Author: j john rockner

Paperback! / Kindle!

One year after the events in this book. Or not. Washington, D.C., Pentagon. Mike Stanton waits in the debriefing room for Major John P. Jasper. Paperback! / Kindle!

Come on. I don’t have all day, I thought as I sat alone in the meeting room, tapping my fingernails on the mahogany tabletop. I looked at the assortment of clocks on the wall and shook my head. Does anybody really care what time it is in Bombay? Eight clocks when one will do.

“Hello, Mr. Stanton,” Major Jasper startled me. I stood to welcome him.

“Shall we get down to business?” Major Jasper took a seat at the table, so I did too. “I read your brief. This is an incredible story.”

“Yeah. It happened that way. It did. Freaks. Fireballs. Explosions. And the love of my life. I couldn’t make any of this up.”

“Sorry, but I’ll need your eyewitness account. Can you also please fill in any gaps with information you have learned since those three days?” Jasper was cold as a fish.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll tell you what I learned from Meg, Carter, Brian, and Tomsic too. Then there’s those other parts I got from the news—interviews with Banks, RCK, Jade, that guy they call Caveman, even President Pavlich. Others too.”

Jasper just stared at me. I stared back until I realized how stupid this game had become. I looked past him at the clocks. I was suddenly curious. What time is it in Bombay anyway?

Jasper pulled a notepad and pen from his jacket pocket. “Shall we begin?”

“Okay. Here it goes. Write this down,” I said. He didn’t need to write anything. The notebook was a prop. The whole conversation was being recorded. I knew it. It will be transcribed by professionals. There’s probably six people listening right now. That’s okay. The bigger the audience, the better I guess.

“And don’t make your report so boring. You know, like you usually do.” That did it. By the coldness in his gaze, I knew we would never be fishing buddies.

“How did it start?”

“Well, it all started that April. Fred and I were lookin’ for freaks. Out by Dugway.”

He nodded. He was done talking. Okay. Show time. Here we go. “Then …”

Friday evening, 9:30 p.m. MT: Utah Test and Training Range, 11 miles northwest of Dugway Proving Grounds. Mike Stanton and Fred Rawlins scan the skies on lookout duty. Paperback! / Kindle!

“You know, one of these nights, I might get tired of saving you,” Fred said.

“I’m sorry. I forgot.” I wiggled in the gray blanket wrapping around us like a soft taco, the camouflage blending with the ground. I pulled the blanket to my shoulder, but Fred, with a flip of his powerful arm, shrugged it back like he was swatting away a fly. We continued to scan the sky, looking for freak activity.

“That’s what you always say.”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

Fred shook his head and exhaled, which, of course, meant ‘I’m fed up with you.’ My third-grade elementary school teacher mastered that same condescending body language. Why did Mrs. Price pop into my head? Go figure. Then he glared at me.

“You know, I tell Black Wolf little white lies to cover for you, like ‘Yes, Sir. Mike is dependable. Yes, Sir. Mike is a great partner.’ And I remember your gear. And what do you do?  You forget your phone! I mean, all the time!”

“I think I just said I’m sorry.”

Fred ignored me. He has a habit of doing that. It’s so annoying.

“Mike, what’s the requirement?”

“To keep my phone within reach at all times.” That was my best monotone. What a stupid question. This isn’t my first day on the job. Not my first rodeo.

“Right,” said Fred, ignoring the sarcasm. “And where is it now?”

“You love to see me squirm. You get some twisted pleasure out of it, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

I didn’t respond. I counted backwards to myself. Ten, nine, eight. Fred didn’t say another word. Silence bores me. What am I waiting for anyway? More bugs to bite? Oh man. I gave in.

“Okay. You win. It’s in the Jeep. It’s still plugged into the stereo.” We listened to a podcast driving out tonight, Coast to Coast, Ground Zero, Fade to Black—something like that. I forgot to grab it.

“And what is the problem?” Fred asked.

The alligator’s question failed to grab my attention, which typically drifts anyway. The mention of my Jeep sent my mind off-roading. Man, I love that Jeep. Who wouldn’t? Perfect white paint—hasn’t faded in five years since I drove it brand new off the dealership lot. Black vinyl flared fenders cover oversized mudder tires: 35-inch beauties on black spoked wheels. I love those halogen lights on the bumper. They come in handy, and man, they look sharp! Yeah, that’s right. That’s my Jeep! And the military paid for it! Tax dollars at work. What’s not to love?

“Hello! Earth to Mike!” Fred interrupted.

How rude of him!

“I’m talking to you. Focus on your job!”

“What?”

“Focus Mike. Focus!”

“Sorry, Fred.”

“Now, if the freaks show up, we can’t call it in. Can’t, as in C-A-N-N-O-T. Because you forgot the most important thing, like, maybe your phone!”

“Okay. You can spell. Kind of. But I’m pretty sure there’s an apostrophe in there somewhere.”

“Shut up, Mike.”

Fred’s voice is low, full, and resonant. Fred could rap if he’d just talk a little faster. He talks slowly to hear his full voice reverberate back to him. He’d be a knock-out radio host with those pipes.

My voice is high, thin, and loud. I could replace most classic rock singers. Ever since I heard a dirty, distorted guitar with a high-pitched vocal riding over it, I’ve never been the same. Attention all bands searching for a killer lead screamer, call me! I can hit the high notes! I can. Okay, so there’s one small problem. If I could sing in key, I’d be dangerous.

“Uh, Mike?”

I’m a thin white dude; Fred is a strong black man. I’m not short, but he towers over my slim six-foot frame. I tried sports, but I mostly surfed in Southern California as a teenager. I miss that place. One day, I swear, I’ll buy a Spanish stucco house and plant a palm tree—no, two palm trees—in my yard. Then, I’ll live my best life. One day.

“Mike, is anybody in there? Mike?” Fred said.

But Fred, now there’s an athlete. He played college basketball until a torn ACL derailed his senior year and knocked him off the NBA radar screen. He had serious game.

“Mike, are you coming over tomorrow for the barbecue? At six?”

Now that got my attention. “Of course!  When have I ever missed one of your barbecues?”

“Maybe you should text once in a while. I can’t read your scrambled mind.”

“Oh, come on. You know I’ll be there. What you cookin’?”

“Hamburgers.”

“And?”

“My slow-cooked ribs, of course.”

“Ribs? Oh man,” Fred’s ribs are the best. The meat just melts off the bone.

“Yup,” Fred said.  “And you can’t have any. Unless you go get your phone!”

It’s funny how Fred got involved in all this. He attended a campus lecture: Hidden Government UFO Files. He saw the bookstore poster ten minutes before it started. I still can’t figure out why Fred went. He probably didn’t have anything else to do. Only nine people attended. The nuclear physicist presenter secretly doubled as a Black Ops military recruiter. I still see that guy at the briefings sometimes. Ted? Let’s go with that. Ted must have been impressed by Fred’s questions and his size.

“Look, is that a duck?” Fred asked.

He knows there aren’t any ducks out here. He’s just trying to get my attention. Sorry, that trick won’t work. Now, where was I? Oh yeah. So shortly after, a rogue general paid Fred a visit, and a lot of money, to join this renegade program. There’s big money in Black Ops and they don’t play by the rules or use a standard military pay scale, which is fine and dandy for me. That general is our boss: Aban Arsenio Romero. Black Wolf to us. Fred and I suspect that he is based at NORAD command in Colorado, but nobody knows for sure.

Now, most nights, we’re in the desert on lookout duty, or bug bites and frostbite assignment, as we like to say. The program’s a throwback to 1949’s Operation Lookout. It encouraged civilians to work in shifts, watch the sky, and report sightings of anything strange. Civil Defense for National Security they called it. Fred and I are specialized, overly trained descendants of that initial program with one important difference: We are highly paid. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Sometimes months pass and we don’t see a thing. Sometimes we see a silver dot or a red flicker or two around known freak hot spots. Sometimes, well, things can be more intense, even terrifying. I mean, it might be for other people. Yet, in a way, it’s no big deal. Still, tonight seemed different. That message from the Command Center didn’t help. High alert.

“Mike, space case, get your phone!”

Now unless you’re wondering, the common cell phone won’t work out here. Strangely, it’s one of those dead spots – after all, it is a military testing zone. But our phones? Well now. No problem.

I was tired of Fred’s pestering, so I hit him with my own secret weapon. I held it close to the vest. Now, it was time to let it fly. Let’s see what damage it can do. Here goes:

“Aw, let’s just use your phone.”

Fred shut up. Bam! Looks like my missile disintegrated the target in a flash! Just like that! The alligator is silent. I love blasting gators. Not just Fred, but anyone that snaps at me. I’ll tolerate it for a little while, until my joker kicks in to get me out of the heat. Fight fire with fire. Yeah. That’s me.

“Talk about glass houses!” I nagged. “It’s in your duffel bag in my dream machine over there. Right?”

I elbowed Fred. Poke the big bear, but not hard enough to rile him up. I’m not that stupid.

“Knock it off, little guy. I only tolerate you because if you weren’t such a joker, these nights could get pretty boring.”

He’s right about that. I pushed myself up from the blanket.

“Wait!”

The urgency in Fred’s voice stopped me cold, suspended in the push-up position.

“Here they come!”

Bright, streaking silver and red dots rose like flares above the horizon, through the nebulous red vapors distorting the space between the stars, and cut tracers through Orion’s belt, first one, then two, then five, until they consumed the western horizon. They danced against the black April sky, right, then left, then back, hard to track, like the shining eyes of a coyote caught in the headlights: beautiful, enchanting, but menacing and brutal.

We typically don’t see ostentatious displays of power like this. The show-of-force reminded me of a Mayday parade in Red Square at the height of the Cold War, the military hardware rolled out for all the free world to see—and fear. Tonight, thirty silver or red streaks cut across the sky, some darting in straight lines and then changing direction abruptly, some looping in wide arcs.

A bright red dot zipped over the Dugway Proving Grounds Army Base traveling north towards the Great Salt Lake. It stopped above us, paused for a second, and then disappeared.

“Did you see that, big guy?”

“Yup.”

“They know we’re here.”

“Yup.”

“You know, it might be time to worry now,” I joked as the situation became more threatening.

“Something’s wrong, Mike. Buddy, this ain’t good.” Fred adjusted the high-resolution camera.

Fred was right. I heard the briefings. Maybe I didn’t want to face it. Maybe I wanted to think everything would be fine—that the freaks would leave us in peace so we could continue to wage our senseless wars across the planet. That’s what we do. But what if the freaks intercede? Now that scares me.

“Let’s record ‘em,” Fred said. “We’ll call it in later.”

Fred snapped some pictures.

“Mike, you gonna freakin’ do something or just lie there with that dumb look on your face?”

“I got it.” I grabbed the video recorder, but it was too late. They were gone.

Under the tarp, rock music blasted from the idling Jeep that someone—well, that would be me—forgot to turn off. It was my phone ringing, or should I say, blasting from the speakers.

“Mike! Pick up, Mike! Where are you?” The woman’s agitated voice cut through the desert chill. It was my ex-wife, Meg.

“Why don’t you tell her you’re wrapped up in a blanket … with another man? Ha, ha,” Fred covered his mouth with his hand to mute the laughter.

“Shut up, Fred.”

“Okay, I really don’t care, but where are the child support checks?” Meg continued.  “You’re two months behind! Did you forget? Your daughter is ten and her name is Kelly. You jerk! Where are they?”

“Meg, I just got a little behind. I’ll send them next week!” Even I didn’t believe it. How can I possibly come up with the money by next week? Fred’s pointy fingers prodded my ribs like an arrow to shut me up. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t hear me. I hope the freaks didn’t either.

“Mike, you better…”

The Jeep sputtered and died, interrupting Meg’s complaints with sudden, total silence.

“Fred,” I whispered, “even the crickets stopped chirping.”

Tentative, perfidious silence?

Bam!.

A blast from the past and the present.  Paperback! / Kindle!

My teeth rattled. Everything blacked out. The ringing in my ears intensified. I opened my eyes, but everything was different. I was disoriented, shell-shocked. I wasn’t sure if it was real or just a surreal foreign movie.

“Too…too…too close to the blast,” I stuttered, only partially aware of what I was saying.

In slow motion, burning Jeep parts fell around us. That’s interesting, I thought nonchalantly, although I should have been freaked out. Funny what you think about when your defense mechanism kicks in. Flaming parts? Wow. There’s the seat—and that floating thing? Is it a ghost? No. It’s part of the tarp. Twisted metal fell around us. Sagebrush burned.

In a flashback, I saw Mrs. Price, my third-grade teacher, the middle-aged, plump woman with black, frizzy hair. Her baggy dresses fell just below her calves. She wore flats, no socks or stockings. Her puffy ankles hung over her shoes. Why didn’t she buy a bigger size? She didn’t move much.

Mrs. Price walked out of the room, leaving a rowdy third-grade class unattended. That’s when it all started. I stood to demonstrate how my friend, Jake, turfed it in the hallway at recess.

“Jake fell like this,” I announced. Kids turned their attention to me.

Show time.

I fell backward, arms flapping, face contorted, sound effects added, a real comic showman. It wasn’t my fault that floppy record—gotta love the vinyl—protruded from the stand below the phonograph. I loved those old phonographs, two parts you’d snap together and carry like a suitcase. Whatever happened to those? Anyway, my butt hit the record. It snapped. My head slammed into the metal stand, but I didn’t feel it. I knew my goose was cooked.

I commanded all the attention I wanted, but now wished I didn’t have.

“Ooh.” The voices built into a crescendo.

My third-grade classroom faded away. Fire approached. Fred shouted something, but his mouth moved slowly. No sound came out. What? I couldn’t speak. I pushed my real-life emergency out. The classroom faded back in.

Tough kids, the sons and daughters of hard-drinking refinery workers, pointed at me.

“Really?” I asked. Third graders are so irritating. Duh. They pick their runny noses with those fingers.

The “oohs” got louder. Jabbering kids spoke in distorted voices that echoed like singing in the shower. “You broke Mrs. Price’s record.”

“You saw it,” I said. “It was an accident. I’ll apologize.” I meant it. What else could I do?

You can’t rationalize with excited kids. You guessed it. When Mrs. Price walked in, everyone feigned shock and disapproval. “Mike broke your record.”

They sold me out. I understood. No chance to apologize with confession and sincere contrition. The judge and jury are one in the same. Punishment will be swift and severe. The earth will be scorched.

Mrs. Price didn’t like me. That’s the way I saw it. I’d complain to anyone who expressed a little sympathy. I guess I represented what she resented, the underachieving class clown, the poor kid with shabby clothes, reeking of second-hand cigarette smoke, the predictable outcast.

Mrs. Price ran from the door to my desk. I swear I’ve never seen her move that fast. Then with a jerk, she grabbed and twisted my ear, all in the same fluid motion. She lifted me out of my chair. I winced. “I’m sorry I broke your record. I’m sorry,” I apologized. And I was. I gazed into the bitterness simmering in her eyes, which had darkened as black as her frizzy hair.

Yet, I knew it wasn’t real. How could it be?

She tightened her grip and pulled harder. It hurt—that seemed real. I talked a hundred miles a minute. “I’m so sorry,” I said. No mercy. With all the quickness in that lethargic body, she swung the ruler at my head.

Apparently, somewhere in her educational background, she mastered Newton’s second law of motion: force equals mass times acceleration. Now, she applied that theory quite well. Of course, as a third grader, I didn’t know Newton. This is gonna hurt, was all I thought. Then I realized, I was both experiencing the scene as a participant, observing it, and analyzing it from the perspective of an adult, all at the same time. Very strange. I braced for impact.

Just as the ruler smacked my head, the falling gear shift nob grazed it. Ouch! I hung suspended, fluctuating between two worlds, and then I crashed back into full consciousness, chaos, and confusion.

I knew the approaching fire was real. I felt the heat on my cheek. A soft breeze fanned the flames closer to the blanket.

Scramble on the high desert.  Paperback! / Kindle!

“Mike?” Fred yelled.

“Uh…”

“Mike, are you alright?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s get outta here!” Fred said.

“Wait.”

“I ain’t waiting for nothin’.”

“Stay put,” I cautioned.

“You’re crazy if you think those freaks can’t see us under this stupid blanket. They know exactly where we are. Let’s run for it.”

“Fred, hold…”

“Follow me. I got you, buddy!” Fred threw off the blanket and jumped up.

“Fred, wait a…”

Fred resorted to what he does best: run. Fight or flight? Fred can do both. He’s like Superman or something. He’s got it good.

“Come on! Don’t be a sittin’ duck,” Fred called as he ran into the darkness.

“Fred, we can’t get separated. Wait!”

It was no use.

Man, that guy is quick. I rose to chase him—yeah, right, like I had a chance. Then, I vaguely saw him crouch behind a sagebrush.

“Hurry!” he called.

Like that scrawny plant can hide that big dude. Funny how you can still laugh in a crisis. Does he realize how ridiculous he looks?

Bam!

Another fireball ripped through our two-man tent. The searing heat singed my eyebrows, my brown hair hanging out of my Denver Broncos stocking cap, and my four-day, prematurely gray-speckled stubble. Fire raged in front of me.

I was stunned for a few seconds, tops. It couldn’t have been longer than that. I swear. I checked the skies. All clear. I scrambled out of camp, but in confusion, I ran the wrong direction—away from Fred, who probably couldn’t see me through the flames. I crossed fifty yards of crackling sagebrush under my boots and climbed the next hill, scampering on all fours, staying low. Get away. That’s all I could think about. I reached the hilltop.

Bam!

Another fireball slammed into the blanket that covered us a few minutes ago. Flames soared thirty feet into the air. I dropped to the ground. My face pounded into the dust. Luckily, the spring dirt was still soft, even spongy. By June or July, the sun bakes this ground as hard as concrete. I watched the campsite burn. That’s just great. There goes our electronic gear, up in smoke.

Just as I feared, Fred and I had become separated. He probably thinks I’m dead. Fred’s a smart guy. He won’t return. It’s not safe. He’ll keep moving and find a way to call Black Wolf. That’s his number one priority. It’s the by-the-book move, too. Then he’ll return to help. That is, if he thinks I survived. If not, he’ll leave it to the clean-up crew. I don’t blame him.

I laid motionless for what seemed like an hour, but it was probably about ten minutes. The night was quiet again. In an instant of bravery, or stupidity, not sure which—okay, definitely stupidity—I stood up, making myself an easier target. I didn’t care anymore. Last August, I committed to stop those freaks, and, at least symbolically, on this hill, I decided to make my stand. I owed it to Meg.

“Here I am, you freaks! You gonna do something about it?” I called, concealing the twitching in my right leg. I shook my fist defiantly. “Come back and fight,” I yelled, all the while hoping they wouldn’t. I realized this could be a hill to die on, literally. I lowered my fist. Stay cool. Ten more seconds passed. Nothing happened. I was still alive. They’re probably gone. “Cowards,” I said, softly.

Brilliant, beautiful stars hung frozen like diamonds, an illusion of peace shrouding an unseen menace high in the atmosphere. Out here, away from the glow of the city lights, that sky can take your breath away.

“Now what?” I asked, wondering what the freaks might do, and what might happen if we can’t warn Black Wolf.

I gazed at the stars.