Episode 17- The Uninvited, Part II

"Is that a rocket launcher?"  I asked nervously.

In the confined space of the van, it looked like a shoulder mounted cannon.  I pressed my cheekbone hard against the driver's side door because my head was too close to where he was aiming.

"Combination of things," he said.  "Controlled pulse cannon, virus insertion tool, software cancer in a tube.  You name it, it does it."

"Okay.  But what does all that mean?"

"No time for that, time to dial.  But don't worry, we're not going to blow anyone up."

With the big-tube contraption balanced on his shoulder, he used his free hand to hand me a piece of stiff paper with a number written on it.  I looked up to ask him what the number was for and noticed him attaching two co-axial cables from his unit to the roof of the van.

"What do I do with this?" I said, holding up the card.

"We don't want government jerk-offs to track our location with all their expensive toys, so you call that number first and listen for three beeps.  When you hear that, you dial the lab's number.  Then you power down the phone, throw it in here and close the lid."

Mark slid an open briefcase toward me with the toe of his shoe.

"Is it lead lined or something?"  I asked.

"Something like that.  Now do it.  Longer you wait, the better prepared they get."

I hesitated for a second, then did what he said.  Got the three beeps then dialed the lab number.  Asked for the head scientist.  His voice seemed odd.   He was too happy.  Right up until I told him to bring the alien artifacts and meet me at the restaurant Mark and I had picked out.

"Right now?"

"Now," I said.

"I might need... hold on."

Permission.

It was the word he almost said.  I could imagine five or six men and women dressed in government issued hush-hush suits hovering over him.

"No, actually I'm good to leave right now,"  he said.  "It will be good to see you again."

The little bastard was rebelling against the machine.  We'd never met.  We'd talked on line and over the phone, but never met.  I'd UPS'd the artifacts to him so no one could ever place me at the lab.  Just in case.  And now, here was my very own scientist trying to warn me off.

After I'd punched the END button, threw the phone in the briefcase and told Mark about what the scientist said.

"They'll put his head in a microwave oven and set it to explode for that," he said.

"Seriously?"

"Get ready to drive when I say go.  Be smooth about it.  Don't draw attention to us.  Don't act like Harrison Ford in the Fugitive.  Just drive down Farmington Road til we hit I-96 and head East til we get to I-75 then head south.

"What are you going to do with that cannon thing?"

"I'm going to lock onto their communications system and follow it up the food chain.  First agent I can sight, I aim, pull and we're connected to their network.  Agent calls into their superior, our software goes with that call and monitors the superior's call to his superior.  The calls will be quick and go straight up the line about this one.  So we stay with them.  We record each conversation so we get a better idea of what's going on and so you can hear it for yourself.  It's good to know what the enemy's thinking.."

"Is that possible?"  I asked.

He grinned and rubbed the back of one hand across the stubble on his chin.

"They'll be loud and clear through this blue-tooth,"  he said, pointing to his ear.  "And lookey here- I'd say you've got some uninvited guests."

I saw the helicopter coming over the top of an office complex.  There were men attached to the runners.

"Ready, aim, communicate," Mark said.  "Now get gone, brother.  Drive like we're on the way to the bowling alley."

"Are they coming for me?" I said.  "This is insane."

"Shut up and drive.  Their black sedans will be here in three or four minutes and when they find out we gaslighted them they'll be closing down traffic.  We want to be in Toledo, Ohio by then."

I was officially on the run.  Emily was dead and the government had the alien artifacts.  There went my story.  Nothing left but to hide out in the hills and pray they never found me.  I couldn't believe it was happening to me.

Mark disengaged himself from his electronic cannon and hung it on a hook that stuck out from the side of the van.  He sat down in the passenger side front seat and buckled up. 

Six black cars passed us before we got to I-96.  I felt physically ill.  I wanted to pull over, get out of the van and throw up on the side of the road.

"So far so good," he said.  "Where's that Bible with the picture of the alien?"

That picture was the only thing I had left.  In today's world, pictures were so easy to fake, it was useless as evidence. Without evidence, I didn't stand a chance of getting my life back.

"Under my seat," I said.  I'll get it."

I found it and handed it over to him without taking my eyes off the road.  I couldn't afford a traffic accident.  I couldn't afford to make any mistakes at all anymore.  I was a federal fugitive.

"It's a Polaroid," he said.  "Haven't seen one of these instant pictures in a long time."

"Does it look real?"

"Anybody can fake anything anymore.  Short answer  is who the hell knows.  We'll run it through the lab and see what we can see.  It's this sheet of paper with writing on the back that's more interesting to me just now."

"What sheet of paper?"  I asked.

"The one with your name on it," he said.

"Give it to me," I said.

"Keep your eyes on the road, ace.  We have to get out of this state before they find us.  You should hear what they're saying about you."

He was pointing to his bluetooth.

"What?" I asked.

"Not now.  Later you can hear it for yourself.  But just so you know, you're lucky you don't have a wife and kids."

"Why?"

"Because they'd be feeding them to the pigs by now."

Behind me, I heard the big Rottweiler get comfortable for the long drive ahead.

Episode 14- The Survivalist Calvary

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

I couldn't seem to process a rational thought until I stepped out of the car.

Thirty minutes ago I'd seen an alien craft tractor beam up, up and away three thugs and the body of the E.T. I'd run over.  I'd sat there in my car twenty feet away watching it happen like I was a crash test dummy at my first moving picture show.  When the alien tracker took off and left me behind like I wasn't there it took me a full minute to floor the gas pedal and fishtail up the incline til I was back on West Jefferson.

"Where's the cops when you need them?  That's all I'm saying is where are they?"

I was mentally numb enough by that time that I repeated it six or seven times before switching over to my next line of thought.

"Where's Homeland Security?  What the hell happened to radar?"

No answers to anything and I blew through three of four red lights before I noticed I was doing it.

At Fort and Outer Drive, I pulled into the all night convenience store, turned the engine off and went inside while I thought through what I was doing.

I was way over my head and desperately needed help.  I went through my mental contact file while I bought two prepaid cell phones, six energy drinks and a sandwich that the label said was egg salad.

"Anything else?" asked the woman behind the bulletproof glass.

"No?"

"Do you need a bag?"

"Yes."

Back in the car I ate the sandwich and guzzled down two Monster energy drinks.

Time to call the crazies.

"Yeah?"

"It's me," I said.  "No names."

"Me who?"

His voice was a coarse, gutteral demand.

"No names.  I'm the writer.  We met at the bigfoot hunt.  We talked about the first time you saw a squatch.  Then we found the print and the nest."

"Uh-huh.  What was in the nest?"

My mind went blank.

"I can't remember.  I don't know.  Wait, wrappers and an empty peanut butter jar."

"And?"

Shit.

"I don't remember anything else.  Seriously, I don't remember."

"Good bye."

"Wait.  Please, give me a second will you?  I'm under some serious stress here."

"I'll give you a minute."

I pictured Mark and his wife Susie surrounded by guns, rows of computers, and survival food packets in their hand-built Kentucky log home.  Bigfoot casts lining the tables, rottweilers running loose in the yard and a satellite dish big as my kitchen bolted to the roof of their house.

"I'm trying."

"Too bad."

"Wait, I've got it.  Those twisted stick figures, like in the Blair Witch project."

Dead air on the other end.  I checked the screen to see if he'd hung up.

"You a traveler?"

Shit again.  It was a Masonic thing.  I hadn't been to lodge in so long I couldn't remember what the hell to say.

"I forgot how it goes.  I just don't remember.  I told you I'm under a lot of stress."

"You alone, brother?"

"More than you know.  I need help.  I need you to come get me right now.  I'll park the car in the long term lot at Detroit Metro.  I know it's a bitch, but when you get here, you'll never regret it.  It's what you've been looking for and more."

"You got a live one?"

"Not that," I said.  "Better.  Bigger than that.  I'll meet you at the Bob Evans.  I'll walk from the Airport to get there."

Silence.

"Don't do that," he said.  "They got cameras all over the airport.  Park in the off-site long term parking near the Ramada.  It'll take me a while to get there, maybe-"

"I know how long it'll take.  I'll be there."

"You know what you're asking?"

I did.  I told him so and we hung up.

For the first time since the whole thing started, I felt better.  Help was on the way.

He'd get the whole alien artifacts thing.

He'd hide me from the authorities while we worked out what to do.  I needed to contact the scientist examining the artifacts before the government got to him.  No way I was doing that without Mark.  Once we retrieved the artifacts we'd head to Kentucky to hide out in the hills.

If they came after us, we could disappear into Townsend Cave.

Mark and I both had an interest in Townsend Cave.  For me, it was the land my family owned for generations until it was taken from them.  Lots of history there.

For Mark, it was where Bigfoot lived.

When you're on the verge of going insane, it doesn't matter which asylum you hide out in.

Episode 10- Telling the Right Lies

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

Cruise control is a wonderful thing when it's raining hard and you're on the run.  Turn the windshield wipers on, drive five miles an hour less than the speed limit, set the cruise control and you're good if you don't do anything stupid.  No need to worry about driving too fast or driving too slow and some cop noticing.  You have to be careful when you're about to be hunted down by the military-industrial complex and you don't know exactly when that timer will start.

Eventually they would show up at my house in the middle of the night.  Or maybe in broad daylight.  The only news story big enough to cause CNN, Fox News and MSNBC to ride in the same van.  Homeland Security could call me a terrorist or say that I was Julian Assange's nephew.  Everyone would understand why I was taken away in chains with a black bag over my head.

So I didn't go home.

Going home would have been a stupid idea.  A smarter idea was to drive to the house of the best looking female writer I'd ever known.  I needed someone to dump my company on someone until things blew over or I got blown away.  She'd do it.  Not because she'd care I was in trouble, but because she'd hope I didn't come back alive so she could keep it.  She could always find someone else to sleep with, but to take control of a profitable publishing business- that was a permanent relationship.  Good-bye writer and hello businesswoman.

I drove for four hours with only three stops.  Once for gas.  Once to load up on coffee.  The last time to use the bathroom.  Not once did I call Adele to let her know I was coming.  I was done calling anyone- I'd tossed the phone out the window, over a railing and into the first river I'd driven over.  Then I just kept driving.  First time in my life I'd driven over fifteen minutes without music.

Thinking all the way.  Listening to news reports.  Looking out the window and checking the side and rear view mirrors for anything in the sky that shouldn't be there.

I wasn't thinking about what was in the trunk.  I was thinking about how the thing in the trunk would change my life.

No way the military wouldn't own the burned ashes of Emily's farm by morning.  They'd totally control the traffic coming and going for a fifty mile radius before dinner time.  Maybe before lunch.  They wouldn't stop til they'd quarantined and grilled every witness they could find and I sure as hell didn't want to be quarantined.

Three UFO's rising up in the sky.  Three fighter jets vaporized.  I couldn't know for sure that they were fighter jets, but that was what my gut told me they were.  I'd waited in the fog after the three UFO's disappeared, then drove away with my fog lamps on.  Sweating like it was July instead of early October.

When I finally pulled into Adele's  driveway it was three in the morning and her house was dark except for one light in the living that stood just on the other side of the pulled curtain.  She wouldn't be happy with me for showing up without warning  She might not even be alone.  Four plus hours of driving and I'd never even thought about that.  We'd never talked about it, but you can tell when someone's not seeing someone else.
Lot of guys probably thought that's the way it was.

I bent over and picked up the Bible and the photo from the passenger side floor mat, tucked the photo of the creature back inside and hid it under my front seat.  Adele didn't need to know about it.  She thought I was crazy as it was.

There seemed to be no one up except me.  No lights on anywhere except streetlights and Adele's living room light.  She could still be up writing or reading.  Writers did that a lot.  Slept for most of the day and stayed up all night.

I slid on my jacket as I walked up her driveway and made an effort to tuck in my shirt, then straighten my collar.  The whole trip down I'd been working on what to to tell her and what not to tell her.  Keep it simple was always the best bet.

The thing was, I needed cash- more cash that I could pull out of my ATM's.  More than that, I needed someone to take over the publishing until I came back.

I'd killed an old woman and set her and her house on fire.  Trying to get away before anyone knew I was even there, I'd crashed into a strange blue creature and killed it.  Emily didn't need to know about any of that or the three UFO's and what they'd done to the aircraft coming after them.  All she needed to know was that I wanted to offload my company for cash in the middle of the night, and I'd better have a damned good story to explain why.

By the time I pushed the electronic doorbell button, I thought I had it all figured out.  I waited a few minutes and pushed it again.  Things were coming together more clearly.  I had a good story that she just might buy.

But when the door opened and I came face to face with a thirty something red faced guy who looked like he wanted to punch my ticket, I couldn't think of anything to say.

Later I found out that at about the same time as I stood there stammering, a Homeland Security team was going through Emily's phone records.

Episode 9- Body Bag & Sky Wars

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

I backed the car up, got out and popped the trunk, trying not to think about what I was doing.  I dumped the contents of my thirty gallon black plastic trash bag of emergency supplies.  Flares, first aid kit, jumper cables, flashlights, batteries and other necessities fell into a jumbled heap that I pushed toward the back.  I found a pair of work gloves and slid them onto my hands.

The fog made it easier.  I was alone in the middle of nowhere.  It would be days before anyone noticed that Emily's house burned to the ground.

The corpse smelled like a mixture of windshield wiper fluid and sulfur as I stuffed and slid it into the bag.  I tried not to look at the blue skin, the three broken fingers with tiny suction pads scattered across the palms.  The stomach area had burst under the weight of the car.  A dark gel-like substance coated my gloves and I slid what was left of the organs into my improvised body bag.

A sudden nausea swept over me.  I turned to one side and vomited

The taste of bile filled my mouth.  The corpse-odor caused me to throw up again.

I placed one palm on the packed dirt road to keep from losing my balance.

When the dizziness passed, I wiped my mouth and chin with my sleeve and turned back to finish the job.  The flashlight lay on the ground and was shining directly at the bag.  I could see that I had most of the thing in, but it's head and neck and the top half of its torso stuck out.  It's dark black eyes seemed to be staring in my direction.

"Quit looking at me," I said.

I took a deep breath and went back to work.

One glove on the top of its head, careful not to look at its eyes.  One foot on its exploded stomach- if it was a stomach.  I lifted the head and pushed it forward by placing my knee on its back.  The force of the car lying on top of it must have snapped its spine- if it had a spine- because it bent right over.  Maybe they didn't have rigor mortis wherever it came from either, but only a half an hour had passed since I ran it over.  I didn't know how long it took for a human body to stiffen, much less whatever it was.

Road kill.  The thought flashed through my mind as I pulled the garbage bag back up and over it and cinched the drawstrings.  I was just cleaning up roadkill.

The truth was so much worse I couldn't even think about it.

I closed the lid on the trunk after covering the bag with the emergency blanket.  The sound of the latch engaging was like a cell door closing on my life.

My legs were shaking by the time I reached the driver's side door.  Then I heard a sound that put an end to all that.  A high-pitched keening, like the sound of a dentist's high speed drill.  It came from somewhere up and behind me.  I stood completely still, willing myself to be invisible in the billowing fog.

It rose in pitch, and then brilliant white flashing strobes suddenly turned the night into a rural disco.  I turned to look up into the sky and saw something that filled me with terror.  Three gigantic silver discs appeared a quarter of a mile above where Emily's house still burned.  They separated with amazing speed then stopped dead in the sky like points of a triangle.

Further away but coming in fast across the sky I saw what could only be three jets racing toward the crafts.

"No," I thought, "go back.  Don't do this."

But before I could think another thought, a matrix of green laser-like rays shot from the crafts and vaporized the jets.

Dr. Bob Introduces The Alien Diaries Project- Episode 2

The Alien Diaries Translation Project is now live over at Kickstarter.  Here's the head our our science team introducing the project.

We're paying this guy a lot of money for this, but he's still weird.

But even though he's crazy, won't you go over and take at look at what we're doing?  We have some excellent rewards for donations.

Alien Diaries Anthology- Episode 1

I started another project over at Kickstarter for an anthology titled "The Alien Diaries," which I'll soon put up over at White Cat.  This might lead you to think I'm going nuts, but I'm having fun!

They'll let me know if it goes through in a day or so.  Here's the project description:

*****

As a paranormal investigator, writer and amateur UFO-ologist, I receive a lot of strange calls.  But none as strange as the one I received early last year from an elderly woman I'll call only "Emily."

She'd read a copy of my alien werewolf book "Tainted Blood," heard that I lectured on Ghost Hunting Technology, and told me she thought I was just the person to solve the mystery of two alien artifacts that were left behind the night her husband was "taken."

If it weren't for the tone in her voice, I would have thought she was a crackpot.  Ninety nine times out of a hundred, when a total stranger tells you they have alien artifacts, they are in fact crackpots.  But Emily sounded different.  So I said yes. At the very least, I could come away with an interesting story.  

She lived on a small farm in the middle of nowhere, five hours driving time due south and east, according to my GPS.  The last twenty five miles or so were dirt roads twisting through fields, dense woods and a brutal thunderstorm.   By the time I reached her house, her long driveway was was more like a seldom used cattle trail and so muddy my car slid onto her lawn and stopped four feet short of crashing into her front porch.

I'll tell you more about that night with Emily in the weeks to come, but for now I'll tell you that Emily was telling the truth.  In her living room, in the light of a lamp that dimmed in and flared with each thunderous gust of wind, she sat across from me in a faded upholstered wing back chair and said, "If you can't keep a secret, you'd best leave now."

I assured her I could.

"Not a word of this until I'm dead and gone," she said.

I agreed.

She looked me over carefully, saw that I was sincere, and picked up an old, latched wooden box from next to her chair.  With a flick of her yellowed fingers, she flipped the latch and then lifted the lid.  Carefully, almost reverently, she withdrew a swatch of folded black velvet.  She held her breath for a second, then shook her head once as though she'd made up her mind.   A warning blast of air shook  the windows, but she ignored it as she unwrapped two iridescent purple-red metal plates the size of playing cards and laid them in front of me on the coffee table.

"What are they?"  I asked.

"I think they're record books.  If you look at them close, under a reading glass, you can see the markings and patterns."

"What do you want me to do with them?"

"Figure them out," she said.

"I'm going to need some help," I said.

And I would.  Lots of it.

"Same thing goes for them," she said.  "Not a word of this gets out until I'm gone."

"I'll put a team together," I said.

"Just don't any of you look at them too long in one sitting.  You'll start to hear voices and see things that aren't there."

                                                    *****

Like I said, I'll tell you more about Emily and what she told me that night in the coming weeks, but for now I'll tell you that my team and I have made significant progress in decoding the information contained in the Alien Diaries. But we need your help.

Using the latest in computer analytics and technology that's too complicated for anyone but our scientists to understand, we believe we've been able to decipher scattered words and phrases.  Problem is, we need imaginatively gifted people to help us string together the stories that will make the content come alive.

So we're asking your help to fund and participate in this project.  We'll make the fragments available (three to five words) each week, give you what geographical links and time coordinates if they're available, and ask the writing community to construct plausible scenarios to explain what they could mean.  We'll solicit artists of all ages and backgrounds to submit drawings to supplement the stories.

When we've accumulated and sorted through the stories and drawings, we'll collate them into an anthology which we hope will reveal for the first time the records of our Alien visitors and perhaps explain why they keep coming to our planet.  We want to answer important questions such as those raised by great thinkers throughout the centuries such as whether they are planning an invasion or just hanging out, whether their itineraries coincide with concert schedules and/or whether or not they are responsible for the evolution of our species. 

Those are just some of our thoughts.

And we'll need to pay the story contributors.  That's where your financial support will be available.

For too long we've been in the dark as to why they keep coming to our planet. We know they're here.  We've seen the lights in the sky, heard the abduction stories and watched world governments scramble to suppress the facts.

The truth isn't "out there," it's in the Alien Diaries.  Help us decode them, will you?  Who knows what we'll discover?

White Cat Publications First Kickstarter Project

Just a short intermission from our "Creative Juices" series to tell you all that we've started our first Kickstarter Program to help us launch our first book "Tainted Blood" with a major US book distributor. To take advantage of this huge distribution channel, we need help with funding and Kickstarter will make that possible. Drop on by at this link and take a look:

White Cat Kickstarter Project

Kickstarter is a fantastic venue for funding creative projects and we hope friends of White Publications will give us the support we need to become a strong venue for up and coming creative novelists.  We appreciate any help you can give us.  The rewards alone are worth a contribution!