The Stickmen (18 page)

When he looks up, he can see the moon and
all the craters and peaks. The harder he looks at it, the closer it
seems to get, until he can even sees flag and pieces of equipment
that astronauts have left up there.

He can see satellites orbiting the
earth.

He’s never afraid of the Stickmen, not here,
not when he’s with them. The Stickmen are nice to him, and they
seem to know about the bad things in Danny’s life. They know about
his father and mother, and they know how bad he feels sometimes.
They seem to be sorry for something.

The light inside the hallway would be
blinding, but Danny can see just fine. The ship is long and thin;
it’s like a white tunnel. Every so often he passes an object
mounted on the curved wall that looks like controls for something,
with blinking multi-colored lights like slits.

The further the Stickman leads Danny through
the ship, the louder the humming gets, but even though the humming
is loud, he starts to hear things in it.

Things that sound like words.

Words in his head.

When he gets to what he guesses is the back
of the ship, the bright light dies down. Now he’s in a darker room
tinged with reds and yellows, and he can see that several other
Stickmen are there too.

Then the first Stickman turns around and
leans over to face Danny.

He sees the Stickman’s face real close now,
but it’s not really a face at all. More like a stub of pale-pink
flesh. No ears, mouth, or nose, either. Only a single slit for
eyes.

The slit blinks.

Danny isn’t afraid at all when the Stickman
begins to talk and begins to tell him what to do—

—and then—

—and then the headache was gone, and Danny
felt fine. He leaned up from where he’d been laying his head
against the work table.

He remembered what the Stickmen had told
him.

They told him exactly what to do and exactly
where to go. He’d need the glove again, of course, the glove they’d
given him the first time they’d come.

Well, it was
sort of
a glove. It only
had two fingers in it, so it didn’t fit right, but—

“Danny!” his mother’s voice suddenly called
down from upstairs. “Dinner’s ready! “Be right there, Mom!”

Danny got up off the work bench stool and
went up the basement steps. He hoped they were having something
good tonight, like fish sticks or cheese dogs.

“Don’t forget to turn off the light.”

Oh, yeah,
he thought.
I always
forget that.

At the top of the landing, Danny switched
off the basement lights.

Then darkness fell on everything down below:
the stacks of old moving boxes, the sheet-covered piece of
furniture mom didn’t like any more, and all the other old basement
stuff.

The darkness fell on a couple of other
things, too, that Danny had hidden well behind the moving boxes: a
green canvas sack and an olive-drab box about the size of a
portable television set.

Embossed letters on the box read:

CONTENTS: ONE (1) (S-)A-D-M:

(SMALL) ATOMIC DEMOLITION MUNITION

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Each job required a select wardrobe, so to
speak. Right now, Sanders wore Army BDUs with the rank of full-bird
colonel, and had phony TDY orders in case he was stopped. Getting
onto the post had been uneventful; he’d simply driven on in the
HUM-V with U.S. Army plates and ID stickers from Fort Meade,
Maryland. The orders had been called in and passed.

How many men have I killed?
came the
sudden and peculiar thought. Peculiar because it was honestly the
first time the question had ever occurred to him.

The question pricked at him for several
moments. He didn’t quite know why, and then he thought of old women
on their death bed trying to remember the tally of lovers in their
lives. Eventually, though, Sanders realized that his
death
tally, by now, was probably incalculable.

Hundreds,
he knew. That was fine.

Death was relative anyway.

In his lap lay the pieces of the black
Barrett M82A2 semi-automatic sniper rifle. In his rather qualified
opinion, it was the best in the business, pure and simple. In his
time, Sanders had used them all: the H&Ks, the
Steyr-Mannlichers, the Marine M40 variants. But this put them all
to shame. It was the only long-range sniper rifle that fired
absolutely flat every time.

Zero lift and fall at half a mile.

Made in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the long
ugly weapon housed a fat eleven-round snap-clip and chambered a
specialized .50-caliber semi-jacketed round loaded with more RDX
explosive propellent than filled a typical Mark IV hand grenade.
The Bausch & Lomb scope only made death more of a certainty.
The sodium paste sealed in the projectile’s flattened tip would
explode upon impact. With a weapon like this, Sanders could
definitely reach out and touch someone.

He assembled the weapon in a matter of
moments, then inserted the magazine, and jacked back the charging
handle with a loud, metallic
CLACK!

Sanders shouldered the weapon; when he did
so, the twenty-six-pound rifle became an integral part of his
anatomy, an extra arm. He brought his cheek to the right side of
the stock, lined up his sight, then began to rove the target
area.

He flicked off the manual safety on the
other side of the receiver, then began to lay the reticle’s
crosshairs on the primary target’s head.

This was one kill Sanders definitely needed
to add to his tally, this writer named Harlan Garrett.

««—»»

Ubel bummed one of Garrett’s cigarettes. “I
quit a couple of years ago…but I guess now is a decent time to
start up again.”

Garret lit the guy’s smoke for him. “You
were saying?”

“It was some osmotic or telepathic mode that
they used to communicate to Swenson. They didn’t have voices, not
like we have; it was more like a sound they projected into his
head. It was almost as if they’d selectively jimmied his memory; he
knew he’d been abducted, but he could never remember how. And for a
short time after the abduction, they maintained some kind of mental
contact with him. It brought on incredible headaches, but he was
certain they were communicating with him, gicing him vital
information. That’s why they abducted him in the first place. To
tell him.”

“To tell him what?” Garrett asked.

“The first thing they told him was that the
first ship crashed because of a wavelength flux. It’s some kind of
gauss-matter propulsion system that’s not compatible with the
earth’s EM field. That first vehicle stayed past the flux margin,
so their fuel elements lost power—”

Garrett had read about the theories in
numerous physics books. “—causing an overload of some sort of
buffer system. I’ve know all about the gauss-matter hypotheses. It
would be like yanking nuclear fuel rods out of a graphite
absorption block. The eventual result would be an explosion.”

“That’s the way Swenson figured it, and we
all agreed. It was the only thing that made sense. But when they
abducted the General, they also told him that they’d be returning
sometime in the future, and that if we interfered with that return,
some very cataclysmic things could happen. So that’s why we formed
our own group. Swenson jinked all the paperwork, and lied to eight
Presidents. He didn’t trust the government to take him seriously,
and neither did we.”

Garrett didn’t quite get it. “What do you
mean? He jinked
what
paperwork?”

“General Swenson never reported his own
abduction,” Ubel revealed. “Not to the members of his own Aerial
Intelligence Command, not to anyone else in the government or
Defense Department, and after that he produced
counterfeit
records that claimed the Nellis bodies were transferred to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Hanger 1166, part of the Air Force
Foreign Technology Division. Unfortunately, not too long ago, our
good friend Sanders went over, with everything he knew. He didn’t
know everything, mind you, but he knew enough. He blew the whistle
on us to someone at NSC or maybe even the executive branch, so now
he’s working for them. Why? Because no one but Swenson, Urslig, and
I ever knew where the Nellis skeletons are actually being
stored.”

The answer bloomed in Garret’s mind like an
ugly hot-house flower. “It’s here, right? Swenson said as much.
You’ve got those skeletons hidden somewhere on this post, haven’t
you?”

“Um-hmm. And right now, no one in the world
knows that except for you, me, and Sanders.” Ubel looked right at
Garrett. “But only
I
know
exactly
where.”

“I see.”

“That’s how Swenson wanted it. Only one guy
in the group could ever know the exact location of the bodies. Me.
Because I’m assigned here, I have the greatest control. The
Edgewood Reservation occupies more land that most major cities.
They could dig out here for years and never find it. They could
tear up every building, warehouse, and vault on this post and
never
find the spot.”

Garrett rubbed a hand across his five
o’clock shadow. “It’s in your best interest to tell me, you know
that. The rest of the group is dead—you’re the only one left. You
don’t have to know how to clone sheep to figure out that you’re on
Sanders’ list too. Only he won’t kill you—not until you give him
the information. And I have a pretty good feeling that a guy like
Sanders has some foolproof ways of making people talk. You’re next,
Mr. Ubel. I can guarantee it.”

“I know that,” Ubel said. “But I’m not sure
what to do. How do I know I can trust you?”

“For God’s sake, man. You trusted Swenson,
didn’t you? Swenson
sent
me to find you.”

“Or so you say.”

Garrett grit his teeth in frustration.
“What? I’m making it up to trick you? I
stole
the files and
that arm from Swenson? Then why would I come here?”

“To get the location from me,” Ubel
said.

“All right.” Garrett pulled back his jacket,
showing the 9mm Sig pistol stuck in his pants. “If I was working
for the other side, I’d have this gun to your head right now,
right? I’d be shooting your kneecaps off to give up the exact
location.”

Ubel eyed Garrett behind a hint of fear.

Garrett removed the pistol and cocked it.
“Isn’t that what I’d be doing? First your kneecaps, then your
elbows, then your hips and your shins?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess you would.”

Garrett handed the pistol to Ubel. “So if
you can’t trust
me,
buddy, you can’t trust
anyone.
”

Ubel hefted Garrett’s gun, looked at it. “I
guess you’ve made your point.” Then he relaxed in the driver’s
seat. “Area November, Depot 12,” he revealed. “It’s not on the base
grid map, it never has been. I’ve got the directions and the lock
combinations stashed back at my barracks. There’re also some
documents stashed behind the refrigerator. So if I don’t make
it—you’ve got to go to my place and get the stuff.”

“Area November, Depot 12,” Garrett recited,
relieved. “But what about the kid, Danny Vander? That’s another
part that I can’t figure. Is he the one who stole the ADM?”

“We have to assume so. There’s no other
explanation.”

“But how is that possible? The ADM weighs
three or four times more than he does. He’s just a little kid.”

“He’s a little kid being aided and abetted
by extraterrestrial lifeforms,” Ubel reminded.” He returned
Garrett’s pistol. “In case I get waxed, you have to do everything
you can to ensure that the kid is allowed to do what he sets out to
do. Even if it means killing Army personnel. If Danny Vander is not
allowed to set off that ADM at exactly the right time, then…
Christ, I don’t know
what
will happen. Who knows what those
things might do in retaliation?”

Now Garret’s confusion crested. “You’re
asking me to
help
somebody set off a
nuclear
weapon?
”

“That’s right,” Ubel affirmed. “This isn’t
Dr. Strangelove. That ADM only has a yield of half a kiloton. The
safe-distance demarcation is only 2000 meters, and the depot is
underground. There isn’t even any fallout, it’s so low-yield. We
have to get that kid to Depot 12 on time. And the time is
tonight.”

Garrett nearly spat out his cigarette.
“Tonight!”

“Yep. Tonight.”

“But why?” Garrett insisted. “Why to we have
to ensure the detonation of an ADM? What the hell is so damned
important about blowing up a bunch of
skeletons
?”

Ubel’s face was beginning to shadow in the
early dusk. “Well, see, that’s the catch,” he said. “They’re
not
skeletons.”

««—»»

The actual morgue suite wasn’t quite what
Lynn expected. High fluorescent fixtures veiled her in flat white
light. Plain white-tile walls, a drain in the floor, and only one
autopsy table. A rush of sudden fumes in the air chafed her sinuses
and watered her eyes.

“The fixation fluids are tough if you’re not
used to them,” Jessica said, getting into her autopsy greens. “But
don’t worry, in a few minutes the fumes will kill enough brain
receptors that you won’t notice it anymore.”

“What!”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “It’s a
joke
. I was
joking.
”

“Oh.”

Behind her stood a flank of stainless-steel
cabinets, and some shelves full of equipment. A pan scale depended
from the ceiling directly over the table, like an odd hanging
flowerpot. Some other sort of apparatus was mounted on the ceiling
too, folded up on hinged, pivoting arms. Lynn couldn’t imagine what
it was.

Jessica snapped on a pair of latex gloves,
then lay the subject of her exam in the middle of the guttered,
rulered, height-adjustable table. She turned on a small tape
recorder.