Instead she stood perfectly still, practically rooted to the spot. She watched the one called Billy swing the bat as hard as he could and heard a sound like a cantaloupe smashing into the ground. Dutch flopped on the dirt road near where they'd been preparing to make love a short while earlier. His body spasmed and where his head touched the sun-bleached clay, a thick trail of red was left behind. Pete Donovan and his hairy friend Billy continued their assault, breaking bones and bruising flesh long after Dutch had to be dead.
Becka watched it all in silence. The scary man watched it too. She couldn't tell what was going on behind his dark eyes, but in her own head, every blow to Dutch's body was another reason for her mind to scream and scream again. The sounds never reached her lips. That silence saved her life.
She stayed quiet all the way through the beating, and even when the men gathered poor Dutch's body in their arms-the quiet man never touched him, but he carried the weapons the other two'd used-and hauled him away.
5
William O'Rourke stared at the saucer where it thrust from the ground. In that gleaming, silver disc were the answers to more questions about life and faith than he wanted answers for. Did the inhabitants of that vessel believe in a god? Were they the foundation of the modern religious beliefs, as so many of the so-called New Agers believed? Why had they come to Earth in the first place? Did they seek peace? War? Universal trade with the planet?
He couldn't have cared less. A day ago, the questions he now shrugged off had bent William into a knot of anxiety. Now they were merely puzzles he no longer wished to solve. None of it mattered, not without Emily.
He closed his eyes, wanting to remember his wife's smile and her caress. Instead he only saw her burnt remains and the image of Artie Carlson with a pillow over her face, sobbing to himself as he extinguished her life.
He shook his head and gulped air. He wanted to be angry with Artie, but found he couldn't. The man had done exactly what he'd been toying with himself; he'd taken away Emily's pain. Both he and Emily had known that Artie carried a torch for William's wife. Both knew he'd never do anything about it. Now the man had done what William couldn't, and he was, in a way, grateful to Artie.
But the loss of Emily was still too big for him to completely accept. His main reason for believing in God had died. Despite all of his years as a minister, he'd always come back to the same reason for never really doubting God's existence: there had to be a God, because Emily was simply too perfect to be an act of random creation. As a result of Emily's existence he'd never had any trouble believing in a divine power. And just as soon as she was taken from his life, his belief fell apart. Maybe that wouldn't be the case if she'd died of natural causes, or not suffered for almost a week through the worst imaginable agonies. Looking at the ship in the lake, a part of him understood that the alien craft was simply an excuse, a place to focus his anger and his doubts. But most of him just didn't care to hear excuses. Most of him simply hurt too much to give a damn.
Emily was dead. Karen had grown into a fine woman, but having him around in his present state would simply be a burden.
So now he sat behind the wheel of his oversized Pontiac, looking down at the headquarters of Colonel Mark Anderson and beyond at the focus of all his rage. In his defense, William O'Rourke never even gave the notion any conscious thought. He simply turned the key in his ignition and backed out of his parking spot at the top of Millwater Street, across from the row of shops that hadn't been visited since the military came into town, and slid towards the edge of the hill. He never gave any conscious thought to why he waited for the black Humvee to pass before he started down the steep slope, his foot securely planted on top of the gas pedal.
The hand that rested on his car horn was placed there more as an instinctive warning than out of any fear for anyone's safety. Just the same, between that and the scream pouring from William's soul through his mouth, the people below saw him coming long before his car tore into the burnt grass of the Lakeside Park. His warning was just enough to get Mark Anderson and Steve Hawthorne out of the tent in time to avoid becoming fatalities. They cleared the way with less than a second to spare before O'Rourke's car tore through the tent, taking precious documents and a dozen confiscated cameras along for the ride.
Along with a dozen or so others, they were witness to William O'Rourke's last defiant cry of anguish as he and his car went sailing off the edge of the shoreline and slammed into the side of the ship stuck in the lake's bed. At that moment they had no idea who was behind the wheel of the car. All anyone saw was the massive steel structure tear into the canvas of the tent, taking the heavy fabric along like a funeral shroud. Then they saw car and tent alike disappear over the edge of the lake and heard the wrenching squeal of metal against metal as the entire mess slid to the base of the thing from the stars.
They saw the scaffolding set up by the men in black vibrate and then tilt as much as the ship allowed. (Later, when all was relatively calm again, Anderson would remark on the inability of the people in the area to leave his damned gantry alone, but by that point even Hawthorne couldn't be sure whether or not he was serious any longer.) They saw the two soldiers working near the top of the thing slip and fall, saved only by the network of safety cables they now wore, which attached to the metal framework as an added precaution. Then the witnesses heard another explosion and watched helplessly as William O'Rourke's body burned in the ruin of his car.
Through the entire process the ship remained motionless, a brooding silver monolith that resisted all attempts to harm it.
Karen Donovan simply stared at the wall when she found out about his death. Between that, and finding the body of Dutch Armbruster on her doorstep later the same night, she seemed incapable of reacting to anything. Only the Danskys knew better.
6
The fine, upstanding group of white supremacists who were now calling themselves the Collier Militia changed tactics the day after William O'Rourke killed himself in an act of defiance against his god and the alien ship. Because it was harder to sneak up and kill two heavily armed men when they couldn't use anything more violent than knives and baseball bats, they learned a new trick.
With the help of Paul Summerfield, a man who knew far more than he should have about terrorist activities, and whose cold demeanor had terrified Becka Thomerson even more than watching two other men beat her lover to death, they learned about the advantages of modern terrorist tactics.
The first thing the Militia did was break into the offices of Dr. Samuel Cumming and Dr. Arthur Trenton. They found what they were looking for with very little effort, especially since they had the permission of both doctors to take what they wanted. Under the present circumstances, neither man was doing much business in town; veterinary care was at an all time low in Collier, and both men were afraid of what the men in black had planned for the town.
The group's next move was riskier, but they managed just the same. They hit the Eckerd's pharmacy on Wilmington Street and they broke into the Phar-mor and Rexall drugstores on Main Street as well. Almost everything in the stores was left untouched, and in all three cases, the pharmacists explained that they couldn't be certain what was taken, because their inventory invoices had been stolen along with the missing drugs.
Then the cooking began. Distilled water was used in minimal doses to liquefy the digitalis pills they found. To add to the fun, several types of painkillers were dissolved in similar fashion, and mixed with the digitalis. The mixture was injected into bottles of Humulin R insulin, and that in turn was carefully loaded into the darts for the three tranquilizer guns the Militia had liberated from the veterinary offices. When that mixture ran low, additional darts were loaded with iodine laced with strychnine, simply because one can't be too careful.
Ping-Pong balls were filled with bleach, and then sealed with a small dab of Elmer's Glue. The glue would last just about long enough inside the gas tanks of the military vehicles to allow the person dropping the bleach filled packages into them to get clea
r before their contents mixed with the gasoline and started a nasty chain reaction. The idea wouldn't work on most modern vehicles: the Ping-Pong balls were too large to fit through the openings for nozzles, but they'd work just fine on the older model gas tanks. While the people working at the Brightman Textile Mill went about the business of making noise and producing stock that would likely never be used, the Militia worked quietly in a store room, concealed behind pallets of fabric that reached almost fifteen feet into the air. When the self-proclaimed defenders of Collier's freedom had finished with their lethal packages, they moved on to the next step and began making their special surprises for the hotels where the soldiers under Colonel Anderson rested when they weren't on duty.
The soldiers had to sleep some time, and even Billy Garner was smart enough to know that they couldn't possibly sleep with their breathing gear on. Or at least that was what they all hoped. Either way, the soldiers would soon discover that the hotels were off limits.
After several days of preparation, the Collier Militia was ready to up the ante of the war for Collier's independence. Tensions were high, true, but the excitement of finally fighting back on a large scale made up for their worries about life and death.
7
Frank Osborn was there when the helicopters came back in from their unexpected departure. What he saw coming off the choppers filled him with a sense of foreboding. Ten people in all, each with a single briefcase. Business people, some male, some female. Varying ages and physical conditions. None of them looked extraordinary, at least not from this range, but the way they moved, the way they gestured and walked, made him suspect otherwise.
Clipboard and Anderson were there too, but they were far closer than Frank. They actually went and greeted the people. Almost as a single unit, the people from the outside-that was how Frank had started to think of the world beyond Collier, though he wasn't consciously aware of the difference-nodded, spoke softly and moved away to where three waiting Humvees were idling. They didn't head towards the Dew Drop Inn and the Collier Motel where the soldiers were staying; instead they moved in the direction of the high school. For some reason that bothered Frank, but it was nothing he could focus on.
None of them wore survival suits. Not so much as a dust mask on any of them. Frank lit another cigarette, tossing aside the butt of one he'd lit only moments before.
He slid back into his patrol car, cursing the bad luck of having the transmission on his Mustang go bad on him as he did so. He watched the Humvees disappear over the hill leading away from the lake.
"Why the hell are you bastards goin' over to the hospital? That's what I want to know. What makes you so different from everyone else?" No one answered his questions, and Frank's mind refused to let them rest.
The sudden knocking at his car window made Frank half leap out of his seat. His heart pounded loudly in his ears, and he had to remind himself to breathe. He turned to see who was there and was rewarded by the sight of one of the Colonel's bug-eyed soldiers.
"What the hell are you trying to do? Give me a damned heart attack?" Frank's voice came out far higher in pitch than it usually did, and he felt himself flush with embarrassment.
"Sorry to bother you, Officer Frank, but we've found a body. We don't know if he's a local or not. He's not wearing any identification." The soldier paused for a moment, while Frank stared at him with blank eyes. "We were wondering if you could help identify him, sir."
Frank's brain finally fired all its pistons and he nodded. "Sure. Where's the body?"
"We haven't moved it yet. We're still investigating the area, and we thought you'd like to see the scene of the crime." The man waited passively for Frank to respond.
"You driving somethin'? Or do you need a lift?"
"I was about to ask if you wanted to take separate vehicles…" There was something in the way the man spoke, something in the way he moved that demanded Frank's attention. He couldn't place just what it was, and that annoyed him.
"I'll follow you."
The soldier nodded and moved off to yet another Humvee. A moment later, Frank was following the vehicle's taillights and moving off towards the residential area on the other side of the town square. He was about to light another cigarette when part of what was wrong with the soldier clicked into place. "Sonuvabitch… He called me 'Officer Frank,' not Captain Osborn." The road went screwy in Frank's mind for a minute. The soldiers always called him Captain Osborn.
The only people in town who ever called him Officer Frank were the kids. That was the way it'd always been.
"What the hell's going on here?"
BOOK THREE
JACK'S STORY
CHAPTER 9
1
Sergeant Jack Calloway sat behind the wheel of the Humvee and cursed himself for his stupidity. He'd done his best to be careful around the people of Collier, but he still caught himself using names he shouldn't and being almost familiar with the locals. By all rights, he shouldn't have even been here. Collier was once a place he had called home and, even if he hadn't been born here, there were still memories connected to the area. He should have asked to be left at Durango… Hell, they should have insisted he stay behind.
But everything'd happened so damned fast; nobody'd known about his connection to the town, and now it was too late. He was here, and there was no way to avoid seeing old, familiar faces. No way to escape the memories associated with the people of Collier.
First he'd called Karen O'Rourke by her first name, and now he'd just called the captain of Collier's police force Officer Frank. "Jesus Christ, it's like walking back in time." Oh, yes, Jack was very angry with himself. He hated to think how Anderson would react if he heard about the incident. Yeah, there's a great thought my ass being ripped apart by Anderson's teeth. He sucked in another lungful of cold, sterilized air though his mouthpiece and sighed heavily. This wasn't going the way he'd hoped it would, not by any stretch.
This was supposed to be a simple operation: locate the Bogie, retrieve the Bogie, and get the hell out of the area. So far ONYX had managed several such retrievals with great success. No problem, thanks for asking. But each collection mission was different. Normally the best they could hope for was a chunk of debris with strange writing on it, like the one they'd picked up in Utica, New York. The only other case where the government had actually found a ship was so well known that no one really gave it too much thought anymore, unless the press decided it was time to increase everyone's paranoia levels again.
So, naturally, the one damned time a retrieval goes wrong, it has to happen in his home town. And could it go wrong in a small way? Oh, no. It had to be a BIG damn snafu, nothing small. Quarantined town, media hounds sniffing around the edges of the razorwire barriers; half a dozen soldiers dead by violent means, and over two hundred civilians wiped out when the ship crashed into the ground, at least if you added the stragglers they'd had to kill since the unit had come to town. It just had to get better; it couldn't possibly get worse.
Famous last words.
He caught himself speeding along the residential street at just over fifty miles per hour, and slowed down when he realized he was leaving the police cruiser in the distance. This wasn't Sector 17, also known as East Bumblefuck, and he had to remember that there were still pedestrians walking along the streets of Collier. The differences went a lot further than merely the temperature. Here he had to worry about running down some little kid, or even mashing a dog's skull into the asphalt. There'd been enough stress between the soldiers and civilians without adding a few deaths to the stew.
A few minutes later, while still chastising himself for his slip-up, Calloway pulled up in front of a two-story house. The building was gray with red trim, and looked like virtually every other house in the subdivision, apart from the color scheme. He'd never understood why anyone in their right mind would willingly move into a neighborhood of cloned houses. It was like asking that your personality be leeched away. Of course he was wearing a uniform that looked e
xactly like all of the others in town to the naked eye, so who the hell was he to make comments?
A middle-aged man came waddling towards him, even as the sun began its final descent towards the western horizon. The man huffed as he climbed the slight incline from the driveway to Jack's vehicle. But he didn't think the old guy was winded. He looked afraid.
"You've got to come quickly! Three of your men, I… I think they're dead!" His accent said he wasn't local. Probably from the northeast, unless Jack was losing his ability to distinguish between regional dialects. The information was filed away, even as the meaning of the man's words sank like lead weights into his mind.
Jack shoved aside his earlier concerns for whether or not he'd revealed too much about himself, and grabbed his firearm from the passenger's seat. "Where are they?"
The man led him towards the side of the house. Jack pressed the SEND button near the right jaw of his facemask and spoke urgently. "This is Calloway. I've just returned to 1734 Glory Lane, where the body was found earlier. I've got Captain Osborn with me. Over."
"Affirmative, Sergeant. We're not receiving any responses from Pike, Williams or Hornsby. Is there a problem? Over."
"Possibly, Control. Man here says he thinks they're all dead." Jack saw two bodies in armor lying on the ground, with a little shifting, he could make out the third. The one big problem with the survival suits was still a lack of full peripheral vision. He studied the three armored forms lying on the ground and felt his blood pressure start a slow rise. "I can't tell for certain, but I'm guessing they must be. I need medical assistance immediately. Over."
"Medical is on the way. Secure the area. Out."
Osborn came up behind him, and Jack could hear the man muttering under his breath. Before Jack could tell him otherwise, Frank Osborn was down beside Hornsby's still form, reaching with his right hand, sliding it under the protective rubber of the connector between faceplate seal and torso seal, and placing his fingers against the soldier's neck. He paused for a moment and then went to the next one, Pike.
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