Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

Even Tony was suspect. Rick didn’t really know him. He seemed like a solid guy, but all he knew was what Tony had told him on their walk out of the canyon. He’d served in combat as an Army Ranger. He’d then completed a degree in political science and wanted to go on to business or law school. At some point, he’d decided to apply to the New Jersey State Police. He’d gone through the extensive application process and cleared their background checks. He was accepted shortly after. He’d started with a class at the academy and after just three weeks had been caught screwing one of his classmates in her room. She happened to be the daughter of one of the officials at the academy. He was sent packing the next day.

  That had been the peak of Tony’s legitimate career history. From that point on, he’d taken some business classes, started his website exploring the federal government’s trashing of the Constitution, then come into some money and moved out west.

  It had been Rick’s job to figure out how to get through the Provenger technology, or steal it, and use it for some kind of half-baked bum rush suicide mission at their ship. What the fuck was I thinking? Rick shook his head, realizing his stupidity. They couldn’t get at the Provenger that way.

  Rick left the signal at the designated spot. Tony was right on time and checked it in a surprisingly professional manner. Rick only saw slight surprise on his face as he watched the reflection in the side mirror of his car. He was using a monocular concealed in his fist and held to one eye. He was parked in a busy lot about seventy-five yards to one side. Tony walked to his SUV and drove off in the direction of the drop. Rick watched for other cars leaving at the same time and saw none that looked suspicious. Rick’s main concern was not the Provenger; it was anyone that Tony might have recruited or any law enforcement that might be investigating Tony for any missteps he might have made.

  At the drop location, Tony would find a note telling him to return immediately to the Walmart to meet in the fabrics section in the store. Rick figured that was one spot where they might be able to notice anyone lingering if they were being followed or surveiled. They needed to talk in person.

  Rick waited for Tony to return, again observing nothing suspicious during his arrival back at the parking lot. He watched Tony get out of his SUV and walk directly into the Walmart. He appeared to be alone, and it seemed no one was following him.

  Rick got out of the Charger and went inside. He had some food shopping to do before approaching Tony. Let’s see, how do I shop for a cave woman who hasn’t been to Earth for the last ten years and wants to party, Rick wondered? He already had all the elk, venison, and fish he needed at home. So he was really just there to replace the vegetables that had gone bad in his fridge over the last week and pick up some onions, garlic, tubers, cabbage, and maybe a few tropical fruits as a treat and surprise for her.

  As Rick pushed his cart down the aisle, he saw an acquaintance from his gun club up ahead and was going to make polite conversation. But just as they neared the distance that dictates a greeting among friends, the guy looked away and went about his business. Rick wasn’t even recognized. He was clean shaven and wore a baseball cap and sunglasses. Even with the cap on, people could tell he was bald underneath. Okay, that’s understandable, Rick thought, a little nervous. I must look like a completely different person. Chances are Tony won’t recognize me either.

  Rick completed his shopping with a stop at the spices section. Most of these will be a real treat for her, Rick thought. After all the food selections were complete, Rick caught himself imagining Shainan’s first trip to the grocery store. Except for being outside on his property, she hadn’t really been out yet to see this new world. Shainan was about his height and could wear his clothes, but he made an effort to buy her a few women’s things, being careful to conceal them in the cart, a little paranoid about people discovering his new live-in.

  He rolled through sporting goods to the ammunition section to check prices and then went to find Tony. He was there, a bolt of fabric in his arms, examining a few yards of red velvet. Rick did a casual three-sixty around the isle Tony was in, scanning for anything unusual as well as trying to smell anything that might be a cloaked Provenger. Rick didn’t know if he should bring the tag. It could be a listening device. He hated the thing and had left it at home, choosing instead to rely on his senses. He then approached Tony and took off his glasses. “Long time no see,” Rick said.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Tony asked in an excited but low tone, recognizing Rick’s voice more than anything.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “What’s with the hairless look?” Tony asked, brazenly reaching up and grabbing the bill of Rick’s cap and pulling the hat off. Rick immediately grabbed it from him and casually put it back. “Damn you look young without all that gray shit all over your face.”

  Taking a cap off is sometimes used as a signal in law enforcement and elsewhere to initiate a team action, and Rick wondered if Tony had done it to see what might happen, if anything, before they started talking. “Yeah, I know. A lot has gone on since the canyon. My son Carson had some serious health issues and a few other developments.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine now, better than ever, actually.” Rick changed the subject abruptly. “I need to know your progress. Things are even more complicated now than you might think.”

  “Well, I’ve got a half dozen that I’ve been working on, may get a dozen with more time. I’m not going to give you names for their protection. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this. I think we need to send these things a message.”

  “What do you mean a message?” Rick snapped.

  “A message that they can’t just come down here and do whatever they want.”

  Rick had a bad feeling about this, what he’d been dreading all along. “Tony, we’ve got to be very smart about everything we do. You have no idea what their capabilities are. So think carefully. What are you talking about?”

  Tony gave a heavy sigh and began, “You know when Lewis and Clark did their expedition in the Louisiana Territory? Well, if the Indians had just killed them, they would have been fine for a long time, the Indians that is. When the next expedition was sent, they should have killed them. And so on and so on. They could have delayed the onslaught of settlers for decades or longer if they’d just had that resolve. Same way with the pilgrims.”

  “Tony, this is not the same situation. We never know exactly when or where they’ll be.”

  “That’s your job. You’re supposed to figure out how to make that happen,” Tony retorted.

  “Yes, I suppose I could, maybe, eventually.” Rick saw Tony looking down at his arms.

  “Where’s that thing you had on you wrist?”

  “They took it off. I still have it, but I don’t have to wear it. They said if I put it on, I’d be able to take it off on my own, but there’s no way I’m putting it on, so I loop it on my belt. I left it at home in case it can hear or record us. These guys can cloak themselves, too, so we have to worry about that.”

  “You mean like invisible cloak?

  “Yeah, invisible.”

  “Why do you still have the wrist thing? What does it do?” Tony asked about the tag.

  “It allows me to call them. Then they either come to me, or I go to them.” Rick was regretting the words as he spoke them.

  “Well, there you go right there. That’s how we can trap them.”

  “But it’s not a matter of killing just a few…” Rick shut his mouth abruptly as a woman rounded the corner, looking at fabrics.

  “You know what?” Rick suggested, “We should get out of here. I’ve got to pay for this stuff,” nodding at his cart, “and I’ll meet you outside. We can walk and talk.”

  Tony nodded, and they went separate ways.

  After Rick had made it through the checkout line and out to the car, he saw Tony standing by the propane refill cage. Rick packed the groceries in the car and walked over to Tony to continue their conversation. Tony’s mood
had grown sour. He accused Rick of being soft. Rick accused Tony of being impatient.

  Rick realized the relationship could crumble quickly if they stayed on this tack, so he changed the tone. He knew he needed to be useful to Tony, give him something that would seem to help. So he told Tony about the abductions, the natural disasters in the news lately, and told him to get anybody he really cared about, family members and members of the team, on statins as soon as possible. Rick explained that the drug would probably do the least immediate damage to their health, but the effect on the entire body could possibly prevent the Provenger from being able to use any part. It might be enough to prevent them from being harvested.

  Tony was grateful for the advice. And he immediately worried about his mother, who had recently stopped taking statins due to some book she’d read. He wondered how he could get her back on them when they made her feel bad.

  Rick’s conversation with Tony had gone from unproductive to lousy. They parted with that inconclusive and always barren notion of agreeing to disagree. Rick would continue to look for ways to infiltrate, and Tony would continue to build a group of true believers radically dedicated to saving something.

  Rick drove home with the weight of too many issues crushing his mood. He still had the issue of Carson’s mother to reconcile. He needed to tell him what he’d done, what he’d been forced to do. She hadn’t made her usual weekly calls to Carson, and he hadn’t said anything about it yet. But Rick knew Carson would probably suggest they call soon. He must have figured she was just neglecting him but would want to call soon, just to see that she was alright. When she was reported missing, an investigation would begin. There was no avoiding that. Rick wondered if he’d better approach the situation first.

  As Rick pulled up his driveway, he thought again. He imagined himself as the investigator driving up to the house, knowing that in any missing person’s case, with absolutely no leads, the ex-husband would be the prime suspect. Since the Provenger took her, there would be no body. With no body, there would be no time of death. Rick and Carson had been gone on the Provenger ship for almost a week after Rick had given up Sarah as the required family sacrifice. The police would suspect him. There would be interviews. He’d taken leave from work during the period that she’d disappeared. He’d called his boss at the last minute and asked for two weeks! He couldn’t show that he wasn’t in Denver because he couldn’t show that he was anywhere on Earth. No one around town would have seen him for an entire week. This could put him on the top of the suspects list, and he had no alibi. On top of all that, he had a smoking hot Cro-Magnon living with him that had no identification. This quick assessment made Rick realize he couldn’t tell Carson.

  If his son knew the Provenger had taken his mother, it would be very difficult for him to carry off a series of believable answers to an investigator’s questions. Any cop who knew his job would get suspicious. Carson’s reactions to his mother missing needed to be genuine. Suspicion of murder was the last thing Rick needed.

  He lingered on that thought. Rick had murdered her as much as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. He began to wonder if even he would be able to squirm out of an interrogation. No, they could not draw any suspicion. Instead, he and Carson needed to get their story straight; in Carson’s case, for the benefit of school officials or friends inquiring as to his whereabouts. He would brief Carson to say that he had been sick, which he had, that he’d stayed home for the week, and that his Dad had the flu and forgot to call the school. His father had been with him the whole time. The lie, in this fashion, would be easier. They should probably hide Shainan in the basement. The only problem was, they didn’t have one. The horror.

  Chapter 25

  Nwella and Rick

  After two weeks, Rick had finally gotten Shainan into her own bedroom, along with the dogs. Not so coincidentally this was also the first night he’d been able to keep her from drinking. He’d hidden the four bottles of wine he had left in the garage and was able to convince her there weren’t any more. He felt bad for her. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing when she started drinking. Rick figured they had some kind of alcohol in her time because she’d immediately recognized the smell of it on his breath. From that point on, she’d wanted it.

  Rick feared it might become a problem. Whenever she started drinking, she didn’t seem to stop until it was gone. She seemed to have no control. With the first sip, any resistance to drinking more was gone. He hoped it was merely an adjustment. Although she was very happy to be back on Earth, she seemed very sad or lonely, or both. She was friendly but somehow distant, tough to assess with the language barrier between them.

  Rick wondered what the term for “high maintenance” was in Shainan’s ancient language. That night she had insisted they build a large wood fire outside. She found an almost flat rock, put it in the fire, and covered it with coals. Then she took one of Rick’s elk steaks, laid it on top of the coals, and then put more coals and ash on top. After about ten minutes, she fished it out with a fork, brushed off the chunks, cut it into portions, and served it to Rick and Carson. Out of curiosity, he tasted it first without any seasoning. To Rick’s surprise, it was good, perfectly cooked, but it did need salt. It wasn’t burnt anywhere. When Rick tried to brush some small bits of black charcoal off, Shainan stopped him and motioned for him to eat it. Hesitant at first, he popped a chunk of meat in his mouth. The charcoal had no flavor, was crunchy, and quickly dissolved. It wasn’t at all unpleasant, completely not worth the effort to brush off the small pieces. When Rick added salt, the flavors of the steak exploded. It was one of the best he’d ever had. The ash added a flavor he’d never experienced.

  He realized that a people with limited tools or continually on the move must have cooked this way, probably for hundreds of thousands of years. It beat holding the meat over the fire with a stick, and a grill wasn’t necessary. Rick wondered why he hadn’t been cooking that way all along. You needed nothing but the meat and the coals and hot ash.

  After dinner, Rick got on the internet and searched the nutrient content of wood ash. Most of the sites he found were related to putting ash on gardens, not on food, with the exception of some high end restaurants. But the nutrients in ash made perfect sense. Wood ash was loaded with calcium, and many of the trace minerals needed for cellular metabolism were there: potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, iron, copper, cobalt, all probably in a form that would be readily absorbed by the human body. According to what he read, ash also enhanced the body’s ability to digest and absorb protein. Sulfur, important for proper cholesterol transport, was possibly infused into the meat while cooking, and the small particles of charcoal appear to have the effect of absorbing chemicals that are poisonous to the body.

  Flaming, which creates harmful hydrocarbons in grilled meat, didn’t occur because the meat was in the ash, making the meat healthier. The only questionable issue was that some warned of heavy metals in the ash. But at most, there seemed to be only the slightest trace amounts, not enough, most sources said, to worry about.

  For the next few days, the three of them settled into a routine. One evening, Rick thought it was time and suggested Carson call his mother. Of course, he got no answer. A few days later, they were visited by the Cortez Police as a courtesy, to let them know that Sarah was missing and to ask a few questions. Then the next day, they were contacted by the Denver police and questioned over the phone.

  Carson had a rough time with it. He loved his mother, as any son would. After what they’d been through, he feared the worst. He regretted some of the harsh words they had traded and the missed opportunities. When answering questions, Rick and Carson were helpful and stuck to their story. They offered to assist in any way they could and waited for further developments. Rick told Carson that when investigators came to question them in person, they wouldn’t make an appointment; they would just show up. If there were two of them instead of one, that meant they considered him a suspect in the disappearance. Rick still didn
’t tell Carson of his involvement.

  Meanwhile, Rick was working on getting Shainan some kind of identity. Because she wouldn’t be applying for a driver’s license any time soon, that wasn’t a priority, but he did need something in case the police arrived to question them. His plan was to introduce her as his second cousin visiting from Armenia. He and Carson had talked it over extensively. “It’s a small country but still European to match her looks,” Rick explained to Carson. “She’s much less likely to run into someone from Armenia.” It was a legitimate concern since, even though they lived in a remote area, they had a healthy flow of foreign tourists due to all the national parks in the area and Mesa Verde National Park right there in Cortez. As a final strategy, if they ran into someone from Armenia, they would claim she was deaf.

  Rick was halfway through an elaborate plan to have her assume the identity of a dead girl when he realized he should delegate this to the Provenger. Within eight hours, she had a full identity as an Armenian immigrant with a green card and bank account with twelve thousand dollars in it, delivered to him by a messenger from Synster. Through sources at work, he checked the identification. It was all legitimate. The twelve thousand was an interesting number, Rick thought, small enough to not draw too much attention but large enough to be an immigrant’s life savings.