After I was done, there was silence on the line, and then I heard her sniff, she must have been crying. “I have to go, Nik,” she said.
“No. Please, don’t,” I said. “Just talk to me. This has been a bad few days. I—” Movement caught my attention inside the burning saucer. It was a brief flash of something, I couldn’t tell what. I moved closer, peering through a large gash in the vessel that ran vertically.
“I can’t, Nik. I can’t. I’m sorry, I—”
“Holy shit,” I said. I had heard her words but they didn’t mean much. The gash was ragged metal, and inside the vessel was a flashing light. When it flashed on I thought I could see a humanoid form and hear moaning. “I think he’s alive.”
“What?” Licia asked. “Who’s alive? What are you talking about?”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Umm… Area 51. Training, I told you that. Why?” she said.
“Okay, good. Listen carefully. I’m between Flagstaff and Winslow next to the train tracks.” I said, talking fast, my words punctuated by my chattering teeth. I was naked and the cold was getting to me. “There’s a downed alien craft and I think there is a live alien in it. I think he’s hurt. There is a fire inside the craft. I am going to try to pull him out. Tell Colonel Williams. Have him get personnel here as soon as possible.”
“Oh my God, Nik. Please, be careful,” she said.
“I’m putting the phone down now. Leave the connection open, it might make it easier for them to find me.”
Licia was speaking, but I put the phone down anyway. My mind was careening between fear of the alien, fear that I might find another corpse, and excitement at the possibility of talking to a live alien and asking questions.
I stepped away from the phone and changed to my neutrino form. It was a blessed escape from the cold, but that hardly registered. I approached the gash and peered through. There was a small open area in the center of the ship. It was dominated by what looked like a reclined chair. Light was coming in from above where I impacted the ship. There was a fire burning on the other side of the vessel, and there was an alien in there.
He was of the Nordic variety, dressed in what looked like your standard When the Earth Stood Still silver jumpsuit. That confused me. I wasn’t expecting anything I found to represent a decades old Hollywood representation of an alien.
The alien had red blood covering the right side of his face and was off the couch. He appeared to be badly injured and was crawling away from the fire to the gash I was peering through. His eyes meet mine. They were blue and entirely human. I could see pain and fear and surprise in them.
He didn’t draw a weapon or act in a threatening way. He seemed harmless and, frankly, pitiful. The fire behind him flared up. His eyes drilled into mine and he said one word. “Help.”
I flashed back to the dead alien at Yellowstone. The gaping hole in his chest caused by my neutrino bolt. I felt the guilt and revulsion that came with that memory. I knew this creature was my enemy, the enemy of my planet, but I couldn’t leave it there to burn to death. I didn’t think I could live with the guilt.
“Stay there,” I said to him. “I’m going to have to burn my way through.”
He nodded and backed up, cowering against the chair.
I gripped each side of the gap and pulled. I kept my reaction low and just tried to widen the gap so I could get through. It wouldn’t budge. The metal was thin and strong.
I carefully increased my reaction in both hands the same way I had done when I was cutting through the safe. I plunged them into the metal at chest height and began cutting a wider opening into the ship. This metal was tough, much tougher than the steel safe I had just cut through. It was work, and I did my best to keep the bulk of my neutrino reaction low; I didn’t want to radiate the alien to death.
I took several minutes to cut through. I watched as the fire spread towards the alien, its yellow tongues licking at the grey chair she hid behind. I hadn’t realized it at first, but the alien was a female. She was thin and tall like the male versions I had seen, but with delicate feminine features and long blond hair pulled back.
As I neared the end of my cutting, she was in the fetal position, the chair above her fully on fire, the ship thick with smoke. I thought I heard her weeping.
I pulled away the metal I had cut through and yelled, “Come on, get out of there.”
She was still in the fetal position and coughing. She looked at me and nodded. She tried to stand, but collapsed in pain. It looked like her leg was injured.
I let go of my neutrino form and crawled through the hole. The smoke was thick and acrid. It burned my eyes and my lungs and I began coughing. The floor of the vessel was a shiny metal. It seemed like I should have slid on it, but I didn’t. The material provided excellent traction.
“Take my hand,” I said in between coughs. I wasn’t all the way in the ship, just far enough to reach her. The chair was completely on fire and being naked, I didn’t want to get too close.
She grasped my hand with surprising strength and I pulled. I heard a sharp beeping noise coming from the ship followed by words in a language I had never heard. Her eyes meet mine and she coughed out, “Hurry!” I wasn’t sure what was happening, but her urgency was clear and palpable.
I reached back and grabbed the edge of the ragged hole I had created and pulled hard. The metal was still hot and burned my hand.
The beeping noise became more insistent as I pulled her from the ship. It was clear she couldn’t walk so I leaned down and got her over my shoulders in a firemen’s carry and started moving forward as fast as I could. The ground beneath my bare feet was rough and cold, but I ignored it. My hand screamed with the pain of the fresh burn, but that didn’t matter.
The beeping coming from the burning vessel behind us became louder and more insistent. I forced my legs into a jog. “Hurry,” she grunted as I jogged along. I forced myself to move faster, my foot grazing a small prickly pear cactus as I moved, its needles biting into my flesh.
The beeping was so fast now, it was a continuous tone. “Down!” she yelled. I got the message, roughly tossing her to the ground. I stood, took a step back towards the burning ship, and changed back to my neutrino form. We were only about fifteen yards away, and if the ship was going to explode, that wasn’t far enough.
I crouched down and extended both hands in front of me towards the ship, like I had done in the Verde Valley when the meteorites were descending on Lightningirl and me. This wasn’t something I had practiced, and I didn’t know if it would work, but I wanted to preserve the life of the alien if I could.
As the ship erupted into an orange ball of flame, a column of yellow light shot out of my chest and formed a shield in front of us. The fireball was quickly upon us, but the shield held, the explosion dividing around my shield.
It was quickly over. The ground all around us was burnt and blackened, the two of us in a small unscathed space. The ship was gone, nothing more than a few hunks of melted metal. I changed back to my biological form and went back to the alien. She was breathing and gave me a wan smile. I again wished that I had some medical training. I had no idea what to do. She didn’t seem to be actively bleeding so I just smiled back. “You’re going to be okay, help is on the way.”
I studied the blast radius. The ship crashed about twenty yards north of the train tracks and the radius of the blast was about fifty yards. The charred ground around us was completely decimated. Even the rocks seemed to be misshaped as if the blast had melted them.
In the distance, to the east, I heard a train headed our way. I looked down at the rocks and wondered at this blast, how it had altered them.
I heard the train rumbling closer. It was a fair distance off, but I could hear it with my rat-enhanced hearing.
Melted rocks. Large blast area near the train tracks. Train headed this way. It all tumbled together in my mind. “Oh, shit!” I said. I turned to the alien, “Hang in there, help is coming. I’ve got to go
.”
Chapter 13
Locomotive
Late Winter 2005, East of Flagstaff, Arizona
I flew fast and found the train. It was a westbound Amtrak, just like the one we had just robbed, pulled by a silver locomotive with red, white, and blue stripes down the length of it.
I turned around, matched speed, and yelled through the little window on the side, “Stop this train. The tracks are out up ahead!”
There were two men inside. They both looked surprised to see me. I mean, of course they did. I was a flying yellow humanoid telling them to stop their train.
“Stop this train now!” I shouted.
The older one looked to the younger one and gave a nod. The younger one just stood there, his eyes wide, staring at me. The older one pushed him aside and started pressing buttons and pulling levers and the train started slowing, its metal wheels screeching and sparks flying. I flew up and a little ahead to get a better view. We only had a few hundred yards before the blast area, the train was going about seventy miles per hour and had no chance of stopping in time.
I looked back along the train—there were maybe fifty cars, all filled with passengers. If the train hit the blast area, it would derail, injuring and potentially killing many. I had to stop it.
I flew back to the front of the train and examined it. The top half was sloped with two windows. The bottom half was vertical with a big metal coupler sticking out. That seemed to be the sturdiest part. I carefully landed on it and lowered myself onto it so my back was facing the train.
It was a dizzying view, the tracks whizzing beneath my feet. I extended my feet and started thrusting. Slowly at first. I did my best to control my reaction so all the power was coming out of my feet. I didn’t want to melt the coupling down.
The train was slowing, but still not fast enough. I added thrust from my hands and increased the thrust from my feet. The pressure of my thrust was holding me in place while my hands and feet were positioned straight ahead spewing columns of yellow.
The tracks beneath me were slowing noticeably, but it still wasn’t going to be enough. I noticed that I was closer to the locomotive now, the coupling was melting under the heat of my reaction. I had no choice, I redoubled my efforts.
I continued to ramp up the thrust slowly. I didn’t want to derail the train. I pointed the neutrino jets up a bit, so I wouldn’t take out the tracks in front of us. I heard the squeal of the brakes increase and looked ahead noticing that the blast zone was now visible. The train tracks were there, but looked like melted plastic. Some of the railroad ties were on fire.
I thrusted more, I was now pressed directly against the front edge of the train, molten metal splashing down on the tracks as the metal I was pressing against melted.
The force I was exerting against the train was tremendous, but the train was massively heavy and had a large amount of momentum that I was fighting.
The train had slowed to a few miles per hour, but the blast area was just ahead. I gave it everything I had, a cry escaping me as the effort took its toll.
I felt the metal that pressed against my back give way and I was completely engulfed by the train. I saw sparks as I melted through electrical systems and heard the squeal and groan of metal as my thrust continued to burrow me farther into the engine.
I stopped thrusting. I didn’t know much about how a locomotive was designed, but I did know they ran on diesel fuel and I didn’t want to cause an explosion.
I quickly crawled forward to the front of the train just as it reached the damaged section of the tracks. The train was barely at a crawl as its front wheels came off the track and burrowed into the freshly charred earth. The train ground to a halt, the locomotive’s back wheels staying on the track.
I breathed a sigh of relief and flew back to where the alien was. As I walked to the spot, about fifty yards from where the train had stopped, I had this fear that she would be gone. That by stopping the train I had given up our chance to find out why the aliens wanted us dead. I could almost hear Toxicwasteman admonishing me for not letting the collateral damage happen, for not focusing on the larger mission, the greater good.
Fortunately, my fear was unfounded. She was still there, her eyes open and staring at me and the train beyond. Her eyes were wide as she watched me approach.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded slowly. It was a strange nod, stiff and awkward as if she had to think about the gesture. As if it wasn’t normal for her. “You are unexpected,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what she meant. Was my presence unexpected, or my actions? “My name is Nik,” I said. “What’s yours?”
She grimaced in pain and took a deep breath and told me her name. I had no chance of repeating it. It began with a “sh” sound and had a rolling “r” in it (as well as several clicks and way too many vowels).
“Oh, I’ll never be able to say that,” I said. “How about Sarah? Do you mind if I call you Sarah?”
“No, Sarah is good,” she said.
I smiled and turned to the west where I heard the sound of an approaching helicopter. Help was coming, but I really wasn’t sure how helpful they would be.
Chapter 14
An Alien Named Sarah
Late Winter 2005, East of Flagstaff, Arizona
We only had a minute or two before the helicopter arrived. Before the military swept in and took over. I let my neutrino form go and walked closer to the alien, squatting down.
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you here? Why are you trying to kill us?” I hugged my arms around me as the cold bit at my skin. I could hear the helicopter coming closer and the sounds of shouting from the train behind me. “Please, what have we done?”
“It’s not what you have done,” she said slowly. “It is what you will do.”
“Are you from the future?” I asked.
A bark escaped her chest. It took me a moment to realize that it was a laugh. “No. Time travel not possible. I did not speak correctly. It is what probability says you will do.” She groaned and clutched her abdomen. “I should not speak,” she said through gritted teeth. “Is not my place.”
I heard the helicopter land behind me. I tried to get her to tell me more, but she would not speak of it.
~~~
The military personnel first on site were Army National Guard from Camp Navaho, about thirty miles away. They created a perimeter around the wreckage, the alien, and myself. The train tracks were a few miles away from I-40 at this point and only some poorly maintained dirt roads led back here. I could hear sirens in the distance from the approaching emergency services personnel. We had a train wreck, a crashed alien spacecraft, and a live alien all in one spot. This place was about to become a circus.
A young sergeant by the name of Mills seemed to be in charge. He had been kind enough to loan me his jacket so I would not completely freeze. But, he hadn’t produced a medic yet.
“She’s dying,” I said, not for the first time.
“I am sorry, sir,” Mills said, “we didn’t bring a medic with us. One is in route.” He was around thirty, stocky, with a square jaw and grey eyes.
“You said that ten minutes ago.”
“Yes sir,” he replied, “And I’ll say it again next time you ask.”
I smiled and almost laughed. He was right. I was being a pain, pacing back and forth, feeling helpless. Once again I was confronted with my helplessness in medical situations.
“What about first aid?” I asked. “Surely you have training in first aid.”
He nodded, “Yes sir, we do. But orders are to create a perimeter, contain the situation, and do not interact with the alien life-form.”
I wasn’t laughing anymore. “She’s going to die without treatment.” I looked over at her prone form. She was unconscious, her breathing shallow, and the last time I checked, her pulse weak. His gaze strayed to the alien and back to me again. “Do you have any idea how much more a live alien is worth than a dead one? Do you know what thi
s might mean?”
He stood there, his face impassive. Of course he didn’t know what this meant. He had no idea that the aliens were bent on the destruction of the human race.
“Sergeant Mills, please. Get someone over here with first aid training. This is on me. I’ll take the heat for the decision.”
“Sorry, sir,” he said. “You are not part of my chain of command. You cannot take the heat for the decision. I will.”
It was at times like this that I was glad that I was a civilian. Orders, it’s all about orders for them, not what makes sense, not what is best. And to be fair, I understood the system. In battle you needed soldiers that took orders, not ones that questioned everything.
“Those orders are out of date,” I said. “They didn’t know the situation on the ground.”
“Orders, sir,” he said turning away from me.
I cursed under my breath and jogged towards the train, the rough ground cutting into my feet. One of the soldiers on the periphery yelled at me to stop, but I ignored him. I was a civilian. I was going to do what I thought best.
As I approached the train, a fair number of people had deboarded and were milling about, looking my way. Well, considering my state of dress, they could have been staring at me, but I think it was the silver wreckage of the spaceship and the military personnel that caught their attention. Not that I didn’t draw some stares. I was wearing a grey camouflage military coat, with my bare white legs and feet showing below it as I gingerly jogged towards them.
“Is there a doctor here?” I shouted. “We’ve got an injured woman over there. She needs immediate attention. Doctor? Is anyone a doctor?”
They all stared at me. They probably thought I was crazy, running in my bare feet, barely dressed. And then whispering started and rippled through the crowd. A young girl towards the front pointed at me and said, “He’s Neutrinoman!” The quality of stares changed then. From pure suspicion to wonder and some fear.
“Please,” I said, “I need a doctor. It is urgent.”
I heard someone say, “I’m a doctor,” but couldn’t see him. Soon an older man shouldered his way through the crowd. He was short and round with greying hair, round glasses, and kind brown eyes. “I’m Doctor Romero, what’s the problem?”
Neutrinoman & Lightningirl: A Love Story, Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 3) Page 23