by B. V. Larson
“Circle around to the left, Fiona,” I said. I didn’t want them to take cover on the far side of the vehicle and shoot under it. We had to stop them quickly.
Fiona did as I asked without hesitation, scuttling sideways like a crab over the desert floor, staying low and keeping her eyes on the vehicle. She wanted to fight. I could see that clearly. Could these objects, depending on their natures, alter the mental outlook of their users? I felt it had to be the case, watching Fiona. No normal young girl would act like that. She was a like some kind of barbarian.
“Keep up our shield, Abigail,” I shouted back over my shoulder. I glanced and saw she still stood with her hands held high. To stop her, they were going to have to cut her down. I didn’t want to see that happen, so I kept flanking them.
In the end, a Gray Man hiding on the other side of the vehicle edged around it, shooting. He didn’t see me immediately in the dark. The only source of light was the big rip itself, slowly spinning in the sand. Unfortunately, the Gray Man got off a shot before I could take him down with my pistol. A blue-white blaze of plasma fired toward the rip. I put five rounds into him and he went down. I kept going around the vehicle. There was only one other Gray Man, and he was dead in the desert. Fiona stood over him with her knife in her twitching hand. She panted and stared at the body.
We’d won.
Victory had come at a price. The Gray Man who’d gotten off a shot had killed Old Red. His cap and the dolly had survived, of course, but the rest of his upper body was a block of ice. The ice had cracked when he’d hit the sand. You could see frozen organs and shattered ribs inside.
Abigail stood still, eyes closed, concentrating.
Fiona came up beside me and stared at Old Red’s remains. “What do we do now?” she asked.
I had been scanning the horizon, but didn’t see further signs of the enemy. I figured they had to be coming, though. The group we’d ambushed must have reported our position. After losing contact, the next time they sent a force they would come in strength. I imagined Gray Men quietly scrambling and loading their weapons into more trucks out there somewhere.
“We’re scouts, so let’s scout. We check out their truck, learn as much about their technology as we can,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.
The design of the truck was odd—there were no curves to it. There were slanted, diagonal lines, but no rounded edges. The corners of the vehicle were so sharp they couldn’t have been molded metal; they had to be flat sheets of steel that met at precise points. Was this an example of advanced engineering or their chosen style? I wasn’t sure.
The cockpit had very simple controls. A bar of metal shaped like a delta wing seemed to serve as both the throttle and the steering mechanism, depending on how you manipulated it. The system reminded me of a joystick. There didn’t seem to be an ignition or even a start button. Experimentally, I touched the power bar. The engine thrummed into life. I nodded; it had sensed my contact. My physiology must have been similar enough to a Gray Man’s to fool it. I gave the bar a tiny nudge forward, and the vehicle surged a few feet in response.
“Anyone could drive this,” I said to Fiona. She stood outside in the sand, watching me with big eyes.
“Are we going to steal this machine and ride to their base?” she asked. The next words she blurted out in a rush: “I want to kill more of them.”
I glanced at her, trying not to appear disturbed. She stood there with dead Gray Men all around her feet. Old Red lay farther away, turned half to ice behind her. The smell of burnt alien flesh alone was cloying and difficult to take. But all Fiona could think of was her next kill. That knife she gripped and regripped in her hand had a hold over her mind I didn’t fully understand. Maybe only certain objects generated such emotions. I had several objects and didn’t feel any urge to kill.
“I don’t think so,” I told her, climbing down out of the cockpit. “They’ll all come to this spot. We can’t be so obvious. I’m going to go back and talk to Gilling. Stay here and cover Abigail.”
As I walked to the rip and stepped within its embrace, Abigail spoke to me. Her voice was just above a whisper. I could tell all her concentration was required to keep up our shielding.
“Can’t we all go home?” she asked.
Abigail was so peaceful compared to Fiona, the contrast was shocking. Her curly black locks hung around her neck. Her upraised hands were tipped with blood-red nails. She was as peaceful and calm as Fiona was bloodthirsty. She only wanted to go home to our existence, and I felt bad turning her down, but I didn’t want to give up yet. We’d proven we could fight with them and win on their turf. We were the aggressors for once. I wasn’t ready to run yet.
“Just give me a few minutes more, Abigail. If you drop the shield, they will see the rip clearly and come right here. They will know everything then.”
Abigail nodded slowly, sadly, accepting my instructions. Fiona had no difficulties with my instructions. She stood near Abigail and slashed at the alien truck. It was odd, seeing her cut the air and hearing scraping sounds coming from the metal of the vehicle that stood about fifty feet away. I wondered vaguely if slashing something metal could dull the edge of her knife—even though she wasn’t actually touching it.
Feeling like a bastard, I stepped back home and left them in the hostile desert. A half dozen hands with tightly held objects rose up to confront me when I stepped into view. They lowered their objects when I stepped out of the blurring rip and they realized who I was.
“Where are the rest?” Gilling asked. His voice sounded confident, almost disinterested, but I could tell he had been waiting nervously like the rest of them.
“The Gray Men saw us before we could get the shielding up. A truck came out to investigate.”
A dozen glittering eyes stared at me. No one spoke. I could see they thought I might be the last survivor. Rheinman, the mechanic with the ball-peen hammer, tapped his palm with the head of his object. His cheeks twitched. He probably figured I’d ditched the rest—or killed them.
“We won the fight, and we captured their truck,” I said.
A murmur went through the group. They were relieved and fearful all at once. I understood what they were thinking as they exchanged worried glances. They’d officially announced war upon the Gray Men now.
“Where are the rest?” Gilling asked again.
“Abigail is maintaining her shield. Fiona is protecting her. But Old Red died in the fighting. He was hit by one of those big projection guns of theirs.”
“It’s a failure, then,” said the rifleman named Souza. “We’ve alerted them. We have to abort the mission.”
Everyone started talking at once. Everyone except for Gilling and me. Instead, Gilling eyed me curiously. Maybe he didn’t believe my story. I barely cared. While they argued about what to do next, I reloaded my .32 auto.
I let them talk for a minute or so, shouting that our cover was blown, that this was supposed to be a quiet mission, not a pitched battle. The consensus was that we couldn’t face their organized army on their own ground.
I listened, but not too closely. My mind was made up. I was going to press ahead.
Gilling raised his bejeweled fingers and the group quieted. “Let’s hear what our scout suggests.”
“I want to open a new rip to the east, much closer to the cubes. Who’s coming with me?”
People shuffled their feet. A siren rose and fell in the distance. They looked this way and that, studying the streets that wound down the hillside. I knew they were getting nervous. Without Abigail to cover them, someone might have called the cops and sent them up here by now.
“If nothing else, we must retrieve the body of Old Red,” Gilling said. “Show us where he is.”
I stepped through and a dozen people followed me, most of them reluctantly. I was relieved to find Abigail and Fiona as I had left them. The only change was the rising of a second small moon on the horizon. It was yellow and sickly looking in comparison to our own luna. The
surrounding desert was dark and quiet. But maybe the trucks were out there, full of angry Gray Men with their deadly weapons. Maybe they’d grown smarter and this time kept their lights off to surprise us. Thoughts like these caused the skin on the back of my neck to crawl.
They hauled Old Red’s remains home and experimented with the beam rifles the Gray Men had dropped. No one could figure out how to make them operate, however. Perhaps they were linked somehow to their users.
“Are you going to go out into the desert with me and open a new rip?” I asked Gilling.
He shook his head slowly. He didn’t bother looking at me. He was too busy staring out into the darkness. I could tell he was wondering what was stalking us out there. I followed his gaze and wondered the same thing.
“Lost your nerve already?” I asked.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this. We signed on for a quiet raid. We can’t fight an army.”
“I don’t care,” I told him. “I’ll take that alien truck to the cubes alone if I have to.”
Gilling stared at me as if I were crazy. “They know we are here now.”
“Maybe. But they don’t know what we’re planning. They don’t know who we are. I doubt they will suspect a serious raid. I want to hit them now, while we still have a shred of surprise left.”
Gilling shook his head. “We aren’t an army. Not even the scouting mission went right. More are sure to die—maybe all of us. I can’t order them to do this.”
“All right,” I said, turning away from him and facing the ragtag crowd.
They were wandering around in the sand, looking like house cats who’d slipped out the front door for the first time. I didn’t think any of them had ever left their home existence before.
“I’m taking that truck and using it to sneak into the Gray Men’s cube base. With luck, they’ll think we’re their kind. Who’s coming with me?”
Any idea of combat squads and support squads had been cast aside. Now it was down to who had the guts to keep going when death was a clear possibility. Most of them wouldn’t even meet my eyes. A few looked positively terrified.
Fiona volunteered immediately. “I’m in,” she said.
I was surprised when Rheinman stepped forward next. “Just don’t get in my way again,” he said. He held his hammer in his hand with tight knuckles.
I nodded, letting his bad attitude go without comment. “Who else?” I asked.
In the end, most of them abandoned us. I had high hopes for Abigail, but she refused with a shake of her head. Among the riflemen, only Souza stepped forward.
“Can I have Old Red’s stuff?” Souza asked Gilling.
Gilling nodded once. The man pulled on the red cap and grabbed up the heat-blasting rag doll with a tight smile. So that was how you moved up in this outfit, I thought to myself.
“What about you, Gilling?” I asked.
Gilling put up his hands. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll open your new rip for you. Let’s go back home now before we all get killed in this strange land.”
I tried not to smile, but I failed. That was what I had been hoping for. I jumped out of the cockpit and headed for the shimmering rip. The others followed me hastily, with many worried glances over their shoulders.
Abigail was the last to come through. I knew at that point the rip would be exposed to the Gray Men. They seemed to have some way of sensing these phenomena, even if it was only by spotting them visually. It wouldn’t be long now before Gray Men came to investigate.
“That’s all of us,” I told Gilling. “Close the rip fast.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. It’s like a fire. It has to burn itself out.”
I looked down at the various foodstuffs they’d poured into the bowl of the big fountain. It looked like this rip was going to last for days if we didn’t do something.
“Shovels, everyone!” I shouted. “Empty out this material or the Gray Men will come for us.”
People hastened to do as I asked. But the rifleman named Souza stepped forward. “Let me handle it,” he said.
I nodded.
“Everyone step back!” Souza roared.
We did as he asked and he lifted the rag doll. I’d seen two people die who handled it now, and I’d begun to think that if I’d ever seen a cursed object, this was it.
With a broad grin on his face, teeth clenching, Souza released gouts of heat into the bowl of the fountain. It wasn’t quite like a flamethrower—the heat wasn’t visible flame. I suspected this was because the projection of heat wasn’t done by spraying out gas or flaming liquid. Instead, it was more as if pure energy gushed out of Souza and his upraised toy. Maybe it caused an infrared beam to lance out and set every molecule it touched into rapid motion—the very essence of heat.
The stuff in the fountain hissed, steamed, and then finally burst into lively flames. Everyone backed several steps farther away. Only Abigail stood close, shielding us from detection in this world now, as she had in the last. I appreciated her focus and reliability. If any of us were owed a medal when this was over, it would be her.
Before Souza was done, I saw blurry figures stepping through the rip. The Gray Men!
“They’re coming through!” I shouted.
Everyone who had a weapon raised it. Souza sent more heat toward them, causing the blaze to leap higher. The four man-shapes I could see standing in the midst of the inferno hesitated.
“Will it burn through to them?” I asked Gilling.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. There are three existences here, our world, theirs, and the in-between of the rip. If they stay inside the rip, bullets, fire, explosions—nothing will affect them.
They stood there as the rip began to slowly die. It was being starved for fuel now. It was in competition with the flames Souza had created.
Souza himself ran with sweat and his teeth gleamed wetly. He was wild with excitement. Using his object so thoroughly, so successfully, had brought him a rush of joy. I knew the feeling, but could tell the sensation he was experiencing was infinitely more intense.
Finally, Souza stepped back and unslung his rifle. “Let ’em come now,” he said. “I’ll shoot them as they burn.”
Rheinman stepped up with his hammer and I held my pistol at the ready. We all stared at the shimmering shapes in the rip. I wondered what they were thinking. They had to have seen what we’d done to the men in the truck.
After another minute, the Gray Men moved away as one. They retreated, stepping back into their own existence. The fires and the rip died together. Soon, there was nothing there in the bowl of the fountain but drifting ash and hot embers. The PVC pipes at the bottom of the fountain had burnt away to nothing. The blue tiles had cracked and been scorched black.
“They won’t suspect our next move,” I told Gilling. “This will help us. We’ve just created a diversion.”
Gilling looked less than pleased. “They will circle around this spot in the desert on their side. Soon they will create their own rip near here and come for revenge.”
“Maybe. But they won’t get any satisfaction if we leave right now.”
The rest of the cultists didn’t need any further urging. They were already climbing into their vehicles.
“Whoever’s with me, we’re taking Gilling’s SUV,” I said. “Come on, Gilling.”
“What if I’ve changed my mind?”
“Then you are a liar and a coward. Did you really think this was going to go perfectly?”
Gilling rubbed his face. After a moment’s inner debate, he threw me a jingling set of keys. “You drive,” he said.
We both climbed into the SUV along with Fiona, Abigail, Rheinman, and the sweating Souza who still gripped his dolly as if it were a bag of cash. We followed the rush of cars out of the grounds and rolled down dark streets. As we reached the bottom of the hill, a fire engine passed us going up the lane. I chuckled. Someone had called the fire department. If they met up with the Gray Men, everyone was in for a shock.
We headed northeast, out of Henderson. I turned onto Pabco road, which led up into the Frenchman Mountain area. This was where I’d estimated the enemy base was located now that I’d seen it from two different angles. My triangulation was very crude, but in both our existences this region was rocky and barren.
Frenchman Mountain itself was a geographical oddity. Standing on the eastern border of Las Vegas, north of Henderson, the mountain was formed of the most ancient rock to be found anywhere on the North American continent. The peaks and ridges had been pushed up from an ancient seabed of a nameless ocean. The stones here were thick with fossils of strange creatures that had been extinct for eons. Trilobite fossils were common, things that resembled lobsters stripped of their claws. They had once crawled here in great numbers.
I didn’t really understand the relationship between our existence and that of the Gray Men, but if we shared a history, this spot was more likely than most to be comparable. I’d done a little thinking about the parallel places we both lived in. Maybe our earth was the same as this place, but there had been a single twist of fate in the distant past of both worlds that had set them apart. Perhaps they represented one possibility, one fork in the road of time, while we represented another. If that were the case, then Frenchman Mountain might be a shared ancestor of history, since every stone here was over a billion years old.
I was peering ahead through the windshield, trying to estimate our distance from Henderson, when something caught my eye off to the north.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing off to the right.
Everyone stared.
“That is someone trying to signal us,” Gilling said with certainty.
“Who…? Could it be the Gray Men?”
“Maybe. But this is unusual behavior. They’ve never crossed to our world and attempted communication. In fact, they’ve never spoken or attempted any form of communication whatsoever.”