He heard the scream break from him, then Kate’s frantic effort to calm him.
“Russell,” she was saying. “It’s only a dream.”
But it wasn’t a dream, and he couldn’t accept that it was a dream no matter what she told him. He buried himself in Kate’s arms, sobbing now like a little boy. She held him gently, lovingly, and after a time he pulled himself away, calm now, but helplessly glancing about, searching the room for the vanished soldiers.
“You’re all right, honey,” Kate said. “You’re with me.”
He believed her suddenly, believed that it was only a dream. He relaxed and took a deep breath, trying to fight back even the slightest notion that the soldiers had been real. He looked at the room and nothing had changed. The summer wind blew softly, raising and lowering the curtains. He looked at Kate, and she was the same, her beauty undiminished. He glanced at the clock. Five-thirty. He felt a terrible shiver pass through him. Two hours had vanished. Where had he been for two hours? He drew his eyes downward, toward his body, moving along the fingers and the upper arm to where his gaze suddenly froze on a series of small punctures that were as real as the wind and the curtains and Kate beside him, and where he knew instantly and with utter certainty, the needles had gone in.
The colonel looked up sharply as Owen burst into the room.
“There’s something you have to see right now,” Owen said.
The colonel stared at him irritably. “You have an important reason for interrupting me? One that’s going to stop me from stripping you back to sergeant?”
Owen smiled. “That super-secret spy balloon of yours?”
“ ‘Mogul.’ What about it?”
“Want to see what it crashed into?”
At the crash site, the colonel’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Could it be Russian?”
Just then, Owen emerged from inside the ship, carrying a body in his arms. “Russian?” he echoed.
Owen’s eyes rested on the alien figure briefly before they returned to Colonel Campbell. “I don’t think so.”
Within minutes, a vast array of soldiers and technicians had arrived, all at the colonel’s command. A large truck, fitted with a cable pulley and a stanchion, stood ready to retrieve the ship. Four bodies lay on a tarp near an ambulance.
Owen and the colonel stood together, staring at the bodies.
“You going to let them give this to the press, too?” Owen asked.
The colonel shook his head. “It was one thing when it was a lie. We could control that. Now that it’s real, there’s no way we can let it get out.” He paused. “Who found this?”
“A father and his sons out hiking,” Owen said.
“Can you clean up?”
Owen nodded to the right, where, in the distance, Watkins and his sons stood, surrounded by soldiers. “I already have.”
“I appreciate you coming right to me with this,” the colonel said. “When the time comes, you won’t be forgotten.” He remained silent for a moment, considering the situation. “We’ll have a press conference. We’ll say this debris is from a weather balloon. That there are hundreds in the air at any given moment.” He smiled. “That it was made in Cleveland, not in outer space.”
Owen glanced at the alien bodies before them.
“When I went inside the craft, there were five seats,” Owen said. He looked at the swirl of activity around him, soldiers everywhere, tents, lights. “But there are only four bodies, Colonel.”
Colonel Campbell nodded. “I’ll have my best men put on it.”
Owen paused before continuing. “I was wondering, sir, what you’re going to do now.”
“Do? About what?”
“And as far as the craft is concerned, and the bodies, I could…”
Colonel Campbell looked at him sharply. “What craft?”
“Sir?”
Colonel Campbell peered at Owen sternly. “What bodies?”
“But I…”
“You, Captain, are not involved in this… situation.”
“Yes, sir.”
Campbell nodded toward the craft. “A weather balloon crashed, Captain. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
Owen nodded crisply. “Yes, sir.”
“Including you, Captain.”
“Of course, sir,” he said stiffly. Like hell, he thought, like hell you’re going to freeze me out.
Russell placed the board across the closed front door and nailed it into place while Kate stood by, watching him worriedly.
“How are we going to get out?” she asked cautiously.
“It doesn’t matter as long as they can’t get in,” Russell answered. He turned quickly and rushed into the den. He had to protect himself, he knew, and he had to protect Kate and Jesse. They had come for him, and they would come again. He had something they wanted and they wouldn’t stop until they got it. He could feel them around him. Their eyes hung invisibly in the air and their fingers reached for him from the clear, crisp breeze. In the whispering leaves, he heard the falling tumblers of their ever-calculating minds.
“Russell, look at me,” Kate pleaded.
Russell ignored her and drew a pistol from the drawer of his desk and began to load it.
“Russell, no!” Kate cried. She reached for the pistol and the cartridges spilled onto the floor. Was it Kate? Or had they slapped his hand? He dropped to his knees and frantically began gathering up the scattered cartridges.
Kate stared at him brokenly. “What’s happening to you?”
Russell peered at his wife. He could see the terrible worry in her face, the dread. He knew what she thought.
That he was crazy. But he wasn’t crazy, and he knew it. They had come for him. They had pierced his skin. He knew they had done these things, and that they would come again… for him. But how could he expect Kate to know what he knew? She hadn’t seen them. No one had seen them. He was as alone as if he were floating high above the earth, drifting in the empty darkness, unreach-able, burdened with a terrible knowledge he couldn’t share, and which no one else could understand.
A voice called to him from some distant chamber of his memory,
He recalled the blue lights he’d first seen in the skies over Germany, the men who’d been with him that day. “My crew,” he whispered.
“What?” Kate asked.
“My men,” Russell said. “I have to find out what happened to my men.” He sat down at his desk, retrieved the old crew list he’d brought back from the war and frantically began going through it.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked.
“I have to know,” Russell said.
“Russell, please.”
Russell looked up at her through the haze of his own exhaustion. “I’m no good to you, Kate. No good as a husband or a father.” His eyes returned to the list. “I have to find out what’s going on.”
He was not sure when Kate left the room, only that she’d eased herself out cautiously, as if to let his madness run its course. Perhaps she’d listened as he’d dialed the first number, tracked down the first of his crew. Dead. Then the second. Dead. And the third… until.
