Lee had hoped for something better to come out of his mouth, but when he said, "I'm sorry," he didn't know why.
The creature continued looking at Lee. As Leslie moved back toward the gurney, it moved its head slowly and looked at him. He quickly lifted a thin piece of gauze from its chest and replaced the greenish soaked bandage with another, which the doctor laid as gently as he could on the large puncture wound. He repeated the process with the head wound, and again with an injury on the throat that was deep and more than likely beyond his surgical prowess to repair with any equipment. The small being blinked and took a sharp intake of breath. Its eyes closed and it hissed again. Leslie closed his eyes, knowing it had caused the small thing pain in removing the bandage. Slowly the eyes opened, and to Leslie's and Lee's astonishment, it smiled and blinked its eyes once again.
"I think it may understand you're here to help it, Doctor," Lee ventured.
Leslie nodded, thankful that his intentions had been understood.
The alien slowly rolled its head to the left and took in Lee once again. They watched as its arm rose from its side and slowly pointed at Lee's face. Garrison raised his own hand and felt; then he understood. The small finger was pointing at his patch, or possibly the long scar that marked the right side of his face.
"I was wounded in the war," he said. Then he smiled. "I hope you have no understanding of that."
The creature again looked away. It saw Leslie and its eyes moved to the small chrome table beside the gurney. It again pointed, but this time it was indicating the syringe that had been used to ease its pain.
"No, I don't think we can give you any more, my little friend," Leslie said as softly as he could.
The being again attempted the smile and turned its head back to the left and pointed at Lee, again indicating the scar or eye patch.
"Amazing, I think it believes you are injured and he wants you to have the same shot I gave it," Leslie said.
Lee smiled and slowly reached out and with his fingers gently touched the being's fingertip. The alien again smiled. "I'm afraid this wound is an old one," he said, using his other hand to touch the eye patch.
Lee was watching the small being and leaned closer. "Doctor, could this injury to its neck cause it to lose vocalization?"
"Right now we can't be sure if it talks at all. The wound by itself wouldn't be life-threatening, at least I wouldn't think. But is it keeping it from speaking? I really don't know."
The creature seemed to be listening to their exchange and reached for the gauze-covered wound at its neck. It swallowed and removed the hand and looked at Lee and reached for the scar again. He leaned over so the being could touch. It lightly ran its long, thin finger along the pinkish scar tissue, then lightly touched the patch. Its eyes were slowly opening and closing. The mouth was moving. Still looking at Lee, it swallowed and again reached for its throat.
"W... arrrr," it said barely above a whisper.
Lee was astounded. He looked at Leslie, who nodded that he too had heard the word. Lee turned his attention back to the little creature and jumped when it slowly and painfully sat up with difficulty. It was shaking badly and was obviously in much pain as it attempted to move. Lee and Leslie both tried to gently push the being back onto the white sheets of the gurney. The small alien resisted and looked at Lee with eyes that pleaded for help. Garrison relented and removed his hands. He nodded once at the doctor, and he too stepped away and allowed the visitor to sit up. It turned over on its belly and slowly slid from the gurney, almost falling. Leslie quickly disconnected the IV from its bottle and rolled up the tube.
The alien made first one step, then another tentative and smaller step. Lee and Leslie adjusted to allow for the motion. The small creature stopped after four steps and shook extremely hard, closing its large eyes in pain. Leslie reached out with a fresh square of gauze and dabbed at its chest wound, but the alien wasn't paying him any mind as it reached out and tentatively took Lee's large hand and then took Leslie's. The little hands held on tightly to both men as they slowly made their way from the plastic-lined area of the hangar. As Garrison reached out and parted the curtain that separated the hospital from the rest of the huge hangar, they felt the eyes of the Group on them. People were stunned at the sight of their boss leading the injured alien from the secured area at the back. Hendrix, with his hands now cuffed in front of him, stared wide-eyed at the strange trio as they moved. The alien stopped and watched as the Group security men, their mouths ajar, moved Hendrix back away from its path.
"Major Marcel, quickly remove everyone from the hangar with the exception of my departmental supervisors. All other personnel, including my technicians, are to evacuate the hangar, now," Lee said quietly in rapid-fire orders. He stepped to the front of the small alien to block the view from the interior of the hangar as Marcel started barking orders.
"What did it say, Lee? Tell me!" Hendrix said loudly, startling the small being and forcing it to take a step back. "Tell me, goddammit!"
The small alien narrowed its eyes as it took in the handcuffed Hendrix. The large head first moved left, then right, as if it were sizing up the intelligence man in its mind. The eyes, still narrowed, blinked, and then it moved on, dismissing Hendrix outright.
Lee waited until the last of the technicians were out of the hangar, then he stepped aside and allowed the alien's progress into the hangar's interior to continue.
The supervisory men and women of the Event Group were standing and watching the most amazing happening in history; one by one their activity stopped as the small alien with Lee's and Leslie's assistance gingerly stepped through the debris of the crashed saucer. Its thin legs suddenly became wobbly and it almost collapsed. Lee placed his other arm in the small of its back, helping to support it more firmly. That was when it gently removed its hand from first Lee, then Leslie. It stumbled and fell; both men reached down for it, but it stood quickly and started moving faster through the piles of debris. Event personnel moved out of its way. A couple of the women and at least one of the doctors let out a cry as the alien came a little too close to them as it walked, then stumbled and fell in front of a huge container. Again the body was racked with shudders as it stared up at the enclosure. Leslie grimaced as he could see it was bleeding quite freely from the wound in its chest.
It touched the side of the container and seemed to relax again. Then it lowered its eyes and closed them, and without looking, it pounded softly on the side with its tiny fist, producing a hollow sound that echoed slightly in the large hangar. Then the alien looked up and saw Lee standing over it.
"Destroyer... dead" it whispered.
Lee leaned down. "I don't understand you."
"The Beast..." It swallowed, making a face as if its speaking caused great pain. "Dead" it repeated, then suddenly slid to the floor.
The remaining few people inside the hangar gasped as it fell over. Lee and Leslie immediately reached for it. But Lee was quicker and lifted the small alien into his arms and nodded for Leslie to take the lead. There was loud talking among the group now as they made their way back to the hospital.
"Alright, what you saw is top secret. Now get your teams back in here, let's move, people," Lee said over his shoulder.
The small creature opened its eyes and watched as Lee carried it back to its bed. "No, w... ar. War" it said, and swallowed gingerly. "No ex--tinct man" It reached up and touched Garrison's face. "Man is... safe...for now. No extinct by Destroyer." It smiled far broader than it ever had, then it weakly tapped its chest. "Kill Des... troyer."
Lee quickly returned the small being to its bed and Leslie went to work, applying pressure to get the bleeding to slow.
The alien was looking at Lee, its eyes drooping and its small breaths coming in short gasps. "We use... animal... to assist... our master race, to, to... clear... new worlds... for... Gray Masters.... Destroyer... not... meant for... here, but uninhabited planet... Some Gray... want to... clear... your world...for their... need. I... kill D
estroyer, animal... is dead... No... war... this time... but... my masters... try... again maybe... kill your... world"
Lee watched as the being's gaze went beyond him to nothing. He saw the large pupils dilate, then fix. Leslie checked its small chest for some kind of movement but found nothing. Its greenish skin immediately started to turn a grayish white. It had died as if content; it went with a small smile that was now frozen in death.
Lee sat with a distraught Dr. Leslie for ten minutes, then headed toward the exit of the hangar thinking about monsters and war. His head pathologist, Gerald Hildebrand, approached him. "Sir, I'm afraid I have something you must see." The young professor stepped back when he saw the greenish blood that soaked the director's clothing. Lee's eye patch was almost off. Hildebrand reached out and pulled the patch back into place.
Lee absently nodded his head in thanks and placed his fedora on his head.
"You have to see this," Hildebrand said again.
Garrison followed the doctor to a rather large piece of debris. It was at least ten feet high and the same width and also had small canisters attached to its top. Lee remembered it was the same container the small alien had insisted on seeing and touching. He came out of his thoughts as he realized that the animal the small being had called the Destroyer had been in this cage. It now made sense why the alien had to confirm to itself that the creature was dead.
"It's here, sir," Hildebrand said, still looking at Lee with concern.
He followed him to the front of the enclosure. The professor leaned down and pointed to a large brown, jellylike mound on the floor of what Lee now knew was a live-animal cargo container. A disgusting smell emanated from it.
Lee suddenly turned away. "Jesus, that's bad."
"Yes, sir, it is. It looks like whatever it was had been completely covered by something that ate it down to this." Hildebrand removed a fountain pen from his lab coat and slowly slid it into a liquid that had gathered on the floor around the gelatinous mound of material. As he lifted the pen, it slowly began to melt, first bubbling, then turning to liquid as the doctor threw it to the floor. "We tested all three containers separately and received no reaction, but once the chemicals are mixed, it turns corrosive, more so than anything I've ever seen."
Lee listened but didn't comment.
"There are other containers like this one, some small, some large, but none as big as this one, but they all have the same kind of substances in them. It may be genetic material that's been reduced to that," Hildebrand said, pointing to the fluid substance at the floor of the cage.
"Get samples and be careful," Lee said, suddenly tired.
"We did find this in the large container, or what I now believe may have been a cage, sir. It was embedded deep in the metal." He walked over to a nearby table and brought back something for Lee to see. The object was some sort of appendage, large and curved. Its tip was like a shovel, sharp and seemingly serrated at its leading edges. It had to measure a good fifteen inches in length. Some kind of scaly flesh clung to its base.
"If I didn't know any better, I would say that is one hell of a big claw, sir," the doctor said in awe.
Lee nodded, his thoughts turning to what the small being had said about the Destroyer. The director turned and walked away. His mind was traveling a hundred miles an hour. "The Destroyer" he mumbled to himself as he entered the hangar's office once again. Could Brazel be right, could one of the saucers have brought the other down? Could this have been a... God, could this have been some freakish act of war?
The room was empty and he walked to the phone and dialed fifteen numbers. He waited for the clicks and the chirps to stop and for the phone on the other end to ring.
"Yes."
"Mr. President, Garrison Lee reporting, sir," he said into the black handset. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his left forefinger and thumb.
"What's goin' on down there, Lee?" Truman asked.
He hesitated a moment as he gathered his thoughts.
"It seems, sir, our flying saucer may have been downed by a second, similar craft, and I believe it was brought down here, on Earth, on purpose."
"Downed! Downed by whom?" Truman asked in confusion.
Lee waited until the famous "Give 'em hell, Harry" temper subsided a little.
"It's all pretty speculative right now, but the craft may have been some type of container or cargo ship... and..." He hesitated. "Hell, sir, I think you better sit down for this one."
Present Day
Compton hadn't moved from his chair throughout the whole of the senator's story; he stared at his shoes, just listening. No questions had been asked by Jack or Niles, and the old man had finished uninterrupted. The senator had added more to the story than he had included in his written report those many years ago. After all, he had had years and years to theorize and piece things together to update his file. The theories fit. Throughout all of the recorded abduction reports made by citizens throughout the world, there had been two factions. One, the Gray beings that were encountered were aggressive and hostile, and two, the Green creatures were kind, gentle, and always benign. Therefore, Lee deduced there were two separate groups involved, one group aggressive and bent on invasion, the other passive and helpful, intent on stopping the Gray whenever they could. The theory fit the facts, and Lee embraced it.
Jack stood and slowly walked to the credenza and poured a glass of water from the pitcher, then walked back and placed it before Lee, repeating the scenario from the day before, only in reverse. The senator lifted his tired eyes toward the major and accepted the water in silence.
"Now you think the same thing has happened, another premeditated attack?" Jack asked.
"Yes, I'm not a believer in coincidence," Lee answered. "We don't have much time if that creature survived the crash; I just wish we knew what it was and its capabilities."
Compton took a deep breath and stood. "Speaking of which, I'm not getting anything accomplished sitting in here." He started to turn away, then stopped and looked at Collins. "I'm relieved the weight of this thing is not only on our shoulders now." Then he left the conference room.
"This Event has haunted me for almost sixty years," Lee said to the remaining two people in the room. "Now another saucer is here again and we can't find it. I guess we need a break and hope God favors the lucky."
"So what it boils down to is that we have to find the remains of this... Destroyer... and verify that it was killed by its present keeper or in the crash itself," Collins said. "If it has indeed followed the same pattern as the incident in '47, that would clearly explain the aggression of that second saucer yesterday and its attempt to keep our naval fighters out of the way."
"There are so many variables to consider, Jack. For instance, the master-slave relationship as told by the being in Roswell. What if this time the animal's keeper isn't as benign as the last?"
There was silence for a moment and then Jack looked at the senator. "We have very little information to go on without the testing that needed to be done in '47 on the animal's remains. Someone out there, whoever stole the debris and murdered the Event personnel, has vital information that may help in saving this planet if it comes down to that. What about this Hendrix? Where did he vanish to?"
Lee shook his head. "He was killed in an air force plane crash two weeks after Roswell. And, yes, before you ask, I know it was that son of a bitch that hijacked the debris and bodies from Roswell. After I turned in my final report, Mr. Truman, as I suspected he would, bowed to the pressure from the Pentagon and their intelligence communities. Then Eisenhower, completely paranoid about anything he didn't fully grasp, buried it and we were out totally. The Event Group had essentially been pushed aside by the triumvirate of LeMay, Dulles, and Hendrix, and men like them, who ended up having the last say in the matter after all."
A knock sounded at the door, stopping the question in Jack's head. Alice stood and walked to the huge double doors and pulled them open. Outside stood Carl Everett and a man in a gree
n flight suit. Alice beckoned them in.
"Commander Everett," she said, smiling, "and you must be Lieutenant Ryan?" She stepped aside as the two men entered the room. "I hope you had a nice rest, Mr. Ryan?"
"Yes, thank you," Ryan said.
The senator stood and, using his cane this time for support, walked to greet the newcomer.
"Senator Garrison Lee, this is Lieutenant Junior Grade Jason Ryan, of the USS Carl Vinson" Alice said as the two men grasped hands.
"I understand you have had a trying experience, Mr. Ryan," Lee said sadly.
Ryan was looking around the huge conference room while he shook the old man's hand. "Somewhat, but I'll live. Senator?"
"I suspect you will live, son, and, yes, former senator," Lee said, letting the man's hand go.
Ryan watched him turn and head back to the long conference table. Everett made the other introductions while Lee sat.
"I must admit, I've never seen the back room of a pawnshop before, but this is a little much," Ryan said while still looking around him. Then he smiled as he took in Major Collins.
"I'm going to be blunt with you, Lieutenant," Lee began. "Your flying for the navy? Those days are over. We need information from you and we're also short on personnel. You are now a part of our group, so consider yourself on detached service and your new commander is this man." Lee gestured toward Collins.
Jack nodded at Ryan, looking the naval pilot over, and accepted his 201 file from him.
"Is your incident report in here, Mr. Ryan?" Jack asked.
"Yes, sir."
"I'll debrief Lieutenant Ryan," Lee said. "I want you and Mr. Everett to see what you can do to give Niles a hand in the Computer Center. We just received word the NSA's pulling their photo-recon satellite, so that's going to leave Boris and Natasha and the National Weather Service as our only eyes out there. That's only two KH-1 Is to play with and five remote drones, and we need that ship found quickly," Lee said, almost pleading. "Jack, find out who's been piggybacking us since '47; you'll have full access to the Europa XP-7, and the best backdoor technician we have. Find out all you can, discover who's been on our back for sixty years, and then get the Cray back to Niles. God knows he's going to need it."
Event (event group thrillers) Page 21