button was a bright red. It took every bit of concentration for Stotter to steady his hands.
“Those of you listening who are Stottercam subscribers, you should be getting a shaky view of this incredible sight. For the rest of you let me attempt to describe it. The lights are going to come directly over me. Friends, it looks like Venus and two companions—that’s the size and brightness—only they’re moving together through the sky, slowly now. But just a few seconds ago they were shooting up and down, independent of each other. Almost like polar opposites.”
Stotter had been chasing lights in the night sky since he was old enough to drive. As a boy he had listened to his father tell stories about his days in the army. John Stotter had been stationed at the army’s guided missile base at White Sands shortly after the end of World War II where a classified program did test launches of German V-2 rockets. Fifty miles to the east was a nuclear-testing facility at Alamogordo and also nearby was the army’s 509th airfield just outside Roswell, New Mexico.
The story Wesley Stotter enjoyed the most was the one his father told about being on night patrol July 1, 1947, when he watched an alien spaceship fall out of the night sky and slam into the desert. John Stotter had been one of the first to arrive at the crash site. His description of what he saw that night could still raise the hair on Wesley’s arms.
Wesley Stotter would be sixty next year and as a self-professed expert in UFOs he had seen many strange things, but he had yet to experience anything like his father’s close encounter.
Maybe tonight was that night.
The lights stopped before reaching Stotter and hovered over an area of sand dunes. Somewhere in between Stotter knew that the Dismal River snaked through pasture land. The water separated grazing fields from the national forest. Stotter contemplated driving closer but there were no roads. Only sandy, bumpy cattle trails in the tall grass. He couldn’t risk spinning the tires of the Stottermobile and getting stuck in a blowout or scraping off the muffler again like he did two weeks ago.
He loved his Roadmaster. The wood panel had one small scruff—that was all—and the interior was still in pristine condition. Every year he told himself maybe he should get an off-road vehicle, but money was tight these days. His syndicated radio gig didn’t pay much and his UFO Network depended on membership fees.
Stotter missed the days of the Comet Hale-Bopp and cults like Heaven’s Gate stirring up the public. How could you beat or replicate young followers putting on their Nike high-tops, tightening plastic bags over their heads, then lying down and waiting for the spacecraft traveling in the tale of the comet to come and whisk them away to their greater destiny? No one could make up crap that good.
These days the Internet allowed UFO junkies to get their fill 24/7. They didn’t have to depend on Wesley Stotter. But just as the economy was cyclical, so was alien fascination. The more unsure and chaotic the world became, the more people started looking for something to blame their fears on. So Stotter’s webcam investment was giving Stottermania a second life.
He continued his narration for his radio audience, slipping in his characteristic tidbits of history and folklore, the kinds of things his cult following gobbled up.
“This is sacred land,” he said in a soft reverent tone and yes, sure, a bit theatrical. “The Cheyenne hid in these valleys in between sand dunes, surviving a brutal fall and winter in 1878–79. Soldiers from Fort Robinson hunted them down, wanting to imprison them. When that didn’t work, they slaughtered more than sixty men, women, and children right here in these valleys.
“They say the Dismal River ran red with their blood. So you might, indeed, call this hallowed ground. Coincidence that another civilization would hone in and choose the sky over this same valley where the energy of Cheyenne spirits still rise up at twilight? Nope. I don’t think so.”
Stotter’s hands were steady now, the camera tracking the lights. How many minutes had it been? They had remained stationary for so long that anyone first seeing them might simply think they were stars.
Then just as suddenly as they had appeared, they shot out, so quickly Stotter couldn’t move the camera fast enough. They streaked above him, shooting up and out, like meteors, only no jet stream, no cosmic dust was left behind. Without a sound they were gone.
Stotter stayed plastered to the side of the car where he had leaned to hold himself up. His head tilted back, his face to the sky, mouth gaping. Only now did he notice his flannel shirt was glued to his sweat-drenched back. His beard itched and his balding scalp tingled. There was a ringing in his ears and it felt like an electrical surge had passed through him.
He glanced back, expecting the lightning to be close. Instead the thunderheads stayed on the horizon. In the twilight they looked more like mountains than clouds.
He signed off and managed to reach up and click off his microphone. That’s when he heard a voice saying “… asking all emergency personnel … ”
It was his police scanner. Had they seen the lights?
“ … reporting injuries. Southwest side of the forest off Highway 83.”
Wesley Stotter spun around to look at the sky over the national forest. It was in the opposite direction of where he had seen the lights. But it had to be related.
He checked his watch. Then he rammed his equipment back into the duffel bag. Slammed the tailgate, making three attempts before it stuck in place.
He was close enough that he could be one of the first to arrive. He would witness the damage before anyone had a chance to cover it up this time.
FIVE
Maggie recognized the smell from another time, another place. Scorched flesh, singed hair. This is what her father smelled like lying inside his casket. He had been a firefighter, killed in the line of duty. Maggie would never forget the smell of his burned flesh, despite the plastic wrapped around his arms and legs.
The odor was alarming, but it was the moans—soft, wounded cries in the darkness—that unnerved Maggie the most. She wasn’t a first responder. Though she knew CPR, most of her victims didn’t need it. Usually, by the time Maggie arrived, they were dead.
Slices of light from high-powered flashlights caught the huddled figures crouching, hiding. Leaves swirled and skittered away like frightened animals.
Maggie would never forget the looks on their faces. Eyes wide. Lips trembling. Some of them mumbled incoherently. Hands and arms flayed in front of them, jerking under the flashlight beams like stoned dancers under a revolving disco ball.
Maggie had put on her leather jacket before leaving the pickup but her chill came from within. The darkness inside the forest disarmed her, swallowing up everything that the flashlights missed.
The canopy of branches became a moving ceiling, creaking and swaying. Gaps allowed a view of black sky. Once in a while the full moon pierced through the cloud cover—the result a brief and startling streak of sudden illumination.
A tall, thin forest ranger named Hank guided Maggie and Donny. He had met them at the main campground, telling them they wouldn’t be able to get a vehicle down to the site.
“You’re the first to arrive,” he had said with such relief Maggie found herself hoping Donny would know what to do with the injured. Her specialty—heaven forbid it was called on—would be dealing with those who could afford to wait.
“Damn, it’s steep,” Donny kept repeating.
Maggie was thinking the same thing as she followed him down an overgrown trail, feeling more than seeing, grabbing branches before they whipped into her face, missing a few and feeling the sting. How the hell were they going to get the injured back up this path?
By the time the three of them reached a flat clearing, they were breathing hard. Maggie felt sweat trickle down her back despite the cold.
“We’re here to help,” Donny called out so low and gentle Maggie wondered if anyone heard him. “We need to get some light down here, Hank.”
“I’ve got one of my guys bringing down strobes with a mobile generator.”
