by G. L. Argain
Keith had a girlfriend named Marlene who recently moved to Searles sometime after Andrew had moved out. She previously lived in Grand Junction, Colorado, and although Searles hardly appealed to her, anything was better than living with her athletically-obsessed parents. She was fairly shy and quiet, but of course her personality shined whenever she was around people that she liked and felt comfortable with. Everything she loved most in this world revolved around Japanese anime; she could list off dozens or even hundreds of shows and mangas that appealed to her, not to mention she had an anime collection that crowded her entire bedroom. Her social life was minimal and had not changed much between Searles and Grand Junction, yet the only reason she even knew and cared about Andrew’s disappearance was because she knew Keith, and Keith knew Andrew.
Marlene and Keith found out about each other by accident when Keith decided to dial a random number as somewhat of a prank call, which turned out to be Marlene’s cell phone number. She played along, and Keith couldn’t bring himself to hang up the phone. After several minutes of awkward conversation, where both people were unsure when to end the conversation and hang up first, they grew attached to each other and became friends. After a couple weeks, Marlene told her newly-found friend about her “duel” between watching anime and having to run several miles each week, all the while arguing with her parents constantly. Keith replied, “Why not live where I’m at? I mean, its not much of a place to get excited about—in fact, it’s a freaking salt pit—but at the very least you won’t have to worry about arguing with your parents all the time.” Marlene eventually accepted his offer and saved up some money in order to pay for the trip. Eventually, considering how she was about to go move into some dude’s house she knew nothing about. Predictably, Marlene and Keith did end up in a relationship with one another, and after a few months, he told her about the incident with Andrew.
“You know what? I’ll go with you,” said Marlene, “simply because you want to help him out so much. And besides, the road he was taking—Highway 6—was the same road I drove down to get here from Grand Junction. It’d be nice to see some of those parts of Nevada again.”
“Yeah…by the way, what d’you think of Drake’s alien theory?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“…What?”
“It would be so awesome to see if that was actually true! We could set up camp for the night somewhere and look for UFOs!”
“God…dammit…”
“What? What’d I say?”
The other person that agreed to go with Keith and Drake was a former school bully whom everybody liked to call “Billy Bob.” Technically named Bill Langley, he worked at the nearby factory, letting his mind wander from day to day about his social peak during high school. He had been on the Varsity football team, he had plenty of friends, and he had lived in a rich household with loving parents. So why did he go around behaving like a jackass to any unpopular kids he could find? His parents had hardly ever set limits with him, and his friends didn’t do much to reverse this fact. The only moments when he was under control was under the school system and under law enforcement whenever he got arrested. He never cared about going to college, but he did make sure to graduate high school; he hoped that it would make finding a job easier if he at least had a diploma. It had hardly helped…the factory sure didn’t care about diplomas.
As the years passed, the real world gave Bill a change of heart. He realized that although the glory days were gone, he could still do something about his life to make it meaningful. I don’t want the rest of my life to end up like this, he thought. I don’t wanna keep working the same crappy job in the same shitty place forever and ever. But…how am I gonna do it? I don’t know what I’d do, or where I’d go, or anything!
It was shortly after thinking this that he heard about Andrew’s disappearance, how Drake and Keith were looking for someone to go with them for the search. Bill decided to start off his “new life” by helping them, but there were some complications.
“And why are you so suddenly interested in helping us?” said Keith. Bill had met up with Keith and Drake in person.
“I’m just trying to get my shit together, that’s all,” said Bill. “I thought maybe I could start by helping some old friends—”
“DON’T! Don’t you dare call us “friends” after these last four years! We have no reason to believe that you, who’s cracked some of our bones before for the fun of it, all of sudden wants to be this peace-loving oaf!”
“You don’t think I’m different now? How would you stay the same working at a dead-end job with no way out, you motherf—”
“Enough, God dammit,” interrupted Drake, “both of you! If Billy Bob says that he wants to help out, then maybe he’s telling the truth!” He faced Bill. “And if you really want to get your life together, don’t be an asshole. Simple as that.”
“I will. And don’t call me Billy Bob. Just Bill or Billy.”
“Actions speak louder than words,” said Keith.
“Dude, seriously, I know I’m not all that good, but I can at least try.” Drake winced at Bill’s argument.
After discussing fees, time, and arrangements within the following week, Drake, Keith, Marlene, and Bill met on a warm July morning at Drake’s house. He would drive first, then Keith, then Bill, then Marlene, and repeat; they would change seats every time they stopped, whether it was to eat, to stretch their legs, or anything else. Whoever wasn’t driving—but was going to drive after the next stop—would sit in the passenger seat. They packed their belongings into the trunk of a Ford Fusion, got into the car, and began the trip.
The group first stopped in Lone Pine. Bill was aching to get out—the aspirin he took did little to help with his inactive knee joints that made road trips for him often uncomfortable. They all stepped out onto the outskirts of the town where they could see Mount Whitney to the west. All stone with some snow here and there, Drake and Keith enjoyed looking at it for a brief moment. Bill was mostly focused on his knees, which were getting better as he stood and walked, and he didn’t care much for looking at mountains anyway. Marlene was pleased the most by the sight, reminiscing on her memories of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
Keith drove from Lone Pine to Bishop; Bill sat in the passenger seat with the seat as far back as it could go, giving him enough leg room to prevent his knees from acting up for a while. Drake, however, sat right behind him, the seat pressed onto his knees as he remained uncomfortable for the next hour.
As the group approached Tonopah, Marlene asked to turn on the radio, and everyone else agreed without hesitation due to sheer boredom. After browsing through three channels of religious music, one classical station, and one country station, they found a channel that talked about public news. Marlene was about to switch back to the classical station before Drake interjected and listened in to the news.
“A gigantic jump in reports from Rachel have been coming in recently on UFO sightings—nothing new around there, but something must be running through those aliens’ heads lately if the reports are that numerous. Thoughts, John?”
“I’ll bet they’re running out of humans on their ships, and they’re coming back for more,” replied the co-host named John.
As the two men at the station laughed to themselves, Keith shut off the radio.
“The hell?” responded Drake.
“I’ll admit,” Keith answered, “Aliens sounds more like a possibility now. But the more I think about it, the less I think we’ll have any power to change it, to bring Andrew back, if that’s the case.”
“…………………”
After several more hours of driving on one of the loneliest highways in America, they finally reached their destination.
“So…what now?” said Keith.
“Well, his car’s gone—must’ve been taken away. I suppose we could check the buildings around here, or maybe we could find somebody up the road that would know what happened to Andrew.”
Th
ey were reluctant in checking inside the abandoned buildings in the area; even if there was the chance that it was legal, it seemed like taboo. All they could find were cobwebs, cockroaches, some old photos, and graffiti on the walls. So they drove a few miles along the road to the nearest house. It was an old-fashioned house with trees around the yard and alfalfa crops in the background.
The person who answered the door was an elderly woman, most likely in her seventies, and everywhere from her eyes to her grimace showed that she was bitter. There was noise coming from the television in the house, and it sounded as though an old man of equal age and his son were busy watching it. “If you’re government agents,” she said, “or missionaries, or you’re trying to sell me something, then just go away. I won’t even bother.”
“It’s none of that,” Bill interjected, “we were just hoping to find something out about a friend of ours that went missing around here some time ago.”
“Huh? Oh, I think I heard something about that, but Harry would know more about it.” She turned to the living room of the house. “Harry! There’s people here wanting to know about that kid who went missing! Remember those police investigators who were asking about him?”
“How should I know? I never saw that guy in the first place—why would I? I didn’t have anything to say to the investigators, and I still don’t now! Besides, what the hell would a stranger ask for if his car wasn’t broken down? If he did show up here asking for anything else, I would’ve brought out the twelve-gauge.”
The old woman turned back to the group. “Well, sorry, We’ve got nothing.” She closed the door before anyone uttered another word.
When everyone got back into the car, Drake went on a rant. “Shit! I can’t believe we went hundreds of miles for absolutely nothing but shit!”
“What else did you really expect? I said it’d be unlikely that we’d find Andrew if he was abducted,” said Keith.
“Hey, I know this sucks,” said Marlene, “but at least we know this wasn’t some sort of lie that the investigators made up, right? Andrew really is missing?”
“NO! We haven’t solved ANYTHING by going on this trip! Andrew’s either still at God-knows-where, or he’s just dead, and we haven’t gotten a single clue leading to him!”
“Well, we can’t just give up now…not like this,” said Bill.
“And where do you suppose we should look? The desert? The mountains? Both of which are too large and demanding to go through, by the way. We’ve got tents, but we didn’t even bring any water bottles…”
“…Yeah, I guess we’re retarded for not thinking this through, huh?”
Everyone sat silent.
Bill looked up to the sky, thinking to himself. He was somewhat pleased by the idea that he answered the lady at the door first, that he took the initiative to help everyone with their quest. He was, however, discouraged along with everyone else that there was nothing they could do.
Then Bill’s eyes widened. He caught a star in the sky brightening and growing by the second, soon becoming large enough to show that it wasn’t some star.
“Guys, get out and look up.”
“Why?” said Keith.
Bill and Drake went out anyway, then Keith and Marlene followed suit shortly afterward. They looked up into the sky and saw the same sight that Andrew experienced not too long ago.
What surprised them the most was that it was not nighttime, when stars are supposed to appear. It wasn’t even close to dusk.
Chapter 16
Three months have now passed on Ku-an Doel since Andrew began his training.
A large creature prowled the forest, an area different from the one that Andrew and the hupac had met in. The creature was gray and leathery, having no hair on its wrinkly skin. Its general body size was between that of a moose and a bear. It was at the top of the food chain in its natural environment, eating fish and small mammals for substantial meals while eating grass and berries like salad along the way. However, it would meet a real challenge as a human and the hupac came to visit.
Andrew’s hair had grown all over; because he was training in the elements, his body needed to provide some form of warmth, however minor. Therefore, Lee was ordered not to remove all of his hair for good during the genetic procedures. Plus, he no longer had the suit—it had long been taken off, damaged beyond repair. It would be accurate to say that, aside from the beard and the long hair on top of his head, the hair on his body grew by fifty percent.
The human never gave the hupac a name, as far as he knew. He thought about giving his animal partner a name for a while, ranging from something as simple of a name as “Carl” to a more elegant one such as “Shasta,” but he could never decide on anything. Andrew thought that maybe it would help if he discovered what gender the hupac was, but he later found out it had no observable gender—the external reproductive organs had been removed long ago. Despite such a high success in survival and vitality, evolution would leave this hupac behind with no offspring to bear.
The two predators decided to venture outside of their normal environment, to make their way into something more challenging. They had just found this gray, hairless beast wandering around to take as their first test. Andrew was nearly two hundred and eighty pounds (in Earth weight) now, all earned from muscle mass, and the hupac had gotten a little tougher as well. They cooperated remarkably during their time together, especially with the hupac’s ability to understand the feral human. Unfortunately, feedback was a problem; the hupac had no effective ways of using language or any communication past primitive vocal sounds and body language. Neither one of them knew anything about sign language.
“Alright,” said the human, “I’m gonna distract that thing while you sneak up from behind. Whichever one of us that thing faces towards, the other one will attack, alright? So if it’s facing me, then you attack it, and vice versa, okay?”
The hupac nodded its head.
“Good—and no running away this time. That was a pain in the ass for me to deal with.”
As the hupac walked around the creature at a seventy-five meter radius, Andrew walked straight up to the beast, its eyes meeting his. It was bewildered for several moments—the animal had never seen a human before, and although its memory of the scientists was strong, it did not regard Andrew as one of them. This human appeared to be part intel-being and part animal, so the beast did not know whether to just walk away or attack. After a few seconds that seemed to drag on for ages, it walked up to Andrew and pawed him. He did not retaliate, standing strong in his position, but he was left with five straight tears on his torso. Doing this enabled the creature to know how durable and strong the human was, and it made its decision with a loud roar.
At this moment, the hupac sprang onto the beast at a four o’ clock direction and broke the creature’s hip upon impact. Startled, the beast turned around with great effort and directed its full attention onto the hupac, forgetting about Andrew. The human had kicked its other hip, fracturing it as well. The hupac pounced and sunk its teeth into the creature’s jugular area. The beast remained standing on its front legs, yet unable to move from pain flowing throughout its body. After about two minutes, it fell down unconscious, and the two predators finished it off.
Andrew and the hupac found a cave to use as shelter for the night, taking their newly-earned prize with them. The human took an old log and a few sticks he found for firewood while the hupac laid the entire time in the cave doing nothing. The human took a long time to get the fire going, seeing how all he relied on was the friction burn of rapidly twisting a stick onto another stick, but he had enough wood to keep the fire going throughout most of the night.
He took off the dead beast’s skin and decided that he wanted to make some leather clothes out of it. Unfortunately, he had limited resources and experience. He had no string, and it would take some time to find some stone, carve it into a point, and use it to pierce holes into the leather where the string would go through. Andrew searched diligently for
some vines—they were his best substitute for string. He went out, took some vines back to the cave, and as he was just about to start working on the stone tool, his hunger kicked in. The hupac also though it was time to eat, but Andrew’s partner did not hesitate to put the beast carcass to good use.
The human set up some sticks above the fire in a way that would allow him to cook his meat. The past few months had desensitized him to the ideas of killing animals for food and anything else he needed, but he still preferred to cook his meat rather than eat it raw. He never wondered if the hupac would prefer it that way, too. By the time he finished his meal, he had grown tired, and he only worked on making his stone tool for an hour before going to sleep.
The hupac stayed up longer, watching Andrew while thinking to itself. It could not speak, but it could still think like a human. In its mind existed more than just survival principles. It also thought about the future, such as where they would go next. It thought about the relationship it had with this human, how things had changed from paranoia and hatred to something like cooperation. It knew nothing about friendship, since hupacs are generally solitary animals. However, this hupac could not deny that it was a benefit to have Andrew around. Without his help, there would have been a weak chance of taking down that gray, leathery creature with force alone, and there wouldn’t have even been the idea of going outside the original environment. If animals don’t stay in their own upbringing because it’s all that they have, then it’s because it’s all that they know.
The hupac developed an idea on its own a few weeks ago, a concept that animals normally don’t conceive because they almost always have it in the wild—freedom. The only reason that the idea of freedom existed in this hupac’s mind was because the human had taken some away.