by Chris Lowry
MOON MEN
By
Chris Lowry
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Lowry is an avid adventurer and ultrarunning author. He divides his time between Florida, Arkansas and California where he trains for 100 mile Ultramarathons. He has completed over 68 races, including 18 marathon's and 12 Ultramarathons and is planning a Transcontinental Run across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City. He has kayaked the Mississippi River solo, and biked across the state of Florida. When not outdoors, he is producing and directing a documentary film about adventure and writing. His novels include Sci-Fi thrillers, Spy thriller's and mainstream fiction. He loves good craft beer and meeting with reading clubs and running clubs, especially if the aforementioned beer is offered.
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A disillusioned scientist kidnaps a warrior from the past to save his future from an all controlling computer and the Troops that protect it.
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More Books by the Author
Have you joined the adventure? A father hunts for his children after the zombie apocalypse in this sci fi comedy series.
Have you joined the adventure?
Battlefield Z
Battlefield Z – Children’s Brigade
Battlefield Z – Sweet Home Zombie
Battlefield Z – Zombie Blues Highway
Battlefield Z – Mardi Gras Zombie
Battlefield Z – Bluegrass Zombie
Battlefield Z – Outcast (June 2017)
More adventures in the series
FLYOVER ZOMBIE – a Battlefield Z series
HEADSHOTS – a Battlefield Z series
OVERLAND ZOMBIE – a Battlefield Z series
MOON MEN
The Milky Way is an exceptional phenomenon. Millions of people have stared up at the night sky throughout history and felt small, insignificant.
Stories were created to explain the stars, traditions created to remind people of their place in the cosmos.
People slowly moved from the wild places and gathered in cities.
At first, they used torches to hold back the dark and stars began to slowly fade.
Time passed and the city light grew brighter, glittered in an incandescent hum that pushed back the night and blacked out the sky.
Now only the occasional wild soul looked up at the heavens and wondered.
“Are we alone?”
Rob Crow knew the answer.
He sat in a rolling chair in front of a computer monitor connected to a high-powered telescope and took meticulous handwritten notes in a notebook.
Despite the light pollution that assaulted the observatory perched on a mountain at the edge of Los Angeles, the high powered optical scope and computer program gave observers a pristine view of the galaxy.
Tonight, it was aimed at the Crab Nebula, measuring the light waves reaching the earth from a group of stars that Rob suspected no longer existed.
At some point in the future, a young astronomer would be sitting where Rob sat and the light would cease to exist.
Star death.
For now, though, he documented his observations and set up an automated program to monitor the coordinates even as the earth rotated past.
He whistled to himself as he tidied up the already neat office and exited to unlock his mountain bike from a fence.
The parking lot was empty this late at night, the popular park closed at sunset and the museum section of the observatory closed at six pm unless there was a special event.
Rob didn’t pay attention to the two dark gray sedans that parked across from the entrance as he pedaled past.
“Is that him?”
Anson Branch was a former college football player, but too many nights in the sedan left his middle spreading and his cheeky jowls pursed in a permanent scowl.
His partner, Jodi Adams sat behind the wheel and watched as the bike turned a corner.
“I feel like we should duck or something.”
“We’ve been here before and he didn’t notice then. You know those egghead types. All up in their head and pay no attention to the world.”
“Looks like he’s heading home.”
Anson held his cuff to his lips and spoke into a microphone clipped there.
“He’s heading home boys. Let’s roll.”
2
Rob rolled up the quiet street in the small neighborhood of Los Feliz and chained his bike to the side of the stairwell.
He had a top floor apartment in an old Victorian converted into four units with a rent he could barely afford.
He liked the street though, because it felt safe, and his bike hadn’t been stolen yet. His apartment wasn’t much, just a second-floor unit, but there was a spiral staircase he had installed that led to a skylight and a rooftop deck he built piece by piece.
It was unpermitted and the landlord hadn’t found it yet, but Rob liked to spend some of his nights up there watching the sky.
He planned to go up there tonight, after he grabbed a beer and checked his email.
He didn’t turn on the lights after he unlocked the front door and moved across the apartment. He slammed into the coffee table with a small crash.
“Damn it Jim,” he muttered.
The computer monitor lit up at the sound of his voice.
A picture of a UFO over Roswell moved back and forth across the screen.
He flipped on a lamp and massaged his bruised shin.
The walls were covered with alien posters and pictures of UFO’s. The rest of the decor was simple, Spartan even.
There was a couch, a small television, and the assaulting coffee table.
The primary focus of the room was the computer set up resting on a giant desk that dominated an entire wall.
Rob walked over and nudged the mouse.
While the computer opened to his Gmail program and loaded his correspondence, Rob walked to the fridge set against one wall.
He opened it and pulled out a Corona Light from a six pack that was the only occupant in the refrigerator.
He settled into the stuffed executive chair in front of the computer and clicked one of two new pieces of email.
“Star changes course. Western quadrant, Cassiopeia’s armpit. Notice? Tell me true. Capt. Sam Michaels.”
“No way,” he breathed and sucked down two quick swallows.
He moved the mouse to the second email and clicked it open.
“The heaven’s move! Can you see it? Selkirk, ICP.”
Rob nodded and hopped out of the chair.
He stumbled over to a nook under the spiral staircase and fumbled a telescope case up the stairs.
He gazed through the eyepiece at the prescribed coordinates.
A star was indeed moving slowly across the indigo sky.
A comet would have a different glow, the light signature a shade hotter than this cool blue white blob of energy.
A meteor or shooting star would be a white-hot streak of energy skipping along the atmosphere. This light was different.
Steadfast and relentless.
Without meaning to, Rob shivered.
“Son of a fudge…” he whispered with an edge of awe in his voice.
He backed away from the telescope, his body shaking, trembling.
One leg kicked out, his foot spastically twisting and twitching.
He leaned all of his weight forward onto it, and his booty started shaking.
He was dancing, and awkward gyrating mess of rhythmic imbalance.
Perhaps it couldn’t even be called
dancing, more movement with intent.
No matter though, because Rob was celebrating.
Years of ridicule, countless hours being taunted and accused of being a crackpot, or worse, insane were released in five minutes of vindicating dance.
3
“Is he okay?”
Anson and Jodi peered through the windshield at the loft skyline. They watched a silhouette of Rob as it jerked and shimmied along the edge of the roof.
“I think he’s being electrocuted,” said Anson.
Jodi shook her head.
“I think he’s dancing.”
“That? I took dance. That’s not dancing.”
“You took dance?” she shot an incredulous look at her partner.
“What? My mother insisted. I did the whole Arthur Murray catalog.”
“You don’t look like a dancer.”
“I can out foxtrot you any day of the week.”
“You’re on and we’re putting a ten spot on the bet,” Jodi held out her hand for Anson to shake.
“You’ll probably look like him,” Anson smirked at her.
She held the radio to her lips.
“Sit tight,” she keyed the microphone. “We’ll handle this.”
“Come on,” she said to Anson. “Let’s go cut in.”
He shifted his bulk out of the passenger door and followed her across the street.
“I’ve got point,” he said.
He unlocked the strap on the Glock that rested to his belt.
“Next time,” she said and led him through the door to the loft lobby.
“One of these day’s someone’s not gonna let you lead.”
“You’re the dancer, partner. You can lead then. Until that, I go first, I get shot first.”
“That’s what you tell yourself.”
A car whipped around the corner of the street and rocketed toward them.
Jodi spun around, her Glock in hand and tracking the driver.
Anson leaned against the wall to clear her line of sight and aimed with the weapon he drew a second slower than her.
They both watched as a flustered soccer mom raced past the loft, screaming at two towheaded boys in the back seat.
They couldn’t hear her, just see her mouth moving through the closed window.
Jodi slipped the pistol back into the holster on her waist.
“Scared you?”
“You blinked first,” Anson grinned.
“Let’s go see what this dancer is doing,” she said and led him through the door.
Neither of them noticed a black panel van pull up beside the other Sedan across the street.
The agents in the sedan looked left as the cargo door rolled back.
They didn’t have time to react as a silenced handgun slithered from the dark interior and spat twice.
Both agents slumped in the car seats.
Four black clad commandos hopped out of the van.
The passenger side window rolled down and the driver leaned over to the lead commando.
“It’d be nice if you made it look real.” His voice was oily and sinister delivered over dead eyes that made the hard-core commando wince.
“No problem, Sir,” he said and licked his lips. “Move out.”
The four men hustled across the street, dipped in and out of shadows and disappeared through the doorway entry.
4
The thing about dancing, especially when you are dancing as if no one was watching because you are pretty sure no one is watching, is it’s pretty darn liberating.
Millions of humans were graced with the ability to dance, to turn movement into art and poetry, to jump and jive in beat with the music so that the only option anyone watching has is to stare in wonder.
Unfortunately, that left billions of humans with no innate ability to dance. Not even a close approximation.
Rob fell squarely in that category. His dancing look like a controlled fall, a twitching twirling dervish of out of sync bounces and fist jams.
There may have even been howling.
“Mr. Crow?”
Rob stopped dancing. He stopped howling.
He nearly fell off the roof, but caught himself at the last moment. He settled in from the edge, just to be safe and cleared his throat.
“Yes?”
Anson approached him with one hand extended to shake. But Rob didn’t notice him. He stared transfixed by Jodi.
It was Anson’s turn to clear his throat to get the young man’s attention.
“I’m Agent Anson. This is Agent Johnson. We’re with the government.”
Anson reached into his jacket pocket and flipped out his badge for Rob to see. A hole popped open in the laminate.
Anson’s eyes grew wide. He let the badge slip from his fingers and revealed a mirror hole in his chest.
As Rob watched, crimson stained the hole in his white shirt and widened.
The Agent collapsed.
Jodi whirled around before he hit the rooftop and squeezed off two shots from her Glock 17.
Rob saw a ninja collapse in the skylight. At least it looked like a ninja, covered head to toe in black as it was.
Jodi ducked low and scurried over to Anson. She placed two fingers on his neck and bowed her head.
“Damn,” she growled.
“Is he dead?”
Jodi tracked the skylight and rooftop with her pistol.
“You’re the genius, figure it out.”
“The ninja’s gone,” he told her.
“Get down!”
A bullet whizzed by his head. She dragged him down next to her.
They watched as a canister arced out of the skylight and landed on the roof with a clatter. It rolled in a straight line toward them.
Jodi calmly reached out and covered Rob’s eyes with one hand, her eyes with the other holding her gun.
The can popped with a loud flash and a bang. Smoke poured from the end of the cylinder.
Two figures ran across the roof through the smoke.
Jodi lifted her pistol and dropped them with two shots.
Rob screamed. She lowered her hand from his eyes to his mouth.
“Quiet.”
“What in Hell’s name is going on?”
Sirens wailed in the distance. A neighbor heard her gunshots and called the police.
“Come with me.”
Jodi hauled Rob up and surged toward the corner of the roof.
“Ninja!” he screamed.
Jodi whirled and fired off a shot.
The last commando collapsed across the edge of the skylight.
“Jump,” she shouted.
Rob glanced down at the shrubbery two stories below. The bushes looked painfully small.
“I can’t. I’m afraid of heights.”
Jodi scanned the roof. She didn’t have time to appeal to logic or reason.
“Are you more scared of bullets? Then jump!”
Rob teetered on the precipice. Jodi reached out and lightly pushed. She leaped right after him.
To his credit, Rob didn’t scream the whole way down. It was more like a whining grunt that ended when his feet hit the bush that broke his fall. He rolled across the ground and came up sputtering.
Jodi grabbed him by the collar and shoved him forward.
“See that sedan? Run for it.”
She noticed two slumped figures in the sedan as they approached.
“Damn it.”
“You say that a lot,” said Rob.
Headlights sparked on behind them. The panel van squealed down the street in a pall of smoke and burning rubber. Jodi used her hold on Rob’s collar and shoved him across the hood of the sedan.
The van sideswiped the parked car in a whirlwind of sparks and shrieking metal.
It slid around in a U-turn, and aimed for them on the sidewalk.