The Bone Triangle (25 page)

I passed the town and pressed on, walking about two hundred yards to the east of the main road and heading north toward the testing sites. Occasionally, I found a gully
or an outcropping of rocks where I could sit and rest. I drank half a bottle of water each time I stopped—no more. I allowed myself to become visible when crouching in these hiding spots, mindful of Jacqueline’s warning: if I stayed invisible too long, my own vision would fade.

The candy cane stayed in my pocket. It seemed to work its magic just fine from there. I wondered about it as I walked. Jacqueline had never explained how she’d come into possession of the artifact. This often seemed to be the case with rogues. They didn’t mind bragging about their powers, but when it came to the backstory, they turned shy. I suspected it was because in most cases, they’d stolen the object in question. I didn’t blame them for that. For most people, they held a powerful allure.

The walk northward up to the major test sites was a long one. It took several hours and the sun dropped behind me to touch the mountaintops of the distant Sierra Nevada. I knew Death Valley was on the other side of those peaks. Ten miles to my northeast was the infamous Area 51.

I pressed on, passing the Yucca Airstrip and several clusters of abandoned buildings. Oddly enough, I realized I was getting a sunburn. I touched my hand to the back of my neck and felt the unmistakable heat of burned skin. I shook my head, marveling at the varied physics of these rule- breaking objects. How could an invisible man be affected by the sun? I knew I could feel the heat of it on my skin, but I’d thought I was somehow shielded. I wished now that I’d let Jacqueline spray me more liberally with sunscreen.

I began to suspect, as the hours passed, that the candy cane affected the mind, not the human body. I wasn’t really invisible, but the power made it so I could not be seen by human eyes. After thinking along these lines for a time, I shook my head, rejecting my own theory. If it was a mental
effect, projected by the object, then my talisman should have prevented it from working on me. I should have been able to see Jacqueline all along.

I began to mutter to myself and debate other, more bizarre possible explanations. Perhaps the effect worked only on visible light, and therefore didn’t stop the ultraviolet rays that caused sunburns. That theory went out the window, however, when I pointed out to myself that cameras saw the invisible person normally. It was quite perplexing, as were all these objects.

Engrossed in my own thoughts, I almost walked into an old metal sign. It was yellow with black lettering. It was a warning, and the atomic symbol on it could not be mistaken. Neither could the words, which read
ENTERING RADIOACTIVE ZONE.

Sobered, I paused there and looked ahead. The sight was jaw-dropping. As far as I could see, there were craters in circular patterns. Each of them was a few hundred feet across, and I knew that underneath this ground numerous nuclear weapons had been set off. They’d stopped the aboveground tests in 1962, but the underground tests had continued for another thirty years after that. This was the place where they’d set off so many underground bombs. I lingered at the sign, wondering if I should press ahead. Finally, I summoned my courage and walked forward.

“I wouldn’t do it, if I were you,” said a voice behind me. “Not without a guide, at any rate.”

I whirled around so fast I almost tripped on my own feet. Heart pounding, I searched the horizon for the source of the voice. I wondered, for a panicked second, if someone just as invisible was following me. Except maybe…this someone could see me.

“Who are you?” I asked, deciding not to bother pretending anymore.

“Trujillo is the name. Dr. Trujillo. Who are you?”

Finally, I spotted him. He stood directly to the west of me, backlit by the red blaze of the dying sun. I shielded my eyes and squinted. I realized as I did so that he was an outline, nothing more. Was he a rogue who could alter his appearance to that of rippling shadows? But as I looked around, I realized everything around me was rippling somewhat. I hadn’t really noticed as I’d marched in the heat and dust. But now it was undeniable.

In an instant, I knew that the problem was with me. Jacqueline had said my vision would fade with time if I stayed invisible. It must be happening to me now.

“I’m Quentin,” I said, answering Trujillo’s question at last. I had a sinking feeling in my gut. He could see me, and maybe that meant they
all
could. There were probably snipers somewhere, tracking my every step. I’d been a fool. Perhaps they’d even followed me for hours, laughing and nudging one another.

“That’s quite a trick you’ve got, Quentin,” the man went on. “Even with these goggles, I can hardly see you. You’re just an outline.”

As he spoke, he walked slowly in my direction. He was still indistinct, but he seemed older than I’d first realized. His steps were almost shuffles, and his back was slightly hunched. A stained tan hat covered his head. I thought I could see his goggles now. They covered his eyes with circles of glass as black as night.

“I’m lost,” I said. “Is this the way to the highway?”

He guffawed at that. “An invisible man marches straight past the pillboxes to the interior, then tries to pretend it was all an accident? Oh please, let’s not even go there. Don’t
embarrass yourself, young man. I wasn’t born yesterday—far from it.”

The land was darkening quickly, and that was almost as alarming as being discovered by this geezer. At least, I
thought
it was the onset of night. Perhaps my vision was fading faster now and these were my final moments of sight. I tried to recall anything Jacqueline had said about the vision loss. Could it become permanent? I didn’t think she’d ever mentioned it. Perhaps, in a panic, she’d become visible the moment she’d noticed the effect. That seemed like it would be a reasonable reaction, and my mind screamed at me to do exactly that.

But I didn’t. I held on to my shadowy state. I stood there next to the warning sign while the old man shuffled closer.

“What are you thinking?” Dr. Trujillo asked me as he came closer still. I had no idea what kind of doctorate he had, but I could take a guess.

“If I should run or not.”

He laughed and wheezed. “Sane thoughts! You’re not like some of them, half-crazed and irrational. I hate that.”

I frowned. He now stood no more than ten feet from me. He was looking right at me, so I allowed myself to become fully visible.

“There you are,” Trujillo said. “I can see you more clearly now. Tell me, young man, what are you doing out here wandering about on the forgotten asshole of Planet Earth?”

“Um,” I said, deciding to tell him the truth. “I’m looking for clues about my origins, I guess. I’m also seeking answers concerning the strange events going on back in Vegas.”

“Answers? You want
answers
, do you? Well, I’ll give you some. But I’ll warn you, you might not like them.”

“Are you alone out here?” I asked.

“No. Not anymore. You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Who exactly
are
you?” I asked. I hoped maybe this time he’d say more than “Dr. Trujillo.” But I wasn’t that lucky.

“Nobody,” he said. “Not anymore.”

He walked past me and headed into the radioactive zone. I hesitated a moment, then followed him.

The craters came and went until they almost became routine. Trujillo told me about them as we walked. The biggest of the craters was called “Easy.” They all seemed to have odd names like that. I had to wonder what had gone through the minds of the people who’d set up hundreds of physics-bending tests and given them such strange names.

“Deep underneath the ground here we lit hell’s own fire at each of these spots,” Trujillo said. “We sat safely in those bunkers to the west—at least, we thought we were safe. I was here during the Baneberry Test in 1970. That didn’t go well at all!”

I wondered why deserts always seemed to be full of crazy old guys. This particular specimen had been here in the days of the tests, and from his hints I thought he might know something about the artifacts and how they’d come to be. He seemed harmless enough, and I decided to tag along and learn whatever I could from him.

He was still chuckling about the Baneberry Test as I followed him to the edge of the deep crater called Easy and stared down into the pit.

“What happened during Baneberry?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

He waved his hand vaguely to the north. “This region here is called Yucca Flat. We set off most of the bombs here, about three-quarters of them. Baneberry lit up the northern sector, over that way. It yielded only about ten kilotons—not that big. But we screwed up. It sent a plume of dust up into the atmosphere, a column of dust ten thousand feet high. About a hundred of us got a heavy dose of radiation that day.”

He chuckled as if remembering happier days. He moved around Easy crater and headed deeper into the zone. I followed apprehensively. There was residual radiation out here, I knew. The old scientist didn’t seem worried about it, but I was.

“Tell me about the objects,” I said. “Were they made by the tests? When did you first discover them?”

“There have always been weird stories out here. I was one of the skeptics. I didn’t buy into the crap about aliens and collapsing matter until recently. I was one of the last people to become a convert. Now, the evidence concerning the objects and the invaders is impossible to deny.”

He proceeded to relate to me a series of encounters with artifacts and aliens. These events had shocked him as much as my own experiences had shocked me. Apparently, the objects had been around since the early tests. But frequent incursions by nonhumans from other worlds had started only recently.

“They stopped firing off nuclear weapons out here in 1992,” he said. “But the government is still out here. Mercury
was populated up until a year ago. Area 51 is fully manned. Have you ever wondered about that? Have you wondered what we’ve been doing out here for these last few decades?”

“I think quite a number of people have been wondering about that.” I was also wondering what Trujillo was still doing out here. I’d relaxed a bit more as it became obvious he was probably some ancient hermit stuck in the past and not the emissary of some black-ops government organization.

“Rightfully so. We stopped lighting bombs, you see, but we didn’t stop experimenting. We continued working with new tricks of physics. Fission and fusion are big, loud events; people can detect those from space. But there are less flashy things you can do to an atom. Quiet, subtle tests that an installation can perform. These new tests were no less dangerous than the old ones—maybe, they were worse.”

“I’ve got a question and I imagine you are the man to ask,” I said. “Are there really alien captives out here in these facilities?”

He stopped and looked at me. “That’s classified.”

I shrugged. “I imagine most of what we’ve been talking about is classified. But I’m in the middle of it. I’ve met aliens. I was just wondering where they came from.”

“Well, they don’t fly here on a rocket, I can tell you that much! They come here the same way you’ve gone to visit them.”

“Through cracks in the universe?” I asked.

“You know about that, eh? So much for state secrets. This is probably all on TV now—I’ve been out of touch for a few years. Anyway, spacecraft are too difficult to build and too slow. It would take centuries to fly to another star system. It’s my belief all the aliens we’ve met have come through the fissures in the world. There have been more of them recently
because we’ve created new flaws in our little slice of time and space. It’s a much easier path for everyone.”

I figured he was probably right. Stepping out through a rip was much simpler than reaching escape velocity and piloting a ship over light-years, not even knowing if there was a habitable world to explore at the end of the journey.

“I was told you might be able to help me with something,” I said, “something called the Beast.” McKesson hadn’t mentioned someone like Trujillo specifically, but what the heck! A little white lie might make Trujillo feel important.

“The Beast, eh? Cute name.”

“The creature in question is anything but cute,” I said.

“Something one of the crew let loose, am I right? Several of them like pets. Have you talked to Rostok, Haggstrom, or Gutter Jim?”

I’d never heard of anyone named Haggstrom but assumed he meant another member of the Community I’d yet to meet. I almost asked about that before deciding it was more important to learn what I could about the Beast.

“This creature dwells in another place, but raids the city at will,” I said. “As far as I can tell, it is able to create small rips between our world and its place of origin. At first, it came to devour a citizen about once a day. Now, the attacks are growing more frequent, bolder, and longer in duration.”

Trujillo glanced at me and whistled appreciatively. “Doesn’t sound like any of the Community pets I’ve heard of. I would say you have a new monster on your hands—one with a mind of its own. What’s it look like?”

I described the Beast as best I could, having seen only a fraction of it.