was really hoping...well, that’s okay. I mean, it would have been nice to have some pictures in the book you’re doing. You know, of me in the hat and stuff. Good advertisement, you know? But I’ll tell you what, I’ll just leave you my email address and send you some pictures later.

  I tell him that will be fine, though I don’t have any inclination to put pictures in the book.

  Now, I was born and raised right here in Roswell. That’s what sets me apart from these other wahoos who come here and hock their merch and try to give tours like they know what they’re doing. You know where they have to go when they do one of those tours? Right past my house, man! So I just put up signs saying that if they wanted a real tour from a real Roswellian, they know who to call. I give the only tour lead by someone who was there, man. I saw it. So...you’re definitely going with the right guy on this.

  Have you been out there? To the crash site? You can find a sign for it out on Main. You gotta go, man. Something happened out there. Something real. Something...big. You can feel it in your bones. That spot...there’s a lot of people who get really strange feelings in that spot. You can almost feel some kind of connection to a whole different part of the universe. It’s a spiritual experience. It’s heavy. I go out there all the time with tours...it’s intense.

  So, the story. Um…On June 14th, 1947, I was a thirteen-year-old boy living here in Roswell with my folks and my little sister. I was thirteen, it was Saturday night, and I would have given anything to be out of the house and doing something more interesting. Roswell’s not the most exciting of places. Or at least it wasn’t back then. But that night, the whole world got a little more interesting.

  I had just got done listening to my favorite show on the radio: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. And this is always the point in the story where one of the kids on the tour says “Shows on the radio? What about TV?” And I get to tell ‘em we didn’t even have TV back then! And their eyes get all big and the parents laugh. That’s the kind of thing that gets tips at the end of the day, man.

  It was just after 9pm, and Buck Rogers ended, so I ran out of things to do. I left the house and walked down the driveway to play in the yard. The sun was down, but there was just a little bit of light left. One of those long, long summer nights, ya know? A night where that summer sun will do anything to stay alive just a minute longer. And then, I felt it. At first I thought I’d heard it, but it was more than that. I got the sensation of being pushed and pulled at the same time. My skin felt too tight and I thought my heart was going to burst right out of my chest. It was like an explosion, but that wasn’t it. I heard a sound, but I really think that was just my eardrums vibrating. And then there was fire in the sky. A big streak of fire going right over my head. The sun caught it and I saw that it was metal, and coming

  down fast. It crashed in a field only a mile away from my house.

  That’s the story. The one I tell the tourists. The Army went out and collected the wreckage. They even called it a “flying disk” at the first news conference about it. Of course, they later went on and called it a “weather balloon”, and that’s been the official line ever since. Weather balloon. Man, if that was a weather balloon, then my face is a baboon’s ass. But who am I? I was just a kid. What do I know, right?

  He looks around, checking to see if anyone’s listening. A bit of the showman quality to his voice drops away.

  I know what I saw. And I’ve got suspicions on how it happened, too. I can’t say for sure, but...see, there was this family that lived across from us. We lived in a pretty sparse area, no houses on either side. But we had that one neighbor across the way. They had a tiny little house on a couple acres. There was a horse out back and a little garden. It wasn’t meant to be a farm or anything. Just a place where a family could get away. The man was a soldier. I only knew that because he was gone for part of the war. My mom met his wife a couple of times. I think she was pretty scared being left alone like that.

  When he came back from the war, that was the first time I’d seen him. One of his arms was gone, all the way to the shoulder, which must have been why he came home early. He seemed...well, I don’t know. I didn’t meet him a lot or anything, but he seemed like a real angry guy. He always had a mean look. And he was super loud.

  My dad never said anything to me about it, but I heard him tell my mom that the guy was a drunk. I didn’t really know what to make of that. I’d seen my folks drink a beer with dinner, but I’d never met a drunk. I’d heard the man, though. Late at night you could hear him yelling. You could hear doors slamming. It was the country, you know. Sound really carries.

  They had a baby soon after he got back. My mom said they had a little boy. And for a while, the yelling stopped and everything seemed to be

  going real well. Then the crying started.

  My mom called it colic. I didn’t know what it was, I just knew it meant the baby cried all the time. During the day. During the night. I’d lay awake at night and hear that poor kid crying. Then the shouting started again. The man was mad. Mad at his wife and kid, maybe. Or maybe just mad at how his life had turned out.

  On the week of the 14th, on the days leading up to it, the crying was louder than ever. The kid must have been around two at that point. Maybe he was teething? I don’t know. But man, he had a set of pipes. And as he got louder and louder, strange stuff started to happen. A couple days before the crash, one of our windows busted out. There wasn’t any wind, and it’s not like someone threw a rock at it. It just burst. My dad went out to check it and found that all the windows on the house across the way were busted out too.

  The next night the kid was at it again, and I was outside. I wasn’t really out there to play. I was out there because...I got a feeling I should be. I don’t know if that sounds stupid. But there was something happening over there in that house, and I felt like I had to watch. The kid screamed. The man screamed right back. And as the screams got louder, I watched as the truck in their driveway, with nobody touching it, started to tilt on its side. It slowly went up on two wheels, then tipped over with a crash. I ran back inside because I didn’t want to get blamed for it. I didn’t tell anybody because...who’s going to believe it? I didn’t even believe it. But when you’re that young, with a wild imagination, you can see things that don’t make sense and just fil
e it away. So that’s what lead up to the crash.

  The next part happened pretty much the way I tell it to the tourists. Standing outside, watching the last bits of sunlight creep away. Then the noise. The fire. And the thing I don’t say is that I was watching. I mean really watching. When I got that strange feeling, it drew my eyes up to the spot where it happened. One second, the sky was completely empty. The next

  where it happened. One second, the sky was completely empty. The next second, the sky was filled with fire. It didn’t come from anyplace. It hadn’t fallen from somewhere higher. It just was. I didn’t tell anybody that part because, even though I know I saw it, part of my brain just rejected that it ever could have happened. I forgot about that part completely because it was so unbelievable. Then, thirty years later when I heard about The Invasion, it all came back. When I heard about what happened...heard the stories of the people who’d been there...I just cried. Man, I broke down and bawled. For thirty years I had no way to explain what I’d seen. After that, thousands of people saw that same thing. Changed my whole life.

  He leans back, taking a sip of the now-cold coffee that sits in front of him.

  There’s one more part...and I should probably include this in some of the tours. But I don’t know if they’d want to hear this part. Maybe it’s a little too intense.

  To be honest, I’m surprised I’ve never been asked about it. But after the fire went over and I heard the crash, I did what any thirteen-year-old boy would do: I hopped on my bike to check it out. That’s not something every adult might do...but kids don’t know about curiosity and cats, ya know? When you’re thirteen, you just go for it. No second thoughts.

  There was still smoke coming off it, so it was easy to spot. I got off the bike and walked up real slowly to it. It was buried pretty deep into the dirt; maybe half of it was sticking out. It was a little smaller than a small car. Smooth all around, but came to a rounded edge. It had a disk kind of shape, but not quite. The shape of the UFO gags you see everywhere come pretty close, but there’s still something different I could never put my finger on. It had a crack running through it, broken in the impact, I guess. I put my hand on the surface...I was expecting it to be hot but it was super cold. Cold like it had been in a freezer.