J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection (15 page)

Ironhorse directed Harrison to park the Bronco outside the gate, next to a personnel carrier, and climbed out. Before Suzanne could struggle out in her "unpractically narrow skirt, Ironhorse was already on the passenger side, offering a helpful arm. She took it reluctantly.

"So now," the colonel said to Harrison, who climbed out o
^f
the driver's side, "you can see why I'd like to have that tape analyzed. Could I ask how it is you happened to acquire it? Or don't I need to know?"

Harrison smiled. He still couldn't stand the man, but at least Ironhorse had the good grace to poke fun at his own terminology. "It's not classified. We broadcast radio signals into space and also monitor for transmissions."

"Who were these people trying to contact?" Ironhorse seemed more confused than enlightened by Harrison's explanation.

"I don't know." Harrison feigned ignorance. "Suffice it to say we managed to pick them up because they were using some serious equipment." If he gave Ironhorse the same explanation he gave Suzanne, that would be the end of the guided tour right there. She gave him a knowing look he interpreted as meaning that she understood.

"I get the uncomfortable feeling you're hiding something from me." Ironhorse frowned but motioned them toward a large army-green van parked just beyond the personnel carrier. "If it was just the radiation," he said, "I could probably fit you into protective gear and send you in for a look. But whoever overran this installation did a very professional job of mining the area. You'll have to be satisfied with our remotes." He slid open the side panel of the van.

"I'm surprised he didn't send us out there, then," Harrison muttered in Suzanne's ear. She didn't react, but Ironhorse, who caught it, smiled sourly and thrust out his hand as Harrison moved to step up into the van.

"The tape first, Dr. Blackwood."

Harrison returned the wry smile, fished the tape from his pocket, and dropped it into Ironhorse's waiting palm. The colonel moved aside and let him pass.

Inside, a bank of video monitors lined the opposite

wall of the van. Two technicians sitting with their backs to harrison and the others manned the control panels. Upon realizing that Ironhorse had entered, they struggled to rise.

"At ease," Ironhorse said abruptly. The two techs sank back down. The colonel removed his sunglasses and slipped them into his shirt pocket; his eyes were dark, almost black, and so coldly intimidating that Harrison decided he liked him better with the sunglasses on.

Harrison found it easiest to focus on one of the monitors at a time. The images were unprofessional, fuzzy, made by the hand-held cameras they'd seen wandering inside the installation. This particular soldier was aiming his camera at the bombed-out barracks. Harrison saw a jagged, blackened ceiling beam lying across a mangled government-issue cot, its mattress torn and blood-spattered.

He looked away quickly at a different monitor. Better. The camera was panning over a boring stretch of dirt that looked as if a gang of motorcyclists had roared through it, maybe popped a few wheelies. Another soldier wearing the white radiation gear wandered through the shot briefly.

A third monitor showed a puzzling scene: steel drums stacked only on the top tier of a wooden flat. "Strange," Harrison whispered to himself.

The camera pulled back; in the background, some barrels—older, rusting—lay on their sides. Something about the sight didn't seem right, compelled him to take a step closer, for a better look, but then the

camera moved on abruptly to a view of what appeared to be a stack of bodies, draped discreetly with black garbage-bag plastic.

"Back up!" Harrison shouted at the monitor. The guy couldn't hear him, of course, but he was standing close enough to one of the techs to grab his mike and find the off-on switch.

"Hey!" the technician exclaimed, but Harrison scarcely heard him.

"Back up, soldier," he barked into the mike, "and focus on those overturned barrels!"

Ironhorse was at his side instantly, and grabbed his wrist, then slowly peeled the mike from his fingers. "That's it, Doctor. You've seen enough."

Harrison ignored him; his gaze was fastened on the monitor as the camera obeyed and slowly panned back to the new barrels . . . and then the older rusty ones. "Tell him to zoom in," Harrison ordered the tech. "Tell him!"

Ironhorse nodded at the tech, who leaned over his reappropriated mike. "Camera three—zoom in."

"What
is
it?" Suzanne's voice in his ear, but he couldn't answer just yet. An alarm had sounded somewhere deep in his memory, triggered somehow by the sight of the overturned barrels. He struggled to piece it together.

The camera zoomed in—on the new barrels. "Not those!" Harrison shouted. "Lower! On the ground."

The technician said something unintelligible into the mike; the image tilted, the focus adjusted and

settled on the overturned barrel,
classified i951 -1
953, it said along its side. And us
govt property; hazardous; do not remove.

Classified 1951-1953.

Harrison shivered and broke into a sweat. He had seen those markings before . . .

Twenty-one years ago, when Clayton had first brought out the files. Harrison closed his eyes and saw the photograph in Clayton's trembling hand.

Here.
Clayton handed him the picture.
Those are the barrels the government stuffed the remains into. They all bear the same distinctive markings.

classified 1951-1953 .. -

Hundreds of thousands of them,
Clayton had said, his voice flat and bitter.
Hidden away in military installations and other secret locations all over the country, some of them only a few hundred miles from here, in Jericho Valley . . .

Jericho Valley. No wonder it had sounded familiar. Harrison opened his eyes and stared at the monitor.

The cameraman waxed creative and pulled back, then zoomed in again, this time using a different angle.

The top of the barrel had been forced open from the
inside.
Dear God, the drum was empty . . .

Harrison's knees went weak; he clutched at the console to keep from falling, only vaguely aware of Suzanne's and the colonel's eyes on him. "Ask him" —he tried to speak louder, but his voice remained a hoarse whisper—"ask him if there are any more barrels like that."

"Camera three," the tech asked, "what's the count on barrels in this condition?"

The voice filtered through the console. "We've found six empties."

Harrison reached for the mike switch again, shouting as he suddenly found his voice. "Six empties—but how many old barrels with these markings? There should be hundreds! Thousands!"

"Only six old barrels with the 1953 stamp on them," the voice said.

Ironhorse firmly pulled Harrison's hand off the switch and replaced it with his own. "Soldier"—he leaned over the console—"how long until you've done an inventory check?"

"We're hours away, Colonel. This place has been a nuclear waste dump for nearly forty years."

"Oh, God," Harrison whispered, his gaze fixed on the monitor. "No . . ."

He closed his eyes and saw it all happening again. The sky, streaked with death rays and glowing dull orange-red from the fires that raged out of control, the air thick with smoke and screams of the fleeing. Those bodies not reduced to cinders by the rays lay crushed under debris or exposed where they were trampled to death by the terrified crowds.

He was not quite five years old, and had just seen his parents killed by the aliens' rays. The memory of it clutched at him full force, pulling him down into a dark vortex of panic.

Harrison, darling, get up . . .

He'd run screaming through the streets until his voice and legs gave out and he collapsed, sobbing, on the sidewalk. And now the nightmare was starting again. . . .

Harrison turned and ran out of the van.

"What's wrong with him?" Ironhorse asked. The gruffness was gone from his voice, and in its place was genuine puzzlement.

Suzanne was still gaping in the direction Harrison had fled. "I don't know," she answered slowly. Whatever he had seen had driven him berserk. She was shaken; she had judged him to be eccentric, perhaps slightly obsessed by the need to find the aliens who had killed his parents. Now she saw it was far worse than that. The man was in trouble, the man needed psychiatric help.

Suzanne turned back to stare with Ironhorse at the close-up of the open barrel. It was clear to her that the base had been attacked by terrorists who had stolen the nuclear waste for God knew what evil purpose, and
that
frightened her ... as much as Harrison's panic attack. Obviously, he had been counting on finding his aliens here and now could not accept the fact that his misguided search had failed.

"Excuse me," she said to Ironhorse, and went outside to look for Harrison.

She didn't have to look far. He was in the Bronco, slumped down in the passenger seat. She walked over and bent down to peer into the open window. He was hugging himself tightly; sweat trickled from his forehead, but she knew it had nothing to do with the heat. His lips were parted slightly as he stared straight ahead into the distance.

"Harrison ... are you okay?"

He wasn't. He jerked sharply at the sound of her voice and looked up at her. His pale eyes were bright, wild. "We have to leave."

She stared at him, unable to think of an answer.

"Now,
dammit!"

She withdrew from the window. Ironhorse stood at the van's entrance, watching. She could have gone back to him then and told him Blackwood was having a mental breakdown and she was afraid to get into the truck with him. Maybe the army would get her home.

Instead, she walked around to the driver's side, climbed in, and turned the ignition key.

They rode the entire seven hours in silence.

TEN

About thirty-five miles from anywhere, the tiny burg of Brewster sat just off exit 92, smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The town consisted of one gas station, one Safeway, one electrical appliance store, Mae's Dress Shop, a Baptist bookstore, three churches, and four auto parts stores between there and Skylerville, the neighboring town with which Brewster shared one sheriff, his deputy, and their patrol car.

It was late afternoon, and the sun was just getting ready to slip below the horizon and take the heat with it. Inside the display window at Crutchins'Electronics, four nineteen-inch Sony color TV sets were all tuned to the same channel, a local independent station that aired mostly reruns. A rowdy group of teenagers, a couple of them with spiked technicolor hairdos, stared mesmerized at the pictures on the screens.

With Xeera and Konar by his side, Xashron stepped

up silently behind them. In thirty-five years, it seemed, the humans had made few real advances in their technology; clearly, they were still far too primitive to be a threat. Even so, Xashron was faintly amused by the drama unfolding on the television screens. It was a crude representation of a space battle between the Earthlings and some unseen enemy; the humans, vain creatures that they were, showed themselves winning the confrontation. Xashron smiled thinly at the irony of it.

On the screen, the interior of the Earth ship shuddered; consoles rained sparks. One of the actors fell, and another actor rushed to kneel over him. The camera closed in on the kneeling man's grim face.

"He's dead, Jim," one of the boys said in a shrill falsetto that was in perfect sync with the actor, who silently mouthed his line. The group laughed and nudged each other; as they did, one of them caught sight of Xashron. Soon the whole group was staring.

Someone imitated a chimpanzee, another made jungle-bird calls; a third giggled. Xashron and his soldiers shifted their attention from the television sets to the punks. The giggler fell silent. Slowly, silently, the teenagers moved on.

It was time for Xashron and the others to leave as well. The Advocate had come up with a suggestion that was actually intelligent, which indicated to Xashron that it was Xana's doing. These host bodies were deteriorating far too quickly, causing almost as much alarm as it would for them to use their natural form; apparently, their cellular structure made it impossible for them to tolerate large doses of radiation. Therefore, the Advocacy decreed, it was necessary to obtain medical information on caring for the human bodies. The method of doing so had been left to Xashron's discretion.

In the meantime, Xana and the others had work of their own.

Waller's Amoco lay south of Exit 92 outside the little desert town. It was twilight and the heat was fading; old Doc Waller was just getting ready to lock up the office when he spied Orel Ralston weaving down the road.

"Doc!" Orel spotted him and waved wildly. The action knocked him off balance, and he reacted by staggering off to one side. He had just left Nelda's Tavern a half mile down the road and was drunk as a skunk.

Doc gave up and slipped his key back into his pocket without locking the office door. Orel was running early this evening. Usually he didn't reach this particular level of intoxication until well after nightfall, after Doc had left the station, at which point Orel would stumble from Nelda's down to the Amoco and climb into one of the cars left overnight for maintenance, where he'd sleep off his drunk and leave the next morning by seven-thirty, before Doc and the customers started showing up.