The Stickmen (25 page)

Even though he was only eight years old,
Danny felt a sudden and very complex notion of loss. Just being
able to stand in some grove in the middle of the night was
something he’d taken for granted. There was an astonishing beauty
in the world that he’d never really noticed until now, until just
this precise moment. The humid, sweeping night, the calls of
crickets and peepers, the
hush-like
sound of an errant
breeze straying through the woods.

It was all exponentially and indescribably
beautiful.

And for that same handful of isolated
moments, Danny felt like a grownup, thinking such things, becoming
aware of how beautiful the world was.

And understanding that he’d never see any of
that beauty ever again.

It’s almost time,
he realized.

It was time to go down, down into the
hole.

Danny picked up the ADM and began to walk
down the red-lit ramp.

««—»»

The kid’s gonna die,
the thought
pounded into Garrett’s head. It was a peculiar impact of emotion.
Kid’s shouldn’t die, but they did every day. Across the globe
millions
of kids died every month, from starvation, disease,
remnant anti-personnel mines, and the mindless wars of men. Garrett
didn’t even know Danny Vander, had never met him…but that didn’t
matter at all. He was just another kid.

Just another innocent who’s gonna die
because of something he doesn’t understand.

Garrett felt impotent, useless.

He
had
done his job, though, hadn’t
he? Swenson’s last vital order had been carried out, and so had
Warrant Officer Ubel’s.

Ubel’s instructions repeated like a whisper
in Garrett’s mind.
If Danny Vander is not allowed to set off
that ADM at exactly the right time, then… Christ, I don’t know what
will happen. Who knows what those things might do in
retaliation?
Garrett had nixed the threat; he’d killed Sanders.
So now Danny Vander
would
be able to set off that bomb at
the proper time.

And he’d die.

Garrett understood the influence that the
aliens must have over Danny, and he couldn’t forget that they’d
influence Swenson too. But in all their clear psychical and
technical superiority over the human race, Garrett sorely doubted
that they had the capability of communicating the proper timer and
fuze instructions to Danny in a way that would allow him to escape.
Even if the bomb had instructions, how could an eight-year-old kid
discern all the details?

“Fuck!” Garrett suddenly shouted, and
punched the wall in frustration. The wall had barely dented—he’d
struck a stud—and then his knuckles throbbed in pain.
Dickhead!
Break your hand why don’t you? That’s just what you need!

It was futile to be angry. There was nothing
he could do. What ever it was that needed to happen tonight in all
likelihood
would
happen. Not even Garrett was sure what that
could be, but he knew it was crucial. Danny Vander would die, but
something more important than Danny, than Garrett, than anyone on
the planet, would be served.

That’s just the way it is,
Garrett
thought.

He meandered around the house, fully aware
that the dead bodies upstairs would have to be tended to in some
way. Garrett himself, of course, could not be present to
explain…because who would
believe
such an explanation? No, a
simple “anonymous” phone call to the base security office would
suffice. He’d leave the post soon, and stop at the nearest
payphone. And that would be the end of it. No one in authority
would ever figure it out, and that was fine. It would look like
some kind of militia murder, and Sanders’ body would never be able
to be officially identified except by the highest cells who knew
all about this already. Case closed.

Garrett helped himself to a beer from the
Vander refrigerator (he doubted that the general would mind), then
sullenly shuffled about and smoked, perusing the family room
without really seeing anything.

Walking through a bad dream.

The house sat totally silent; Garrett felt
edgy. There was something unnerving about being in a house that had
three dead bodies upstairs, wasn’t there? The darkest musing caused
his heart to skip a beat. He was the only one alive in the house.
What would he do if he heard someone coming down the stairs?

Garrett flinched.

His mind was trying to spook him, but he
knew it was only remorse. Why didn’t he just leave?

He tapped an ash in the sink, then cocked a
brow toward the other side of the kitchen.

What’s…that?

He noticed two doors.

One of them was obviously an exterior door
which lead out to the back yard. But the second door stood slightly
ajar.

Basement?
he wondered.

When he approached and pushed it open, he
found exactly that. He flicked the light switch next to the wall
and was looking down a flight of wooden steps.

He took them down, found a typical basement.
Mostly storage for old stuff that had outlived its usefulness but
no one had the heart to throw away or give to Good Will. Lots of
cardboard boxes and old lamps and chairs with sheets draped over
them. He turned on another light from a dangling string. And
stared.

There, along the farthest wall, Garrett
easily noticed a number of disarranged moving boxes. They appeared
to have been pulled out, pulled away from the wall. Garrett walked
closer and leaned over. He squinted.

This is where Danny hid the ADM,
he
knew at once. Swathes of dust on the floor had been plowed away
when the boxes had been pulled out, and it was clear it had
happened very recently. The boxes left lines of dust from their
movement.

“So that’s where Danny stowed the bomb,”
Garrett voice aloud. The words echoed dully. A short flight of
wooden steps lead to a pair of cellar doors which, when pushed up,
provided an exit to the basement. It was all right in front of him
now: Garrett knew that he was looking at Danny’s route with the
bomb.

When he went over to the cellar doors, he
wasn’t surprised to find a broken Master padlock. He mounted a few
of the steps, pushed up one of the cellar doors, and was next
peering out into the night.

He’s out there, somewhere,
he
thought.
An eight-year-old kid with a tactical atomic explosive
device…and I have no way of finding him.

Still glum, Garrett came back in, let the
cellar door flap shut. He was about to go back upstairs and leave
the house, but then he noticed the short work tale erected off to
the side. He turned on another overhead bulb and saw nothing out of
the ordinary. Just a regular workbench with a vise mounted in the
corner. Various tools hung from clasps in peg board sections on the
side wall.
Big deal,
he thought. But then he noticed the
corner of a folder sticking out from under a package of sandpaper.
Garrett withdrew the folder and found it filled with sketches.

Garrett began to flip through the sketches.
Looks like Danny had an interest in drawing…
Though clearly
rudimentary, it was damn good artwork for a kid; in fact, when
Garrett thought back to the files Swenson had given him, and the
CIA’s Physiological Science Unit’s artistic renditions of the
Nellis crash based on eyewitness accounts—he decided that, if
anything, Danny’s drawings were better.

And definitely based on the same theme.

He’d drawn several versions of the ship, to
the same specifications and levels of detail related by witness
descriptions from over thirty-five years ago. The long, narrow
fuselage, all black, a cylinder in the sky. The thin illumination
element running underneath like a thread of light. The bizarre
trapezoidal shapes on the sides that could only be windows or
viewing ports. Next came a salvo of drawings depicting the beings
themselves: tall, lanky stick-figures, nearly flesh-less, a creepy
stub for a head. Worse was the face…if it could be called that. No
features whatsoever, save for a single slit for eyes.

But what bothered Garrett more than any of
that was the meticulousness with which Danny had drawn the only
part Garrett had actually seen for himself.

The beings’ hands.

They were identical in configuration to that
of the forearm bone he’d found in the storage garage.

Just two multi-jointed fingers joined at a
narrow wrist.

Garret shuddered.

Several more drawings showed a young
boy—obviously Danny’s depiction of himself—standing on a hillock at
night, gazing up at the cylindrical vehicle. Another sketch of the
figures standing over Danny’s bed, leaning over, and several more
of Danny standing in a place that could only be the inside of the
craft.

The kid must’ve been shit-scared,
Garrett considered, then wondered how well
he
would handle
the same situation.

Probably not very well.

The final few sketches, however, were easily
the most curious.

What the hell is this?

Garrett peered at the next drawing. It was
Danny carrying a fat suitcase-like container away from a fence that
had been pried apart.
The bomb,
Garrett realized. He had a
theory for everything else, but not this.

How did an eight-year-old kid bust open a
twin-layered electrically charged fence, break three unbreakable
high-security locks?

That’s what I wanna know?
Garrett
thought, urgently examining the sketch.

Then he noticed something curious. In
Danny’s own sketch of himself lugging the bomb away from the
fence…

What’s…that?

There seemed to be something on his hand,
the hand that gripped the slot-like handle in the ADM’s case.
But…what was it?

A glove?
Garrett wondered. .

He couldn’t be sure; the details of the
drawing were minute. But there was definitely something on the
figure’s hand in the drawing, the hand carrying the bomb, and it
could’ve been a glove, or…just something odd that seemed to be
covering Danny’s hand.

Then:

Wait a minute,
Garrett slowly thought
when he flipped to the final sketch in the stack.
Is that
a…

The last sketch was simple and stark. A
grainy black shape with an oval opening at one end and two
long…fingerlike shapes extending from the other end.

Like a glove.

For a two-fingered hand,
Garrett
thought.

Garrett stared, cruxing, contemplating.

This was
very
interesting.

But then the full reality snapped back into
his power of cognizance. What difference did it make? There was
nothing Garrett could do. Even if he could figure these sketches
out completely, the fact remained that Danny Vander was already on
his way to Area November, Depot 12, to set off the ADM in a crudely
nuclear detonation that would surely vaporize his eight-year-old
self in a single five-million-degree second.

Garrett didn’t know where Area November,
Depot 12, was. And there was no way to find out.

Therefore, he was helpless to save Danny
Vander.

So what am I worrying about it for?
he reasoned.
If I could do something, I would. But I
can’t…because I don’t know where Danny went.

That was it. That was the final truth.

I might as well just get out of here, go
home, get back to my life. I did my best, but the final pieces just
didn’t work out.

For some reason he couldn’t quite define, he
picked up the pile of sketches, placed them back in the folder, and
prepared to take them. Some last vestige, at least, if this little
kid he would never meet but who was carrying out a paramount task
nonetheless.

Something to remember him by.

An innocent kid…

Another confused anger welled up, though,
even though he realized it was a futile emotion. Whatever these
things were, and from wherever they came—

Fuck them,
Garrett thought.
Fuckers…

Swenson’s last order had been fulfilled. And
these beings, sure, they were getting what they needed, but they
were doing so at the expense of a little boy—a little innocent
easily manipulated
human
boy.

What right did they have to do that?

With all the hypotheses and common-sense
deductions that any alien race capable of traveling to earth would
have to be superior—

It’s all shit.

They’re just as self-serving and selfish as
we are.

Garrett, at least, knew this: if his
own
survival depending on the sacrifice of a little boy…he’d
say to hell with it. He wouldn’t let a little boy die to save his
own skin.

`He wouldn’t. He simply knew it.

He lit a cigarette, spewed frustrated smoke
into the cramped basement. Maybe people were the same everywhere
overall. On this planet or any other.

No compassion anywhere.

The whole thing’s just so…fucked up.

He placed the folder of sketches under his
arm and turned to leave, turned to put this whole nightmare behind
him, when—

CHRIST!

A stab of pain shot into his head like a
slaughterman’s air-bolt gun. Garrett’s face contorted into a twist
of agony. At first he thought that someone must’ve shot a bullet
into his head, but when he collapsed to the basement’s cement
floor, he vision showed him that he was undeniably alone.

Then the pain in his head trebled, and
trebled again, such that he lay completely paralyzed. Tears
squeezed out from the corners of his eyes, his face a rictus. His
mouth froze open but he couldn’t even muster a whimper much less a
scream.

Garret knew he was having a stroke.

He knew he was going to die.

But he didn’t know that he was wrong—