by Mikayla Lane
“Hey! The guy in the ship is sending us the information on the military people coming,” Mojo interrupted. “Some guy named Major Kyle Morris heads up the unit that hunts our people.”
Mojo turned his laptop around so that everyone could get a good look at their enemy. Dennis let a growl rumble through his chest as Bess walked over to get a better look. Her eyes scanned the picture, and she smiled broadly.
“Oh I think we’re going to do OK with this one,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
“What are you getting, Bess?” Buford asked his sister.
“I don’t think this one is what he pretends to be at all. But I won’t know more until he arrives. Remain vigilant!” Bess warned them all.
“Mary says we’re ready in the hollers,” Buford relayed the message from his wife to the others.
“Town is ready,” Dennis added.
“I think we’re ready here too,” BJ said.
Mojo laughed out loud and turned to the others.
“We’re ready on the video. They did a great job on this; I got to see their set up,” he admitted, a little awestruck of what Fiorn had been able to accomplish in such a short time.
“Is it believable?” BJ asked, peeking over his shoulder to look at what was on his screen.
“If I hadn’t seen the original, I’d be convinced,” he told her.
“Good enough for me,” BJ said with a relieved sigh.
Her nerves were wound tight, and she struggled not to pace the room in order to expend some of the expectant energy and adrenaline coursing through her. She knew she shouldn’t be so nervous; she’d seen how it would go, and there wasn’t anything to worry about. At least not that day.
As long as nothing changes dramatically, it will all go as planned, BJ tried to convince herself.
She knew that the one thing that could screw up a vision was free will. All it would take is for one player in the game to do something different than she’d seen in order to mess up the entire outcome.
“Stop worrying,” Bess warned then clapped her hands together.
“Everyone get ready. They’re driving into town now,” Bess told everyone and smiled as the excitement level increased around her.
BJ took one more look around her station and sighed at what they’d done to it. It no longer resembled the organized, clean, and competent station it had been only hours before.
It’ll all be fixed when this is over, she told herself, wondering why it would matter if she wasn’t going to be there to run it.
Her heart stuttered with a momentary sense of loss before she heard tires braking dramatically and doors slamming outside.
“Showtime!” Dennis whispered through the shengari’.
*****
Major Kyle Morris looked around the area with a sense of disgust and disbelief as he got out of the unmarked black SUV in front of what appeared to be the police station.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Kyle asked the driver, Captain Greg Stillman.
“Sir, this is where the coordinates led us. Sign says Baker’s Creek Police Department, so this has to be it,” Greg replied.
“What the hell would they be doing out this way?” Kyle muttered.
He also couldn’t help but wonder how anyone from a place like this could catch not one—but two—of the dangerous aliens he’d been hunting.
Although barely seven a.m., the humidity was already becoming uncomfortable, and the small-but-neat block-long town was already coming alive. Unwilling to spend any more time in Baker’s Creek than necessary, Kyle turned to his men.
“Surround the building and get ready to transfer the prisoners,” he called out.
Kyle watched his men do as ordered then strode confidently into the police station and stopped dead in his tracks.
Irwin gasped and clutched his chest dramatically as Major Morris came in the door followed by Greg and another four soldiers.
“Oh, the Lord Jesus does perform miracles,” Irwin whispered as he dramatically sashayed over to Kyle and held out a limp-wristed hand.
“I’m Mayor Irwin Jenkins,” Irwin said as he fluttered his eyelashes at Kyle.
Kyle looked at Irwin’s hand in disgust and took a few steps back from him as he surveyed the unbelievable scene he’d walked into.
“Where the hell are my prisoners?” Kyle yelled out in order to wake up the handful people sleeping all over the room.
BJ jerked herself out of her pretend sleep and stood abruptly, knocking her chair over behind her as she wiped haphazardly at her face.
“Who be you?” she demanded as she pulled up her gun belt and looked Kyle up and down.
“I’m Major Kyle Morris! I sent the request for hold on your prisoners. Where is the police chief, and where are my prisoners?” Kyle demanded as he gestured for his team to search the empty cells he could see in the other room.
BJ smiled wide to show the two side teeth she’d blacked out with the black wax.
“Well, I’m acting police chief BJ Markson,” she said with a smile as she looked him up and down in pretend interest.
“He sure is a purty man, ain’t he?” Irwin said from right next to Kyle, causing him to move away from the man again.
“There’s no one here, sir!” Greg called out, looking around the office in confusion.
“Where are my prisoners?” Kyle yelled out angrily.
“Well now, sir, there ain’t no call to be so rude,” Dennis interrupted as he moved to stand near BJ and crossed his arms over his large chest.
“We weren’t no match for those butterfly people BJ done found out there in the hollers last night! No, sir! Those butterfly people, they be slippery creatures,” Mojo told them with a wide-eyed stare that made him look even more odd with his fluffed and twisted hair and a few blacked-out teeth.
“They escaped?” Kyle yelled out. “When?”
BJ scratched at her head, pulling one of her pig tails even more askew.
“Well, now . . . it was after Momma had come to feed them. But before you got here,” she said, acting confused.
Irwin fairly danced across the floor and gently touched Kyle’s hand before the major jerked it away from him and stepped away again.
“I saw one of them run out of the door, but Buford said he saw them fly away. That means they ain’t haints, they be the flying humanoids. You done seen that show on them around these parts ain’t ya? It was on TV and all! Don’t you worry none. I’ll protect you,” Irwin said as he winked at Kyle.
Kyle couldn’t stop the shudder that ran down his spine at the man, and he moved closer to Greg, feeling better with more distance between him and the mayor.
“They weren’t haints or the flying humanoids,” Mojo argued, slapping his hands on the desk. “It was the butterfly people. Ain’t you heard about them helping out all those people when that there tornado hit in Joplin? Ain’t no other way they could have gotten the slip on us.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kyle screamed out as the crazy locals began arguing over things he didn’t understand.
Bess smiled gently and was suddenly beside Kyle and gently holding his hand.
“You should calm yourself; stress kills. I believe what they are telling you is that your prisoners escaped,” she said calmly.
“When did they escape?” Kyle ground out as he yanked his hand away from Bess.
“It was still dark! Haints don’t come out in the day!” Dennis called out.
“It wasn’t haints! It was the humanoids!” Irwin shot back, clenching his fists at Dennis.
“Butterfly people,” Mojo added limply, as if uncaring but convinced he was right.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” Kyle asked as he rubbed a hand down his face.
Kyle turned to his men.
“Get out there and comb the damn town. Look for anything that may help us figure out who was here and where they went,” he ordered.
When Greg moved to leave as well, Kyle stopped
him.
“Get a team in here. I want them to go through everything in this damn place and find out what the hell happened!”
“Now, sir,” BJ said with a cluck of her tongue. “We done been trying to tell ya what happened, but you just ain’t be listening.”
“I got some homemade tincture that will clean your ears right out! Want to come to my home, and I’ll show you how to use it?” Irwin asked as he sidled up to Kyle, fluttered his eyelashes, and rubbed against Kyle’s arm.
Kyle jumped back from the amorous mayor and held his hand up in front of him.
“Get the hell away from me!” Kyle snapped, completely caught off guard by what he had walked into.
If this is a damn joke, I’m not fucking amused, Kyle thought as he backed out of the door.
He stood near the SUV and took a deep breath to try and sift through what had happened.
“Sir, where do you want us to set up command?” Greg asked, already knowing the answer.
Kyle pointed at the police station and watched with a smirk of satisfaction as his teams headed into the building to take it over. He couldn’t be more thrilled to keep the mayor away from him while he figured out if he had wasted his time even coming to Missouri.
Something isn’t right here, Kyle thought as he looked down the street.
Baker’s Creek looked almost exactly like a movie set for one of those old mountain type inbred movies that sent shudders down the spines of every man who’d ever heard of the stories or seen the graphic movies. Women and children wearing worn, soiled, and ill-fitting clothes openly stared at him and his men. A group of men was hanging out in front of a white clapboard building proclaiming itself to be the “Diner.”
Kyle narrowed his eyes and looked over at Greg.
“Follow me,” he said before he stormed off down the street towards the men.
He was halfway to the group of men when he was hit with a smell so pungent and so sharp he nearly stumbled back from it. Greg continued forward only a few steps beyond Kyle when he stopped and gagged.
“What the hell is that?” Greg choked out as he covered his mouth and nose.
“Ain’t you know how to scare the haints and humanoids?” a little boy with half a mouth of missing teeth giggled as he ran past them and hid behind the group of men staring at them oddly.
“Aw now, don’t you let a little varmint sex oils scare ya off! It’ll keep them haints from carrying off wit’ ya next!” one of the men called out.
Kyle was speechless as his mind tried to figure out if he was the butt of some elaborate joke. Unwilling to be drawn into whatever was going on, Kyle held his breath and moved through the crowd until he got into the diner. Greg quickly followed and shut the door behind him.
Both men breathed a sigh of relief when they realized the diner wasn’t engulfed in the foul smell from outside.
They must have been wearing that shit, Kyle realized with a shudder of revulsion.
“Would ya like some coffee? Breakfast?”
Kyle just stared at the small, thin, and completely toothless old woman holding up the dirtiest coffee pot he’d ever seen as she proudly displayed her gums with a broad smile. He could see at least one set of the woman’s false teeth in her shirt pocket.
“What the fuck?” Greg whispered, standing close to the major as he looked at the motley group of people occupying the small diner.
Kyle didn’t think he’d be able to count more than 30 teeth in the whole room of 15 people, and he shook his head.
Every damn stereotype about these people is the absolute truth, he thought with disgust. Stupid, inbred, toothless mother fuckers still might be able to give me information.
“No, thank you,” Kyle said to the waiting woman, trying not to flinch in revulsion as she smiled wider and turned away.
“I was hoping that you good people could help me,” Kyle began, looking around the room at the suspicious eyes watching his every move.
Confident that his superior intellect could make finding out what happened to his prisoners quick and easy, Kyle smiled at the silent faces. Instead of answering him, one large man with a predominant bulge in his cheek spit a huge, nasty stream of brown juice into a dirty water glass on his table.
Kyle cleared his throat and tried to pretend he didn’t see it.
“Did anyone see the criminals that your police caught last night? Anyone see where they went? Or see anything strange or unexplainable?” Kyle asked.
Kyle cursed the shudder that almost ran through him when the room erupted in laughter that showed missing and sick-looking teeth and gums all around.
“This be the Ozarks! There be strange magic all around,” one man said with a laugh.
“It was tha’ howlers, not tha’ haints! I heard ‘em! Been hearing them for weeks now! They hunt ya in the night, prowling around until ya too scared ta fight ‘em off . . . then they steal ya soul!” another added loudly.
“The flying humanoids came and took the prisoners from BJ. I saw a light flash in the sky, then they flew away. You can’t keep a humanoid locked up. They ain’t like it. Not at all,” another spoke.
Kyle closed his eyes, trying desperately to retain control of his fracturing composure. In all his travels, he’d never encountered anything more stupid than what he was hearing, and he wasn’t sure how to proceed in getting anything useful out of the hillbillies.
“Sir?”
Kyle turned thankfully at the voice behind him and looked at one of his lieutenants.
“Sir, we found something at the station that you should see,” the man said.
Kyle was glad for the distraction and began to leave the diner without a word.
“Y’all come back now for lunch! We got a possum stew special today! We’ll even give you a discount since it be your trucks that ran over the varmints!” a man behind the counter called out as he held up a dead, beady-eyed animal and cackled with laughter.
Kyle turned back to the door and almost had to fight Greg to get out first. He cursed the moment he stepped onto the sidewalk and got another whiff of that foul scent the men outside were engulfed in. He quickly turned towards the police station and took long strides to put as much distance as he could between himself and the town’s insane residents.
Chapter Seven
BJ looked over at the others in the room and tried not to grin as the soldiers tore apart her station. She’d leaned back in her chair, put her dirty boots on the desk, and pushed her stomach out as she lazily watched the men seize everything they could.
“Where are the fingerprint cards?” one of the soldiers asked.
BJ lunged out of her chair so fast the soldier jumped back and she grinned broadly at him. She rubbed her pooched out stomach and smiled as she batted her lashes.
“I think I could find them if’n ya want ta come ta dinner tonight?” she asked him.
Mojo almost burst out laughing at his sister’s fake attempt at seducing the horrified soldier. Her pig tails were comically cock-eyed, two of her upper side teeth looked missing, her clothes were rumpled and dirty, and she was making every effort to change her normally sweet voice to sound crackly and weird. He couldn’t be more proud.
“I’ll find the damn things myself,” the soldier muttered as he turned away from BJ and began going through a filing cabinet.
BJ dug her thumbs in her utility belt and sauntered over to the soldier. She ran a finger awkwardly down his arm, causing him to jump back from her.
“I’m sure we can skip dinner and go right fer dessert,” BJ said with a wink.
The soldier dented the metal filing cabinet as he slammed the drawer closed a little too hard. He held up the finger print cards in his hand.
“I think I’d rather gnaw my own dick off,” the soldier muttered with a look of disgust before he walked outside.
“That can be arranged,” Bess whispered with a mischievous smile.
Mojo and BJ smothered smiles as they watched the other soldiers continue to scour through eve
rything in her office.
“Where are the weapons? The evidence? You did disarm them, didn’t you?” another soldier asked BJ.
“What happened to this door handle?” another male called out from the holding area where Traze had broken in to help Nik escape.
“I done told ya that’s where they used that there ray gun thingie on it. Never did get to see the ray gun though. The light was too bright,” BJ replied.
It was really hard not to laugh as the soldiers muttered, moaned, and whispered to one another about how incompetent and pathetic BJ and the others were. It was going exactly like she and Mojo had seen in their visions, and BJ was grateful it would all be over in another hour or so.
Then Major Kyle Morris came back into the office, and the whole outcome was thrown into disarray. The major strode into the room, moving past everyone as he went into the holding cell area and spoke quietly to the soldier who was looking at the door.
BJ and the others maintained their casual nonchalance, pretending that the future wasn’t changing by the second.
“What the fuck happened?” Mojo whispered in BJ’s mind.
“I don’t know. Did we forget something on the door?” she asked.
BJ’s mind ran through the reasons why they’d allowed the melted door handle to remain and the points were still valid. There had to be an extraordinary means in which Nik and Traze escaped that would be believable enough to make the soldiers go away.
What did we forget? BJ wondered as she felt the major’s energy escalate.
Kyle looked down at the door handle with narrowed eyes before he opened it, stepped outside, and looked at the door itself.
“Over here, sir,” a soldier said as he pointed at the bumper of BJ’s car which was parked several feet away.
“And there’s footprints all around here from the breaker box to the door,” another added.
Kyle looked over the scene and the hair on his neck stood on end.
Something isn’t right here, he thought as he followed the set of large boot prints around the building to the power cut off box, then back again.
“What are we missing?” Kyle wondered aloud.
“It doesn’t make sense, sir,” Greg told him as he knelt down to study the door. “She didn’t mention anything about putting her car against the door. If they’d already escaped, why would she bother?”