“Which brings me to the critical question that will decide if you live another twenty-four hours. What, if anything, do you know about the incident that occurred here?”
“If you thought Julie Conner’s tits were something to look at, touching them was…”
Jennings, who had been the calm one up until now, slaps me across the face and yells to Vostov in Russian, “After we leave, beat him as much as you want.”
Jennings and Ratface get up to leave. Vostov gives me a half smile, unaware that I know what’s going to happen next… or is supposed to happen next.
I pull myself to a seated position on my mattress while Vostov shuts the door behind him. He’s become so used to my not putting up a fight the poor bastard thinks he has the upper hand.
What he doesn’t realize is that I took this mission prepared to die. I even had a suicide capsule in my flight suit. To other guys it was a joke. Not to me.
Every time I strapped on my pressure suit and squeezed into that tiny cockpit I knew there was a chance it was a one-way mission. I also knew that if I got caught behind enemy lines, my one and only duty was to make sure secrets that could cost American lives didn’t fall into enemy hands.
Some guys struggle with this. Not me. I was ready to lay down my life without hesitation. I knew that back when I took that skinny-dip with Julie Conner. Billy, I said to myself, this is the best day of your life. Everything that comes after is just an afterthought.
Vostov cracks his ape-like knuckles and strides toward me.
He doesn’t notice that my hands are in the space between the mattress and the wall where I keep the spoon I’d used to carve the code Ping and I created—the spoon I’d took the bowl off, so I could use it like a sharp pick to etch into the concrete.
Vostov holds my head against the wall, getting ready to punch me. As his arm rears back, I throw out my own fist, clenching my shiv, and hit him right in the kidney.
His eyes bug out as he tries to process what just happened. I stab him under the jaw in his neck and he stumbles backwards. The spoon handle is yanked from my fist as he falls against the other wall.
Warm blood starts gushing out over his fingers as he tries to close the wound.
I get to my feet, too filled with adrenaline to notice my own pain. Vostov makes flailing motions as he tries to stop me from rifling through his pockets for the key.
A blood-soaked hand clenches my face, but I swat it away. His heart just can’t pump hard enough to keep him going.
My chances of escape are somewhere between zero and nonexistent—but it’s not the plan. My plan is suicide—death by Russian Army.
* * *
When they put my star and no name on that memorial marker at CIA headquarters, I want it to be because I died trying to escape, not because I froze to death or spilled my guts so they would trade me back for some Soviet spy.
I find the key to the lock and get ready to burst into the hallway and fight the first man I see, maybe even getting his AK like Ping did and take out a few of them on the way.
Ping… would he want to get in on this suicide mission? Maybe he thinks his masters back in Beijing are willing to trade for him and it’s not worth the risk. Should I even ask? Why not?
I tap a series of clangs, the one I use for me and the one for him, followed by “door” and “move.”
There’s a long pause—probably only five seconds, but it feels like a day. Then: clangclang.
Yes.
Then it gets weird. Ping taps something that seems to mean if I get him out, his friends will come get us.
Which doesn’t make any sense, because the Chinese aren’t about to invade Russia on the account of us.
But whatever. We’d both rather die on our feet than in here.
* * *
I head into the hallway, looking for a weapon—a spare AK-47, a pistol, anything—but all I can find is a wooden chair.
I take it and go down the flight of stairs to the level below me. There’s a big elevator, but I’m sure it’s been dead since the blackout.
At the bottom of the steps I spot a guard sitting in front of a gas lantern, his rifle by his side and his back to the wall near a massive door.
Since he’s the only other person in this wing, I assume this is Ping’s cell.
“I bring chair,” I say in Russian so bad the soldier just stares at me, trying to figure out if I’m mildly retarded.
He doesn’t know if I’m supposed to be in my cell or outside running errands. It doesn’t matter after I grab the top rail and swing the edge of the seat into his face.
His nose shatters in a spray of blood and he falls out of his seat. Before I remove the massive metal beam holding Ping’s door shut, I have to slide the unconscious man out of the way.
I sling his rifle over my shoulder then open the door to Ping’s dark cell. The first thing that greets me is a pungent, almost acidic smell.
It’s a big chamber and the light from the lantern barely makes it past the door frame. I pick it up and move closer.
“Ping? Um, Clang? You in there, pal?”
Clangclang
Yes.
My light falls onto some medical carts and equipment. There’s a whole rack of scalpels covered in a yellowish fluid.
I push them out of the way and go toward the sound in the back of the room. “What the hell are they doing to you in here?”
There’s a kneeling man with a hood over his head, his arms bound in chains, stretching from one side of the room to the other.
Even though he’s on his knees, I can tell he’s a big boy.
“How the hell did they fit you into a cockpit?”
He pulls at a chain attached to the metal pipe and clangs out a message: Big plane.
It must not have been a JZ-8. I set the lantern down on a cart and reach for Ping’s hood.
“Sweet Mother of God!” I blurt out when I see his face. “You’re not Chinese!”
It’s like every creature I ever pulled out of the creek, all smashed into one nightmare. I’m too shocked to be frightened.
“Did they do this to you?” I ask, trying to comprehend how a man could have such a horror show for a face. Then I look around at his body and realize that everything is wrong. His skin has a sickly greenish-white hue. The musculature is all off and his hands aren’t anything that evolved on God’s green earth.
And those eyes—those tiny yellow-silver balls—they’re just… alien.
Other pilots have told stories about picking up strange radar reflections at altitudes too high for planes. I’ve even heard of accounts of pursuits after phantoms. But those were just… stories.
Worry about the present, Billy.
I realize that battery acid smell is coming from him. I spot several oozing wounds with a greenish-yellow liquid dripping from them. It’s not pus or infected—it’s the kind of thing an eight-foot tall spider would leak if you poked it.
“Ping?” I say again.
Clangclang
Yes.
I grab my rifle and contemplate running for my life. Then I realize it isn’t really worth much right now. And besides, a promise is a promise.
I fumble through Vostov’s bloody keys and go over to the lock holding Ping to one wall.
“You’re uh, not planning to invade us, are you?”
Ping just watches me. I’m not sure if he grasps the question.
I unlock his wrists and he stands upright.
Jesus.
My neck hurts staring up at him. He’s at least seven foot tall. Definitely not Chinese.
His webbed fingers reach out and grab the AK-47. Moving almost too fast for me to see, he field-strips the gun, inspects the parts then puts it back together and pushes it into my chest, clearly not impressed.
He moves through the room, searching through the carts, then reaches up and yanks down the light fixture from the ceiling and begins to take it apart. I put on the guard’s uniform and boots because I’m freezing my ass off. Ping d
oesn’t seem to care.
“You making a ray gun or something?” I ask, looking at what he’s doing, terrified of what it could be.
Ping creases the metal on the floor and bends the casing into something that looks like a huge machete.
He inspects the blade in the lantern light. It’s crude but deadly.
“So how do you think we should go about this…” I start to ask, but Ping is already moving toward the door.
Fast.
Real fast.
I chase after him, doing my best to keep up, but he’s already halfway down the upper hallway by the time I exit the steps.
Ping comes to a stop at the locked door that leads to the soldier barracks. I throw him the key ring.
He unlocks it then bursts into the other room before I can tell him to wait up and let the AK help us out.
It doesn’t make a difference. By the time I’m in the barracks there are bodies everywhere. The soldiers who managed to get to their weapons fired indiscriminately, killing their own.
Ping is using a limp body as a shield and flinging cots left and right. I squeeze off a few rounds at men trying to shoot at Ping from a shielded position—hesitating only slightly at the thought that I’m firing on my own race. Yeah, well, they never should have asked Vostov to beat me to death.
Ping grabs a man and flings him across the room, his neck snapping as he slams into a concrete wall.
Blood and broken bodies litter the floor. And silence.
I survey the massacre. At least twenty men are dead—all in under two minutes.
Ping’s blade is bent and covered in gore.
Footsteps come from the other hallway. I rush to the door, aim my AK down the corridor and start picking off soldiers as they race to the barracks to see what the commotion was about.
Catching them off guard, I manage to drop six of them before they return fire and I have to go back into the barracks.
Bullets streak through the door as I hear someone scream for reinforcements.
When I look back into the room for Ping, he’s gone.
What the hell?
Something grabs me by the neck and I’m lifted off the ground.
It takes me a moment to realize that Ping has managed to climb into an airshaft—a miracle given his size—and pulled me inside.
He’s already racing through the conduit like a greyhound by the time I orientate myself.
I give chase and find even more momentum when the tunnel starts to get barraged by automatic weapon fire.
A hole emerges inches from my knees and I spot a terrified soldier staring up at the shaft. He knows what just got loose. I’m not sure if I do, but I’m starting to get an idea.
I don’t stop to tell him that he’s not shooting at the monster.
The monster… or as the Russians would say: monstr. Same thing.
There’s a cold blast of air as Ping kicks open a vent. He found a way out and is already running across the snow toward the edge of the facility.
A group of unfortunate soldiers come running around the corner from the opposite direction and Ping slashes through them, sending one man’s head rolling across the snow.
Christ Almighty.
I try to step over a massive puddle of blood, keeping up with Ping.
* * *
There are lights coming from a rise just beyond us. Generators hum over the night air. They must have been able to scrounge enough parts to get them working.
Ping has finally stopped his locomotive pace and is lying on the edge of a hill looking down below.
I crawl on my belly until I’m next to him. I try not to stare. But it’s hard.
Below us, Jennings and Commander Ratface are standing in a huge crater barking orders to men with welding torches and various tools as they try to disassemble the thing that’s in the middle.
A goddamn spaceship—at least part of one. The other half looks smashed up.
There’s a bunch of tarps strewn over the top so our satellites can’t see what’s underneath.
“I’m not rocket scientist, but I’m pretty sure that bird ain’t going to fly again.”
Ping grabs me by the back of the head and aims my nose toward the generator at the edge of the crater, points a terrifying finger at it, then at me.
“Want me to take out the generator?”
For the first time I hear him make a sound. It’s a click… actually two of them. Clickclick.
Yes.
So, my newfound pal wants me to march down to the middle of the crater that’s filled with all of the rest of the soldiers from the base and try to take out the generator?
I asked for a suicide mission, but I wasn’t counting on it being actual suicide…
Then I remember that I’m wearing the uniform I stole from the guard back at the base. At least I’ll be shot in the back as I flee, and not the front as I approach.
I slide down the hill and make my way to a gap at the farthest end from the spaceship.
At any moment, I assume some survivor from the base is going to come running here, telling them what happened. While it would seem logical that the Red Army soldiers here would then race back to help their comrades, I gather Commander Ratface and Jennings would decide it more important to protect the spacecraft.
I enter the caldera and get a better glimpse of the ship. What looks like the cockpit is almost completely smashed.
I have no idea how Ping could have survived that— unless he wasn’t inside.
Wait? Is Ping like our demolition boys who make sure our airplanes and boats don’t fall into the wrong hands?
I stop halfway to the generator. That would mean Ping intends to blow this whole thing up.
Something tells me anything capable of destroying that huge craft is going to leave a crater a lot larger than the one I’m standing inside.
How do I feel about that?
Hell, if it comes between the Russians getting ahold of this tech or not, then this suicide mission got a lot more purposeful.
“Captain Moore!” Jennings yells from across the crater.
I look up from the generator and see fifty commies staring back at me. I’d been trying to find an off switch with no luck.
“Put down your weapon!” Jennings screams as he runs toward me.
Guns are trained on my body from every direction.
I hold my AK-47 in front of me and act as if I’m going to set it on the ground. Instead, I squeeze the trigger, blasting rounds into the generator, and dive toward the frozen dirt.
The lights go out.
There are screams.
Lots of screams.
Bullets whiz through the air and bodies fall. Something hits me in the side, but that part of my body is already numb.
I don’t move, deciding it’s best to let Ping do his thing.
Suddenly there’s a greenish glow from what remains of the cockpit and the silhouette of Ping—then he vanishes.
Dead soldiers are everywhere.
Two heads come rolling toward me: Jennings and Commander Ratface.
Ping has one hell of a sense of humor.
A big hand grabs me by the neck like a kitten and yanks me to my feet.
Ping is on the move away from the ship.
We enter the frozen tundra and my lungs are screaming from the freezing air. Ping doesn’t stop moving.
“We’re going to run out of island, pretty soon, pal.”
Ping isn’t deterred. I get a sense it’s going to be a very big explosion.
We reach the edge of the small bay that looked like an ancient meteor crater from the surveillance photos.
I drop to my knees, exhausted. That’s when I feel my own blood trickling out my side.
The commies got me.
“Ping, it was a good run,” I say through halting breaths before falling on my back and staring up at the stars.
My vision begins to fade and I hear a splash.
“Swim for it, man. Never stop.”
The las
t thing I see is the Aurora Borealis glowing like neon overhead. It’s a beautiful thing. So much brighter than I’ve ever seen it.
Still not as beautiful as…
* * *
I remember lying there for an eternity, expecting to die. At some point I think I woke up again. There was a loud explosion—louder than anything I could even imagine.
Then I passed out again.
Strange smells.
Even stranger sounds.
And now I’m floating in the water. The stars are overhead again. Crickets are chirping and I can hear frogs croaking.
It’s a beautiful symphony, just like the one we heard back in the reservoir—the day I found true love and I promised Julie Conner I’d marry her one day.
I raise my hand up and look at the wedding band, reminding myself that part wasn’t a dream.
I tell myself I could lay here in perfect bliss, but my back starts to hurt. I roll over and realize I’m on the bank, only half in the water.
Ping is nowhere to be found. In fact, everything is different than I remember…
I get to my feet and look around me.
The chain-link fence.
The no trespassing signs.
My elation is quickly usurped by my frustration.
I’m thousands of miles away from my base—half a world away from where I ditched out of my plane.
And I’m standing in the middle of the backwoods of Alabama wearing a Russian Army uniform.
What am I going to tell my superiors?
Hell, what am I going to tell my wife?
BUFFALO JUMP
BY WENDY N. WAGNER
The corn dolly sat beside the bottle of gun oil on Anderson’s desk. He wiped his hands a second time, grinning. The town of Coyote Creek had hired him as their sheriff because he could shoot a can of tobacco off a fencepost a hundred yards away, because he could hoist a drunk miner over his shoulder without throwing out his back, and because he didn’t let anybody scare him, not even if they were giving him the business end of a shotgun. Somehow they’d forgotten to ask if he had a softer side.
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