by Nate Castle
“We have to find a car with keys already in it,” Logan said.
“Look for the most beat up, run down car around,” Garrett said.
His hunch was verified after scanning the pit area and locating a truck with a decal on the side that read, ‘Hoboken Raceway Pit Crew’.
“We’re good to go let’s roll,” Hank said as he fired up the engine.
It wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing truck; it looked like it hadn’t been treated with care by its owner, but it would have to suffice. Hank drove, with Logan riding shotgun, and Garrett in the middle on the single cab’s bench seat.
Pa-POW!
A loud noise echoed from behind, and they all turned their heads to investigate.It appeared that Sal had rammed the derby car into the alien craft and was now driving in reverse, preparing to do it again.It was hard to tell from a distance, but it looked like the alien craft had taken a major dent from the impact, which could be a good thing. Sal’s second attempt came to a halt, however, because one of the aliens extended its arm as Sal was making a b-line towards the craft. From the alien’s hands came tentacles which wrapped around the derby car, stopping it on a dime. Sal was now suspended inside the car five feet in the air.
“Jeepers,” Logan yelled out.
The alien reeled in its tentacles, as if it were fishing, and now the derby car was on the ground.Sal opened the driver’s side door and jumped out, but it was no hope. One of the other aliens now had a vice grip on Sal and it took only ten seconds before Sal was melted into ash.
“Go, go, go!” Garrett yelled at Hank to drive.
They had seen all they needed to, and now it was a matter of self preservation. The truck began picking up speed. Checking the rearview mirror, out of habit, Hank saw the aliens weren’t far behind. They had almost made it off the raceway grounds and onto a two lane road, when the asphalt in front of them crumbled and Hank had no choice but to hit the brakes.
“They pointed something at us, it looked like a futuristic canon,” Logan said. “Why didn’t they just shoot the truck though?”
“Maybe what they have isn’t a canon, but shoots out some kind of electro field, causing the ground to crumble. There was no sound emitted from the canon,” Hank said.
There was no option of driving forward anymore without falling into a sinkhole who knows how deep.
“I think we can jump it,” Garrett said.
“Jump the truck or jump ourselves?” Logan said.
“Ourselves, if we get a running start,” Garrett said.
The sinkhole, although it was extremely wide, wasn’t very long, so if they could just clear the gap, they would be on their way once again.
They got out of the truck and sized up the jump. The aliens were now 100 yards from them, but were stopped as if waiting for something.
“I’m not going to be able to clear the gap, I’ve got bad knees,” Hank said.
“I got this, Logan make sure you tell me when to stop,” Garrett said.
He hopped back in the truck, put it in reverse, and kept the wheel turned to the right. The tailgate of the truck was now facing the sinkhole, with the front end facing the aliens. He began backing the truck up towards the sinkhole slowly, being cautious about going off the edge. The truck had one of those annoying beeps installed whenever you put it in reverse.
“HO!” Logan yelled and put his hand up to stop the truck. The back tires were now about six inches from the sinkhole, and part of the the truck bed was suspended over the sinkhole.
Garrett hopped out and said, “Hank climb into the bed of the truck and make the jump from there, that way you can jump less distance to clear the gap.”
Hank didn’t hesitate, and was able to clear the gap, landing on two feet on the other side of the hole.
“You go next, I’m gonna try something,” Logan said to Garrett.
Garrett hopped into the bed and made the jump, in the same fashion that Hank had.
“Now throw us our bags!” Hank said to Logan.
They had placed their backpacks on the ground so they wouldn’t be weighed down when making the jump. Logan heaved three backpacks, one at a time, to Hank and Garrett, and then turned the other direction and began sprinting towards the aliens.
“What the hell is he doing?” Hank said.
“Experimenting at a time like this, highly questionable,” Garrett said.
The aliens had been standing in the same spot now for the past two minutes, and appeared to be less of an imminent threat than before.
Logan hadn’t gotten more than ten yards into his sprint, when all three of the aliens began moving backwards, away from Logan. Logan stopped running. The aliens had taken one step that covered ten yards and now were standing still.
“Am I seeing this right, is Logan scaring the aliens?” Hank said.
“It sure looks that way,” Garrett said.
Logan slowly put his right hand on the ground, like a lineman in football would do prior to the snap.He was in motion again, this time sprinting towards the aliens for a total distance of twenty yards. The aliens retreated once again, taking two steps this time. Logan make a 180 degree turn and hustled back to the truck. He hopped into the bed, and made the jump to safety.
Standing next to Garrett and Hank, he said, “Garrett you need to try doing what I just did and see what happens.”
“Are you insane?” Garrett said.
“Just do it!” Logan yelled.
Garrett walked backwards a few paces so that he could get a running start and jumped the sinkhole, landing next to the truck. Jumping into the truck bed would have been too difficult given the height calculation, but luckily Garrett didn’t have a problem landing on the ground. Garrett looked back at Hank and Logan, who nodded in approval. He went for it, accelerating towards the aliens. After twenty yards he stopped himself. The aliens had not retreated this time.
“Go another ten yards,” Logan yelled.
Garrett did as instructed, but when he still saw no movement from the aliens, he doubled back towards the truck. A few moments later, Garrett had safely made it back to where Logan and Hank were standing.
“Dude, can you explain to me what’s happening right now?” Garrett said.
“I think I can,” Logan said. “The aliens can’t get within 100 yards of me, which is why when I run towards them, they move back.”
“But they can be within 100 yards of me? And what leads you to believe that?” Garrett said.
“This is gonna sound crazy, but I had this experimental medical chip put in my knee, when I tore my ACL playing college football. The chip assisted with providing the doctors with information on my recovery from the surgery and stuff like that. I think the chip has a weakening effect on the aliens, which is why they can’t get too close to me,” Logan said.
“It’s kind of like their Kryptonite?” Hank said.
“Exactly. And since Garrett doesn’t have this chip, at least I’m assuming he doesn’t, when he ran towards them they didn’t retreat,” Logan said.
“C’mon let’s get out of here before they find a way to get to us, I’m still not 100% sold on Logan’s theory,” Hank said.
They strapped on their backpacks and began running towards the main road.The three were in working shape, but not athletic shape, and were gasping for air a few minutes later.
“Over here,” Garrett said, pointing to a group of trees adjacent to the road. They followed Garrett into the tree cover; at least they couldn’t be spotted from the road.
“Tell me more about this chip,” Hank said.
“I don’t know too much about it. They told me it is similar to the type of chip used in cell phones. I was supposed to have another surgery to get the chip removed, but I never got around to it. The doc told me that it wouldn’t be harmful to the body to keep it in,” Logan said.
“Wait a minute, this is making more sense to me now,” Hank said. “The aliens tried to wipe out all people with cell phones on them in their first attac
k right? Well maybe they didn’t intend to wipe out the people, their main concern was disabling the cell phones.”
“You mean they weren’t trying to kill the humans, just were trying to disable their cell phones?” Garrett said.
“Yeah and disabling the cell phones ended up killing most of population due to the strength of the electro signal, for lack of a better word, that they shot out.” Hank said.
“So by disabling the cell phones, they were able to come to Earth, and it wouldn’t hurt them being in close proximity to humans,” Garrett said. “But why then would Logan’s chip not have been disabled when the cell phones were?”
“It’s hard to know, but maybe the fact that it was used in a medical device differentiates it enough from the cell phone chips,” Logan said.
“Unbelievable. If Sal had stayed with us, the aliens wouldn’t have been able to touch us because of Logan’s chip,” Garrett said.
“That’s water under the bridge, we can’t do this Garrett, we will drive ourselves nuts going over ‘what-if’ scenarios. Plus there’s a good chance we wouldn’t have made it to Denver in time to get Sal medical attention,” Hank said.
“He’s right, we have to move on,” Logan said.
“Ok what’s the plan now?” Garrett said. “I guess it’s safe to say now that the attack wasn’t an inside job, that it was in fact done by the aliens.”
“We have to get in contact with the President. He needs to know what just happened, and start formulating a plan to counterattack these aliens,” Hank said, “Logan might be the only hope for the American people, so even though I’m pretty anti-government these days, I think we have no choice but to team up with the White House on this one.”
13 GUILTY PLEASURES
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“What’s that?” Noel said to Shelby.
“It’s a game camera,” Shelby said.
“You mean like for hunting?” Noel said.
“Yeah, I picked it up when we were at the Bass Pro Shops, and I think I was able to record the whole alien encounter,” Shelby said, “ But this thing doesn’t have an LCD screen, so I’ll have to plug it into a computer or something to know for sure.”
“Wouldn’t that be incredible, if we got the whole thing on camera,” Noel said.
Shelby walked to the back of the store where there was a customer service desk with cash registers that doubled as computers.The cable for the game camera was pretty standard, it plugged into a USB port on the computer. It didn’t take long for the camera to be recognized by the computer and a control panel appeared. The options included ‘Save files to Drive’ and ‘Playback’. She clicked ‘Playback’ and a video started playing. They didn’t need to watch the whole thing and relive the terror; once she saw the aliens pop up on the video, she knew they had enough evidence. It was an eighteen minute video, and Shelby hit pause three minutes in. With the control panel still open,Shelby clicked the ‘Save to Drive’ option, and immediately the computer screen faded to black, as if it had just been hit by a virus.
“Oh God, I sure hope it didn’t wipe out the hard drive on the game camera also,” Shelby said. She unplugged the USB cable and tried the plugging it into another computer next to the one that had been wiped out. An error message popped up on the new computer: ‘Incompatible device, no hard drive recognized.’
“SHIT! We lost the video,” Shelby said.
She turned to look at Noel, who was standing behind her. Noel was holding a tablet computer in her hands.
“Don’t worry girl I got it. When you played the three minutes of the video on that first computer, I recorded it on this tablet,” Noel said.
“Are you for real?” Shelby said. Her tone had now changed from anger to excitement.
“Yeah, I had a feeling that something like this was going to happen. I mean we’re dealing with aliens and all. I knew going in there was a good chance that the game camera might not show the footage that was recorded or it would crash after playback, so I made sure we had the footage backed up. Without video footage, no one is going to believe us that there are aliens here,” Noel said.
“Absolutely genius. That’s why you’re my best friend,” Shelby said. “We should make a few more copies of the video though, in case something happens to this one.”
“Yes, but we can’t do anything that involves transferring the files, or the same thing might happen again,” Noel said.
“You’re right, but I don’t see any other tablets around. Do you think it’s safe to use a cell phone now?” Shelby said.
“It’s your call, but I think if you store the video on a cell phone and take out the battery and the chip, there will be no way for the aliens to target your cell phone again. If we need to pull up the video, then we can temporarily put the battery and chip back in,” Noel said.
“Ok I’m gonna take your word for it,” Shelby said.
She walked over to the long wooden table in the store, which displayed demo models of all the cell phones the company offered, and ripped the charging cable out of one.
“We’ll have to try with one of these; if we use a brand new phone out of the packaging it will have to be charged first which will take too much time,” Shelby said. “Ok, I’m ready, point the tablet towards me, press play and I will begin filming.”
Shelby had the cell phone pointed at the tablet and began recording. Noel hit play on the tablet and the 3 minute video of the alien encounter played.
“Done. Let’s do it one more time on another cell phone though as a backup,” Noel said.
Noel had already begun unplugging another demo phone and handed it to Shelby to record the video again.They now had three copies of the footage. They put the tablet and two cell phones, with the batteries and chips disconnected from the phones, into a canvas bag they found behind the register.
“We somehow have to get ahold of the President or someone in DC, so we can show them this footage,” Shelby said.
“Do you think it’s safe to leave this store yet?” Noel said.
“I don’t, and I’m not going to leave here until we have a rock solid plan intact,” Shelby said.
~~~
President Taylor and General Kaplan made the trek back through the tunnel until they reached the ladder leading up to the janitorial closet in the Presidential Library.
“It’s no longer safe for our search parties to be out rounding up survivors,” President Taylor said.
“But then we will be leaving who knows how many hundreds of people stranded,” General Kaplan said.
“We’re still going to find a way to get them DC, but the random searches are too risky, given the landmine situation, and what we just witnessed back there in the armory,” President Taylor said.
“At the very least, it would be good to know the exact locations of the survivors, so that way the search parties wouldn’t be driving around aimlessly; they would have a targeted location, and could plan out how to make it safely to that location and back,” General Kaplan said.
“Have you ever been ice fishing?” President Taylor said.
“No, why?”
“Well I went one time, and it’s the biggest bullshit I’ve ever experienced. First off, it’s colder out there than you plan for, and then you drill a hole in the ice to reach the water underneath, throw a fishing rod in there and hope you get a bite. Your chance of success is slim to none, compared to regular fishing where you can at least see the fish you are trying to catch, or cheat and use a fishfinder on your boat,” President Taylor said.
“What’s your point?” General Kaplan said.
“Right now it’s like we’re ice fishing. We have no idea what the end result is going to be. We are sending these innocent people out there to rescue survivors, but we don’t now where the survivors are, not to mention how many there are,” President Taylor said.
“I see what you’re saying. So we need to come up with a way to reach out to the survivors to determine their exact locations, and also tally
up how many there are. Then we can plan our rescue missions accordingly,” General Kaplan said.
“When you have taken out terrorist targets in the past, did you go into the mission with a general idea of where the guy was, or did you have specific intelligence pointing you to his exact geographic coordinates?” President Taylor said.
“We had the exact location. It was often a major pain in the ass, there was a lot of red tape. There were times when we had the target’s exact location, but then had to abort the mission altogether because the location changed and our intel couldn’t verify with 100% certainty, that the target was there. Had we gone forward with the mission based on our 85% certainty, the public would have had a fit,” General Kaplan said. “I think if we can get up to 85% certainty of where the survivors are in this case, that we should go ahead and proceed with the mission.”
“Ok, I’ll let you make the call. It will be a case by case basis,”
President Taylor said.
“The quickest way I can think of to make contact with the survivors is to reroute all US phone numbers to our secure line in the Oval Office. When anyone dials any phone number, the call will be rerouted to us,” General Kaplan.
“That can be done?” President Taylor said, “Our phone will be ringing off the hook, people calling will get a busy signal and won’t be able to get ahold of us.”
“Not if we also tether the rest of the phone lines in the White House into our main line. This will cause an alternate phone to ring, when the main line is busy. We won’t miss any calls. If I remember correctly, there are twenty-five phone lines that we can adjoin to the main one. After we get this all set up, you should make a loudspeaker announcement for survivors to call us to provide details on their location,” General Kaplan said.
“So what you’re saying is we will need twenty-five people here in this room on standby to answer the phones?” President Taylor said.