“But if there are…alien…truckers, why wouldn’t they know about Cheryl?”
“You said it yourself,” said Eileen. “They’re truckers. They aren’t all in cahoots. The reason we can’t tell them apart from people is that they’re no different. They come in here to eat, rest, visit a spell, have some coffee, do their paperwork, and get on their way. Nothing sinister, nothing special.”
“You’re saying that Herbert’s Corner is just a truck stop?”
Eileen smirked. “I gotta help Lorie get ready for the breakfast rush.”
“One of them might be willing to help me find Cheryl, maybe give me a ride.”
“I think you oughta be careful,” said Eileen.
~ * * * ~
That evening, Martin hurried back to his Subaru with an armload of snacks and more Diet Mountain Dew, as much to hear the start of Beyond Insomnia as to make sure he didn’t miss any trucks coming through the junction. But there wasn’t much chance of that. Trucks were few and far between on a Sunday night.
Martin wondered if after all this was done—when Cheryl had returned and everything was put right again—if it would qualify him to be a guest for Lee Danvers. He had always liked to imagine the “always-on-the-move BI Bunker” to be some sort of tricked-out RV with military-grade stealth technology, but Lee probably broadcast from some studio back East somewhere.
From the outside, it probably looked like any other anonymous office in a business park. He’d be met at the door by a producer who would lead him down a hall lined with framed promotional posters into a softly lit green room with potted plants, a couple of couches, and maybe a counter with a tray of cookies, bottled water, and a pot of coffee. One of the evening’s other guests would be there. Maybe someone who worked for NASA who had been ordered by men in black to keep the true nature of Jupiter’s moon Europa a secret. Or maybe a Wiccan priestess who claimed that the rocks of Stonehenge had been levitated into place. Maybe there’d be chocolate chip cookies, good ones almost as big as your face.
Lee would sweep into the room like a benevolent lord to introduce himself. With him would be X-Ray, BI’s notoriously anonymous, but extremely competent, broadcast engineer. Lee would graciously spend a few minutes chitchatting like an old friend, and X-Ray would make sure Martin knew how to talk into a microphone.
A few minutes later, he’d be in the studio having a pair of headphones fitted over his ears and a microphone boomed a couple of inches from his lips.
“Look around at where you are right now, Waker Nation,” Lee would begin, “because you’ll never want to forget where you were and what you were doing when you heard this interview. The man in our studio tonight is soon to be a household name. He’s a former account representative for a second-rate hardware concern, but now a renowned expert on extraterrestrial hunting and author of the upcoming books Snaring ET: How to Build the Mother of All Mousetraps and Among Us: A Love Story, soon to be a Lifetime original movie. Martin Wells, welcome to the Bunker.”
“It’s a pleasure, Lee. As a longtime Waker, there’s no greater honor.”
Martin would tell his story in a way that—despite its being about rhubarb pie and alien truck drivers—made him sound perfectly reasonable. It would start right here, with him waiting by the Herbert’s Corner propane tank, and end with Cheryl at his side as the aliens declared a civilization-wide holiday in his honor for solving the riddle of the pie.
After a break, Lee would take calls.
Ruth from Des Moines would ask, “Your story is fascinating, but I’ve always wondered: How does a regular person get themselves abducted?”
“I wasn’t abducted per se,” Martin would answer. “I found an alien willing to help me and arranged to travel with him.”
“But that’s not to say that abduction doesn’t take place,” Lee would add.
“Absolutely,” Martin would reply, “and that’s an important part of my upcoming book.”
“Which will be next month’s must-read recommendation at the wakernation.com bookstore,” said Lee. “Now, Ruth, do you really want to be abducted?”
“I do. I can’t explain it. I feel this pull, this calling.”
Martin’s tone would become sympathetic. “I understand what you’re feeling, Ruth. Alien abduction is a serious personal choice. However, the experience can leave lasting psychological and physiological scars. It may be difficult for your family and friends to accept. So if you really want to, you must understand the risks.”
“Ruth, have you had experiences before?” Lee would ask.
“When I was a little girl, I saw lights over the lake at my aunt and uncle’s cabin. I remember them as vivid today as then.”
“Ruth,” Martin would ask, “what kind of aliens are you hoping to get abducted by?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the little ones with big eyes.”
“It’s an important subject to consider, because there are many different species. It sounds as if you’re familiar with the Grays, who are responsible for the majority of reported abductions. They can alter time and manipulate matter with light, which might provide interesting experiences. But they are also infamous for, shall we say, sticking hilariously metal objects in unmentionable places on your person. So consider: Reptoids, spirit beings, angels, Annunaki, Men in Black, Log Cabin Republicans, to name a few. It’s important to know what species of alien suits your lifestyle, to know who they’re looking for in an abductee, and where they commonly are found. My book provides a guide on making this choice.”
“And I suppose that this choice depends greatly on what you hope to achieve.”
“It does, Lee. Many simply seek the thrill of the unknown. But others have loftier ambitions, such as the search for proof.”
“Hasn’t it proved very difficult to do actual science in abduction scenarios?” Lee would ask.
“It has proved notoriously difficult. Aliens resist collection of evidence by carefully controlling the circumstances, leaving abductees with nothing but vague memories. But far be it from me to discourage anyone.”
“Ruth, are you searching for scientific proof of your abduction?”
“I’m just looking for the truth.”
Martin would nod knowingly to Lee and say, “Ruth and others may wish to communicate, and to become messengers. It’s a laudable goal. Obviously we hope that any message will be one of universal peace. But, Ruth, if you find yourself writing a cookbook, or articles of surrender for the United Nations, please inform the authorities right away.”
“Excellent advice. Now, Martin, what would you say to people who want to be abducted for fame or recognition?”
“It’s not a good idea. I can personally attest to the fact that there are quicker, and much safer paths to fame. Ruth, if fame is your goal, I might suggest picking up a video camera and getting a dolphin to whack your husband in the balls…”
“Or drop angry squirrels on him in a hammock,” Lee would add.
“Those are easily worth a couple million YouTube hits each.”
“Well, thank you both so much for your help. And Mr. Wells, congratulations to you and Mrs. Wells. It’s such a beautiful story. Will you be expecting soon?”
“As a matter of fact, we are. You heard it here first.”
“Break out the cigars, Waker Nation.” Lee would reach across the console and shake Martin’s hand. “We’ll be back with more questions for the indomitable Martin Wells. Our sponsor this hour is the Pajama-of-the-Month Club. If you’re searching for a one-of-a-kind-gift for your pregnant wife, your mom, or even your boss…”
~ * * * ~
Martin let the GRT Logistics truck go at the wind farm as Lee Danvers wrapped up the last hour of the night’s broadcast. The taillights faded away around the bend. By the dashboard clock, he had to be back in Billings and heading to work in a few hours.
If any of the trucks had been alien, there was nothing to distinguish them. Nothing floated or flew. None had strange lighting, or plasma exhaust. Martin ha
d sneaked through the parking lot, knocking on panels and kicking tires. They all smelled like fossil fuels. They all had the license plates, regulatory stickers, and debris in the cabs that one would expect. The trailers all had the battle scars of the road: mud, scratches, dents, stains, and missing rivets. Either all were alien or none were.
The drivers had ranged from heavy-set Bible readers in coveralls and lined flannel shirts to lanky dudes with iPads in T-shirts and shorts. This one chewed tobacco in little pouches, that one put Worcestershire sauce on his scrambled eggs. That one had an eye twitch, this one kicked his left shoe off under the table. Some kept to themselves, some knew the other drivers or were simply sociable. They all spoke English—at least Eileen and Lorie never had a problem getting their orders. Maybe the waitresses…? He didn’t let himself finish that thought.
When Martin rolled back into Herbert’s Corner, Eileen emerged from the diner and crossed to the pumps. “I’m getting gas, then going home,” Martin called.
“You should,” said Eileen, and then handed him a cell phone as she stepped up by the squeegee bucket.
“What’s this?” he asked, taking it cautiously. “Hello?”
“Martin? It’s Doris Solberg.”
“Hello, Doris. What can I do for you?” Martin asked, looking at Eileen.
“Eileen tells me you been drivin’ around after trucks all weekend.”
“I’m heading home now.”
“Well, I wish you’d talked to me. I could’ve saved you a heap of trouble. Herbert always told right where they come from. Not that they come ’round much since they took the pie off the menu.”
“What? Really?”
“Sure. Now, I never saw it myself, but Herbert said they came from that bluff up from Deaver Creek. About seven miles south on 360. Toward Billings. Where the highway got cut through the hill in ’52. You know the place?”
“I think so. You come up that hill from the creek, the road narrows. There’s rock on both sides?” He’d driven through that gap and back eight or nine times in the past twenty-nine hours.
“That’s the place. He said they would appear in there and roll right on up here to Brixton. Then when they’d leave, they’d roll right back and go off.”
“They’d just leave? They didn’t have any other business on Earth?” asked Martin.
“What other business would they have?” Doris asked.
“I don’t know. You tell me.” Martin gave her a moment to respond, and in the silence could imagine her chewing her lips at him. “So if I just go hang out down there, I’ll eventually see one come out?”
“You might be waitin’ till you’re as old as I am,” said Doris. “But I ain’t gonna tell you not to ’cause I’d just be wastin’ my breath. You be careful. Now I gotta go. It’s my bedtime.”
“Yes, ma’am. Goodnight,” said Martin. He handed the phone back to Eileen. She listened for a moment, but Doris had hung up. “Did you know about that place?” Martin asked her.
“I didn’t,” said Eileen. “But you should probably get on home and think hard about what you’re doin’.”
“How can you say that? Cheryl’s in trouble. And some of your customers are real-life extraterrestrials. Nothing else matters if that’s true.”
“You’re wrong about that. Nothing changes. I still gotta eat. Still gotta pay my bills. Gotta put gas in my car. Death and taxes and all that. And you’re no different. You’ve got a job and a family somewhere, like everyone else. There’s no getting around that.”
Martin topped off his Diet Mountain Dew. On the way out, Eileen called to him. “I know it won’t do any good, but you should pass that gap right on by.”
~ * * * ~
A knock startled Martin awake. He squinted into the sunlight. A looming figure outside his car resolved itself into a roughly humanoid shape. Martin scooted up in his seat, swore silently, and rolled down the window.
“Good morning,” said the highway patrolman from under the rim of his Smokey Bear hat. “Is something wrong with your vehicle, sir?”
“Uh, no. I got really tired. Needed to pull over,” said Martin. The patrolman glanced up and down the highway. To his right it sloped down around the corner to the Deaver Creek bridge. A hundred meters up the hill yawned the gap. The Gap. “Well, you couldn’t have picked a worse place to do it, sir. There’s very little shoulder and limited visibility for vehicles coming up behind you.”
“Oh?” Martin asked, and glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry. It looked better in the dark.”
“License and registration, please.”
As the patrolman returned to his cruiser, Martin checked the time and swore to himself again. By the time he got back to Billings, got the truck loaded, and cleaned himself up, he’d be lucky to get three accounts in today. What was he thinking?
He took a sip of his flat and watery Diet Mountain Dew to clear the goo out of his mouth. Then he took another sip; it might have to be breakfast.
The patrolman returned a few minutes later and returned Martin’s documents. “Mr. Wells. Next time, I suggest you find a rest area or a motel.”
“Yes, sir. I will. Thank you,” said Martin. The patrolman glanced up the hill to the Gap. But with no traffic coming, nothing to draw attention that Martin could sense, part of him wanted to believe that the patrolman was in on it, even as the man walked away. Martin head checked, pulled out, and some more sensible part of him said, “Martin. Martin. Martin. Martin.”
Chapter 10
“Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You’re Beyond Insomnia.”
“Great to be on, Lee. This is Benjamin. Been awake for a long time. I used to listen to you back when you were on WXGR. Great show tonight. Anyway, I have a question for Dr. Cunningham.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“If I could interrupt, Lee. I’m not a doctor. I appreciate the respect, but I don’t have a Ph.D. I wish I did. But I’m plain old Dick Cunningham.”
“Oh, sorry, sir.”
“Go ahead with your question, Benjamin.”
“Yeah, so NASA’s sending all these rovers up, and they always claim to be searching for evidence of life. They’re scraping rocks, putting sand in mass spectro-thingies, and sniffing for water. But they’ve got the Cydonia complex right there. The Face, the pyramids, everything. If there was a civilization on Mars, they’d need water, right? Wouldn’t the best place to look for water be near the ruins?”
“Good question. Yes, Dick, why hasn’t NASA, or the Russian Space Agency, for that matter, landed a rover or a probe at the Cydonia complex to put the questions to rest?”
“Two possibilities. A—they don’t want to. Or B—they don’t want to. Let me explain. A—They truly might not consider Cydonia a scientifically viable site. Or it might be too logistically difficult to land there with our current entry technology. Or it might have a surface geology that they’ve already studied on another mission. Or B—they might not want to because there may be answers there they aren’t allowed to find.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. Sorry. Can you hear me?”
“We hear you.”
“Great, my phone was a little…anyway. It makes no sense. I understand the science and logistics and all. But NASA’s always crying about their budget being slashed. If a rover discovered pyramids, man, they’d have more money than they knew what to do with overnight. Everyone would be demanding that we go and see what the aliens built.”
“Of course, part of Cydonia is the famous Face on Mars. I’m sure all your listeners are familiar. NASA drug their heels, but finally reimaged it in detail. The new images suggested that the Face might be only a trick of light. But I agree, the delay itself is telling.”
“Thank you, Benjamin. Next up, Roseburg, Oregon. You’re Beyond Insomnia.”
“Thanks, Lee. Quentin in Roseburg. Hi, Mr. Cunningham. Read all your books. I listened to that last call, and I gotta say—NASA’s reimaging of the Cydonia Face is not convincing at all. They had to say it isn’t real. We c
an’t trust anything that NASA shows us. These are the same people that faked the moon landings, and that was with sixties video technology. Hell, my nephew could do a better job with these pictures on Photoshop.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. The data is there. The satellites are in place. A new rover is almost ready to be launched. But decisions have been made to avoid Cydonia. We need to ask harder questions and hold them accountable to do the research and the science that we’re paying them to do. Now, I’ve talked to scientists at NASA—I can’t give you their names; their jobs would be in jeopardy. But they tell me, ‘Dick, we want to go to Cydonia. We find the imagery as compelling as you do, but it’s not going to happen.’”
“They’ve been told not to go to Cydonia?”
“That’s what I take away from that, Lee.”
“Amazing. Quentin, what’s your question for Dick Cunningham?”
“Sure. Mr. Cunningham, I wanted your opinion of the theory floating around the web that the Cydonia site structures are actually a better analog to the constellation Lyra, rather than the Pleiades, as previously thought. I’ll hang up and listen to the answer.”
“Thanks, Roseburg. Dick, has the Lyra-Pleiades controversy figured into your recent research?”
“Not to disappoint the caller, Lee, but I find the constellation analog far less interesting than the analogs we find here on Earth. Overlay the schematic of the Cydonia site on an area map of the Avebury Stone Circle in England. Or compare the shield volcanoes on Mars’s Tharsis Bulge—perfect alignment with the Giza pyramids and Orion’s Belt. Or the Teotihuacan pyramids. We’re finding parallels with ancient Peruvian ruins, Native American burial sites, and even sites now underwater, near Australia and in the Mediterranean. With every one of these discoveries, it becomes more and more undeniable that an ancient civilization capable of great feats of engineering, and who revered the stars, lived on Earth and Mars. Were they human or alien? It’s impossible to say. But it’s clear that a certain part of their knowledge and will to construct monuments has passed down to us. We are driven to build bigger and bigger structures and public works, often for little reason. Could it be some of this racial memory that drives us? It’s the goal of my research to try to connect those dots.”
Rhubarb Page 10