Whack Job

by Mike Baron

  “Contact”

  Thursday morning.

  The image had a disturbing grainy quality like WW II footage except for the coloring, a wet gutter reflecting lurid yellow. Neon lights reflecting off alley ponds. In contrast, the three creatures were so black they seemed to be a glimpse into the screaming void. So black they sucked the light in around them.

  Each had three bulging red eyes forming a triangle: two on top, one on the bottom. The stark contrast between the red eyes and black background caused them to pop like a 3-D effect. It was difficult to tell exactly how many limbs they had since they appeared to be equal parts chitin, tentacles, and fur. The triangular heads bobbed on top of long, beetle-like bodies. The bulging spherical eyes splashed and flowed a disturbingly blood-like fluid. Everything about them was alien. Otto’s first instinct was to turn and run.

  Get away from them.

  “They’re watching us too,” Alvarez said softly. “I’ve sent them greetings in English, a Mozart concerto, and using the SETI manual--a series of geometric designs intended to establish a base line.”

  “Have they responded?” Otto said.

  Alvarez reached out and twisted a dial on a free-standing Bose speaker. An electrical crackle issued. “The radio lines are open. Operators are standing by to take their calls.”

  “Have you notified National Security?” Otto said softly.

  “No. I figure that’s your job.”

  They stared in silence.

  “Why do they twitch like that?” Otto said.

  “I know. At first I thought there was a glitch in the digital feed before I realized that’s their natural motion.”

  Otto looked at the wall clock. It would be eight o’clock in the nation’s capital. His instructions called for him to notify the Director if there were any significant breaks in the case, but at the same time he was reluctant to tear himself away from the lab for fear of missing an historic moment.

  The aliens’ herky-jerk motion was mesmerizing, like that of a mustelid. Perhaps it was meant to be. Otto yanked himself out of a near-trance. “Is there a secure line?”

  Alvarez pushed himself back from the computer in his wheeled chair and pointed to a black wall unit near the door. “Hooked up an hour ago. It’s encoded, encrypted and air-gapped. Only feeds the comsat.”

  Otto crossed the linoleum floor and reached for the phone.

  “GREETINGS!”

  The word crackled thickly from numerous speakers trailing weird harmonic undertones that scraped the inside of the skull like a rasp.

  An atavistic chill shook Otto’s spine like a flag in a tornado. His forearms prickled as he returned to the screen. Stella dug her nails into his arm and clung. The three aliens twitched like bobbleheads.

  They waited for something to happen.

  “Maybe we should answer them,” Alvarez suggested.

  “Yes,” Otto said.

  Alvarez spoke into a little desk mike. “Greetings. Welcome to Earth. Who are you?”

  Bob, twitch.

  “WE ARE THE SKORZH.”

  Alvarez winced and adjusted the modulator.

  “Sounded like ‘Scourge,’“ Otto said.

  Stella put her lips to Otto’s ear. “There’s a protocol for first contact. Shouldn’t you notify National Security?”

  “Not yet.”

  Otto reached over and picked up the mike. “Why are you here?”

  The aliens flickered like bad reception. It was impossible to read their body language. Nothing changed. The silence stretched until Otto thought they had lost communication.

  “We were able to affect a transfer from our universe to yours.” The volume was lower but the voice still sounded like demonic possession--wheezy with disturbing sonics at both ends of the spectrum, as if several people were speaking at once.

  Perhaps they didn’t understand the question. “But why have you come?”

  “First we transferred the stones. We followed and brought more stones.”

  “The red spheres,” Otto whispered.

  “They’re not answering your question, Alvarez said.

  Again, Otto spoke into the mike. “Why have you come?”

  Crackles and hiss.

  “It is our destiny.”

  An industrial sewing machine worked its way down Otto’s spine. He looked at Stella with alarm. It was like looking into a mirror--the same heart-sick expression.

  Manifest destiny.

  The statement left no room for humanity.

  “You’re killing our people. Is it your intention to anger us?”

  Snaps, hisses and pops. A faint babble of voices veered in and out of the loop like a passing comet. A stream of bubbles trickled up from the corner of Witherspoon’s mouth like a string of pearls.

  “First we transferred the stones. We followed and brought more stones.”

  “Oh great,” Alvarez muttered.

  “You’ve committed acts of war,” Otto said. “Do you understand that?”

  Stella put a hand on his arm but said nothing. He knew he was exceeding his authority but hell, somebody had to represent the human race.

  More hissing and pops. That strange loop of multiple voices curved through the room. Otto heard it moving from speaker to speaker like Dolby sound, something Frank Zappa might have cooked up.

  “Who’s in charge?” he said.

  Hissing, crackling, giggling.

  “What is six-two-four?”

  Hiss crack pop.

  “Where are you from?”

  “From the land of sky blue waters” sang the speakers like a long lost radio commercial coming home at last, which is exactly what it was. Otto only recognized the ancient jingle because his grandmother used to croon that, and other old commercials to him when he slept over at her house, a welcome respite from his grimly instructive father. “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” “Brylcreem, a little dabble’do ya.”

  If they’d intercepted a radio signal from the fifties it meant they were in the same universe. The earth had been polluting the universe with signals since the invention of the wireless. A century and a half of screaming detritus.

  It was a big universe. The earliest signals, traveling at the speed of light, formed a sphere of ever expanding radio noise. After 150 years, it was a big sphere.

  After five minutes of silence, Otto went to the phone on the wall and entered his fourteen digit code. He would have preferred the Ocelot but it couldn’t transmit through a mile of rock. Last night, after they’d made love, Stella’s hand came out from under the pillow with the Ocelot in her hands.

  “What’s this?” she’d asked.

  Now the Ocelot was in his pocket, inert.

  He listened to the pings and whirrs as his connection bounced off the comsat and around the world. He looked around. The lab had a sickly cast with a yellowing linoleum floor and flickering fluorescents in aluminum shrouds.

  Six minutes later the National Security Director picked up the phone. “Hang on,” she said. The phone went silent.

  Thirty seconds later she was back on. “What’s happening?”

  “Madame Director you may want to be alone before I speak.”

  “That bad, eh? Just a minute.”

  Another thirty seconds passed. She came back on the line. “What?”

  “We have a Close Encounters scenario.”

  This time the silence was different, like waiting for a stone to hit water.

  ***

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  “Bon Appétit”

  Thursday.

  Otto told Yee everything that had happened since discovering the cave yesterday.

  “What’s your feeling about these visitors?” she said. “Do they come in peace?”

  Their voices made his flesh warp. Their image triggered panic and flight. “No. Like hell. If they came in peace, would they be burning up our people?”

  “That’s my feeling too. See if you can find out how long they’ve been here and how many of their
teams are ensconced in human skulls.”

  “I’ll try but they seem to ignore any question they don’t like.”

  “Will they respond to an existential threat?”

  Will we?

  “Ma’am, they seem to have no problem going down with the ship, so to speak.”

  “Are they secure? Is there any chance they’ll escape?”

  “I don’t see how. If they could have done so, they would have done it already. It’s my belief that their system was damaged when we dragged Witherspoon into the pond. This could be new technology to them as well.”

  But there were six numbers.

  “Keep on it. A SETI xenologist will arrive this afternoon. How do you surmise they enter the body?”

  “I believe that this thing that looks like a spaceship is in fact a spaceship. They pilot them manually, so to speak. I believe they enter the body through soft tissue--the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Same thing happened to Winner and when he erupted, the team targeted Stella. Only grazed her, thank God.”

  “That would make her the first woman so targeted.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “True.”

  “But they failed. Maybe that’s why they don’t target women. Their skulls are too thick.”

  Yee chuckled. “Did you get the intel on Yakovitch?”

  “Yes. I wish we had video. Or a body.”

  “Is Stella there?”

  “Yes she is. Would you like me to put her on?”

  “Please.”

  Otto gestured Stella over and handed her the phone. “It’s Yee.”

  “Hello Margaret,” Stella said softly. She listened. “I arrived right after that happened. Yes I understand.”

  Beat.

  “That’s nonsense, Margaret. It’s exactly as he said.”

  She handed the phone back.

  “Hello?” Otto said.

  “Why did you shoot Agent Hornbuckle?”

  “I have no excuse. He shot my dog.”

  “Well either you have an excuse or you don’t.”

  “It was a complete breakdown on my part. I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life.”

  “I may not be able to get you out of this, Otto.”

  “I understand, Madame Director.”

  “It’s good you have a criminal attorney out there.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Can you route that feed to me?”

  “I don’t think so. This is an air-gapped system but we’re recording everything.”

  “Okay. Very good work by the way. Keep me appraised.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Otto hung up and turned to Stella. “What did she ask you?”

  “She asked me if you were out of your freakin’ mind.”

  The lights flickered.

  “There’s something going on,” Alvarez said with an edge in his voice. The terminal showed a spike graph, the neon green on black line gyrating wildly.

  Otto focused on the head in the jar. A trickle of bubbles fell upward from one nostril, orange eyes bulging from internal pressure until they looked as if they would burst. The head slowly turned from side to side as if taking in the scene, the pinpoint black pupils drifting apart.

  The head shook violently causing the Plexiglas cylinder to bump and jive on the wooden pallets with a weird clattering sound. The whole lab vibrated, beakers and soda cans dancing off counter tops and crashing to the floor, giant springs groaning like hell’s hinges. Otto ran to the door and tried to open it but it was fused shut from pressure. He could hear the guards outside shouting.

  The room jounced and rocked on its enormous springs creating a nerve-grating shriek that penetrated to the marrow. Stella reached out and took Otto’s hand. He pulled her close.

  The lights went out.

  It was black as a cave.

  No. Not entirely black. There was one source of light: Witherspoon’s orange glowing eyes.

  “SHIT!” Alvarez said. A match flared.

  A deep thrum added to the din and the lights went back on. An emergency generator had kicked in.

  Stella pointed at Witherspoon’s head.

  The caretaker’s left eye erupted from within releasing a plume of coagulated blood. The tiny dart zipped through the solution to the outer wall. Otto stepped away from Stella’s grip, bent at the knees and heaved the massive Plexiglas screen just enough to squeeze through. He raced to the cylinder as the tiny dart began to drill through with a high-pitched whine adding to a sonic storm that incited madness.

  With astonishing speed, the miniscule vehicle powered through the space-age plastic. Otto watched from five centimeters, fascinated. It looked just like an ant.

  Like those ants he’d eaten in the desert.

  “With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men”

  The vehicle had almost reached the outer surface. It’s black needle nose broke through. In an instant, it would be gone, or would burrow successfully into Otto or Alvarez.

  Otto laid his cheek against the cool smooth plastic and opened his mouth. As the vehicle emerged he bit down, crushing it between his molars.

  That’s how you do it, he thought. You eat your fucking enemies.

  There was a white flash and the world blew up.

  ***

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  “Graft”

  Sunday afternoon.

  His first realization that he was still alive was the feeling of having a concrete block lodged in his cheek. Otto’s jaw felt stiff, immobile. He opened his left eye. The light dazzled him, bringing tears. His right eye was covered with a bandage. The room was blindingly white. The ceiling was white, and the bed clothes and walls. Sunlight streamed through the Venetian blinds. Stella slept in a chair, long hair concealing most of her face.

  An IV drip had been inserted in Otto’s wrist. Tentatively he used his left hand to feel his chin. The lower right half of his face was constricted by some kind of device using metal screws inserted in the jawbone. He tried to sit up. A wave of dizziness overcame him and he lay on his back staring at the white ceiling, noticing the myriad tiny acoustical holes, the inset fluorescent lighting. He stared at the ceiling so long it began to flow.

  He was in a hospital. The room smelled of disinfectant and clean linen. His mind was a blank. How did he get here? What happened to his face? Then he remembered--Cheyenne Mountain, the spiders. Everything came back in a rush.

  “Stella,” he tried to say. It came out flat and weak.

  Stella opened her eyes and brushed the hair out of her face revealing a flesh-colored bandage on her forehead.

  “Otto!”

  She came over to the bed looking down at him with worshipful eyes blotting out all doubt. Stella had come back to him. That was the true miracle. Everything else was secondary. He tried to smile but it hurt too much.

  Stella laid a palm on his chest, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Don’t try to talk. It blew off half your jaw. The doctors did a bone graft. They’re going to take skin from your ass and paste it on your face. I told them you look like an ass anyway…”

  Stella smiled as a tear drop rolled off her check onto Otto’s nose. He tried to sit up. Della firmly but gently pushed him back.

  “Don’t. Give it some time.”

  Otto tried to speak. Stella held up her hand.

  “Don’t. I’ll get you a pad and a pen in a minute. The federal district court is indicting you for the killing of Agent Hornbuckle. I contacted John Bullis at Camacho, Anderson and Bullis. He’s one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the world. I can’t be your attorney for obvious reasons.” She held up a business card and placed it in the drawer of the nightstand next to his bed. “Call them.”

  Otto didn’t care about that. She loved him again. He pointed to his wrist as if there were a watch.

  “How long? You’ve been out for seventy-two hours. The FBI and federal marshals a
re rounding up every recent Pawnee Grove attendee for CAT scans. The Russians and Chinese are doing the same. There have been no immolations since you took control of the Witherspoon team.”

  Otto pointed to her bandage.

  “I got hit with some junk. When you chomped the rocket it was a directed explosion. One of the servers exploded. Gus is fine.”

  Otto reached for a red Solo cup with a straw in it on the cantilevered table to his left. Stella reached over and snagged it, her breasts brushing his chest. She held it for him while he sipped.

  “I have to get back to D.C. but I wanted to be here when you woke up to tell you I love you and I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll stay for the indictment. They found files at Hornbuckle’s that never should have left the building. Now there’s a full-scale investigation into his background.”

  Otto shrugged and made a ‘what me worry’ expression with his hands. It’s what he’d wanted all along.

  There was a knock at the door followed by the appearance of a tall middle-aged nurse in white slacks and blouse. “Mr. White, you’re awake!” Otto caught a glimpse of a

  Denver police officer seated outside his room on a chair.

  The nurse consulted an electronic monitor above and behind Otto, then timed his pulse with her index and middle fingers on his neck beneath the brace. “Excellent, excellent. Dr Haas will be in in a minute. He’s your reconstructive surgeon and he says that the chances are excellent he can restore full activity. Of course, you’ve suffered nerve damage and it will never be the same. It might even be numb. How do you feel?”

  Otto made the thumb’s up.

  The nurse said to Stella, “Shouldn’t be much longer” and left.

  Moments later Dr. Haas entered. He was tall and broad with a full head of wavy hair and a mustache. “How’s the jaw?” he said.

  Otto made the thumb’s up.

  “We’re using a printing technique called laser melting to construct your new jaw. We take an X-ray for CAD and build it up with metallic titanium, then we coat it with a type of ceramic designed with your own DNA.. I’ll install the new jaw tomorrow.”

  Otto made a writing gesture with his hands. Stella opened the night table drawer and withdrew a pad of note paper and a pen. She handed these to Otto. He scribbled, handed the pad to Haas. Stella looked over his arm.