by Saxon Andrew
“What time did you go inside the motor home?”
“It was about eleven.”
“It was also eleven when I left my family for a few moments.”
“Why did you leave?”
“We didn’t have a motor home and I felt nature’s call.”
“Oh… anyway, we got ready for bed and Mom stuck her head outside to tell them goodnight…they weren’t there.” Jess got a faraway look and remembered. Elle said, “Mom started calling for them and soon started screaming. I went out and she was in full panic mode. It didn’t take me long to join her.”
“Did you see anything where they had been sitting?”
“The fire was in some sand directly in front of the motor home’s door and their chairs were close to the fire when we went to bed. The chairs were turned over and I saw that where their feet had been…”
“What?”
“It looked like their footprints were longer than normal and stopped three feet from where the chairs had fallen.”
Jess saw Elle’s distress but he had to ask, “Like they had been lifted over the back of their chairs.”
Elle’s tears started in earnest and she nodded. Jess gave her a few moments and Elle blew out a breath, “They were never found. Mom lasted about eight years before she just quit living. My mom’s sister took me in when they moved her to a home. Now she sits and stares at the wall.” Elle looked at Jess, “What traces did you see?”
Jess shook his head, “I was ten; I didn’t know enough to even look. I probably erased any traces by running around like a crazy person.” Jess stood, “Thank you. I know what this took for you to share this.”
“You WILL keep your promise.”
Jess stuck out his hand and Elle shook it, “I will. I am very sorry for intruding.”
Elle watched him walk away and felt the empty place in her heart. She saw a kindred spirit in the young man and knew he had the same hole in his. She pulled herself together and went back into the dorm to unpack.
• • •
Jesse turned twenty and looked forward to his trip into Phoenix each Thursday. Mike had started bringing him vegetables and corn from his farm each week and though Jess initially refused the help, Mike finally convinced him he could make his money go further by accepting it. Besides, he had more than he needed or could sell. Jess reluctantly accepted and his lifestyle underwent a change. The first thing he bought was new jeans and desert boots. Now he wouldn’t look like a bum when he showed up in Phoenix. Jess found he liked Mike…a lot. He was honest to a fault and Mike recognized early on that Jess’s family didn’t just walk away.
They were a few miles away from Jess’s drop off point and Mike looked at Jess in the passenger’s seat, “I’ve never been much on UFO sightings or so called alien abductions; but I’ve gotta tell ya, I don’t see any other way they could have gone missing. I understand why you don’t share this with anyone. I initially didn’t believe you.”
“And now?”
“You’re not crazy. I looked on the internet and found the Sheriff’s report that was filed ten years ago about your family and it verifies your account of what happened.”
Jess sighed, “It would be easier if a hole had just appeared and swallowed them up; but it would have taken the car as well. I’ve eliminated every possibility and extra-terrestrial life is the only answer that keeps falling out.”
Mike smiled, “Now that’s a fifty cent word where aliens would work just as well.”
Jess chuckled, “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that. The books I read have affected my vocabulary.”
Mike looked to the south. “There are some banditos that sometimes come this far north and cause trouble.” Jess’s eyebrows went down and Mike quickly said, “I know; I know; there would have been a lot of noise if it was their doing.” Mike paused, “It worries me, Jess.” Jess stared at Mike and he continued, “If they took your family, they did it for a reason. I don’t really believe it’s like ET with a glowing finger, these aliens aren’t nice. They must be planning something.”
Jess nodded, “I guess.” They arrived at the two boulders and Jess opened the door and looked at Mike, “If they are planning something, I hope their plan isn’t complete.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll have to come back.”
Mike nodded, “Still haven’t given up hope, have you?”
“No, I guess I never will.” Jess slammed the door, “I’ll see you next week.”
It was still an hour before sunset and Jess started his hike. A hundred yards into the desert he saw footprints leaving the desert about ten yards to the left of the trail he normally took. He continued his hike and arrived at the four boulders that were six hundred yards further into the desert. He retrieved his P-40 and saw the footprints still paralleled his path. Someone had walked out of the desert. He checked his trail and only saw his boot prints on it. He jacked a round into the H&K and stepped off the trail. He went over to the tracks and looked around. There were no footprints, or tire tracks going into the desert on either path and those two trails were the only way in and out. The tall saguaro cacti blocked any other route. Where did that set of foot prints come from? He continued toward his cave and the footprints continued about twenty yards left of his path. They were moving toward the exact spot his family had disappeared. Jess veered to his right and went around a hill and then moved toward the place where it had all happened ten years ago.
The site was situated in a small depression among large boulders and a half circle of small rises. It was a perfect place to camp. There were few large cacti and the winds were blocked by small hills that surrounded it on three sides; there was only one way in. The Saguaro Cactus were numerous outside the clearing but not in the depression. Jess crawled up one of the rises and looked down on the flat depression. He stared and finally spotted where the footprints started.
They seemed to just have appeared out of nowhere and left the depression. There were no tire tracks where someone could have stepped down to the ground. It didn’t make sense, unless someone skydived into the area. It was downright dumb to skydive into the limited number of cacti in the depression; it would be begging for a load of needles. He slid down the rise and walked over to where the footprints started; he raised his head and determined they moved in a direct line toward the road two miles away. He heard a crackling sound before a large dragonfly flew by his head and landed three feet beyond him. He took a step to take a look at it and saw it was twitching and smoking. Something had burned it.
Jess didn’t move a muscle. That dragonfly hit something that killed it. He moved his eyes right and then left. He looked at the ground in front of him and didn’t see anything abnormal. He slowly turned around and looked in the direction the dragonfly had come from. He looked left, right, and then looked at the ground. Three small lizards were lying dead on the ground. They had all been burned to a crisp. He lined them up and determined that something two feet in front of him had killed them. He slowly backed away until he was fifty feet away. He stepped behind a boulder and picked up a small pebble. He threw it in the direction of the three lizards and saw it fly over them and explode into dust.
“They’ve come back!”
Jess pulled a stick and tied some ground foliage to it. He raked his tracks with the crude rake until he was in the rocks and then turned and rushed to his cave. He changed his shirt to a black long sleeve t-shirt, took out some camo-paint, and applied it to his face. He put on a desert camouflage hat and moved back out of his cave. It was getting dark and he expected that whoever had walked to the road was going to come back.
He took his most prized possessions out of a thick plastic bag; a pair of night vision goggles and high powered binoculars. He climbed over the wall outside the cave and went back to the depression. He climbed the tallest rise, stood up and faced in the direction of the road. From the top of the rise, he could see car lights as they moved toward him from the direction of Phoenix. He looked through th
e binoculars and found he could easily identify the vehicles that passed the curve at the two boulders. After an hour, he saw a set of car lights approaching that looked different. He raised the binoculars and saw it was a cab; the light on top made it look odd from a distance. He watched the cab come to a stop at the boulders and someone got out. After a moment, the cab did a u turn and headed back toward the city. Jess turned, slid down the rise, and sprinted back to the depression. He crawled behind a large boulder fifty yards from the deadly zone and waited. It was going to take about forty minutes for whoever got out of that cab to arrive. He continued to see small flashes as insects were burned by the invisible barrier. He knew it had to be some kind of energy field that had killed the lizards and dragonfly. It was invisible and he wondered if anything was hidden behind it. Night fell fast and he put on the night goggles and waited.
At ten o’clock, he saw a shape moving up the trail and he increased the amplification. It was a man and he wasn’t carrying anything. He walked casually, appearing to not have a care in the world. He looked to be around thirty years old; average height and weight. He had a Diamondback baseball cap on his head and a Boston Red Sox tee shirt. The guy had to be an alien to wear those two items together.
Jess moved a little further behind the rock and noticed his black shirt had a brown stain on it. Darn it. The boulder was mostly iron ore. The rust stain would never come out. The man arrived at the location of the energy field and looked around. He lifted his arm and began doing something to his wrist. The man pointed his arm in the direction he had just come from and swung it around. Jess rolled over behind the large boulder and kept his head down. He shut off the night goggles and listened. He waited a few moments and heard a buzzing sound. He peeked around the boulder and saw a spaceship.
The man had his arm on his chest, so that whatever was on his wrist was pointing at the ship. He kept his arm on his chest until a door slid up into the ship’s hull. Jess toggled the night goggles on and increased the magnification. He saw the man enter the ship and go to a chair in the center of the room. He sat down, took a helmet off the back of it, and put it on his head. He began speaking as the door slowly closed. In an instant, there was a small flash and the ship disappeared. A moment later, Jess saw a large insect flash briefly. Jess shook his head; that ship was a huge bug-zapper. It had to be about two hundred yards long.
Jess slowly crawled away from the depression, keeping the large boulder between him and the ship. Once he was clear of the area, he turned and ran to his cave. He pulled the netting over the entrance and tried to gather his thoughts. His mind was in turmoil as he felt a gamut of emotions assail him. He reached into his bag and pulled out a Valium. He reached for a canteen and took the Valium with a quick swallow of water. He closed his eyes and waited for his mind to slow down. It took thirty minutes. Now the struggle was to stay awake. He tried to decide what to do and couldn’t focus. His mind was still processing too many thoughts and emotions to think rationally.
If he approached the man, would he react in a friendly or aggressive manner? Should he just shoot the man and call in the authorities? Was there any evidence the alien would be a nonaggressive species. Wait a minute; he looked human. Was he human? Jess thought for a moment and decided that he couldn’t be human. The chance of two species from different planets looking identical was remote. Then how did he appear human? It had to be done by technology. What if he was wrong?
Jess paused and shook his head. In moments of stress his mind just accelerated and thoughts seemed to scream through at high speed. He closed his eyes and let his mind go free. He was like a spectator and watched as they swirled around and began coalescing. After an hour, he opened his eyes. It wasn’t human; it was aggressive and hostile; it would be dangerous to approach.
The clues were there but it took some time to ferret them out. The energy field killed whatever came into contact with it. The blasting of the rock he threw at it was clear evidence he would have died if he had touched it. A nonviolent species would never leave an energy field that killed. The creature did something with the device on his wrist before he extended his arm and swept it across the terrain. That was most likely a scanning device coupled to a weapon. The iron in the boulder must have blocked it from seeing him. There was a possibility that it was also protected by an energy field. He had to find out. He closed his eyes and set his internal alarm.
• • •
An hour before sunrise, Jess left the cave and jogged around the depression to the base of a tall rock spire located a half mile down the rise from the depression. It was close to the trail the alien would have to take to go back to the road. If the alien didn’t leave last night, it still had things to do. Jess had climbed the spire many times to hammer out small crystals from the top of it. He took the rope he left tied off to the top of the spire and pulled himself up. He lied down and crawled over to the edge of the spire and lifted the binoculars. He focused them and saw intermittent flashes. The force field was still operational. He rolled over and looked out at the road. He guessed he could see about twenty miles from the top of the spire. He did the math in his head and decided that watching for the cab to return wouldn’t work. The cab would cover the twenty miles in less than twenty minutes. The speed limit was fifty but no one obeyed it out in the desert. The ship’s occupant would have to leave at least twenty minutes before the cab would be seen. He rolled back and looked over the ledge.
It was a few minutes after eight o’clock when the force field opened. This time, a small section of it cleared and the man stepped out. He pointed his wrist at the field and it solidified and then disappeared. Jess kept his binoculars glued to the man as he started his hike to the road. This was the time of morning when biting insects were brutal. He kept his focus on the man as he walked down the trail and after a few minutes he saw it. The man raised his hand and swatted at something flying around his head. He didn’t have a personal force field; he could be hit with a bullet.
Jess noted that the man left around eight o’clock. He rolled over and looked at the road. Twenty minutes later, he saw a vehicle moving on the road. He focused in on it and saw it was another cab; it wasn’t the same cab as the night before; this one had a blue light on top of it. The first one he saw had a white light. Why would he use different cab companies?
Jess let his mind go free and thought about what a cab driver would be asking someone who was picked up at the side of the desert. Now the hat and t-shirt made sense. If he had to deceive a cabby, he would tell them he was with a historical study group examining early American petroglyphs at the water hole. The team needed the vehicle for the generator and he had to walk to the road and call a cab to go and pick up some needed supplies. The hat and t-shirt would be a dead giveaway that he was a nerd tourist.
Jess decided this being knew a lot about humans to be able to use that nuance. How did it acquire that information? It had to take it from those that were taken. But why was it going into the city? Jess decided to find out. He climbed down the rock spire and started hiking toward Mike’s farm.
• • •
“What do you want?”
“I need you to help me follow a cab without being seen.”
“Do what?”
“Please just do as I ask. I need you to give me a ride back to the two boulders now, and then pick me up at seven in the morning. We’ll go to the first turnoff to the city and wait for a cab to come by.”
“Do you want me to give you a ride back?”
“I’m asking too much already.”
“Is something happening, Jess?”
“I’m not sure, Mike. Will you help me?”
Mike slowly shook his head and blew out a breath. “Get in the truck.” Jess jumped in the passenger side of the cab and they pulled out of Mike’s driveway. They arrived at the boulders and Mike said, “We’ll work out in the morning what you need me to do.”
“Mike, I really do appreciate this.”
“What’s going on?”
“Someone is taking a cab out of the desert each morning. I want to see where they’re going.”
Mike looked extremely suspicious but he nodded. “I’ll see you at seven.” Mike did a u turn and headed back toward his farm. Jess looked at his watch and ran up the trail. He needed to be in position to watch the alien’s return.
Chapter Two
Jess was on top of the rise watching for a cab to come down the desert road. It was already dark when he saw the distinctive lights and he knew this had to be the alien. He waited until the cab stopped and turned around before he slid down the rise and went to the large iron boulder. He used the night goggles and he immediately noticed something different when the alien moved into view; it was no longer care free and happy. He had a scowl on his face and it didn’t take a genius to see he was not pleased. The process repeated itself and the spaceship reappeared again. Jess watched the alien go into the ship and place the helmet on his head. He didn’t start talking this time but the energy field snapped back into place. Ummm. Evidently, the field could be finely controlled from inside the ship. The thing on the alien’s wrist would only turn it off…or on.
Jess crawled away and pulled out a pair of new jeans and tennis shoes from a plastic bag and set them aside. He pulled a collared shirt out of another bag and put it with the others. He closed his eyes and eventually fell asleep. He had a busy day ahead and he hoped Mike wouldn’t press him on what was going on.
• • •
Mike arrived at seven the next morning and found Jess waiting on the side of the road. Mike saw he was dressed differently and tilted his head back. Jess sighed, “I know; however, I need to mix with some crowds and not be seen as a bum.”
“Where to boss?”
“Take me to the gas station ten miles up the road so I can shave this fuzz off my face.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’d prefer to wait.”