He was almost as thirsty as hungry, but had no idea what to do with the object. Alex noticed that his hand was so large the bottle nearly disappeared in it. He looked confused.
“Like this,” said Alex. She tipped the bottle to her lips and took a long swig, nearly emptying it. Mot watched then tried to copy her, but the result left him choking. “I am so sorry, Mot,” she said as she rummaged for a bowl.
“Here, try this.” Alex poured the rest of the contents of the bottle into a plastic bowl and handed it to Mot. He held the bowl with both hands and tipped his head over it—sipping eagerly. It reminded Alex of a horse drinking. Successful, she turned and put the steaks on the camp stove grill. They almost immediately started to hiss and pop. “How do you like them?”
“I enjoy all meat Alex,” Mot said, mesmerized the fire.
“I mean red in the middle or cooked through?”
“No red.”
“Well done it will be then my friend. Near as I can tell, you haven’t had a meal in a very long time, so I guess a few more minutes won’t kill you. I just appreciate the fact that you didn’t eat me,” she said, only sort of kidding.
“You would taste much better cooked, Alex.”
Alex looked at Mot and noticed that his reptilian pupils narrowed slightly. “And you have a sense of humor,” she replied, laughing. She pushed the cooler out of the way and sat down on the tailgate of the truck. Mot watched as she put the fire stick back to her mouth, the hot end glowing. She took another long drag and blew more smoke into the morning air. “Oh my god, this is friggin’ heaven,” she said out loud, her feet swinging.
Alex glanced back down at the cook stove, then back to Mot. “Here, have a seat Mot,” she said, patting the place beside her. Mot sat, trying to emulate Alex, the truck bed sinking under his weight. Alex judged again that he must be somewhere around three hundred and fifty to four hundred pounds. She spun halfway around and dug back into the cooler, suddenly remembering that there might be some fruit in the bottom. She removed a plastic bag that contained several apples.
“What else do you eat besides meat?” she asked as she pulled one from the bag and held it up suggestively.
“Oh, many kinds of plants. I have never seen such a thing as this before,” Mot said, studying the round object with great interest.
“Try it. It is called an apple,” she said, passing one to him.
Mot took the fruit, smelling it before taking a small bite. He was amazed by its sweet flavor.
Alex flicked her cigarette aside and took a bite of her apple, as well. “Pretty good, huh?” she asked, the symbolism not lost to her. Now I am Eve, she thought. Alex shook her head, still convinced that she might wake up at any moment.
Mot was overwhelmed. Between the instant fire, the meat now charring on the magic stove, the strange metallic object he was now sitting on, and especially the smooth skinned creature that was sitting beside him, he did not know what to think. “Yes, very good,” he said, as if he were lost in his own thoughts. “Are you a god Alex?” he asked suddenly.
Alex almost choked on her apple, then laughed. She looked at Mot and realized that he was totally serious. “No Mot,” she said emphatically, “I am definitely not a god. I am flesh and blood just like you. You have been asleep for many years—seasons, I guess you would call them—and much has changed, but we are both of the same world.” She jumped down from the truck and gingerly flipped the steaks with her fingers.
“How many seasons, Alex?”
“Many, many,” she said. She bent down, cupped both hands and scooped as much sand as she could from the desert floor, then let it run slowly back out between her fingers. “Many, many seasons,” Alex said, looking back up at him. He was staring off into the desert. “I think the meat should just about be done, now let me just find a knife,” she said. She brushed her hands off, once again digging through a box in the truck, and produced a plate and a long sharp knife. Alex pulled the steaks off the fire with the blade, put them on the plate and sliced them into smaller pieces. “Here you go Mot, be careful, they are very hot.”
Mot picked up a piece, carefully smelling it first, and then placed it in his mouth and chewed. Second most delicious thing he had ever tasted, he decided. He was glad he had waited.
It took only moments for Alex and Mot to polish off the entire plate, with Alex being careful to make sure that Mot got the bulk of it. As she watched him finish the meat—this amazing being with his skin glowing in the sun—she marveled at the creature she had inadvertently discovered. Before her, eating with her, and somehow communicating with her via some sort of weird telepathy—was obviously the singular most important discovery in history. How am I going to protect you, she thought to herself. How long will it take for some wild-eyed cowboy like Batter to screw things up? Alex hadn’t figured out yet how she would introduce Mot to the world of humans but she knew that for the moment, she needed to hide him.
She nervously looked back around the canyon. Alex thought she could hear the sound of helicopter in the distance and glanced up at the sky. Far off on the horizon, in the vicinity of the project, she could see a massive double bladed transport gaining altitude. Her heart skipped a beat. If the chopper decided to turn their way, anyone in it would easily be able to spot them.
She tossed the cook stove into the back of the truck, keeping a wary eye on the helicopter. It was still gaining altitude but did not appear to be turning in their direction. Alex pushed back the cooler and slammed the tailgate shut. “Mot, we need to get out of here,” she said to him as he stood and watched her every move with great curiosity. “There may be humans around, and I am not sure what their initial reaction will be to seeing you, but it might not be good. My father’s ranch is not far from here and I think that would be a safe place to go for the time being. OK?”
Mot looked into Alex’s eyes, and could see the fear in them. It was a silly question, given all she had just said. If what she had told him was true, he was somewhere in a far and distant future he knew nothing about. There was certainly no sign of his clan anywhere and he was beginning to believe that none of them had survived. The thick forest he had grown up in and hunted in was gone. What else was he to do? “Yes Alex,” was all he could say. He looked out at the desert, wondering which direction they would be walking.
“Just give me a minute. I’ve got to see if I can find the spare keys to this truck.” Alex went around to the driver side and opened the door. She fumbled around on the floorboard trying to remember where she had stashed the keys, her originals lost somewhere in the caves. It has to be right here, she thought to herself as she looked under the seat for the spare. Her father had taught her to always have a spare. Not just of keys, but of almost everything it might be practical to have a spare of. There had to be one somewhere. She walked to the front of the pickup and lifted the hood. To her relief, she spotted a magnetic key box far down in the left side of the motor. Alex had to reach to get it.
“Howdy there.”
Alex froze, her head buried in the engine compartment. The sound of the voice was not more than fifty feet away.
“Howdy there,” the male voice repeated, slightly closer.
Alex backed slowly out from under the hood and turned. There were two men in front of her, both dressed almost identically in jeans and camouflaged hunting jackets. One appeared to be in his late fifties. The other, probably mid-thirties, looked as if he could be the older man’s son. They carried shotguns loosely slung over their shoulders. Alex prayed that Mot was not in their line of sight.
“Do you need a hand?” the older man asked. There was something disturbing in his tone.
Alex looked at both of them, still concerned about Mot. She was accustomed to running into people when she was out, even in the remotest areas. Most that she ran into were fine folks, but there was something dangerous about these two that she could instantly feel. This is why I always carry a gun, she thought to herself as she sized them up. Unfortunately, her hand
gun was underwater back in the cave and her shotgun was out of reach in the cab of the pickup. No matter, she reminded herself, the only time a gun is any good against another gun is when it is loaded, first out and first pointed with the safety off. These men had theirs in their hands.
“No, I’m OK. I was just looking for my spare key,” Alex said sheepishly, “seems like I’ve lost my other one.” Obviously, thought Alex, they have not seen Mot yet or they would be shitting their pants and shooting.
“We saw the hood up,” the older man said as he eyeballed Alex up and down in the same obvious way the younger man was doing. Alex noticed that the older man’s hands were filthy, with black lines around his yellowed fingernails. The younger man had tattoos across his knuckles, and she could see the tops of other tattoos around his neck line. There was also something odd about their clothes, she noticed, they just did not seem to fit right.
“What are you fellas doing out here?” Alex asked as nonchalantly as she could, her heart pounding.
Both men continued to look at her like ravenous dogs, not seeming to hear the question.
“Huntin’ for birds,” the younger man finally offered, still looking at Alex as if she were a hotdog and he hadn’t eaten for days.
“Having any luck?” Alex was worried. She had to try to appease these guys so she could send them on their way and work on getting Mot out of there. She was still amazed the men hadn’t spotted him, but she did not dare look to see where he was.
“Not ‘til now,” the older man snickered, shooting a glance to the younger one. “Not real smart for a pretty lady like yourself to be out here all alone. You are all alone, aren’t ya?” The man craned his head around, looking past the truck.
Alex felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. OK, this was real trouble. She prepared to fight. “My husband is just over the rise that way,” Alex indicated over her shoulder, sure that it was obvious that she was lying. “We’re paleontologists,” she added, trying to bring a note of truth back into her tone.
“Bone hunters, huh?” the older man said. “We get plenty of those around here, that’s for sure. Don’t see a lot of women doin’ it though. Junior, jump over the hill there, and see if this young lady’s husband needs a hand.” He looked back at Alex and grinned, flashing his yellow teeth.
“OK, Pop.” Junior gave Alex a good long stare and started up the narrow canyon that she and Mot had come down earlier. Alex took a deep breath, sure that Junior would spot Mot the minute he passed the truck, but nothing happened as he moved around vehicle and up the hill.
“What’s your name?” Alex asked desperate to buy some time. She watched the man carefully, trying to judge if she could get close enough to disarm him before he killed her. If she were going to make a move, she knew she needed to do it before the other man returned.
“I go by Senior,” he chuckled, “and that there,” he said, indicating the younger man already over the rise, “is my boy Junior. Been so long since we used our real names I practically forgot what they are,” he continued, winking at Alex. “Ya know, we been a long time without any female companionship…,” he interrupted himself. “Junior, see anything?” he shouted.
“No, Pop,” came the answer from a distance.
“Well then, get your ass back down here!” Senior yelled back. “Ya see, as I was saying lady….”
“Alex. It’s Alex,” she said. Decide, Alex, decide.
“Well, Alex, as I was saying. Been a long time since Junior and me had the pleasure of any female companionship. I was just wonderin’ if, well, seein’ as how it’s pretty obvious you’re lying about the husband and all…,” Senior’s eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about?” Alex asked, but she knew. She felt as if she would vomit.
Junior strolled back. “I didn’t see no one, Pop.” He stood by the old man and gave Alex an accusatory look.
“Anyhow, I was just telling the lady here, that if maybe she were a little bit cooperative, that maybe we would be a little gentle, and maybe, we’d even leave her alive.” Senior pulled his gun off his shoulder and pointed it directly at Alex. “Whaddaya think, Junior?”
Junior’s eyes narrowed and he smirked as he also pointed his gun at Alex. “Sounds good to me, Pop.”
Alex was pinched between the two men and the front of the truck. She considered trying to run through them but they were too close for that, and just far enough away to blow her face off with their guns. She admonished herself for not trying to take out Senior when she had the chance. All she could think of saying was, “No!”
“Guess we gotta do this the hard way, Junior,” Senior said, moving the barrel of his gun right up to Alex’s face.
In what seemed to be less than a split second, a shadow crossed behind the men, then Mot was between Alex and her two attackers, hissing and snarling, holding the long knife Alex had used for the steaks earlier.
A look of surprise, confusion, astonishment, then fear, and finally pain washed over both men’s faces. Junior dropped his gun in the dirt and fell to his knees. Senior waved his gun in the air, trying to say something, but words seemed impossible. Blood gushed from his mouth as he tried to speak, then he too fell to the ground, his shotgun firing harmlessly into the desert sky in the process. Both men ended up face down in the dirt, blood flowing from nearly identical wounds in each of their backs. They convulsed for a moment then stopped moving.
Alex looked at the men, then at Mot-his back to her, still protecting her-the bloody knife clenched in his fist. Somehow, he had gotten behind the men, knifed them and then moved in front of Alex so swiftly she hadn’t seen him do any of it.
Mot glanced back at Alex, then hunched down carefully over the men. He sniffed Senior first, then turned to Junior and did the same. Satisfied, he grunted, stood back up and turned to Alex. “They are dead, Alex. They cannot hurt you now.” He looked back at the men, then focused on the shotgun Senior had fired.
The males’ sudden appearance had surprised Mot. He had first sensed their footsteps, and then smelled them coming down the canyon only moments before they came into view. Mot could tell from their scent that they were human, but apart from that they smelled nothing like Alex. Then, there had been no time to warn Alex before they had appeared. Mot had immediately found cover under the large metal box Alex called her “truck,” and had waited to see what would happen.
Mot looked again at the dead humans, berating himself for not having detected them sooner. Fortunately Alex had told him her species could be dangerous, so he was ready for anything, but as Alex had spoken to the two males it had been hard for him to probe their minds and find out exactly what they were up to. When Alex had finally said “No,” a clear picture had formed in his mind of what they were planning, and he had taken action.
Mot thought at first about trying to fight them, which would have been easy, but he had no idea what the males held in their hands; some kind of hunting sticks he had never seen, some kind of weapons. Whatever the objects were, it was clear that Alex was as fearful of them as she was of the humans, and Mot had been in too many scrapes before to resort to half measures. Usually, even among Arzats, the conflicts he was used to amounted to kill or be killed. No, he could not afford any mistake. He had silently taken the long knife from the back of the truck, then, as quickly as he could, he had attacked, aiming for what he thought must be the area of the creature’s hearts.
Alex continued to stand by the front of the truck, staring at the two dead men. Senior, in a fit of post mortem nerves, twitched briefly and blood ran from his mouth and nostrils again. “This is not good, this is not good,” she kept saying.
Mot stood over Senior’s shotgun studying it with great interest.
Chapter 15
Depraedor
If Batter had cared to, he might have looked down from the Chinook he had commandeered and spotted Alex’s white pickup and the four figures around it, but the helicopter was already too high for him to have made out any detail, a
nd he was too engrossed in a phone conversation with the President to have noticed anything anyway.
*
Just before he had gone to see Tom he had been summoned on an urgent mission. He was to assess the preparedness of another ARC project that he had been working on for some time in Area 51, a military base in southern Nevada that had become infamous during the fifties and sixties as a highly top secret government facility. Over the years, many rumors had circulated about the goings on there from government testing on extraterrestrials to the development of flying saucers and various other top secret weapons. But, despite decades of research by curious journalists and the enthusiastic speculation of Area 51 hobbyists, nothing of note regarding its operations or actual purpose had ever come to light. This level of secrecy was no doubt helped by the fact that there was a standing order to ‘shoot to kill’ any intruder attempting to breach the complex’s twenty three by twenty five mile perimeter. The secrecy was further ensured by the fact that all of the personnel working there had to have a Level One security clearance to do so, with a potential charge of treason hanging over the head of anyone who might dare to violate the government’s trust.
Aside from the Area 51 staff, Batter was probably one of the few other men on the planet that was completely familiar with the base’s main purpose. During the Cold War, a vast underground complex had been constructed including a secret subterranean railway that ran all the way from Washington D.C. to the heart of the underground facility. The whole thing was a monumental project that was originally designed to serve as an alternate center of government for the United States in the event—god forbid—that D.C. should ever be attacked by nuclear means.
Over the years, the entire facility had been continually upgraded as new technology came on line and new threats emerged. A huge component had morphed into a major research and development center. The rail, once a high speed diesel system, was now all-electric. The power for the entire operation, once a very complicated system of underground hydro, was now all provided by self-contained nuclear pods. Ventilation systems had been reworked to protect the occupants, not only from radioactive fallout, but from pandemic diseases and biological weapons as well. The facility was massive and had even amazed Batter when he had first seen it in the ‘80s. The ARC component had been redesigned to house all of the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Administration, and various support staff. All in all, room for over a thousand souls should they be lucky enough to make it there in the event of a disaster. It was like a giant, one level convention hotel without windows. Families unfortunately, as well as most of the normal support staff that worked outside of the specific parameters of the ARC, were not to be provided for in the event of an actual catastrophe.
In Situ Page 13