As Lenel trudged off, Okun absentmindedly set to work prying the control system components out of their fittings. When he began to sketch, his mind began to wander. He’d poured his heart into finding this ship, and now it looked like he was going to lose it again. He wondered how tough the aliens really were. Could he and Lenel, like the ancient Mogollon Indians, defend their cave? He imagined pelting the unwelcome visitors with rocks as they tried to climb the hillside. If that failed, there was always the tire iron.
When they saw Mad Dog Okun at the top of the slope wearing a menacing sneer, would they turn and run? Would they fight? Or would he feel his body go numb and the weapon drop from his hands like Trina Gluck’s toothbrush had dropped into the sink?
Then there was another possibility. When the approaching aliens were close enough, the craft he was sitting in would most likely be able to fly. He pictured himself glued into the pilot’s pod chair. When the first eebie showed itself in the freshly cut doorway, he would slam the ship in gear, blast through the wall, and fly north to Groom Lake before the aliens knew what hit them. Two drawbacks of this plan were that Okun had never flown any type of aircraft in his life, and he didn’t have the foggiest notion of how the ship’s controls worked. He went back to the tire-iron scenario.
He had finished sketching the major components of the control systems into his notebook when he heard Lenel cursing and grumbling below the hatchway. He checked the cycles again. The power throbs were coming every second and a half now and appeared to be growing stronger. Very soon, the ship would be receiving a continuous flow of energy. Staying as far as possible from the straight-legged remains of the three bodies, he went to see what all the noise was about.
“I can’t dig this out. I’m too damn old.” Okun stepped down into the tunnel and checked Lenel’s progress. He’d managed to dig about a foot and a half back toward the aqua-box. That left three and a half feet to go. Okun took the tire iron and began working furiously, driving it into the earth walls and breaking off handfuls of dirt with each thrust. He should have been doing this job all along. None of the schematics he’d made would be worth anything if they couldn’t figure out the power-generating system. But the floor of the cave was packed hard, und it quickly became clear he wouldn’t reach the door to the aqua-box in time.
He and Lenel both froze when they heard an unfamiliar sound. It was coming from inside the ship. When they looked inside, they saw that the lights on the instrument panel were no longer strobing. The ship was up and running.
“It’s time to get out of here.”
“Not yet,” Okun said. “We’ve got to get a look at the power system.” He proposed the idea of defending the cave to Lenel, who looked at him like he was crazy, then got down on all fours and started crawling out from under the ship.
“You stay here if you want to. That’s not the way I want to die.”
Out of frustration, Okun stabbed the earth several more times with his tire iron. But then, realizing it was too late, he collapsed against one of the walls, sweating profusely. As he was considering his next move the whole ship seemed to let out a shuddering moan. There was a loud cracking noise as it began to lift off the ground. It rose slowly, an inch at a time.
Lenel, candle near his face, seemed to rise with it. Standing on his knees, he straightened up as far as the rising ship would allow. He had a wide-open expression of wonder on his face, like a kid watching a magic show. He let out a giddy laugh, looking back toward Okun. “Will ya look at that! It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” The ship continued lifting until it cracked hard against the stone ceiling, sending a few chips of rock skittering down its sloped sides.
“The thruster rockets seem to be in good shape. Looks like they dug holes for them to sit in.”
The black alien ship, a perfect twin of the one at Area 51, floated three feet above the ground, an mute and mysterious as a sphinx. Okun, oedipal, wanted to solve one more of its riddles before he left the cave. Ignoring Lenel’s protests, he wriggled himself into the freshly created gap between the hull of the ship and the floor of the cave. He began pulling at the cover door of the aqua-box.
“Uh-oh,” Lenel said. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Okun grunted between tugs.
Lenel shuffled toward the door to the cave, leaned outside, and searched the sky. Many miles from the nearest city lights, the stars shone down unobstructed and seemed to form a plush and twinkling blanket in the sky. While he was watching, one of these stars seemed to split in two. Part of it remained high in the atmosphere while another one moved closer.
“We’ve got company! They’re here.” Lenel turned around and shouted. “It’s time to go.”
“Almost. I’ve almost got it.” With a final yank, Okun liberated the door from its slot. It came free of the ship and landed heavily on top of him. When Lenel heard the ooof! sound, he repeated his warning that it was time to leave.
“Start without me,” Okun called from beneath the door. “I’ll catch up.”
Lenel poked his head out the door indecisively and looked at the stone shelf leading to the trail. “All right. I’ll take the same path we came up on. Meet me at the bottom of the hill. How much longer are you going to be?”
If Okun couldn’t find a way to get his head and chest out from under the heavy section of shell armor, he was going to be there permanently. “A minute or two,” his muffled voice answered.
“OK, two minutes. No longer!” Lenel warned. He could see the swirl of green light coming from beneath the ship and knew Okun had gotten the door off. He stepped through the opening and began edging along the top of the slope.
Okun concentrated on making himself very skinny and eventually succeeded in worming out from under the door. Then he looked up and beheld the spectacular play of light caused by the aqua-box, its energy racing around the inside of the chamber like a transparent cyclone of crystal green water. An exact clone of the one at Area 51, it exhibited the same paper-thin walls of rock, the same hairwidth filaments arranged in a complex geometrical pattern. But there was one important exception: floating in the center of the hexagonal chamber, suspended in midair, was a small piece of metal shaped like an ankh. Like a gyroscope, it was spinning and rolling while remaining in one spot. It seemed to be gathering the energy off the sides of the hexagon and sending it out in a controlled manner. Each of the ankh’s four arms sent out a razor-thin beam. He remembered the chaotic way the other ship’s box had purged the system of energy and how the ships would have had to fly improbably close to one another. This was the answer, and it had been hanging around his neck the whole time. Incredible!
When something moved across the doorway, Okun reached out and grabbed the tire iron. But it was only Lenel, who immediately concealed himself behind the rock wall. “Too late. They’re here.” He pointed up through the ceiling. “They’ve found us, and it’s too dark out there for me to see where I’m going.”
Okun gathered up his possessions. He’d seen how the aqua-box worked. He was ready to help Lenel make his escape. But as he made to leave, he decided he needed to try one last experiment. He slipped his necklace off and tried to undo the knot, but couldn’t. “Might work anyhow,” he muttered. He wanted to switch the two ankhs, to make absolutely sure they were interchangeable. He reached up and pulled the spinning piece out, preparing to switch them. Immediately the ship lost power and began settling toward the floor. Okun hadn’t counted on that. He shoved the new piece into the chamber and closed his eyes tight, expecting to feel the weight of the ship crush down on his chest. Luckily, it accepted the second ankh, leather string and all.
If I take both ankhs, they won’t be able to fly this ship out of here! He decided to go for broke.
“What in Hades are you doing over there? They’ll be coming through the door any second. Let’s get—” Lenel, glancing outside, saw something that stopped him in mid-sentence. Hovering directly overhead was the nose of an alien saucer. It crawled forwar
d until it was away from the cliffs, then turned itself around and crept closer. Peeking around the corner of the doorway, Lenel had a clear view through the windows into the interior of the craft. A handful of the large-headed creatures were gathered at the windows, inspecting the cliff.
“How we doin’ over there?” Okun called over his shoulder. He was too focused on his task to notice that Lenel’s answer was an unintelligible stammer. He was trying to get his ankh out of the aqua-box without having the ship squash him. He had crawled back into the trench and was reaching with the tire iron, trying to snag the loop of leather string. But this was as difficult as a carnival game owing to the fact that the spinning ankh was moving the string in all directions.
The hovering saucer pressed in closer. Lenel picked up a large rock and stood with his back pressed to the wall, his eyes glued to the doorway. He planned to clobber anything that stepped inside. He felt the nose of the spacecraft bump against the wall and wondered if they were going to use the ship as a battering ram to open the cave. He found his voice long enough to whisper hoarsely across the darkness of the cave: “They’re right outside.”
One last try, Okun told himself. I know I can get it. But before he could take a final stab at the dancing leather string, a powerful blast of white light entered the cave from outside. It was sweeping across the floor and heading his way. Faster than he knew he could move, he rolled into the trench, hiding himself a split second before he was seen. The search beam scanned the cave’s interior for several seconds before abruptly shutting off.
“Now do you believe me?” Lenel’s voice was trembling. “Please, Brackish, let s go.”
Cowering in the trench, Okun asked if the ship had moved away. Suddenly his idea about challenging the aliens had vanished. When Lenel reported that it had flown a little way off, Okun leaped out of the trench and ran for the door. Without a word, he helped his old friend step through the hole and out onto the ledge. The spacecraft was hovering near the bottom of the cliffs, not far from where the station wagon had been parked a few hours before. Okun was more terrified than he’d ever been. He felt the strong urge to sprint away down the cliff and be well hidden by the time the aliens came out of their ship. But he couldn’t abandon Lenel, especially after making him wait so long to escape. He tried to pull the man along gently, but was afraid of knocking him off-balance. When they came to a flat section of the stone ledge, he left Lenel for just a moment to run ahead and check the switchback trail Pedro had shown him that afternoon. It looked too treacherous for the old man. As Lenel took the last few steps toward Okun, he lost his way and walked off the narrow trail. He landed on the gravel slope and crashed hard against the rocks. By the time Okun got to him, he had slid ten feet down the hill and was clutching a handful of shrubs. Desperately searching for a way to reach his friend, he heard the old man whimpering in pain. Even the quietest sound was a roar of noise in the Silent Zone.
“Lenel,” he rasped, “reach up here and grab my hand. I’ll pull you up.”
The old man shook his head. “I think I broke something. You get out of here. Get back to Area 51.”
“Not without you I’m not.” Okun wedged the toe of his shoe into a fissure in the rock and started lowering himself headfirst down the slope. Before he could grasp the old man’s wrist, the root of the bush Lenel was holding gave way, and Lenel began sliding down the rocky slope. Horrified, Okun made a last desperate lunge, but couldn’t reach him. The old man slid away until he plunged over the side of the lower cliffs and landed a second later with a sickening thud.
“Lenel, are you all right?” he whispered, knowing his voice would carry to the bottom of the cliffs.
No answer. He was about to start down the hillside to find his friend when he heard a metallic click echo through the valley. Then he watched a circular pool of light form on the ground below the ship. The hatch door had been opened. Adrenaline pumping, he ran a few more strides along the trail before diving into a shallow foxhole near the base of the trail leading to the top of the cliffs. Climbing the trail now would definitely expose him.
He looked down on the ship until he saw the little beings step onto the ground and begin wandering around the area. They moved toward the base of the hill, to the place where Lenel’s body must have fallen. Although he couldn’t see Lenel, he could see the creatures standing around him. He wanted to shout at them to get away from his friend, but was too terrified even to move. Suddenly, they abandoned Lenel and began climbing the hillside. Okun knew that probably meant the old man was dead.
Peeking and ducking, he watched the aliens trying to climb the first steep wall toward the cave. From everything he’d learned about them, he expected them to be much more nimble. But they were having just as much trouble as he had had with the rocky terrain.
It occurred to him he could probably make a run for it. In fact, he probably should because his foxhole was only seventy-five feet from the opening. When they realized someone had been messing around with their ship, wouldn’t they come out and search the area? Maybe they’ll think Lenel was in there by himself. No, he had to get out of there immediately. He reached down to grab his notebook and his ankh and realized he’d left them inside! He slapped himself in the forehead. The searchlight scanning the cave had scared him so badly, he’d forgotten to pick up his things. He’d come all this way only to blow it at the very end. He briefly considered making a mad dash back to the door, ducking inside to grab his possessions and racing out again. But, like the other heroic plans he’d made that evening, he thought about it too long. Soon six of the awkward little creatures were approaching the mouth of the cave. At the bottom of the slope, he spotted a taller creature, climbing the hillside even more awkwardly than the others. That must be the Tall One.
The smaller aliens had already been inside for a couple of minutes when the Tall One reached the top of the slope. They came outside and flitted around the taller creature, seemingly agitated. As Okun watched this scene unfold, the Tall One turned its head in a very deliberate way and seemed to look directly at Okun across the darkness. Okun ducked out of sight, fighting to control his fear. It was dark; maybe he hadn’t been seen. His heart racing like it was going to explode, he quietly turned on his back and tried to clear his mind. He knew he had to stay hidden, but he also knew he had to run. He heard the sound of their feet moving across the gravel again. Were they moving in to surround him? He flipped back over and glanced up at the switchback trail. It was time to find out who could run faster, a terrified earthling or these creatures from who-knew-where. But when he peeked once more over the edge of his hiding place, the creatures were in retreat. The six smaller ones were marching away down the hillside and the Tall One was disappearing alone into the cave.
They climbed down the lower cliff and didn’t walk over to Lenel’s body. They went straight to their ship and climbed in. Okun counted them again to make sure none of them were sneaking around to ambush him. A moment after the circular door snapped closed, there was a whirring hum and the sixty-foot craft zipped straight up into the air, disappearing into the canopy of stars at a fantastic rate of speed. When the ship was gone, the zone of silence swallowed him once more. He heard the Tall One moving around inside the cave. Somehow, being left alone near this most terrifying of the aliens was worse than being near all six of the others. Is the Tall One reading my mind right now? Does he know I’m out here?
No longer indecisive, Okun began his escape. He pushed himself quietly away from the gravel of his hiding place and stepped back onto the trail. He began climbing the narrow trail to the top of the cliffs, which was littered with pebbles and sand. Each footstep became a matter of life and death. To help him find the Zen of the moment, he imagined himself as Grasshopper, the young Shao-Lin priest from the Kung Fu television series. Hands gliding through the air, knees bent, Okun climbed the treacherous slope as delicately as if it were a rice-paper carpet he could not afford to tear. When he reached the top of the bluff, he found himself on a larg
e mesa. After a final glance over the side to make sure he wasn’t being followed, he tore away at a dead run. He ran as fast as he could in a straight line across the open plain, looking over his shoulder every few seconds. When he got to the far side of the plateau, he wasted no time. He ran down this new set of slopes which were every bit as treacherous as the ones outside the cave, something he could never have done if his system weren’t overloaded with adrenaline. It didn’t matter to him that he was running ever deeper into a waterless no-man’s-land where he might die of thirst or starvation. His immediate problem was getting as far away from the cave as humanly possible. He wanted to be miles away when the Tall One came out of the cave to look for him. After twenty minutes of sprinting, a stabbing pain in his side forced him to stop. He limped to a place between two boulders and collapsed in the sand, gasping for air and dripping with sweat. He was sure they wouldn’t find him here, even if they came looking.
When he’d been lying there long enough for his breathing to return to normal, he heard a droning sound in the distance. He listened to the sound for a long while until he recognized what it was—an airplane engine. It was coming from the direction of the power lines. Cibatutto and Freiling must have reached a phone and called in the Marines. He wanted to run back the way he’d come and help them locate the cave, but he was beyond exhaustion. All he could do was hope the military found the spot before the Tall One escaped with the ship. Struggling to keep his eyes open, he listened to the plane’s engine purring in the distance.
14
The Okun Era Begins
Even before he opened his eyes, he felt the presence standing over him. He was lying on his stomach and felt every nerve ending in his body tingle to full alertness. His deepest instincts told him not to move, not to change his breathing. He was certain he was being watched.
Independence Day: Silent Zone Page 19