The Stickmen by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

SUBJECT’S HOME SECURITY SYSTEM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN EXPERTLY
BYPASSED.
     
    PASS
    READ: SUBJECT URSLIG, JACK, H. IS FORMER FBI
SA
    END/PAGE ONE OF ONE PAGE
     
    He let the paper slipped from his fingers to
the bed sheets. He blinked, and then his old eyes were staring back
again—
    —back to that day in April almost four
decades ago—
     
    ««—»»
     
    — another one, Brigadier General
Swenson thought, roving the binoculars over the crash site. The
interminable heat beat down on his back, but by now he was numb; he
didn’t even feel it. He was looking down off the bluff…
    The contact perimeter stretched for hundreds
of yards, filled with a varying a varying degree of black crash
debris. At first he thought—he hoped —this might be a false
alarm. It might be one of the YF-12 prototypes that Northrop was
developing; they were rumored to be skinned with black titanium
sheet. But when he rolled down the zoom ring for a closer angle, he
saw that the debris appeared almost chunk-like, nothing akin to any
aircraft skin he could imagine. Most of the pieces appeared to be
no larger than baseballs.
    Nothing like New Mexico, he thought. Nothing like Brazil…
    Dozens of recovery vehicles surrounded the
site, while at least a hundred Air Force security men were sifting
out and removing the debris with rakes. There must have been
thousands of pieces.
    No, this is different. Different from the
others. A different…race…
    The debris lay strewn in a vast fan shape,
the widest end being the farthest off. The initial impact point. So
at least there was one universal invariant. The debris-line
narrowed as it approached the foot of the bluff on which Swenson
now stood.
    That’s where it stopped, not fifty yards off
below.
    That’s where the only intact part of the
craft had stopped.
    Must’ve been huge, he realized. Long.
    In front of the plume of debris, pushed
against a wave of sand, sat what could only be the forward-most
compartment of the vehicle. Swenson couldn’t be sure from this
distance, but it appeared to be cylindrical—can-shaped—and black;
he guessed approximately ten feet high, twenty-five or thirty feet
long.
    No evidence of anything that could be
likened to rivet-work, screws, or welding. No sign of any
seams.
    Then—
    Wait, he thought. Swenson rolled the
zoom down all the way, bringing the jagged can-shaped object to
maximum closeness.
    A pattern seemed to exist on the side of
this alien fuselage. Not a marking…but something functional.
    A shape.
    A trapezoid.
    Like a dark window, Swenson
thought.
     
    ««—»»
     
    Disgruntled, as he always was, Garrett
walked down Connecticut Avenue, away from Benny’s Rebel Room Tavern
and his overly sarcastic friend Craig.
    “No one believes me,” he spoke aloud to
himself. Not a good sign of stability. “Everyone thinks I’m some
kind of conspiracy crackpot. No girlfriend, no running water and no
phone. And no respect. ”
    For no apparent reason, he stopped in front
of a comic shop and found himself peering into the broad window.
Faces stared back at him: Galactus the Devourer, Superman, Doctor
Doom. Grub Girl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Caped Crusader.
They all seemed to glance back at him in hilarity. But it wasn’t
the tableau of colorful comic faces that Garrett stared so intently
at.
    It was his own reflection.
    “Everyone I know thinks I’m a flake,” he
watched his reflection’s lips tell him. He stared a full minute
more.
    “Maybe… Maybe they’re right.”
    But before this moment of self-condemnation
could continue, a loud squeal burned behind him: tires screeching.
Garrett, startled, jumped at the sudden screech; he could even
smell smoking tire rubber as he was turning around to look,
expecting to witness a serious fender bender. But no collision
followed.
    Garrett had time only to see a white van
stopped at the curb, the side-panel of which read JINKO’S PRINTING,
WE DELIVER! Then something clicked in Garrett’s