by Jay Morris
Around 11 A.M. an underling came to Amy and me in the control room. We were actually just watching and one of the underling was driving so it wasn’t a big deal really. He handed Amy a com-pad and after reading it she said that Doc Mary wanted us to stop for a bit. The underling driving had already began to slow our vehicle and we gently settled to the ground. The rear hatch was lowered and I realized for the first time that all the doors and the ramp reacted to our touch, something that had not been true just a couple days before. The underling often did things without bothering to let us know, even if it was for us in the first place. No wonder the Da-Nah liked having them around.
Amy and I walked out the back of our vehicle and Karen and Chase appeared from the rear of theirs. There were a number of underling appearing from both vehicles as well. Karen had a huge smile on her face and she ran up to me and hugged me so hard I had trouble breathing.
“We have a NEPHEW!” she announced.
I kissed her and said
“That’s fantastic! When did this happen?” I asked.
“Just this morning, and it sure happened quicker than I thought it would. Her water broke and by the time Ethan got her into the big bed and Mary got a good look she was already dilated to like 8 or 9 so bada-bing there you go!”
I nodded as if that was tremendous but to be honest I had no idea what water breaking, dilating, if 8 was better than 9, or what bada-binging was, but I figured I could ask her later. Amy was carrying Chase on her hip and was already heading up the ramp. We both waited until she disappeared around the corner and then I said,
“I have missed you so much!”
“I missed you too.” She whispered as she kissed me.
“Think we could have a little time alone?” I asked.
She play slapped me and said with a laughing voice
“I am not just a sex-goddess you know.”
“I know, I know but…grrrrrrr” I growled.
She looked up at the 2nd floor porch of our vehicle and asked
“How is your new roomie working out?”
I looked over my shoulder and saw that Jodi was up there, holding her “baby” and watching. When she saw that I had seen her she smiled and waved. While I smiled and waved back I muttered through my teeth that
“It’s okay so far, she certainly is an interesting person, and she is way into Jim Junior.”
“Who? Who is Jim Junior?” she asked.
As we started walking over to the second vehicle I explained the plot to Jodi’s imaginary version of “As the World Turns.”
“It turns out that Comatose Tucker has been holding out on us.”
“What?” she said, laughter bubbling out of her.
“Jodi and Tucker apparently have gone to Mexico or someplace together and laid on the beach naked.”
“Ewwwwww” she said laughing.
“Tell me about it.” I added.
“So, Tucker gets her in trouble or maybe vice-versa I don’t know, the result was Jim Junior, an all-white alien monkey.”
“You are making that up.” She said as we turned and went up the ramp to look at the new human baby.
Ethan and Krista had named their new son Maverick, yep, that’s what I said, Maverick. We all stood around looking at him, Lucy and Gina were beside themselves, and the underling were running around like someone had put them on fast forward. They seemed particularly confused until at last one ran up to Amy and handed her a com-pad.
“What does it say?” Karen asked.
“Ummm it says ‘Sleepy, not warm, not wet, loud’, what is this all about?”
“I don’t know, maybe they are picking something up from Maverick?” the Doc suggested.
“That or maybe Johnny?” Amy offered.
Everyone laughed, except me and Maverick, he was startled and I just said
“Ha. Ha. Ha.”
An underling scurried up to Amy and handed her another pad, this time when she read it out loud it said,
“What? What? Loud. What? Not warm. Sleepy”
So it was decided that the underling were indeed picking up the newborns thoughts and reactions. We also decided to stay where we were for the night, we had been traveling nonstop since we left Richmond and we felt we needed some time with each other.
The underling closed the hatch on the vehicle and showed us that they could place the two vehicles side by side and in fact a hidden siding hatch on the side allowed the two vehicles to become one huge hotel. Lucy said she wanted to see Tucker so Amy and I walked with her and Gina into the other vehicle’s sickbay.
As we walked in Tucker was covered in Da-Nah again, it seemed that every time we weren’t watching he was almost instantly covered by inquisitive alien babies, maybe they wanted to study him or he made a great jungle gym, I don’t know. I was floored when Gina and Lucy both scolded the babies in Da-Nah, buzzes, clicks, hums, and ‘ss’ sounds. The Da-Nah climbed down from him and scampered away. I looked at Amy who gave me the “no clue” shrug.
“Lucy? How did you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“Talk to them in Da-Nah?”
Lucy and Gina looked at each other, then back at me,
“What are you talking about?”
“You just told those little white monkeys to do something, it sounded like ‘buzz clickety buzz squeak hum buzz’, what did you say to them?”
They both laughed and looking at each other they made their eyes spin and made the universal hand motion that indicated that I quite probably had lost all higher order mental functions.
They brushed past me to see Tucker,
Gina said “You are funny Johnny.”
Lucy said “Yep, Gina’s right, you tell funny stories.”
Lucy and Gina both looked upset at seeing that Tucker still was not responding, even though all of his open wounds had been closed by the Da-Nah technology. Not to mention his broken bones had been repaired and reinforced with metal fibers and according to Doc Mary the underling had kindly regrown and apparently improved upon his appendix, his adenoids and his tonsils for him. He actually looked pretty good, it was just we didn’t know if anyone was at home upstairs.
Day 51, continued, Washington D.C.
Sergeant Major Crook stood silently staring at what used to be the National Mall. Like most of the city it had been leveled. The White House was gone, the Capitol Building was gone, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials gone, the Smithsonian gone, everything was gone. Erased. The only difference between D.C. and Raven Rock was that for some reason the Washington Monument had been intentionally spared. That and the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial. Both had been circumnavigated by whatever had flattened the rest of the city. He had been here, right here, where he was standing, hundreds of times and for the first time that he could remember, he felt tears, burn molten hot trails down his cheeks.
He sensed rather than saw the reaction of the two young soldiers standing next to him. It was numbing, somehow more horrible than all the deaths he had seen in his career. Why was that? He wondered. These were just buildings, not even particularly useful ones. They were not living, breathing people. A realization flooded over him, no, that was insufficient. It was an epiphany.
It wasn’t the buildings. Not at all, but the ideas they carried, the memories imbued with them, like tattoos on the soul of an entire nation. It was the sacrifices made, not in their name but in the belief in the ideals they represented.
It wasn’t possible and yet here it was, right in front of him for all the world to see. The America he knew, the America he served had been obliterated. He sighed and closed his eyes and listened. The wind blowing gently on his face was all he wanted to think about when he was startled by one of the men with him.
“Sir? What should we do now, Sir?”
He breathed deeply and held it and finally came up with an answer,
“We report back to President Burwell.”
Day 51, Continued, Brazil.
The young man watched ove
r the lip of the escarpment. Below him was a mind boggling sight. He counted sixteen alien vessels, all moving through the rain forest below him. They left nothing behind but devastation, but they were not attacking, they were running. The story had been building, chapter by chapter, day by day following the invasion. Their crews had been decimated, one by one. Some were shot, some were poisoned, and many had just gotten sick. Every time the aliens tried to build a base, they died.
Everything around them seemed programmed to destroy. This was not their world, this was not their home. This was the Amazon and one did not enter it expecting to rule it. For centuries man had tried and the soil was saturated with crimson. Now it was being fed with the blood of another color.
The major cities, and many other not-so major ones, had been destroyed, but people still remained, and the jungle remained. The level of panic among the Da-Nah had grown nearly frantic. Things seemed to be going well and then… Death. Death from bullet and arrow and poison frog and every time the Da-Nah sent Defenders or technicians out to respond, they found nothing or they did not return. Whatever had killed them was gone. The Amazon war was not like the Australian one or the Florida Peninsula. It was a war of attrition, grinding day by day, in ones and twos the Da-Nah in bases throughout South America died.
Their machines, wonders that they were, had problems dealing with the constant humidity and high temperatures o the rain forest or the thin atmosphere of the Andes. In larger and larger groups the Pods gathered, seeking security in numbers and in the proximity of their fellows. For a while it would work, then the pattern would start again.
At last they made a tragic mistake. They had merged and merged again until the jungle they feared could no longer hide them. News traveled far faster than the Da-Nah would have believed. In South and Central America the Da-Nah had landed sixteen ships. Three hundred and twenty pods, twelve hundred and eighty vehicles. Now, only two hundred thirty Da-Nah vehicles were still responding to communications and of that total, one hundred and eighty four were gathered in one place. All the trails converged in the Amazon basin.
From Argentina, Peru and from a U.S. Air Force base in Panama a total of nine attack aircraft were gathered. The force they assembled consisted of one Lockheed Martin A-4A Fightinghawk (Argentina), one F-117A Stealth fighter (U.S.), four F-15e Strike-Eagles (U.S.), a MIG-29 (Peru) and a SAAB Gripen (Peru). With mismatched weapons and so little fuel that for two of the pilots this was a one way mission, they attacked. Nearly every remaining Da-Nah vehicle in South and Center America was in one place, at one time. A target the vengeful humans could not and would not pass up.
With the setting sun the attack aircraft appeared on the western horizon, they flew at 550 miles an hour, near top speed for the Fightinghawk and the Nighthawk, but crawling for the others who could all reach speeds that neared Mach 2. They were arranged in a double or nested ‘V’ formation. The muddy trails the Da-Nah had left behind allowed the pilots to make a perfect run. Rockets, auto-cannons, and at last bombs were “deployed” on the closely placed Da-Nah vehicles. The destruction was horrendous, mind numbing to the pilots, indescribable to the Da-Nah, the loss to the alien forces was staggering. Once the vehicles began to explode they created a chain reaction, their Klystron Drive units no longer contained, their liquid hydrogen coolers sublimating violently. If one could imagine Hell that was it. Temperatures so great that sand was fused into glass. Concussive blasts so powerful that Da-Nah and underling alike were turned into formless puddles of white, gray, and blue. Bones were not just broken they were pulverized, internal organs ruptured, and blood exploded from every orifice. For millennia the rains would expose translucent gem stones made of bone, sand, and the hulls of melted alien vessels.
The boy watched them as they headed east towards the Atlantic. He would not see another Da-Nah vehicle in the long, challenging, lonely life that lay before him.
Day 52
There was nothing for a long time and then there was something different, a stimulus. Something that may have happened before, but things were confusing. He wondered if he remembered this thing. He wondered if there was something to remember at all. What was memory? A re-experiencing of events but only from afar. This was not afar, this was close. He suddenly had a memory: flicking eyelids and light instead of darkness, a round thing with spots that seemed to move of their own accord. Now he was sure this was not the same, this was information gathered in an entirely new way, a way that did not include flickering or round things with spots. Whatever it was seemed to be reaching him twice, the information was the same but they were different as well.
His eyes opened and he gathered information, something generated energy nearby and he tried to see it, but could not, this information came at him from two directions. Then yet another new event and his eyes responded to it. There it was, the white oval with spots but it was only part of a more complex whole. The tiny white Da-Nah rose from where it had been sitting on his stomach and walked up Tuckers chest to peer into Tuckers eyes. This complexity had given him information. It did so again,
“Whirrrr-thth, click*click-zzzzzz.”
Tucker just stared at the complexity and wondered how this was occurring, wondering what it meant. Then there was another information source, Jodi Lynn.
“Junior? What are you doing? What? Oh my, Jim you are awake! That’s wonderful! By the way your boss called and he wants you to work overtime tomorrow but I told him that we had plans and they would have to find someone else.”
Tucker did not respond so she reached up and turned his face to her, he had not been aware that such a thing was possible and even more shocking was the realization that he too was a complex thing with many parts. Jodi picked up the alien and cuddled it and said,
“Jim, you know you should really get dressed, it’s ridiculous for you to lay around here like this on your day off. Here, let me help you.”
She took hold of Tuckers hand and the realization that he had a hand was thrilling. He allowed her to pull him into a sitting position, as he rose, the intravenous connections that had kept him alive and repaired him were automatically withdrawn. He looked down at his arm and the small trickles of blood left by the connection, he found it interesting, he appeared to be leaking.
“Jim, I am not trying to start a fight or anything but there is a woman next door that is behaving very strangely.” He listened to her but did not respond, she looked shyly at the ground,
“I know you have wondered about being with two women at once but honey that one is just not my type, okay? She’s just too weird, what about Carla? You like her right? Well this is something we can talk about when the b.a.b.y. is a.s.l.e.e.p.”
She drew little circles on his thigh with one finger. He was excited to find out he had legs.
The little alien reached out towards Tucker,
“Oh honey look! Junior wants his daddy!”
She leaned towards him just a little and the tiny alien leaped through the air, grabbed onto Tucker’s right arm with his long fingers and swung itself around like it was a pole dancer. It ended up sitting on Tucker’s shoulder, Tucker slowly turned his face (all on his own) to look at the alien who was peering back just as intently.
“Awwww, Honey isn’t that cute? You know, he gets his athleticism from my side of the family.”
Tucker looked to his right to where the alien was perched and wondered if his shoulder had another purpose other than it provided a place for the little thing to sit. He felt his entirety being pulled forward, moved and suddenly he was standing, what a remarkable thing, he could do what the other one could do. He wondered if he could make sounds like it too, but all he was able to do was make his mouth open and close which made him look like a goldfish.
Jodi looked at him strangely for a moment as if she was processing something for the first time. He had started one of her standard, ridiculous comments but even in her madness, whatever horrors she was escaping from, she was still able to somehow sense that something was wrong. S
he slowly raised her hand out to Tucker,
“Jim? Are you okay?” she paused then stepped a little closer,
“Take my hand Jim, it’s okay, take my hand.”
She held her hand steady and waited. Tucker barely inclined his face and looked out at the hand, then looked down at his own. Then slowly, he raised his hand to mimic hers.
“That’s right Jim, that’s right.” she said.
Her hand slowly closed the gap between their fingers and touched him. His face displayed nothing but inside he was very interested in this new thing.
Jodi gently pulled on his hand and he nearly fell over but she caught him, and with some considerable effort helped him to stand erect once more.
“Jim, you have to walk, like this.”
She moved her feet slowly, carefully placing one in front of the other so he could watch. Then she reached down and touched his legs, getting him to look down and register that he had legs. She was able to push and pull first on one leg then on the other and finally got him to take a few steps. It wasn’t like a baby learning to walk for the first time, he had the strength and he had the balance. He just didn’t know they were there or that walking was even a thing he could do. In one lesson, Tucker learned to walk, well he learned how to follow Jodi when she pulled on his hand.
They started to walk down the hall towards the large communal sleeping room, the little white alien, a.k.a. Junior, was climbing back and forth over his head from one shoulder to the other. She led him inside and then gently pushed him slowly backwards so that he would sit on one of the long, narrow sleeping couches. Junior scampered up her leg to nestle into her arms, she turned and pressed the panel to shut the door behind them.