Marty had expected to see pit-marks where a thousand different rocks had smashed into the ship as it traveled between worlds. There was not a single scratch to mar the perfect surface of the craft. A deep vibration ran from his hand into the rest of his body, a constant hum that almost masked a secondary vibration. An oscillation not unlike the pulse of a heart. After several seconds of merely touching the metal, Marty lifted his hand and rapped smartly on the surface. He could hear no ringing echo, could feel not the slightest hint that he had made any impact on the vessel. He had almost expected the ship to be built from metal as thin as a piece of paper. Too many science fiction movies had led him to believe that the alien technology would make a thick hull unnecessary. To reconfirm that the exterior was extremely thick, or at least very dense, Marty placed his left hand against the metal and struck the surface again, as hard as his hand would allow, exactly five times. No vibration reached his left hand.
Marty felt a wave of disappointment run through his system. There was nothing magical about the craft, except for the crash landing itself. There were no hidden truths etched into the hull of the ship, nor any markings of any type that he could copy down and try to translate. His depression couldn't have been greater if he'd found a MADE IN TAIWAN tag on the underbelly of the ship.
Worst of all, there was no fragment of the ship that he could take with him as a souvenir. He had no evidence that he'd touched the ship, no trophy to show to Tom Thornton, or Mike if-no, he scolded himself, when-he came back. Marty started to turn away from the spaceship, but stopped when something caught his eye. Where he'd been standing before, where his hand had rested on the craft, there was a small line that had not been there a moment ago. Marty approached the mark as if it might try to bite him. The line was not merely a scratch across the surface, however. Marty could plainly see that the perfect line was a seam.
Eagerly he ran his fingers across the slight indentation. His heart pounded as he felt along the seam's edge, and touched the precision of the magical flaw in the previously perfect metal. He struck the metal again, just at the edge of the seam. Still he heard no echo, felt no vibration. Disappointed, he turned away again. They'd just have to believe him, that was all.
Marty had only taken a few steps when the light suddenly flared to life behind him. One instant he was lifting his foot and stretching his leg beyond a ruined girder, the next his shadow appeared on the ground, surrounded by a yellow-green glow.
Heart thundering in his chest, Marty turned to face the spacecraft again. Eyes no longer used to any illumination protested as he stared at the light, which seemed almost as bright as the sun. Nearly blinded, Marty stumbled towards the source of the light.
A few moments later, the dogs in the area began to bark frantically, and birds erupted from their nests, desperate to escape the sounds they heard. The flaring green light that painted the area where Marty had been a moment ago faded disappeared as suddenly as it had come into existence.
2
Dewett Hammil moved as quietly as his old body would let him, which was not as silently as he had moved in his youth. In his time he'd been able to sneak just about anywhere he wanted, with little fear of being heard or seen, despite his size. He'd been limber enough to crouch almost to the ground, and strong enough to maintain the awkward position for a very longtime.
Those days were long in his past. Now his knees popped like firecrackers whenever he stood up or sat down, and his legs didn't have the sort of stamina they'd had when he was fit and ready for combat duty. The night was on his side at least. Night or day had never made any difference to Dewett. Collier was an old and trusted friend, and one that had never let him down, regardless of how late the hour. Old age, he knew, had taken a harsh toll on his ability to sneak past anything at all. Still, he was a man with a mission, and he knew exactly what he had to do.
Despite his own misgivings about his physical abilities, Dewett managed to slip past the line of sawhorses with no effort at all. Hell, his knees only popped once, and his bad left knee had the decency not to go sour on him, which it was wont to do ever since Korea. After the wooden barrier, it was only a few hundred feet to his store. He made it all the way inside without a single joint betraying him.
Once inside-a task made easier by the fact that them military bastards hadn't fixed the broken glass door, thank you Uncle Sam-Dewett moved to the back room, where he kept the dry goods. The soldiers must have been doing something right, because the foodstuffs he stored there were untouched. Moving around in the darkened kitchen was hardly an effort. For over thirty years, Dewett had baked and sweated every morning away back here, making bread and cakes and sweets for a good portion of Collier's population. When his eye had started going bad on him, he'd just pretended everything was fine, and started working the area by memory. It wasn't until he failed his driver,s license renewal that he finally broke down and got himself a pair of spectacles. That meant about three years he'd gone with eyes bad enough to make a bat happy with its own sight.
He found the chocolate chips on the first try, and used his massive hands to scoop a good ten pounds of the semi-sweet morsels into a heavy-duty garbage bag. That done, he located the crushed pecans and did the same thing again. Lastly he hit the walnuts, which were a fine complement to the pecans. He only took around five pounds of walnuts, though, because this batch was a little on the bitter side.
Dewett grasped all three bags in his right hand, and flicked his wrist a few times, until the bags had spun together into one large bundle. He ignored the pain in his arm and swung the package Santa Claus-style over his shoulder. With a last look around the darkened kitchen, he slipped back towards the front of the bakery, ready to head home and start baking.
The problem was simply that he could not sleep. He hadn't been able to get a good night's rest since the satellite smashed into the lake. Fifty-five years of bending his back to hard labor every day except Christmas was a hard thing to get away from, and not doing anything was starting to make Dewett fidgety. Since he'd given up drinking a long time ago and he couldn't stand the idea of using any of those crazy sleep pills, he only had one option. He had to work, or he'd go insane. Just a few sheets of cookies a night, that would surely be enough to handle the problem. At least he hoped they would. He'd give the cookies to Frank Osborn and them paramedics. They'd certainly earned the chance to munch on a few sweets, what with everything they'd done since the whole mess started.
So he'd waited until late in the night before sneaking away from his house, and then he'd walked the entire mile and a half from his place to the bakery, praying to God Almighty that his knee would not betray him halfway there. Now, he was on ready to head home, and he prayed that his bum knee would not decide to crumble under him on the way back.
Dewett wondered if Angela had noticed his absence yet. She was a sweet woman, his Angela, but she could get mighty angry if the situation warranted. He hoped she was still asleep and not waiting for him like she had when they first got married. Back then, he'd been a damned fool, set in his ways and unwilling to give as much as an inch. (Not that he was much better these days, but where Angela was concerned, he'd wised up a good forty years ago.) He'd go out to the Whittaker farm and suck back the hooch along with a few of the other men in town and drink most of the night away. Nine times out of ten, Angela was awake and waiting when he came home.
She'd never say a word when he actually stumbled through the door. She just sat there, drinking down a glass of iced tea, or another cup of coffee with about ten spoons too many of sugar. She'd just sit there and watch him with lovely dark eyes grown even darker, and then she'd go to bed. The few times he tried getting frisky in that state, she'd walloped him upside his fool head and moved off to sleep on the couch. Or if she was feeling particularly bitter about his attitude, sent him to sleep on the couch.
It was always the next morning when she made her displeasure known. Just as soon as the sun was up, she'd be there with a frying pan in one hand and a metal
spoon in the other, banging the two together in a loud ringing racket. For the rest of the day, so long as he was in the house at least, she would berate him endlessly, making every imaginable noise to get his attention. More than half the time, she'd make comments about his family history, and about how foolish she'd been to marry a man who had no good sense.
Dewett had avoided that sort of confrontation for almost four decades now, and he intended to keep it that way. Angela might not believe in violence, but she could surely make him suffer if she saw fit to do so. Old Herbert Whittaker used to make fun of him, called him a fool for letting his wife treat him that way. Dewett wasn't a fool, though, and he knew it. After all, it wasn't his wife that left when things went sour at the farm, it was Herb's wife. Besides which, he'd been raised by his mother and his mother alone, after the local white boys had decided they didn't like the way his father looked. Marcus Hammil had been hog-tied and dragged behind a horse until he died, his sin being that he owned land. After his daddy's death, his mother made sure to raise him properly, and in his momma's eyes that meant he wasn't ever to strike a woman in anger. He had learned the lesson well.
In all their years as a couple, Dewett had never raised a hand to Angela. A good thing too, 'cause she'd likely have waited for him to go to sleep and then cut his manhood away from him for his trouble. Back then there was so much wood near Lake Oldman that she could have dumped his body and never fretted it being found. Provided she could have moved his oversized corpse.
He was almost home and that was a good thing, because his knee was making more and more threats thaut might give out on him. Even from two blocks away, he could see the porch light was lit in front of the small house he'd bought outright three years after he opened the bakery. Angela was up, and he could fairly well see her sitting at the kitchen table, reading one of her romance novels and sipping away at her iced tea. No way she'd choose coffee this time of year; it was just too damned hot, even this late at night.
Dewett sighed mightily, prepared to face a night of silence and a day of harping. He deserved it. He should have left a note.
He needn't have worried himself over the matter. The man in the black armor saw fit to stop him from reaching the door. One second the street was clear, and the next there was a dark form with glittering bug eyes standing in front of him. Dewett's eyes had long since adjusted to the night, and he could see that it was one of them soldiers who'd come to town. He could even make out the weapon in the man's hands. A lethal-looking thing it was, too. Dewett suspected the war overseas would have ended a lot faster if he'd been armed with one of those nasty looking rifles. He surely would have never had but one run-in with the local Klansmen, and he would have bet on that.
Around the same time the barrel of the soldier's weapon pointed at Dewett's face, he realized he was in a bit of trouble. The soldier's words just helped to confirm his suspicions. "It's well past curfew. What are you doing out here?"
"I surely didn't mean no trouble, sir. I just needed a few things from my bakery." Dewett flinched as a powerful beam of light washed over his face.
"What's your name?"
"My name is Dewett Hammil, sir. I just live right over there, in the green house with the porch light on."
"Mister Hammil, are you aware that you are violating the curfew imposed under the martial law placed on Collier?"
"Yes, sir. I just wanted to get some things from my bakery."
"You couldn't handle that matter during daylight hours?"
Dewett smiled sheepishly, shaking his head. He was embarrassed and more than a touch nervous. "Nossir. I ain't been allowed into the bakery since that thing fell in the lake."
"Why did you feel it necessary to go there now?"
"I just felt the need to bake some cookies, sir. And I didn't figure I'd have the money to go to the store for the ingredients."
"What's in the bag, Mister Hammil?"
Dewett swung the bundle off his shoulder without a second's hesitation, letting the spun together ends of the bags unweave and separate. "I got some chocolate chips, some pecans and some walnuts. Can't make my special cookies without 'em."
"Set the bags down and step back."
Dewett did as he was told. A moment later, the barrel of the man's rifle was lifting the edge of one bag and the light that had settled on his face was moved to examine the contents. While Dewett waited, the man repeated the examination into each of the bags.
Eventually the soldier grew tired of looking around inside the bags. He stepped back and retrained his rifle on Dewett, along with the bright light. Dewett felt his pulse slow down a bit, and realized he'd been holding his breath.
"Mister Hammil, I'm going to overlook this little incident. But for your own safety, do not leave your house after curfew again, do I make myself clear?"
"Yessir."
"My orders are to shoot first and ask questions later. Lucky for you I can't quite bring myself to do that. But I'm not always posted in the same place. If I were you, I'd stay inside from now on. Cookies aren't worth your life."
"Yessir. Thank you, sir." Dewett was as polite as the Queen of England herself. He reached down and grabbed his bags, wrapping them around one massive fist. He wanted to yell at the man in the armor for taking that tone with him.
He also wanted to kiss the man's feet for letting him live.
Dewett walked the rest of the way to his front porch without a single breath escaping his lips. During the part of the trip where he could see the soldier, Dewett also saw the barrel of the man's rifle tracking him. Any wrong move would make him one dead fool. His bum knee throbbed hotly beneath his skin, threatening to pop out of place and send him falling to the ground. Dewett Hammil had no doubt in his mind that even something as simple as tripping would be enough to make certain that he never got up again. His heart thundered in his chest, and he prayed to God Almighty that his ticker wasn't going to give out on him. Every step was an exercise in self-control like few he'd ever endured. Because every step closer to his home and his wife seemed far too slow, and he didn't dare run. Sweat fell into his eyes, and clammy perspiration painted a mustache over his trembling lips.
Dewett opened the door to his house and slipped past the threshold at a speed that, under other circumstances, might have changed his mind about not being able to move as quickly as in his youth. No sooner did he close the door than his bad knee finally decided to go south. Dewett fell to the floor with a thud that shook his wife's collection of knickknacks half off the shelves. He lay there for what seemed a very long time, sucking in great heaving breaths of air and reveling in the familiar smells of Angela's cooking.
When he dared look up, Angela's legs filled his field of vision. Behind the Just Where The Hell Have You Been look she cast his way, he could see the deep love and concern she had for him. Dewett stood up, and behind his wife he could see the mostly empty glass of iced tea sitting on the table in a puddle of its own sweat.
"Dewett Alexander Hammil," Angela started, her voice shaking with suppressed emotion. "I thought I'd broke you of staying out to all hours a long time ago. You had me worried near to death."
Dewett smiled, the fear in his soul replaced by the love he felt for Angela. His long, thick arms snaked around her, and he rested his mouth and nose against the top of her head, breathing in her scent and reveling in her presence. "God love ya, Angie, you did. I just forgot for a little while."
She pulled away a little, looking into his eyes and seeing something that made her smile. "You know that if I catch you sneaking out again I'm gonna whomp you on top of your old fool head, don't you?"
"Angie, darlin', I wouldn't have it any other way."
That night Dewett slept as well as he ever had. When he awoke the next day, he started baking cookies. He never told anyone about how deeply the ingredients for making those cookies had affected his life, but Dewett never again snuck out of the house. Somewhere along the journey, he'd decided that Collier was still an old and dear friend, but on
e he preferred to encounter in the daylight hours.
3
Peter Donovan sat in the massive entertainment room of Lucas Brightman's house and sucked down another mouthful of beer. His left hand rested on the massive oak table in front of his plush chair, and his right hand cradled his bottle of Samuel Adams with easy familiarity. (Let the Yankees call it ale, the shit still tasted like beer to him. Gave him the same sort of pleasant buzz, too.)
The room spanned the entire length and width of Brightman's oversized mansion, taking the entire basement as its domain. Dark wood paneling and a crimson carpet seemed to swallow most of the light, leaving the place in a sort of perpetual twilight. Off towards the back of the room a full-size billiards table demanded a great deal of space. The built-in bar that covered one wall made the immense area seem smaller. At present only one of the three large tables in the room was occupied. Pete and his buddies were playing poker there, leaving the overstuffed couch and chairs ignored by everyone. The room was quiet, but the feeling was casual.
Across the table from him, Joe Ditweiller was still concentrating on the hand of cards wavering before his face. Joe was about a bottle shy of sliding his fat ass to the floor and passing out. He never could hold his liquor, and Pete always felt that was the first sign of a weak man.
Judd Fitzwater was to Pete's left, smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary. That was a sure sign Judd was bluffing the hand he held. The man couldn't bluff any better than his father, the Honorable Asshole In Charge of The Town. You could just barely see a family resemblance if you were drunk enough and squinted your eyes, assuming that father and son were in a poorly lit room and at least ten feet apart. Judd was damn huge in comparison to his dad. Easily a full foot taller, and built like a man instead of a donut. Where his father's head was mostly bald, Judd had a full mane he kept a little too long and slicked against his skull. Damn near looked like Dracula that way, but no one ever told his as much. Where old Milo's face was as round a fat girl's butt, Judd's looked like it was roughly carved from granite. Pete still figured ol' Judd's mom must have been getting her satisfaction on the side. No way did the runt they called mayor have anything to do with Judd's gene pool. Pete had even said as much to Judd once, after drinking a few too many. Judd had settled the matter by taking one of his size-fourteen shitkickers and planting it firmly in Pete's testicles. Just after that, he'd mopped the floor with Pete for about an hour and left a few scars under Pete's hairline. They'd been best friends ever since. Funny how that shit worked out. They had nothing in common, not even their political views, but they were as tight as brothers.
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