“I am not sure Pete, but probably not.”
“Well we can’t keep doping her without killing her. I would like to let her regain consciousness without restraints, somewhere safe where we could still monitor her.”
“We have a few rooms much better for that, my friend—basically padded cells with one way observation glass. They’re in the primate compound.”
“Let’s get her moved.”
Chapter 17
The Burial
Mot gave a light kick to Senior one more time just to be sure he was completely dead, then did the same to Junior as Alex looked on. She appeared to be in some sort of trance. Mot took the time to study the long metal objects that the men had held like hunting sticks. He was particularly interested in the one that had made the great sound. His ears were still ringing. After what he had seen so far, he could only imagine how effective such a thing might be. Mot resolved to thoroughly question Alex about the weapons and their use, but he could sense that now was not the time.
The men were both dead all right. Mot was proud of himself—they had been a very clean kills-but he was still a bit confused by Alex’s reaction. Clearly, the human males had planned to kill her in a most unpleasant way, yet Alex seemed somewhat bothered that they had been eliminated. Mot was still very hungry, and as far as he was concerned, although the males smelled terrible, if he could convince Alex to fire up that cooking contraption again, he might just gut both of these humans and have quite a nice supper. When Mot looked at Alex, he decided against asking her.
Mot was trying to be patient, but he sensed that this place was still very dangerous. “Alex? What are we going to do?” he finally asked.
From the moment they had escaped the caves, Alex had been most concerned with protecting Mot. It was bad luck for the men that Alex really hadn’t been alone, and bad luck for Mot as far as keeping his existence under wraps. The dead men just created a potential trail that might be followed.
“We need to bury them, Mot, and get rid of them,” Alex finally said, snapping out of her shock. “I think there is a shovel somewhere in the back of the truck.” Alex turned to go see if she could find one-sure that Mot would have no idea what she was talking about. Now we’ve gone and killed someone, she thought as she rummaged around. She found it interesting that she felt very little remorse about the dead men. Alex was sure that had the tables been turned, it would have been she who was now face down in the Utah desert. She shivered and returned to the bodies.
“OK, Mot, we are going to have to dig a very large hole.” She handed Mot the shovel and then turned to survey the area. “Not here though. Let’s do it over there,” Alex said as she pointed to another spot about fifty feet away. She didn’t want to have to drag the bodies very far, but she also did not want them to be buried right in the middle of things. They would be harder to find in the place she had chosen.
“Just one last thing.” Alex bent down over the men and reached in Senior’s pockets, producing a wallet and half a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes. “Pall Malls? Who smokes those anymore?” she said absently. She tapped one out of the pack and fired it up, and then flipped open the wallet. Anthony Albert Bradley, Blackhawk Boulevard, Mount Pleasant, Utah.
Alex had absolutely no idea where Mount Pleasant was. Probably some small, hell-and-gone place out in the middle of the state, she thought. It didn’t matter, the picture on the license looked nothing like Senior, not by a couple of decades. Senior had obviously stolen it, and Alex shivered when she thought about what might have become of the real owner. She went through Junior’s pockets, as well, but there was nothing in them but a wad of cash. She shoved the bills in her front pocket, aware that she no longer had a wallet of her own. They might need the money along the way.
“OK, Mot, let’s bury these guys,” she said, standing back up. “What do Arzats do? Do you bury the dead?” she asked, flicking the cigarette away.
“No, we burn them,” said Mot, looking curiously at the tool Alex had just given him.
“That is a very common practice with humans, too,” Alex said as she headed for the place she had indicated before. Mot followed.
“Let me see that thing,” Alex said, pointing at the shovel. Mot handed it back to her, and she began digging in a spot that looked to be mostly sand. “Ever used one of these, Mot?” Alex said, her breath already becoming strained after just a couple of throws.
Mot shook his head. “No, Alex, but I think I understand.”
“Good,” Alex said, handing the shovel back to Mot. We need the hole to be at least three or four feet deep if you can get it there.
“Alex, what are ‘feet’?”
“Oh, I keep forgetting.” How would Mot know what “feet” were? Alex held her hand to her waist. “Three feet, OK? While you dig, I’m going to go get the truck ready to get out of here.”
Mot was amazed by the tool. It was a heavy-duty, folding spade, an Army surplus job, virtually indestructible, but to Mot, the biggest news was that the blade was made of very hard metal. In Mot’s world, bronze had just been discovered and it was very soft by comparison. He began to dig. Although there were many rocks in the soil, the material moved easily enough and-much to Mot’s astonishment-the tool did not bend or break. Some of the bigger rocks he just grabbed and threw out of the hole.
Alex went back to the truck and finally retrieved her spare key from under the hood. She looked over and was surprised to see that Mot had already carved a hole that looked almost big enough to hold the two men. He was standing up to his thigh with a large mound of debris piling up. It would have taken her all day to do what Mot had accomplished in less than ten minutes. She looked around again and made a mental note to someday go and get her motorcycle back from Tom and Batter.
Alex packed up anything else that was still on the desert floor and jammed it in to the truck bed. She wanted to be sure that once they pulled out, there would be nothing left of her camp. When she was certain she had thoroughly cleared the area, she went back to see about Junior and Senior.
The morning sun was already heating up the desert, and flies were beginning to swarm the bodies. She shivered, knelt down beside Junior, and began to tug his body by the feet in the direction of Mot and the hole he was digging. Junior was not easy—he was probably 200 pounds of dead weight. Alex did have the advantage of sliding him over sand, but he was face down. She tried to roll him by pulling hard on his left arm, and eventually she got him to topple over. Then she grabbed his boots and tugged again.
Alex knew in her heart that these were bad men, and that it was very likely they had hurt people many times before without getting caught. It was probably a good thing that they would no longer be able to harm anyone. Still, she hoped that there wasn’t a wife or kids at home somewhere that expected either of these two to show up. “Cuz that ain’t gonna happen, my friend,” she said aloud to Junior, still disgusted, struggling to pull him through the dirt.
Alex had only been able to budge Junior about ten feet before she finally called Mot for help. He easily picked up both men, one in each hand, and walked them over to the hole and dumped them in, as if he were taking out the trash. As hungry as Mot was, the two had already passed smelling good to him and he was ready to be done with them. Once they were in the hole, he looked at Alex. “OK?” he asked, indicating the shovel.
“One last thing,” Alex said as she tossed the shotguns in with the bodies.
“What are those Alex?” Mot asked, very interested.
“What did you hunt with?”
“A long sharp stick, with a metal tip,” Mot exaggerated.
“Well, those weapons are like that, but better. I will explain later. Now, let’s cover them up.”
In another few minutes, there was virtually no sign of Mot’s hole or the dead men. Alex and Mot had carefully camouflaged their makeshift grave, and Mot had added his own final touch by rolling a boulder the size of a small car over the top. The day was swiftly approaching noon. Alex looked to the
sky and noted the time. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 18
Area Five-One
Batter’s helicopter touched down on the west side of the Area 51 complex at 1130 hours local. It was a trip he had made countless times over the years. He knew they were getting close when he saw Groom Lake appear on the right side of the aircraft followed by the massive crisscrosses of runways that made up a good part of the surface facility. They were so large they could easily be seen from space. From the air, Batter thought, the runways and ramps looked like the giant X’s of a target.
Area 51 was not only the emergency alternate headquarters for the U.S. government; it was also the predominant research site for government funded studies on everything from the atom to life in distant galaxies. Anything that was deemed “not safe for public consumption” occurred within the site. There was a primate lab, a lab that worked on viruses, advanced weapons, and lasers. Batter could have named over one hundred other such specific areas of study, given the question. Most of the work was carried out underground, but the centerpiece of the facility was the ARC itself. Batter, by order of the President and a secret congressional committee, and under the authority of the CIA, was somehow in charge of all of it, as well as the other three ARC unit sites.
What would the public think if they knew the actual truth about the extraterrestrials that had been discovered in the 50s, he mused, making his way across the tarmac. As he walked out of the wash of the blades, Pete Wilson approached and half saluted then shook his hand.
“Good morning, Mr. Batter,” Pete screamed above the blast of the helicopter shutting down.
Batter noticed that Dr. Wilson, who was perhaps half his age, really looked barely old enough to be out of high school. How in the hell does a guy like that get to be in charge of the whole scientific division, he wondered. Then he suddenly remembered that it was he, himself, who had appointed him. Pete offered to help Batter with the one small bag he had brought, which Batter declined.
“Would you like some lunch, Sir, or would you like to get right to it?” Pete asked as they climbed into a Jeep and headed towards one of the buildings.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind a quick bite and perhaps you can fill me in, Doctor. I cannot remember the last time I ate.”
“Likewise, Sir.”
Pete would rather have gone right back to the observation room, but he really was starving, and he had instructed his people that he was to be paged immediately if the creature began to awaken. He hadn’t wanted to leave in the first place, but figured it would be a big mistake not to see to Batter’s arrival himself.
A few minutes later, both men entered a large dining hall five hundred feet below ground. There were probably two or three hundred uniformed and non-uniformed personnel having lunch. How in the hell do we keep this place top secret, Batter wondered again as they made their way through the lunch lines. Some of the best food on the planet was served here, and almost no one in the world knew about it. Now, it might all be over in a few days. No more dining of this caliber, that was for sure, he thought.
They found a table and Pete proceeded to fill Batter in on all that had happened since they had returned from the Utah site, including the exact details of the accident. They ate quickly, then Pete got a page, the creature was coming around again.
“Mr. Batter, we have to go.”
Pete took Batter deep into the heart of the primate unit and ushered him up some stairs into a viewing gallery that was raised from the main floor of the compound. There were just two entrances to the compound itself, along with a couple of pass-through drawers where food could be delivered or experiments could be carried out.
Even though Pete had already prepped him, Batter found himself amazed at what he saw on the floor of the room below. At first glance, the creature looked to him like an alligator sleeping—but past the scaly skin and the obvious reptilian features, there was absolutely nothing else about this animal that resembled a gator, particularly the fact that the thing had no tail. In fact, its body looked far more human than most primates.
Another young doctor approached Batter and Pete in the gallery.
“Mr. Batter,” Pete said, “this is Dr. Randall Philips. He actually discovered the heartbeat. What’s the status Randall?”
“Well, Doctor, the creature stirred and then appeared to drop back to sleep. We are just waiting again now. The anesthesiologists say it should be any time,” Phillips said, checking his watch. He glanced at Batter, clearly nervous about being in the man’s presence.
“What are you going to do with her? It is female, I take it?” asked Batter.
Pete nodded. “Yes, we determined that when we first exhumed her.”
“Anyway,” continued Batter, “what are you going to do with her when she wakes up?”
Pete turned to Batter directly, “Sir, I have no fucking idea.”
*
The Arzat could feel herself coming back around. This time she had convinced herself to be more careful. She was fully awake before she even thought about opening her eyes. Her mother had warned her that she might find things very different when she awoke, advice she had failed to fully take into consideration the first time around. She decided to keep her eyes shut for the moment, pretending to still be asleep while she studied her surroundings. She had many other strong senses besides her eyes, and this time she planned to use them. She had a good sniff around, but without flicking her tongue, it was difficult to isolate exactly what was where. Nothing was familiar at all. Could she escape? Where were the other Arzats? Were there any others? She was very disappointed that she could not sense any. If there were others, she should have been able to detect their presence, even if they were not nearby, and even without the use of her tongue.
She wasn’t freezing now and she didn’t think that she was still in the cave. Last time she woke up, she found herself on some kind of table, but now she felt like she was on a rock floor. She did not sense the immediate presence of the strange creatures in the room with her, although she was certain she could hear many close by. There were definitely strong and distinct odors coming from them. She listened and felt. How many were there? One flick of her tongue was all she needed but it would be a dead giveaway that she was awake.
She finally risked opening her eyes, doing it ever so slowly, her retinas mere slits against the light coming from overhead. The brightest light the female had ever seen was direct sunlight, and this seemed even brighter. At first she could see nothing but glare, but gradually her surroundings came into focus. She tried to move her body again, expecting restraints, but was surprised to find none. She actually raised her head slightly and there was nothing attached to her as there had been before. Had she just been dreaming? Had she just imagined them?
As her eyes continued to adjust, she began to look around the chamber. Never had she witnessed any space so well formed. The room was square and smooth, the walls a perfect white—as brilliant as any clouds she had ever seen. At the top, high up on the wall, was a series of openings that went all the way around the chamber. They reflected light like still water. Perhaps they were openings, she corrected herself. Be careful, and assume nothing, she reminded herself.
Batter and Pete watched as the dinosaur slowly gained consciousness. Pete was relieved to see that the creature had not become immediately violent, and that his strategy of just leaving her alone so far seemed to be working. He did have two men prepared with tranquilizer guns stationed near the doors just in case.
“Extraordinary, Doctor!” Batter said as he watched the lizard awaken. “What do you know about her?”
“We carbon dated everything we could get our hands on in the cave. Some bone fragments and some items that we think were used as tools. There were also some carbon deposits we think might have originated from torches. Everything so far points to 65 million years give or take a million. You may not remember, but that was the period in the Cretaceous just before the infamous K-T event.”
“Don’t remind me.” Batter replied under his breath. At some point very soon, he knew he was going to have to break the news to Pete about the new asteroid, and he was not looking forward to it.
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind, Doctor, you were saying….”
“Well, even more mind—numbing than the creature’s apparent age, is the fact that her species appear to have been full-on sentient.”
“Which in English means…?”
“Intelligent. I mean language, tools, fire, writing—‘the whole enchilada,’ as they say. There were engravings in front of all twelve burial plots which we assume might have been numbers or even their names. No paleontologists have ever even suspected… Well, you might imagine… I mean the whole thing is impossible.” Pete shrugged, his eyes fixed on the female. “One thing we now know for sure, is that cryogenics is possible, at least for her species. I sent a sample of the material she was packed in over to the lab and my guys are testing it now. I mean 65 million years! Can you imagine?” Pete went on, watching the creature, talking to himself as much as he was to Batter.
The Arzat rolled up into a squatting position and studied the room around her. Her joints were stiff and sore. She really needed to urinate, and she was extremely hungry and thirsty. She had the uncomfortable feeling again that she was being watched, though the room she was in appeared to be quite empty. Finally, she couldn’t hold it any longer and went to a corner.
The entire staff gasped. The creature’s move was so swift it seemed supernatural. She had disappeared from the center of the room and reappeared on the side like a tiny lizard darting, all three hundred pounds of her.
The female sensed the reaction but continued to relieve herself, disgusted by the way her urine was running so uncomfortably close her feet. The Arzats had a communal bath that had a stream of water running through it for this purpose, and since the females were seldom out of the caves for more than short scavenges, they were rarely forced to urinate outdoors. She hissed and flicked her tongue, totally embarrassed, and looked up toward the glass.
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