“Ha. No, the rumors have been exaggerated, as they often are. Not for these bastards out here though. Everyone thinks the aliens are here to make friends. Personally, I don’t mind new customers, but I don’t think they’re the sort that I prefer to do business with.”
“You think you should be talking that loud about this stuff? In here?”
Mark chuckled. “That old navy dog over there keeps an eye on the place. Doesn’t worry much about what I say.”
A waitress delivered three heavy mugs filled with steaming black fluid to the table.
“And these lovely gals here. Oh, don’t let them fool you. These ain’t school girls. Any one of them could kill you in an instant if they needed to. So make sure and leave a good tip.”
The waitress winked at John before returning to the counter.
“It’s a safe place. One of my little spots where I can talk about business without prying eyes and ears. How we doing this morning Frank? How’s life?”
The old man grumbled. “Taking way to goddamn long.”
Mark chuckled again. John was out of his element. He always suspected that the spy movies were a bunch of bologna, but this guy was acting like he had just fallen out of one.
“Anyway. It seems our good friend Crispy had a long night. I don’t know what the point of this little stunt was, but I guess things can’t get too much worse at the moment. You guys don’t succeed in your mission and I’ll be out of a job anyway. So I guess I’m on your side.”
“Stunt?”
“The media thing. You don’t read the papers?”
“I couldn’t stand another second of media monkeys talking shit on the radio,” said John.
“You should pay more attention. Someone sent out the whole file on the city bombings. Videos that had been classified and removed from the internet. The secret blog post account of the virus. It’s all public, and it’s on so many servers that the government can’t do anything about it. Like someone just dumped the entire catalog of the alien war. As if alien rights protesters weren’t enough. Now we’ve got a bunch of hillbillies getting ready for battle. Shame they don’t know who to aim at.”
“Stories? The story. Shit.”
“What?”
“The colonel gave me a contact protocol. He was supposed to reach out to me last night if his little talk with the general panned out.”
A bell above the entrance to the store chimed. A very pale looking Colonel Ryan Crisp was standing there with bags under his eyes. “And then you fucked it up and told the G man to drop the bombshell. All good, it was about time anyway, since all those assholes in Washington have turned on their own country.”
He stomped into the café area and reached a hand out to shake Mark’s. “There he is. Here to tell us what all the hubbub is about.”
“You started a shit storm, Johnny. Unavoidable anyway. I didn’t intend to keep it all a secret for too much longer.”
“I was trying to talk to you on your little box.”
“Well you failed.” The colonel navigated into the wooden bench and reached for the third coffee. “We have to move quickly. Where are the troops?”
“They’re, uh,” John stuttered. “They’re at the backup location. Where the hell have you been?”
“Talking with our friends at the NSA.”
“You’re consorting with spooks again?”
The colonel shook his head without his eyes moving from the steam in his coffee cup. “SCS mostly. Funny, I never liked those guys when I was in the Army, but if you want to spy on the Oval Office or Congress, they’re the people that can get the job done. They’ve intercepted all kinds of top secret transmissions back and forth from the visiting craft. I don’t have time to get into all the details. I have something new that we need to get Jacob’s team on before it’s too late.”
“That fat engineer?” snarled John. “What the hell is he gonna do? Figure out the voltage needed to turn it on?”
“That fat engineer just might save this planet. I’d be a little nicer to him if I were you. Kid’s gonna get a medal before this whole thing’s over, and he doesn’t even realize how important his research is.”
“Ryan,” said John. “Just tell me what the hell is going on this morning.”
“The girl you keep calling a dirty Mexican? She’s already got the cure for the virus. She doesn’t know it yet. The whole governmental system, from the president on down, has been infected. We have to be ready to defend before they strike. It’s a chess game. The aliens will have mate in two if we don’t get our king out of harm’s way. Lucky it’s our move.”
“I don’t follow.”
“We can stop the virus, then they won’t have any choice but a ground assault and bombing raids. They know this. That’s why they’ve taken control of the launch codes for every nuke on the planet, by infecting the people who control them. Well, that’s what they think.” He elbowed Mark and glanced up at him. “The SCS task force has a big order to place with you.”
“SCS?” asked John.
“Special Collection Service. It’s—a sort of a joint operation between the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and a couple of other organizations, most of them unaware that they’re part of it. Especially in the civilian sector. Nobody knows these days who they’re reporting to.”
“Those guys that plant bugs in government offices?”
The colonel winced. “Sort of. Officially, they spy on shit. Unofficially.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I can’t say more. I still love my country. But let’s just say they have the means to deliver an antidote if we find it, and I think our Dr. Savage already did. They also know the location of the mother ship, but it took a bit of convincing to get that out of them. The aliens think they’re safe from nuclear ordinance. They don’t know about your secret stash. We’ve got all the cards.”
He took a long drink from the steaming cup. John nodded, still not a hundred percent sure about the situation. The colonel looked like a ripped up rag doll. A Nasty rash ran down one side of his face, as if he’d been run over with a car, but his cheery mood was way off the map. “So you’re going to blow them up?”
“We need the antidote first. Savage has it in her lab, I’m sure of it. She’s got something that will work after all those tests. And Jacob has the key component that we need to test it. The virus doesn’t work the way they thought. Rick isn’t curable now, but if he had gotten a shot of the right medicine while he was on that patrol, he would’ve reverted back to normal. I just hope it’s an easy chemical cure. If it is, we crop-dust the planet with it, and then take out their damn command center. We can win this fucker.”
“If you think we can, then I’m with you. What next?”
“We all need to get back to the compound. I’m glad you followed my orders. I have expected you to bolt. Never would have found you if you didn’t make the phone call. I know that you know how to hide.”
John could sense the skin on his face twisting into a particularly grotesque fashion. “I thought you said the military was going to bomb us.”
“They can’t find us.” The colonel laughed. “The fucking intelligence organizations stopped feeding good intel to the president as soon as the bombings started. They’re fishing in the dark. By the time they do locate the compound, this whole thing is going to be over. That’s why we haven’t seen any attack helicopters on recent missions. We need to get our asses back over there on the double, grab the equipment, and then rush it back to Amarillo, Texas. And you.” He tapped Mark on the arm. “I have a number you need to call so you can give them your Bitcoin account information. You didn’t sell the nukes yet, right?”
“Still got em.”
“Then let’s finish this coffee, and get on the road. We have a lot of work to do.”
A social war was erupting. The radio people were right there to jabber on about it while trying their best to distance themselves from the argument. On one side, sympathizers were rallying in every major city, claiming that the new flood of documents w
as part of a government conspiracy, and losing their minds at the idea that humans might be headed for an intergalactic war. On the other, people who were scared that the war had already started. Shelves at food markets had emptied. Gas stations fought long lines and empty tanks. Any idiot with a gun was hunkered down in his home waiting for the invading army. They media obviously exaggerated the situation, as per the norm, but it was fun to picture some of the stories in living color.
“This is nuts,” said John from the passenger seat. A computer was flipped open on his lap while he scrolled across social media platforms and news sites. “The video comments fluctuate depending on title. There’s gotta be four hundred copies of it floating around. This one is titled, ‘Hoax, Government Conspiracy to Raise Defense Budgets. Most of the comments are calling the poster an idiot and hoping that he kills himself. The last one was a warning about the real threat, and commenters were bashing him about being an idiot believing terrorist propaganda. You would think they’d click on the links that support their point of view. There’s enough of them.”
“People don’t want to agree,” said Ryan. “They want to argue. They want to call everyone but themselves a moron, and they’ll spend hours digging up information to prove why their opinion is better than everyone else’s.” He chuckled. “Best investigative reporting doesn’t come from news anchors or CIA analysts, it comes from anyone who knows how to do an internet search and has a bug up their ass.”
“Sounds about right. Gotta admit, I’m tempted to hop on here and start leaving comments.”
“In good time, Johnny.”
Stark was asleep in the back. John folded the laptop and twisted in his chair. “So the fat kid and the Mexican are going to save the world?”
“I don’t know, but I think they’re the only ones who can.”
“Right on. You stopped to consider their next move?”
“Who? Savage and Jacob?”
“No the aliens. They’ve been five steps ahead so far. They made a virus to control people, and masked its purpose by programming it to become infectious and necrotizing the second it’s out of their control, and they secured its development by making big threats and bombing a couple cities. They had to see this coming, if it’s really that easy to disable it.”
“It’s not easy. We have to kill the bug while the control feed is active, otherwise the infected person becomes a useless meat sack. And we have to reverse-engineer their technology to do it.”
“But we can. Assuming we can, you don’t think they’ve planned for that, too?”
It hadn’t occurred to him. What was a warm, comforting thought that his scientists would be able to overcome the looming invasion and protect the planet suddenly shattered. What if the devious little squids had planned this all along? What if they bet on a collection of earthly inhabitants figuring out the virus, and prepared for it? He took a deep breath and reassured himself. If another problem came up, they would deal with it, but for the moment, this was the best plan. And it wasn’t going to be easy. Jacob and Nicole would probably give him a thousand excuses why it wouldn’t work before actually doing it. But it was their only shot. “You got a better plan?” he asked.
“Me? No. You’re running this outfit.”
“Then let’s not worry about what they might or might not be planning until you figure something out. Till then we deal with what is in front of us.”
“That’s impossible,” said Nicole Savage. Her black ponytail wagged behind her shaking head. “Even if we killed the bug, the host would probably die too.”
The wind was whipping up the dry desert sand, pelting the three of them with tiny flecks of tan dirt.
“Probably? Is there a way we can know rather than speculate?”
“I can try it. I have a dozen chemicals that work against the virus when it’s isolated, but as you said, if it works when it’s operating outside of alien control, then it isn’t necessarily going to work on their drones, even if you are right about the nature of it. And the samples I have don’t agree. I don’t have any kind of setting I can put the base virus in to test on. It starts attacking the host cells the moment it infects them.”
“That’s where Swan comes in.”
Jacob Swan was chewing on the flap of skin between his thumb and first finger. “I don’t know if there’s going to be time. I can’t replicate their antenna technology, and I haven’t found anything similar to the box that your troopers found. I’m starting to suspect that they left it there to confuse us.”
“The camera feeds from the troops were clear enough. The instant that plasma antenna thing was damaged, all of their forces stopped attacking. There has to be a connection. I don’t think they would sacrifice a whole operation so quickly just to trick us.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem is from what your strike team told us, that tube was showering sparks. They’re using some kind of technology that I know nothing about to broadcast the signal, something to do with plasma confinement. Even with the machine in hand, I can’t duplicate that kind of tech. It. . . .” He hung his head. “It’s beyond me.”
“Jacob. If you don’t figure out how that virus is interacting with the broadcast box, then a billion people are going to die. I know that isn’t what you signed up for, but you have to figure this out. It all depends on you. Here.” The colonel dug the little black box out of his jacket pocket. “This has the same kind of battery setup as those rifles, so be careful opening it up. SCS thinks it’s some kind of repeater, or maybe a personal broadcast center for the virus. These are being worn by every infected person in Amarillo. And I don’t see any plasma on it. Maybe it’ll help.”
Ryan’s stare passed back and forth between the two of them. “This is it. The moment of truth. I don’t know when the actual attack is coming. It’s probably already started. Amarillo, Texas is crawling with slave humans. If you can’t figure out how to stop this thing, that same fate is going to spread across the whole world.”
“Thought they were infecting people with snakes,” said Savage.
“Another decoy? Another dead end? Who knows? What I do know is that it doesn’t matter how someone contracts the virus. What matters is being able to stop it before it kills them, or before it allows them to infect a hundred other people through alien collaboration.”
“Why don’t we just go to Amarillo to test then?” asked Nicole. “If there’s a working broadcast center there, it would allow us better testing, even if Jacob can’t figure out the signal.”
“That might be a better idea,” said Jacob. “If I can’t figure it out, it would give us a backup.”
“Us or you?” asked the colonel.
His face grew harsh and red. “What do you mean by that?”
“Even if Dr. Savage can cure the virus, we still need to bring in the victims without them attacking us. Amarillo is already in the plan. That means we need our own control mechanism in place. Her success isn’t going to get you off the hook. You guys have your respective labs packed up in the back of those eighteen-wheelers. I suggest you get in there and get to work on the way over. Hit me up on the radio when you make a breakthrough. I’m sorry to put this on the two of you, but you’re the only people on the planet with the right experience and the right knowledge, and failure isn’t an option.” He let out a long sigh. He stared at the dusty caliche beneath his boots, feeling the stress that he just dumped on Savage. He lowered his voice. “It depends on you. If you fail, then we all die. Just do your best.”
He turned about, staring John straight in the eye, who had been standing in his best military at-ease posture. Hands behind his back, and anything but relaxed. Even if he wasn’t smiling, he was likely laughing on the inside about the carefully placed soft-spoken words that weren’t the colonel’s norm.
“Where do you want me, sir?”
“Get to the choppers. Take Stark with you, he knows all of the base systems well enough. Take the maintenance crews too, and the mechanics. Out
fit the birds for long flight and a short punch of rocket blasts. I’ll send word over the secure line when it’s time. We’re going to need air support, and we can’t leave these damn things laying around.” The Hinds were off to the edge of the pad, covered in camo netting.
He glanced over his shoulder. Both Jacob Swan and Dr. Nicole Savage had disappeared. He hoped they were hard at work on finding a solution. They were all up against an hourglass with an undetermined amount of sand in the cup.
“What if we encounter resistance?”
“Do whatever you have to, John. Weapons hot all the way. You’re in charge.” His head snapped toward the sergeant. “Everything is riding on us. Anyone you encounter is either with us, or they’re the fucking enemy.”
“Understood, sir.” He saluted. John never saluted, and this was twice in a couple of days. The colonel answered in kind before climbing into one of the waiting trucks.
“Good luck. If worse comes to worse, you’ll be in a fortified compound.”
“Same to you,” said John. “Watch your six.”
The colonel’s eyes remained shut, but consciousness faded in. The voice over the radio was squelchy, and could only belong to Jacob Swan. “Tell him to wake up then. We need to stop.”
The colonel could feel the gentle rumble of the rolling rig jarring him from a short rest. His eyelids edged open to slits as the driver pushed at his folded arm. “Sir. Sorry to get you up, but one of your scientists is about to give himself a stroke.”
Colonel Crisp twisted in his seat, stretching only his back until it popped. His eyes came open. Highway lamps zipped by in front of low-hanging clouds. “What is it?”
The driver handed the radio across the bench without a word. He took it and mashed the mike button. “What is it Jacob?”
“I’m a fucking idiot!”
“No argument here. You got me up for that?”
“This alien antenna sir. I didn’t even think about it until one of my engineers pointed it out. It’s a plasma antenna. I thought it was some kind of amplifying circuit and the real antenna was buried in the ball on the device, but the little one has this white plastic tube inside. The aliens are using plasma antennas to broadcast their signal. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. After a quick internet search, I realized people aren’t that far away from installing the same tech in our own communications devices.”
Invasion Page 5