Chris Boren decided to take a stand, and along this barren strip of tarmac in the Black Rock Desert, a semi-arid region of lava beds and alkali flats situated in a silt play a 100 miles north of Reno, Nevada, was where he knew it was meant to be.
It was close to noon and the scorching July air wasn’t going to support him for long, nor was his Chevy pickup whose air conditioner died last year along with his ex-wife and only uncle. It had been a hard year for the sixty-four-year-old retired carpenter, but on this day, at this very hour and at this very certain spot, he felt he had a chance to make a difference.
Maybe even have a chance at redemption.
“Mother fuckers, here I am and I’m not moving,” he said to no one in particular, tucked his shirt into his jeans, brushed back long coils of unkempt grey hair with his fingers, and watched the eighteen-wheeler track a storm of dust down from the barren hills in the distance.
He shifted about, trying to move most of his weight over his right leg, the survivor of a rodeo accident back when he was young and dumb and wasn’t worn thin by booze and poor judgment.
“Abby’s Beef & Poultry?” he said, anxiously squinting the large truck into view.
Chris had known for months, and little else in the last few weeks when the dreams started to rob him of what sanity remained. With fractured sleep and less food, the struggle climaxed the previous evening when he found himself sitting on the edge of his bed watching a television that hadn’t been turned on in days.
And yet, it was there. He could see them clearly, grasped their malicious intent and why he was chosen to intercede, and understood the opportunity and risk for what it was.
The great black beast started slowing down more than a mile out from where he was standing and finally came to a full stop less than a hundred feet away.
The license plate was battered beyond recognition, a turn of words that perfectly described his life. The sides of Abby’s Beef & Poultry were scored with faded markings, making ownership and registration, its gross and net weight, and other visible signs of identification indecipherable.
“I said I ain’t movin, and I ain’t.”
A blast of high-pitched air shattered the desert calm as the truck’s horn threatened all in its path. That single warning was followed by a salvo of three more unearthly howls.
“That ain’t going to work either.”
The shotgun side door of the cab cracked open, instantly reminding Chris that he had left his shotgun and half a box of 12-gauge shells in the pickup.
How the hell do you forget something like that? “Damnation,” he moaned.
Both cab doors swung wide, followed by apparitions that so closely resembled human forms they would easily fool even the most alert. He had heard they could assume, if even imperfectly, many forms or transition back into their more natural state of nearly smooth, featureless, faint-green bodies.
Two middle-aged men, dressed much as he was and slightly overweight, moved away from the truck and toward him. Both human replicants were under six feet and walked in a way that was quickly peculiar, as though the vigor of their steps should have accounted for more distance but, in this dimension, somehow didn’t.
A few dozen yards out they both stopped. Neither was carrying a weapon, though Chris suspected there might be others, more openly aggressive forms, secreted in the cab or in the body of the truck.
“Was wondering when you would show up,” Chris said, his voice resonating with righteous confidence.
They stood like department store mannequins, as if they didn’t understand him, or were deciding if he was an inconvenience or threat.
But it was the eyes that gave them away. He spotted that immediately. They were black, deadened, lifeless, like sharks he had seen on the History Channel. The authorities hadn’t mentioned that fact. Maybe no one knew and he was the first to see them transitioning between organic “states.”
“What do you want?”
Chris heard the words, or thought what he heard were those words, though neither of their mouths moved. The tone was stiff and artificial.
He should have remembered the shotgun, and a run for the pickup with legs that weren’t young enough to make up that distance before they would be on to him wasn’t much of an option.
“What do you want?”
“I’m an agent with the Department of Transportation,” Chris said, yanked out his wallet and flipped it open and closed so quickly that, from as far away as they were, there was no possibility they could question his authority, actually a trick he had seen on a Netflix film a few years back. “I’ve already phoned in that you were coming, so my guess is a patrol chopper is on its way.”
Before he could put his wallet away, another apparition stepped from the cab and slowly moved to the front of the truck. This one was at least a foot taller and fifty or more pounds heavier. The afternoon sun shined off its forehead like a threatening beacon, a warning that took Chris by surprise.
“Come to the truck and see,” it said as if it were standing next to Chris. The voice was more human, unsettling so.
“Where is Abby’s Beef & Poultry? There is no address on your vehicle. That’s a violation of Highway Code 650-31C and punishable by a serious fine.”
“Come to the truck and see for yourself.”
This time the voice was less inviting than demanding, which brought Chris Boren to an intersect of uncertainty. He could feel his resolve melt away, and the fears and doubts that had plagued him all his life quickly filled in those familiar, empty spaces.
The larger creature removed a small metallic object from his pocket. It looked like a weapon, but it didn’t really matter. In Chris’ dreams there was a confrontation, and the aliens finally gave way to his resolve and fell back and returned to their planet.
In his dreams, he had faced the threat, brought the vanguard of the invasion to a standstill, and saved earth from a future of brutal domination.
In his dreams he had become the hero he always wanted to be.
Time passed, as did his resolve, slowly and predictability melting like a cube of ice in the desert of his future.
He had put himself in harm’s way and when the silence broke, their leader, or these two underlings, would make quick work of his arrogance.
Whatever panicked hell he was on the verge of falling into was interrupted by a familiar, though more often than not, rarely welcome wail.
Chris turned and spotted a police cruiser from Townsend Falls, Nevada, racing, lights spinning and siren threatening, to his rescue. At first he was relieved, then realized that the two officers who stepped from the squad car were themselves in grave danger. He had to warn them. He had to save their lives if they were going to save his.
He started to walk, then broke into a slow, limping trot as they stood, poised, hands already on the butt of their pistols.
“Officer, officers, you have to be careful. There is something strange going on with these guys and whatever’s in their trailer.”
Both the cops were big, threatening in their silent determination. Still, these were aliens and would probably die to complete their mission. By the time he caught his breath, one of the officers calmly opened the rear door of the cruiser and Chris Boren eagerly jumped in.
“Thank, fucking, God,” he said, and slumped into the back seat of the air-conditioned car, his heart pounding away, a reminder of how close he had come to losing his life, or worse.
Catching his breath and redeeming his courage, he finally focused on the cops who had already reached the two lead aliens. There had to be two or three yards between the pairs, as though the cops were anticipating the worst.
The larger alien was nowhere in sight.
Chris expected the tongues of each alien to slip from their mouths and strangle the officers until they were squirming on the ground, their last gasp only moments away, while the sun witnessed another failed struggle for survival.
As though there was nothing left to discuss, the two aliens suddenly turned and started toward the truck. The two police officers waited patiently, then one opened a channel on his phone and spoke for a few seconds while the truck’s engine kicked in, coughing out a thick belch of black diesel smoke.
Chris swept the sweat from his eyes. “You did it, old man, you stopped the fuckers in their tracks. You finally got something right.”
One officer pulled a metallic device from his pocket, jammed his thumb down on what appeared to be a small red button, and the back doors of the squad car soundly locked shut.
Chris gave himself up to the cold air swirling around him, and watched the two officers move back to their cruiser, walking in a way that was quickly peculiar, as though the vigor of their steps should have accounted for more distance but, in this dimension, somehow didn’t.
“Crap,” he moaned and slumped down when he realized he had shit himself. “Now what the fuck do I do?”
Author bio:
Arthur Davis is a management consultant who has had over ninety tales of original fiction, and several dozen as reprints, published. He was featured in a single author anthology, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, received the Write Well Award and, twice nominated, received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017.
Photo by Ibu Photographer on Unsplash