by Jay Morris
Day 52, Continued, Galveston Bay
The meeting between the underling representatives, the leaders of the two groups of human survivors and five preteens was going reasonably well. The underling had been dream-sharing with the young children and had learned a lot of written English from the Virginia convoy. They had been told by the underling that the South American Da-Nah had been defeated soundly and that the few surviving underling had absconded with two of the alien vehicles. What was known was that the fourteen unaccounted for vehicles had left Brazil and their destination was a mystery.
Of a more immediate concern was two full pods somewhere in Arizona. The underling had discovered that they were heading to the Texas coast and that they wanted to seek out and destroy the survivors there. Even worse the underling felt strongly that the Da-Nah from those pods had ‘eliminated’ the underling. The method of their execution was unknown but they felt a poison was a likely candidate. The humans, led by Irven C. Barnes, a former U.S. Army sniper with 26 human and 56 Da-Nah kills, and Hernando Velaquez, an automobile mechanic who had become one of the most feared “Indigenous Life Aggressives” among the Da-Nah.
“How long till the Virginia bad asses arrive?” Barnes asked.
“About a day and a half Senor, maybe sooner, maybe not.”
Barnes sat backed and rubbed his chin, “I for one would feel better if they showed up before the Arizona Pods find us.”
“Si, I agree but we should assume they will not be here in time. How can we stop these Da-Nah from reaching Galveston Island?”
Concern was engraved on Barnes’ face. One hundred and forty three survivors, mostly women and children were on the 27 mile long barrier island. They were the third largest non-government/non-military group of survivors in North America.
“How many fighters do you have Hernando?” he asked but his eyes were on the underling across the table from him, it creeped him out how they had informed them of the deaths of their people in South America and in Arizona. They might as well as been carved from stone.
“Not counting two 3-person patrol teams I have fifteen, and you?”
“Eight.”
One of the children suddenly sat up,
“Oh! Oh! I forgot! Last night in dream-share the traveling underling told me that with them there were five Aggressives, and someone else, but I think I didn’t understand what they were telling me exactly.”
“FIVE? I thought they were bringing fifty!”
Barnes nearly exploded from his chair.
Her name was Lisa and she was nearly twelve, with blue eyes and hair bleached blond by the Texas coast sun, she was generally shy, leaving underling-human-dream-share messages to her friend, nine year old Marjorie. But this was something that had been told to her specifically since she was the oldest of their dream-sharers. She turned to Barnes and said
“The underling think the ones coming are very good and they are bringing some Da-Nah weapons, lasers and such.”
“Well, that’s something I guess.”
Barnes sat back but knowing that at least two modified Defenders were hunting them had been giving him nightmares. Worse than the ones he had after the first Gulf War.
Hernando placed his hand on her shoulder,
“Is this the Doctor Lady, Chiquita?”
She took a deep breath, trying to explain something she really didn’t understand herself. She answered the man who had become her adopted father, her entire family,
“No, no Papi, not her, I really didn’t understand what they were trying to tell me but they seemed to think this person was important. Best I can tell you is that this was someone new but they had been with them a long time?”
“I don’t get it, what does that mean?” Barnes said as he looked over at Marjorie who answered his unspoken question,
“Sorry, I didn’t get it either” she said as she shrugged.
“Well, el pequeño don’t tell us such things unless they are importantes no?”
Hernando patted Lisa affectionately on the shoulder as he looked over at the silent, gray aliens across from him. Barnes rocked back in his chair, he locked his fingers behind his neck and said
“What about the Stewart?”
Day 52, Continued, Traveling South
Amy had been avoiding Jodi and keeping herself busy, she had organized the watch and gave a driving lesson to Ethan. Now the vehicles had been moving steadily south since 9 A.M. When terrain made it difficult, we just drove right around it on the surface of the Mississippi, twice we had passed places where cities were supposed to be. Twice we just watched the dust whip though the air in a silent testament to a place where humans once lived.
It was almost three in the afternoon, I was painting a name on the side of our vehicle and I could look back at Karen doing the same thing on the other vehicle. We had a debate and everyone had made suggestions about what we should name our “ships”. We finally decided that we would name one after Carl Weir and the other after Diane West. Amy wanted to name one after my mom but Lucy and I talked, we rather liked having our mom all to ourselves. So, we were now proudly sailing south in great vessels that floated above the Earth on unseen fields of unknown forces.
Our ship is The Diane West, Karen’s is The Carl Weir. I liked the way the names sounded together, like they were meant to be sister ships, West and Weir, Wier and West. Pretty cool, I thought. I could just imagine Carl chuckling at our efforts while sipping coffee and Diane just rolling her eyes at how silly we were being. That made me laugh just remembering them.
Once we explained, with assistance from Lucy and Gina, the underling accepted it readily enough. Seems the Da-Nah named their space ships as well so the concept was not new to them. Turns out that all the drawing they had done with the girls had turned at least a few of them into pretty decent artists. They had helped outline the names on the walls on both sides of each vehicle in letters a foot high. They were placed so we could reach them easily from the catwalks. All we had to do was stay between the lines. After the end of the world, we still had to stay between the lines.
That is when Amy came rushing through the open hatch,
“Johnny! Tucker’s GONE!”
She had been relieved from pilot duty by a couple of underling and had grabbed a bit to eat in what was the alien dining room. Then wandered down to the sick bay to check on Tucker. She hadn’t ‘lost it’ but she was pretty damn upset. I handed my brush to an underling and jogged down the catwalk to join her.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
Amy didn’t play jokes and I really did know what ‘gone’ meant but I honestly didn’t know what else to say. Amy grabbed my wrist and dragged me inside. As we raced through the hall towards the ramp that took us downstairs she told me how she had discovered him missing. We stepped into the med bay and just as she said the strange Da-Nah table was empty, the various IVs the underling had hooked to Tucker were no raised into the ceiling and now just barely visible, the displays were dark. He was just gone.
“Do you think the underling moved…”
My words trailed off as an unpleasant thought crossed my mind, what if he had died and the underling just got rid of the corpse. We knew the vehicle had some kind of high energy waste disposal but would they have done that without even telling us? I doubted it. Amy stared at me.
“What? Johnny what are you thinking?”
Before I could decide if I wanted to lie or not something flashed by in the hall. A flash of white.
“Wait a sec.” I said as I stuck my head out into the hall. I watched a baby Da-Nah about twenty inches tall open a sliding panel and disappear into the big communal sleeping area the underling and Da-Nah used.
“Come on.” I said.
Amy was right behind me as I pressed the access panel and the door slide silently into the wall. Standing there in a pair of black boxer shorts was Tucker. He wasn’t moving and five little Da-Nah were climbing all over him, one on each shoulder, one was sitting on his head and two oth
ers were chasing each other around his legs. Jodi was sitting on the sleeping platform, Junior in her arms fast asleep. She had cleaned up some more and it looked as if she had ran a brush through her hair. Or maybe she had just cut the knots out, I don’t know, but she was talking quietly (incessantly, but quietly) as to not wake Junior I suppose.
“So I told Jean Mc Carver that I would support her for school board, she’s an air head but she’s a far sight better than that Barlow idiot.”
She smiled at me but grimaced when she saw Amy. Amy stormed past and started removing alien babies from Tucker. She spoke quietly to him,
“Oh my God John what are you doing out of bed?” she demanded.
She gave Jodi a full-fledged death stare, just daring her to say something or stop her.
Jodi just whispered to the sleeping Da-Nah in a sing-song voice,
“Now don’t you worry sweetie, the wicked old bitch will be leaving soon.”
Amy growled the way Tucker does when he was angry or frustrated,
“John? John? Answer me, what are you doing?”
Tucker blinked and slowly turned his head to look at Amy. He seemed to be evaluating everything about her, but he gave no indication he recognized her and he said nothing. Amy didn’t react at first then instead of anger, instead of screaming, almost in a whisper she said,
“Oh John, what have they done to you?”
I had been watching Amy, now I started to look at the old man, in the med-bay we had been watching things on the inside, so worried about his injuries, and we hadn’t paid much attention to the outside. It was the same Tucker, but not really.
First he was bald, but we had talked about that and had assumed it was because of his fractured skull. But no, he was completely bald, so smooth I couldn’t see even stubble from his formerly wild and crazy silver hair.
Second, the rest of him was just as smooth as his head, where his arms once had hair so long that it curled and his chest and back made him look like he was wearing a sweater, now he looked like a ken doll, and that was creepy. At least he still had eyelashes.
Third, his scars, he had a bunch of them, on his stomach, back, and knees from his various and sundry surgeries. There were at least a dozen other ones, some were from the Before, when they had tried to use him as a chew toy or when the first Defender he had seen had done a pretty good job of kicking his ass. Others, on his legs, arms, hands and face were from years of just being Tucker, now there weren’t any. They were gone.
Fourth, while we all had lost weight over the last two months, Tucker was ridiculous. Instead of a roly-poly 300, he probably was closer to 200, maybe not even that much. He had abs even, maybe not six-pack but certainly an athletes’. His arms now looked huge on his more slender physique, his was now a body designed to dish out punishment. Oh goody.
Lastly, the tattoo on his arm, I had seen it that first day, so long ago. He had been wearing a sleeveless Tee-shirt, and it had been non-descript with bluish smudges that looked vaguely military. Now it looked like some auto-body genius had redone it in high gloss enamels. It was easy to see and easy to read now. It was a grave, with a cross and a bayoneted rifle leaning against it. A crimson sun was setting in the distance beyond it. Below that, in a straight line, four letters: “U.S.M.C.” and in the same arching, black letters over the grave:
“DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR”
Day 52, Continued, Travelling South
“Permissive-Query-Broadcast (underling-this, underling all)
Locative-Current Tucker.”
There was a murmur of thoughts, the universal agreement being that his location was unknown.
“Statement-Factual-Status-Composite
:{ Repairs-Quantity-Estimate (.82)
Statement-Factual-Conjunctive-Multiple
(
(Structural-Modification, Systems-Autonomic, Complete)
(Communication-underling, Self-Repair, Negation (Initialized) )
)
Locative-Current-Required}.”
While the underling in ‘The Diane West’ began to systematically search for Tucker, there was also agreement that a tea-party (formerly known as the Graphical-Communication-Ritual) with sharing of Tang was optimal.
Day 52, Continued, U.S. Government Convoy
President Burwell had spent most of the morning talking to U.S. Army chief of Staff, Lt. Colonel W. F. Franklin. Franklin was going to be promoted a few steps to General in a few days once the President had met with him personally. The President’s convoy was on its way to Franklin’s home base, Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The President’s convoy actually outnumbered the Lt. Colonel's command by almost 50%. Before the “outbreak”, as the President like to refer to it, Fort Bragg was home to about 55,000 active duty Army personnel. Now Fort Bragg was able to field a staggering 62, almost half of which were U.S. Army retirees. More than one hundred thousand such retirees and military families had lived at Fort Bragg, not to mention about fifteen thousand contractors and other civilian employees who had called it home.
While the Army’s losses at Fort Bragg had been staggering, they had actually been rather successful at protecting some of the American population there. In three facilities on the base, 396 civilians were being housed. The President had originally ordered Franklin to come to him. The Lt. Colonel refused. His duty as he saw it was to protect as many of the surviving Americans as possible. Period.
Sargent Major Crook was now officially the Commandant of the Marine Corps, a position he had not wanted but until they found someone else, he was it. As he waited for Burwell to finish his conversation with Fort Bragg, Crook’s mind wandered. He thought of Tun’s Tavern, the birth place of the U.S. Marine Corps, of November 10th, 1775, and all the birthday bashes he had attended over the years. He wondered whose Corps was larger, his? Or the one created that first day.
Finally the President lowered the handset and turned to Sargent Major Crook.
“Well, finally got that worked out.” He said.
“Yes, sir.”
“General Franklin has informed me of a very successful raid carried out by American aircraft against the aliens. Did you know about this?”
Burwell eyed him, looking for a reaction. Knowing that he was trying to get one, Crook didn’t give him one.
“Yes sir, I had handed the report to you about an hour ago.”
“Oh, right, right, right.”
The President’s words quickly chased each other. His habit of repeating things three times was beginning to get on Crooks nerves but he would have to just get used to it.
“Mr. President, I did want to tell you that one of our advance units has come in contact with a number of civilians who had hooked up with some of ours outside of a little town not far from where Memphis used to be. Our boys are from the 72nd Helicopter Squadron out of Langley. Apparently three Iroquois attack choppers made it out just as the field was being over-run. Unfortunately, one of the pilots had been wounded, the infection hit him hard while still in the air, the chopper went down somewhere in the Dismal Swamp.”
The president seemed to be impatient with the lengthy report and he moved his right hand in small circles indicating that he wanted Crook to speed it up.
“Anyway Mr. President, of the two remaining birds, one is being used for spare parts but the last one is in good shape and ready for action.”
“Outstanding Crook! Outstanding! OUT-STANDING!”
“Fuel is still an issue but the one still working is of the UH-1N variety, special operations craft, they have an effective range of 350 miles. When we get closer and find an appropriate field they can join us. No rockets, but they still have a supply of 40mm grenades for the M75 in their nose.”
“Outstanding! Out…”
Sargent Major Crook tuned out the rest of the President’s “outstanding” soliloquy, he just didn’t think he could stand so many outstandings at one go.
Day 52, Continued, Travelling South
It s
eemed that things were about to boil over between Amy and Jodi. They were both doing what I now call ‘whisper-yelling’. Jodi was holding Junior and Amy was trying to confront her about Tucker, since at no time did the volume go above what dogs normally hear therefore ‘whisper-yelling’.
Amy: “Now, you need to get a few things perfectly clear, his name is John Tucker and he is my friend and by disconnecting him from that freaking machine you might have killed him!”
Jodi: “Jim and I are not opposed to meeting your friend but not tonight, we are going dancing.”
Amy: “Listen hear you freaking lunatic, you aren’t going dancing, and you are in an alien mobile home diving down the middle of the Mississippi River!”
Jodi: “Sure, sure, we are and you aren’t a door-to-door meat salesman, now if you don’t mind our baby sitter has just arrived.”
Jodi walked over to me and gently put the tiny, sleeping Da-Nah in my arms, she didn’t whisper-yell at me she just plain old whispered.
“He has just had his bottle so he should sleep through, my cell number is on the fridge, I’ve ordered you a pepperoni pizza and you can watch TV if you want just keep the volume down. Oh and no boys!”
“No problem.” I said
Amy:”Oh my God Johnny don’t encourage her.”
Jodi:”Are you still here? I told you we aren’t interested in new siding, now will you please leave or do I have to call the cops?”
Amy: “Arrrrgh!”
That was when the door slid open and five underling appeared,
Jodi: “I warned you, there she is officer.”
The underling scurried around Tucker checking him out, satisfied they started to lead him towards the door.
Jodi:” Don’t worry honey, I’ll just meet you at the club.”
She stepped forward stood on her tip toes and kissed Tucker on the cheek. She then took Junior back from me, cuddling it she wandered off humming some nursery rhyme to her sleeping white alien.