His mind began to focus on his surroundings. He was in a long, curved, dimly lit hallway, and it seemed to go on and on with no end in sight.
He knew he could not let down his guard. Any moment the base’s security detail might show up to capture him; he couldn’t imagine Manny’s efforts to hold them at bay would be successful for much longer.
Ray couldn’t help but chuckle at the notion of the guards finding him, lost in the recesses of a top-secret government facility, doing martial arts exercises. Now that was something he would have trouble explaining.
The odor came without warning; faint, acrid, a trace of a gas that seemed familiar to him. Now he remembered the odor he sometimes smelled at home right after he had those weird dreams of battling alien craft in outer space. So irritating…it slightly resembled burnt sulfur. Ray couldn’t forget; it first accompanied the sighting of strange glowing lights in the sky, lights he had thought (at the time) were enemy aircraft, just before he was knocked out by that mysterious gas.
Ray tried to breathe in a shallower fashion to reduce the effects of that terrible smell, but it grew worse as he continued along the dark, curved hallway. He considered, not altogether seriously, whether he might be coming closer to these strange alien creatures that had been rumored to exist there.
The stench soon became nearly unbearable. He managed to keep going until he emerged from the hallway into a small, lighted room with…yet another elevator.
Damn it! That last elevator was enough to drive me to distraction. Is this ever gonna end?
Ray tensed for a moment and listened for evidence of human traffic in the dark hallway.
But the layers of dust that covered the old fluorescent lamps indicated that this place might not have had visitors, human or otherwise, in years, or that perhaps, cleaning and maintenance just weren’t high priorities here. His eyes stared for one long moment. Ray walked slowly towards the elevator where he pressed a large red button. The door opened, and he stepped inside.
About a dozen levels were listed, each with a red button at the right of the engraved label, and at the bottom he found it—Level S4. Strange that it should be labeled so clearly.
After all he’d been through that night, it seemed like another sick joke.
Ray braced himself for the worst, pushed the button and closed his eyes. A grating sound filled his ears as the elevator door slid shut. The deep whirring sound grew louder as it picked up momentum and went lower and lower. It sped up considerably, and it soon seemed to be moving as fast as an elevator in a large skyscraper. He held on for dear life now, expecting it to stop suddenly—or crash!
The pungent odor had faded; soon it was practically gone, as Ray became only slightly more confident of his chances for survival.
He had no idea how long he’d traveled. It seemed as if that elevator had dropped for several miles at least.
For one fleeting moment Ray thought maybe there was something wrong, that everything would soon come crashing down into a deep, hidden chamber and he’d be dead. He found the urge to close his eyes hard to resist.
After a period that seemed almost interminable, he felt a sharp jolt as the elevator stopped and the door abruptly slid open. Ray opened his eyes as he emerged into a large room. There were two large containers, which resembled fish tanks, at one end of the room. They were lit with an orange-white glow.
For a minute, Ray simply stared at what lay inside. His mouth opened wide in astonishment and he just stood there, oblivious to anything else.
The creatures were humanoid, all right, with greenish gray skin, delicately formed heads, perfect features, and big, almost hypnotic eyes with large violet or dark blue pupils. Lips were pencil thin, and noses were gently sculpted as if an expert plastic surgeon had done the work.
Their arms and legs were slim and athletic at the same time, seemingly capable of tremendous feats of strength. They were almost human, yet Ray sensed abilities that went far beyond those of humans.
Ray knew who those creatures were!
They were indistinguishable from the beings he had seen in his dreams. Their name rang like a bell, the strange word that first erupted in his conscious memory so long ago: Rockoids!
Ray stared in disbelief. The Rockoids were exactly as he remembered them, down to the very last detail. He tried to slow down his rapid breathing and calm himself, as sweat began to pour down his neck. Ray took a second to gather his wits about him, and tried to observe his surroundings more carefully. He had to use his intelligence skills to help him focus his eyes on the strange sights and sounds around him.
The laboratory was filled with plain, glowing, and blinking buttons, knobs, handles, meters, futuristic-looking machines, and tables with large bottles filled with strange-looking chemicals. Ray stepped back toward one of the non-glowing control panels and tried to avoid looking at the Rockoids. They were dead all right, but so well preserved it seemed they might come alive at any moment.
Unfortunately, Ray spent too much time examining the alien bodies, and not on what seeped forth from the ventilation chamber in the large laboratory. He became aware of the return of that gaseous smell; only this time it was more intense than ever. Caught off guard, a wave of dizziness nearly overcame him; he stumbled back, bumping his shoulder on a switch attached to one of the strange machines.
A loud click broke the silence. Almost immediately, the machines began flashing several different colors at once in random patterns. He began to see a thick, yellowish gas floating all around him.
Before Ray could decide what to do next, he became even more disoriented. He struggled to fight the waves of unconsciousness that seemed about to overwhelm him and hurried back toward the entrance of the room.
However, as soon as Ray began running, he heard and felt a deep rumbling sound.
Legs moved faster and faster until Ray stood before the closing elevator door. Just as he was about to attempt to squeeze himself between the narrowing crack, the door abruptly shut with a resounding clang.
There he remained: trapped inside the room!
The terror of being stranded in that awful place made him breathe deeply and rapidly, and he began to cough as he inhaled the strange gas. It spread thick around him, and he could hardly see. He struggled to hold his breath, but the intense odor had already weakened him, so he found himself breathing in fitful gasps.
Ray briefly wondered if he wasn’t breathing the same sort of air that those Rockoids might have breathed, and he struggled to see through the gas. Maybe he’d find a gas mask somewhere.
As he grew weaker, he stumbled around the room, bumping into tables, tripping over chairs, knocking over chemical bottles, and making one big mess. He could hear objects dropping, liquids and glass. He expected he’d soon be bleeding uncontrollably from cuts and bruises inflicted by the shattered glass.
Ray nearly overturned the transparent tanks holding the Rockoids as he staggered about. The situation had become intolerable. He tried to scream out for help (as if anyone could hear him). However, his efforts were useless. The words never left his mouth. They just stuck in his throat, and although he tried to swallow, the effort only ended up making it sore.
To Ray’s surprise, the gaseous cloud suddenly dispersed. The odor remained, but in a far less pungent form. He felt overjoyed, and he was about to make his way toward the elevator when he realized he couldn’t move. His limbs were paralyzed. Ray tried harder and harder, but his efforts only served to wear him out.
Suddenly everything around him began to ripple, as if he was caught in a transparent flame. He felt the room spinning around him, making him even more disoriented than before. His surroundings became brighter and brighter. Within seconds, the light became so unbearable, he thought if he kept his eyes open any longer, he would go blind.
So this is what people see when they die.
At that moment, relief was brought to Ray’s eyes. Blackness suddenly engulfed the room. He first believed the intense light had blinded him, but qu
ickly realized that every element of the room, from walls to ceiling, and the contents within, had somehow absorbed the incredible darkness in which he was now immersed.
Ray began to fall. The sensation seemed mild at first, not much different from a parachute jump once the chute had expanded. He could only think of the feeling as gentle, rolling, safe, knowing he’d hit bottom and become upright in a few moments.
Sure enough, the manner in which Ray swayed back and forth seemed reminiscent of those near-forgotten parachute jumps back in the Middle East. Gentle and swaying…comfortable.
Suddenly the pace of Ray’s fall began increasing rapidly, precipitously, and he seemed to be pulled straight down, faster and faster. Startled, frightened, Ray barely had time to think where he might end up.
He simply kept falling on and on, without end, without a feeling of approaching solid ground, not knowing if he was ever going to land. Could he be dreaming? The entire scenario seemed horribly real.
He finally got the courage to look down, shocked to see the face of the gorgeous alien woman of his dreams. She had a look of deep pain on her face. He felt her anguish….
Suddenly, the eye of what appeared to be a gigantic tornado replaced the image of breathtaking beauty, a silvery mass, spinning at a speed that Ray surmised was hundreds of miles per hour. The tornado slowly drew him closer and closer into its eye, faster and faster. He could not resist; his muscles were frozen in time….He must surrender to that incredible force of nature. Maybe he’d wake up from his nightmare, safe and sound in his bed at home…if all this were truly a dream.
Ray’s whole life began to replay itself. He became a child again, back in the small but comfortable home he had lived in during his younger years. Adulthood brought him to the classrooms of MIT, where he had first learned how to program computers. A quick jump to the Naval Academy in which he enrolled to please his father, where he got the foolish idea to become a Navy SEAL, and somehow managed to achieve that impossible goal.
Ray saw his friends and watched as he, still a cadet, had to endure the taunts and abuse from upperclassmen.
His mother lay in her deathbed, tentatively clinging to her final moments of life, never the same after his dad died in that freak accident.
Before he had a chance to think about the words he couldn’t utter when she was alive, he was fighting that strange, desert battle in the Middle East, a silly mission, really, just to dig up some intelligence information from a low-level official.
Ray and his crew never reached their destination. Just yards away from a huge compound, explosives suddenly burst all around them. His comrades fell to the ground, one upon another, and that noxious gas filled his lungs, making him feel he was about to suffocate, and he, too, fell to the ground.
The hospital stay wasn’t pleasant. The dreams began during his convalescence. At first, just faint images of space, and the ships came; huge, oppressive, great behemoths of shiny metal, their giant laser weapons raining fire and destruction in all directions.
Above everything, Ray saw her face. The most wonderful creature he’d even seen, so close he could almost reach out to her. It seemed he’d always known her, forever apart, yet so close he could witness her private moments of agony.
He could even see what he presumed to be her counselor visiting her in her private chambers one fateful evening. The words were alien, weird and melodic, more sung than spoken; somehow he could understand their meaning: “Zanther, my princess, I bring you sad tidings.”
“I know, my lord Yexin, it is my parents. I felt their death, I felt all their deaths….”
Ray sensed the alien woman’s anguish, oppressive beyond his ability to comprehend. He, too, was nearly overcome with grief, a grief felt for unknown alien beings who shared nothing in common but their tragic, senseless deaths.
Just when it seemed as if he had regained control of his muscles, maybe find a way out of that horrendous, spinning inferno, everything went black once more.
Total silence ensued…
* * *
The voices were faint at first, hardly more than whispers, one here, another there. The volume intensified, as Ray heard faint notes of some indescribable melody, barely audible in the distance.
People were talking, laughing, happy giggles infusing his ears.
Ray could see nothing; it was all black. Had he gone blind?
The distinctive voice of a young child yelled out, “Mommy, who’s that strange man?”
“Why, that’s just a staggerhead. Ignore him.”
The light returned to Ray’s eyes.
Chapter 4
Positively huge, the place seemed filled with colorful lights and decorations. People with strange clothes strolled about, sometimes so fast it seemed as if they were jogging.
All the sights and sounds were crystal clear to him now, illuminated by an amazing type of recessed lighting that spread nearly uniformly from the high ceiling. It seemed like daylight. Ray squinted whenever he gazed upward, astonished at the view before him.
Ray saw dozens of people walking by, en route to various locations. All were clothed in garments exhibiting the colors of the rainbow, but most had one thing in common; their gloves and boots were all a dark brown or black, as if they were conforming to some unspoken fashion convention.
A young couple walked right by him.
The tall, red-haired man wore a blue long-sleeved shirt and pants, shiny black gloves, and boots. The somewhat portly woman at his side was dressed in clothing similar in design, except her shirt and pants were red.
Ray still felt disoriented, barely able to stand, trying to remain upright.
He almost laughed out loud at the first thought that came to him: I have a feeling I’m not in Kansas anymore. He stifled the laugh and instead attempted to process all the strange and wonderful sights.
Most of people nearby tried to avoid Ray, staying at a respectful distance, for good reason. He was a sight. His hands and face were dirty, bruised, with dried blood on his forehead. His jeans and shirt were torn.
The dizziness almost overwhelmed Ray as he walked outside what seemed to be the exit of this facility. He took a deep breath. As he was about to regain full consciousness, he bumped into a signpost.
The brightly lit, multicolored sign overhead read, “Thanks for Shopping at the Area 51 Shopping Mall!”
As Ray stared dumbfounded, the vertigo engulfed him once more. He stumbled back into the mall, using walls for support.
When he returned to the mall, he began picking out details he hadn’t noticed before. As much as the storefronts resembled a regular shopping mall, they were quite different. Their clothing displays were as odd as the garments worn by the passers-by. The merchandise was totally unfamiliar to him and the names on the doors, with few exceptions, did not resemble any establishments he knew.
Well, Ray did see the signs for The Gap and McDonald’s, but the logos had clearly undergone great changes. It seemed as if the whole world had turned upside down overnight.
What was he doing here? One moment, he was in that…that place, the laboratory, with the alien beings in those gigantic tanks! The next came that strange odor, that whirling, the falling…
Now—this! Was he truly dead?
People stared at Ray, whispered into each other’s ears, and chuckled as they saw him. The fact Ray could hardly stand straight, no doubt made them feel he was a harmless drunk or a lunatic.
Ray felt so disoriented he didn’t even care.
Despite his state of confusion, some things just couldn’t escape his notice. Several of the people he passed were downright strange. They hardly seemed like people at all. Some had protruding foreheads, others had heads that seemed almost fish-like, complete with gills and scales. A few of the beings even resembled giant crabs. Their faces were clearly real, not a mask or outlandish costume. Every element of their appearance seemed authentic, from the odd manner of their gait, to the form-fitting uniforms, to the casual manner in which they strode
around, as if they were used to each other’s different appearances.
The feeling that he had been suddenly dropped into the middle of a science fiction movie nagged at the core of Ray’s being.
It became a little too much for Ray. He resisted the urge to scream for help, but couldn’t still a few panic-stricken cries as he staggered about, trying to get away. Nothing he’d ever seen or heard during his travels around the world prepared him for this.
Eventually, Ray found his way into a clothing store, stopping dead in his tracks to look around.
The female clerk’s eyes widened with fear as Ray approached. He resisted the urge to run out of that place, but with difficulty. Seconds ticked by, and neither party said anything. He stared at her, she at him and they stood, almost frozen in their tracks, about two yards apart.
Ray had to find out where he was, how he got here, and what in hell was going on.
With renewed resolve affecting his still groggy mind, he boldly walked right up toward her and stumbled against the nearest wall.
“Where…am…I?” Ray asked, panting wildly, breathing heavily between each word.
“You’re in the Area 51 Shopping Mall, ninety kilometers north of Las Vegas,” said the clerk calmly, in a smooth, soft voice, as if she got asked this sort of question all the time.
“I know…that…already! What time is it?” exclaimed Ray, as he began to feel calm.
The clerk pushed a red button by the cash register—or what Ray took to be a cash register because of the distinctive drawer at the bottom of the flat-screen terminal—with her small, slim hand, and a robot-like voice said, “The time is 10:05 A.M.”
“No, what year is it? What day? What month?” He tried to act as if this was all routine chitchat.
She didn’t react to Ray’s almost hysterical behavior (hysterical in her opinion, anyway); instead she matter-of-factly pushed the button again, and the same voice said, “The date is September 3, 2232.”
“Why am I here? What is that thing?”
Attack of the Rockoids Page 5