SNAFU: Future Warfare

Shatner Rules Weston Ochse

I shot Ohirra in the faceplate eight times, then spun and shot Sula in his faceplate eight more. They were too stunned to move as I drew my harmonic blade. Stranz was bringing out his minigun to fire at me in self-defense. I swung with all my power and hewed down through the gun with the blade. Then I brought the blade back up, severing Stranz’s right arm just above the elbow, bisecting the sergeant’s stripes for which he’d been so proud. Blood shot out of the arm covering Sula’s torso like a scene out of a Kurosawa samurai film.

Stranz screamed.

Sula screamed.

I screamed.

We all screamed for ice cream.

I shot up in my bunk, sweating, eyes searching for any threat, wondering where I was, ready to kill anything that moved. My vision was hazy. I wiped at my eyes and they came away wet. I felt the misery of one who couldn’t hold their bladder… I couldn’t hold my emotions. I wondered how long I’d been crying in my sleep.

Then I noticed a girl staring at me. She sat on the bunk next to mine. Both of her flip-flopped feet were on the floor. Her right hand rested on the bed. The left hand and left arm were wherever missing limbs go when they die. She wore a Scooby Doo T-shirt with Scrappy Doo dancing on the cover. That damned dog ruined the franchise, of that you could be sure. She wore braces, although the wires were gone from them since the invasion. It was just there was no one to remove the rest of the metal. No dentists. No orthodontists. No one. Her round-cheeked face held old acne scars, but they did little to dissuade an observer that she would have been beautiful if she ever learned again how to smile. A pirate’s patch was over the place where her left eye used to be. Her right eye remained, and that single Japanese eye held me as she stared.

Suzie.

Suzie Yakihama.

I took her to see Matrix Reloaded at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. We’d messed around in the hand and feet prints. We’d laughed at how small William Shatner’s feet were and created a theme that would carry us through many a day. WWWSD. When posed with a difficult situation, we’d ask ourselves What Would William Shatner Do, channeling the overly-dramatic Captain of the Starship Enterprise, and we’d act it out, right there, wherever we were.

Like the time at McDonalds when they’d run out of stuff to make McMuffins. WWWSD and Suzie had slow-moed a performance where she commanded Sulu to put phasers on stun and prepare to fire. The look on the clerk’s face had been priceless.

Or the time we were at Wal-Mart and this fat guy fell off an electric cart and seven innocent bystanders were epically failing getting him back on, much to the sad hilarity of anyone who watched. WWWSD and Suzie slow-moed into the area and loudly commanded Scotty to set the tractor beams on full, then using her hands made a motion like she was pulling the fat guy up at the exact moment the seven got their act together and righted the man and his cart.

Or the time we scandalously made out at the back of a Nickleback concert until security came, and then WWWSD and Suzie slow-moed a comment to the clueless officers about how they wouldn’t kick us out if she were a green woman, because no man can deny a green woman her love.

Yeah. That was Suzie.

Then.

But not now.

Definitely not now.

“Was it Bosnia again?” she asked, voice flat, a dead-eyed stare.

A flash of a mass grave, bodies coated with lye, women’s faces stoved in, their dresses up around their waists, flash-banged through my mind.

When I recovered, I said, “Stranz,” then after a moment added, “the arm.”

She continued to stare at me, or through me, whichever, it really didn’t matter because you couldn’t tell. “That’s a bad one.” She lifted her left shoulder where no arm was attached. “I suppose I can relate.”

Progress! When I’d first arrived and mentioned what I’d done it had set her into a bout of depression that lasted days. Now this… this was almost, dare I think it, a normal reaction.

She reached over and grabbed a towel from the foot of my bunk and tossed it to me.

I caught it and wiped my face and neck. My shirt was drenched with sweat. I needed a shower. After a moment, I realized she hadn’t moved.

“What is it?”

“Mother. She wants to see you ASAP.”

“Know what it’s about?”

“Someone reported an alien presence.”

“Did they say where?”

“Malibu Hills. They said this one was different.”

That didn’t make any sense. There wasn’t anything up there. Just hills and abandoned homes. Unless…

I reminded myself of the black kudzu that produced the zombie spore. Was this another terraformed creation that was the next round in the Hey let’s fuck up all the humans game? I wasn’t working for OMBRA anymore, but I was working for those I loved. Suzie. Mother. The Family.

“Tell her I’ll get ready to do a recon after I get cleaned up and get something to eat.”

She stood, turned, and began walking away. “You tell her. And tell her that I’m going with you.”

I watched her, wondering for the thousandth time what her story was. What had happened to change her so much? Even I was able to function at a high level even though my mind was fractured like a kaleidoscope that had been crushed by a steamroller.

“Hey!” I called after her.

She stopped, then turned, so I could only see her right eye.

“What?”

“What would William Shatner do?”

She hesitated and in that hesitation I thought she might actually say something, but then she merely shrugged, turned, and left me to my own demons.

We were all locked in prison cells when the invasion came. The Cray came down on every major city, riding their hives — organic ships that became their homes once landed. When they swarmed free, they showed their true power. Already apex predators with their claws, fangs, and joint spikes, they had the bonus of having the biological capacity to produce localized EMPs. Planes fell from the sky as everything broke down. The power grid fried. Life as we knew it ceased to exist. The Cray did everything the masters organized them for, hurling us back into a modern Stone Age, leaving us wondering if we’d ever return to the land of reality television, blockbuster Hollywood X-Men movies, and fast food restaurants promising 2000 calorie cheese burgers.

Only OMBRA was prepared, finding us, hiding us, making us learn lessons from science fiction stories and movies until finally they let us free of our cells. Then they gave us the EXO — the Electromagnetic Faraday Xeno-combat Suit. It not only protected us from the EMP, but allowed us to fight the Cray, killing them first at Kilimanjaro, then Bruges, then Rio de Janeiro.

Soon we were fighting them on our own terms.

Soon we were winning.

Then the other intergalactic shoe dropped.

The Cray had been used to soften us up. Next came terraforming, giant vines reducing our cities to dust. Among this alien flora came a fungus similar but far worse than ophiocordyceps unilateralis that allowed the masters the ability to terraform our minds, turning us into zombies, listless, unmoving, except to infect others. That’s how the master controlled me, made me attack my own squad, dismembering one, and almost killing the others.

They excused my actions because I was under the influence of the masters. Plus, how could I be responsible? After all, I had PTSD. But of course, all of us had PTSD. All of OMBRA. It’s why they chose us. We were exactly what they wanted because as broken as we were on the inside from everything we’d seen and done in the name of war, the shattered pathways of our minds could possibly stand in the way of ultimate alien domination. If we couldn’t navigate our helter skelter brains, then how could it be possible for an alien species to do so?

“She can’t come with you.”

My mind snapped back to the present.

“What? Sorry.”

Mother sat in her green Lazy Boy recliner. She wore a blue and yellow housecoat and fluffy kitten slippers on her feet. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her face was stern, yet matronly. “She can’t come with you. She’s still on suicide watch.”

Even after all this time, whenever I looked at her, I couldn’t help but think of that old Hollywood actor, Kathy Bates — the one best known for sawing off James Caan’s foot in that Stephen King film all the while shouting I am your biggest fan. They could have been twins… or for all I know, she could have been her, I just never had the balls to ask. That was something about Mother. You couldn’t help but act different around her. She was like your real mother, a drill sergeant, and a swami all rolled up into one unassuming yet unapproachable person who preferred housecoats, loved cats, and drank tea.

“She wants to come.” I gestured with my right hand vaguely at everything. “She has no purpose here other than to be your go and fetch it. I think she wants a purpose. I for one would like to see if I can’t help her snap out of it.”

“There’s no snapping out of what she’s seen,” Black Johnson said. He was the camp counselor and I’d known for some time that Suzie had opened up to him. We called him Black Johnson because he insisted on it. There was a White Johnson, but we called him Scott.

“Bad choice of words, but you know what I mean. Suzie and I have history. We were a thing before the invasion.”

“And why was it you broke up?” Black Johnson asked as if to make a point.

“Too many deployments. I couldn’t be there for her emotionally or physically.”

“And now you can be there for her. Emotionally? Do you know what she believes?” he pressed.

“There’s no reason two broken people can’t come together and figure out a way to fix themselves. Think of us like puzzle pieces, all edges and curves and stuff. Maybe, given enough time, we can figure out how to go together, and in the figuring out, become something better, different.”

“That sounds like a fantasy I once heard in a movie,” Black Johnson said.

I turned to him. In his fifties. Bald head. Thin as a rake. “I wasn’t talking to you, BJ.”

He smiled triumphantly and sat back, crossing his arms. He beamed as if he’d just won a bet.

“Easy, Benji,” Mother said — the only person on the planet allowed to call me that. “He’s just concerned like we all are.”

I lowered my voice. “Listen, she’s fit. She runs around the compound all the goddamn time.”

Mother looked at me and frowned.

“I mean all the time,” I corrected. “She’s fit. She even wants to go. I can get us into the Malibu Hills and back out in no time at all.”

“But her arm,” BJ began.

“What about it? You going to tell her she can’t go because she has missing pieces? That she’s less of a person?” Now it was my turn to beam. “She needs to figure out the hard way that she can find ways around what’s missing and use what she has.”

When Mother nodded, I knew I had her and there wasn’t a single thing BJ could do. He saw it as well, and his triumph dimmed a bit. She called out to Franklin who stood at the door to the room. “Bring Junebug in. I want Benji to talk to her.”

A moment later, a young woman about my age joined us. Dressed in a summer dress, bare feet, windblown blonde hair, freckles dotting her nose, she said everything she knew, which was virtually nothing.

When she was done, I asked, “Who told you?”

When she spoke, it was with a bright drawl. “Fredericks of Hollywood. He’s a peddler. Rims the radioactive zone and grabs things he thinks might be of value. Entertainment goods mostly. DVDs. Books. That sort of thing.”

“Why did he tell you? Are you a couple?”

She glanced shyly at Mother.

That was the answer I’d expected.

“Does he have any reason to lie to you?” I asked.

She shook her head and toed the carpet with her left foot. “I mean, I know he has girls everywhere, but he’s sweet on me and he’s always nice to me.”

“Is that where you got that dress? Fredericks of Hollywood?”

She nodded.

“And how did it come up? I mean, it’s not something one would normally share.”

“I was talking about the beach and how I missed it. How I missed the feel of those little rocks in the sand between my toes, cold and slippery with water. He then warned me and said to stay away from the Malibu Hills. He said even he doesn’t go up there because there’s some sort of new alien that a bunch of people are talking about.”

I nodded, then turned to Mother. “I got what I needed. We’ll leave tonight.”

I moved to leave, but she stopped me by lifting her hand an inch from her lap.

“Benji?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“Be careful.”

“Yes, Mother,” I said, then I stepped out of the building to where Suzi waited. I nodded as I passed her. “You can come,” I said.

Had I not been looking for it, I would have missed it, but her right hand made a fist and moved ever so gently into what could have only been the world’s smallest fist pump.

“We leave at ten tonight,” I called after her. I had no idea if she’d heard me. I supposed I’d find that out if she showed up and was ready.

The camp was better organized than many forward operating bases I’d seen. There was a place for everything — from the armory, to the barracks, to the garage, to the command and control building. The garrison was run by a retired sergeant major named Scott Marshall, who made everything run as smoothly as could be expected at the end of the world. They’d assigned me to recon, because it let me be alone most of the time and it was something I was good at. Being an eleven bang bang in the Army was my own charm school. Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq were my finishing schools. The invasion was my master’s thesis.

There were six of us recon specialists. There were also the scroungers who were always out searching for items we could use, usually carrying long lists of things for which we were desperate. The welcomers handled new personnel. The wrenchies took care of our sparse motor pool. We even had a police department run by a former highway patrolman named Venditto.

“Hey, wait up,” came a voice from behind me.

I turned, already recognizing the voice, dreading what he was about to say.

Crefloe Johnson skittered to a stop. All bone and gristle he couldn’t have weighed more than a buck forty. He’d been a crack addict in recovery when the invasion happened. That his recovery unit had been in Palm Springs was why he’d never died. Like all crack addicts with street cred, he’d kept his ears and eyes open, watching as some folks were helped and others weren’t. He’d eventually found his way to Mother where he’d promised her he’d long ago gone straight and would excel at being a scrounger. Which he was, but I didn’t believe for a second that he didn’t use his time away from the Family to lay up somewhere stoned out of his mind. He also had the strangest of appearances. He had vitiligo, which can throw a person off when they first see him. The skin across his eyes had lost its pigmentation making him look like a reverse raccoon. Other white spots dotted his chin and neck. Most of his arms and fingers were white with streaks and dots of his original pigmentation. Overall, he had more of a spotted-man appearance.

“Black Johnson sent me,” he said, speaking addict fast.

Which is what I’d figured. Although not related, BJ used Crefloe as his eyes and ears. I had no doubt my every move from here on out would be reported back.

“Is that supposed to impress me?” I made it clear I wasn’t happy.

“Whoa there, Nelly. Cref ain’t your enemy. I’m just doing what I’m told, just same as you. His majesty wants me to help and I think I can. I’ve been to that area scrounging and know some of the back ways in.”

“Did you ever see any strange aliens when you were there?” I asked.

“No sir,” he shook his head fast and hard. “No sir. Not even a little alien. No aliens for Cref. Just the homes of the rich and famous.” He leaned in like we were on a street corner. “Know whose house I scrounged? Barbara Streisand’s. Do you know how much gold she had in that place? Gold tub. Gold shower. Fucking gold refrigerator door. Gave me a work out opening and closing it. It’s a crying shame that gold ain’t worth nothing any more. Was a time I could get rich off something like that.” His words had tumbled out so fast, it took a second after he finished for my mind to catch up.

I thought about telling him to go pound sand. Part of me said I should, but another part of me, the part that knew Black Johnson would find a way to stop the mission if I did, made me hold that thought. Instead, I said, “We’re leaving at ten tonight.”

He almost leaped for joy, a vicious smile raking his face. “Thank you. Thank you. Ten tonight. Ten tonight. I’ll be there with bells.” When he saw my face, he shook his head. “No. Scratch that. No bells. Bells bad for recon. I’ll be there but wearing no bells. That good, Mase?”

No one had ever called me Mase, but as long as it wasn’t Benji, I’d let it slide. I nodded.

Crefloe bounced away like Tigger on his way to a party.

I thought about calling after him, but instead merely shook my head and went to find the chief of the scroungers. They were also the ones who controlled the maps. First, I’d need to get a map and plot primary and secondary routes. Then I’d have to go to supply and draw enough for all three of us to survive a six-day recon. My plan was three days there and three days back. Within a week we’d know what was up there or if it wasn’t anything more than a ploy from a man named Fredericks of Hollywood to get a free frolic under Junebug’s skirts.

We met by the back gate. Suzie showed first, carrying a pink Hello Kitty pack. Crefloe arrived wearing all black, including black Nike basketball shoes. I was glad to see that his pack was a blacked-out military mollied pack. At least he knew how to travel. Now to see what was inside them. I had both empty their packs.

Suzie carried toiletries and blankets. She also had a seven-inch gravity knife. Interesting. But no food. No other weapons. No first aid kit.

Crefloe carried four days’ worth of rations. Five gallons of water. A head lamp and a week’s worth of spare batteries. He also had two changes of clothes, one of which was an LA pimp version of what John Travolta might have worn had Saturday Night Fever taken place in Compton, not New Jersey. When I held it up, Crefloe smiled weakly and murmured something about a disguise. I noted he also carried a double holster with Browning 9mm pistols and had ten magazines. Finally, came a book filled with notes and maps, something he’d probably been working on since he’d first started scrounging. This I handed back to him with respect.

I tossed Suzie’s pack aside and brought forth one I’d already made for her. I added her toiletries and changes of clothes to this, as well as her knife. I also handed her a shoulder holster with a 9mm Sig Saur pistol and eight full magazines.

For Crefloe, I removed his disguise and replaced it with a field medic kit.

He didn’t seem too happy, but said nothing.

Neither did Suzie, watching the process with all the interest as if it were paint drying.

Once everyone had their packs ready and adjusted on their backs, I went around, checking for metal on metal, taping when I found them. Being in the forest alone was one thing. The idea was for us to get to our target area, conduct recon, and return with no one ever realizing we were there. Silence would be our best friend. Silence and speed.

Content with the way the load was distributed and our chances of stealth, I shouldered my pack, checked my nine on my hip, slung my M4 around my neck, and led them out the gate. After about a mile, I led them off the road, then had them kneel.

“I’m only going to say this once. Suzie, you wanted to come. Crefloe, you were told to come. But I can send each of you back in a heartbeat if I feel your behavior or actions will compromise the mission. We’ve been told there is some sort of new alien threat. We’re going to get to the bottom of it, then return with information to Mother. No heroics. No taking chances. Everyone is to follow my orders to the letter. Do you both understand?”

Crefloe licked his lips and nodded hastily.

Suzie stared at the ground, eye unblinking.

I cleared my throat and the effect startled her.

She nodded. “Yes. Sure.”

I stared at her and wondered for the thousandth time what had happened to her. I was hoping this trip would be a breakthrough. That something would happen to get her to open up. I could only hope.

Crefloe and I did a radio check with our walkies, then I stood, hand signaled Crefloe to move forward and take point, then had Suzie walk ahead of me.

Both Crefloe and I had Geiger counters and watched them closely. We would have liked to use the 210, but there were parts that were flooded with deadly radiation from where the Hollywood Hive had blown. Although most of the blast had been protected inside the hive, enough radiation had leaked out to cause pockets and waves of invisible death. We’d seen the occasional refugee try and get into the camp, radiation sores on their skin indicating they were in the final stages of radiation death. We didn’t want to share the same fate. So we had to head north, hugging the national forest, taking side roads through empty communities. Mostly empty. Here and there I noted a house barricaded, wood and roof tin nailed over the inside of ground-floor windows. We left them be.

The dog packs were the worst. Left to their own accord and without anyone to make them pets, they reverted to their precursors, making them dangerous enough that I’d seen packs of them take down an armed band of scroungers. When I could, I avoided them. I hated shooting dogs. So when he heard even the smallest bark, we moved in the opposite direction.

We trekked without incident through Bradbury, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, and Kinneola Mesa, until the sky began to lighten. I had Crefloe find us a hide spot. Not that we wouldn’t move during the day, it was just that a lot of things came out at dawn and I wanted to make sure we had a hide so we could see exactly what those things were. We ended up in a copse of trees on the edge of what the map read as Rocking Horse Ranch.

We heard an inhuman scream coming from the direction of Los Angeles about noon, but nothing else.

We left mid-afternoon, skirting the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I remembered when we’d last been here with Sandi, Phil and Dupree. They’d all been alive back then. I closed my eyes and smelled burning flesh as Phil set fire to the infected children, their skin popping, hair sizzling. They hadn’t screamed. They hadn’t even run away. They were infected by the spore and had no control over their bodies. But they could still feel the pain. They could still see themselves engulfed in flame.

We were forced to stop because I found I couldn’t move.

Crefloe watched over me as I lay on the asphalt, hugging my shoulders, reliving my own time with the spore, and how it had grabbed my soul by the throat and not let go. Then I was burning, burning, burning, my own skin popping, my own hair sizzling, feeling every microsecond of pain, but unable to release it. My insides churned until they were emptied on the street.

An hour later found me stripping my clothes and cleaning myself.

Suzie watched me the entire time, like I was a rare insect who was sometimes a dragonfly and sometimes a pill bug.

Crefloe didn’t say anything so neither did I. For all I knew, he had his own set of symptoms and episodes.

Once I was ready, I moved out, and they followed.

We’d traveled about two miles when I heard the screams. Someone, somewhere close, was dying a horrible death.

Crefloe gave me a look and I nodded. He took off, running forward, a pistol in his hand, carried low and pointed to the ground. He was gone two minutes before he squelched the walkie.

“What’s going on?” I asked

“Cray. Someone winged one and they’re trying to take it out.”

“And the scream?”

“These fools are going to get themselves killed.”

I glanced at the sky. Where there was one, there were usually more. Drones had been outside and away from the hive when I’d blown it, killing their queen and leveling their home. Without it… without her… they became much more aggressive, killing anything that moved. Some of them had gone crazy as well. If they had a Cray, it was definitely dangerous.

“What do you want to do?” Crefloe asked.

I glanced at Suzie, who merely stared blankly at the horizon.

“I suppose we should be Samaritans.”

“You say that now,” he said. “Wait until you’re seeing what I see.”

Two minutes later, I was standing beside him in the shadow of a long-ago abandoned eighteen wheeler. There were six of them, all dressed like they’d stepped off the set of a medieval movie. One was on the ground, bleeding out, while another frantically tried to staunch the flow of blood. The four remaining — all dressed in either chainmail or hard metal armor like I’d seen knights wear in film — held long poles with axes on the end, shoving them menacingly into the face of a Cray whose leg had been trapped by what could only be a metallic-toothed bear trap.

“Knights of the Holy Cray,” I murmured.

The Cray had a torn and bloody wing. Standing nine feet tall, it looked vaguely like a praying mantis, if mantids had deadly elbow and knee spikes, razor-sharp talons that could rip through flesh like a hot knife through butter, fanged mandibles, and the ability to self-generate an EMP pulse that destroyed any electronics within their vicinity. That final weapon was the reason Earth hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight. So I guess it only made sense there’d be knights from the middle ages fighting the beast as if it were a dragon from yore.

“SCA,” Crefloe said. When he saw my confusion, he added, “Society for Creative Anachronism. Group of nerds who got together to pretend they were knights and bards and ladies and shit like that. No self-respecting brother would get anywhere near that nerd shit, but I was in lock up with this guy once who’d gotten popped for selling X at a jousting tournament.” When he saw my raised eyebrows, he added, “I shit you not, a certified for reals jousting tournament.”

Now the scene was starting to make sense. Two of the men wore chain mail and had what appeared to be Norman helms. The chain mail over their torso was a shirt, while a chain mail skirt protected their bottoms. Beneath these were leather leggings that ran into knee-high boots. A third man was dressed in a classic knight’s outfit, the Ferrari symbol emblazoned on his chest. He carried a sword and was busily ordering the two men who were attacking the Cray. A fourth man stood beside the knight with a cumbersome crossbow holding a bolt that looked as if it could take down a charging rhino. On the ground was the second man in a knight’s outfit. His chest had been ripped open by the Cray’s claws. Had I been there to confer with them prior to their insane attack on a Cray, I would have let them know that nothing short of an anodized Faraday cage-protected EXO would protect them from its weapons. But then again, no one ever asks me shit. Another chain-mailed warrior was trying to save the armored nerd on the ground.

“What do you want to do?” Crefloe asked.

“Remove your radio and leave them here with your ruck. Let’s go save these knights.”

After a few moments, we were ready to join the fray.

I held my M4 at low ready and moved forward with purpose.

The knight saw me when I was about twenty feet away from the Cray.

“Stop, good sir! We have this under control.”

I ignored him. Took another six steps, fixed my gaze through my ACOG and fired a short burst into each of the Cray’s eyes.

It didn’t cry out. It didn’t lunge. It merely fell to the ground.

I turned to the two men with halberds. “You can leave off that shit now.”

They looked at each other, backed away, then turned to their knight.

I could see Crefloe over by the downed man. He was shaking his head and moving the knife edge of his hand across his neck.

“How dare you interfere in a knight’s work,” came a shout, a little too imperious for my liking.

I aimed my M4 at him, wondering if the lead-tipped bullets would make it through the armor.

The crossbowman aimed at me as well.

“You can’t go around playing with these things,” I said. “Someone’s bound to get hurt.”

“Sir Porsche was trying to make a name for himself,” the man said. “I am his liege.”

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. Two men who’d named themselves after expensive luxury cars. By the insignia on this one’s chest, I had no doubt what to call him.

“Listen Sir Ferrari,” I began, but he interrupted.

“I’m not surprised you know me. I have a certain amount of fame.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. This douche bag was more of a nut job than most of the folks under Mother’s care.

I lowered my M4 to low ready and looked at the two men in chain mail. “You guys enjoying your game? Look at Sir Porsche over there. It could have been you.”

The man on the left looked scared, but the one on the right took issue with my comment.

“You live how you want to live, pal. Let us live how we want to live. We ain’t hurting none but ourselves.” Then he raised his voice. “What do you want us to do, my liege?”

“Let the mercenary pass,” boomed the voice. “We’ll seek a beast elsewhere.”

I began to walk away, just as one of the men cried out. As I turned, I saw a Cray hurtling toward the ground, foot and hand claws out. The crossbowman fired, but this time missed, and paid for it with his life as the beast landed on him with four sets of claws, ripping and tearing, everything a blur.

Sir Ferrari backed away.

His two liegemen got in front of him, halberds out.

Before I could do anything, the man who’d spoken to me was mowed down by a whirlwind of claws and spikes, his chainmail as effective as papier mâché. The other turned and ran, and was soon followed by the knight who clanked as he ran past.

…leaving me the sole target for the Cray.

I’d faced them down in EXO suits. I’d faced them down without suits in the bowels of Kilimanjaro. I’d even faced them down in Dodger Stadium. I’d survived every encounter yet, so to be fodder for some half-baked knight named after an Italian racing car seemed like the perfect fuck you the Universe had been planning for me, and I was damned if I was going to let that happen.

I began backing away. I raised my M4 and put five rounds into its left eye, or tried at least. It turned at the last moment, and the rounds ricocheted off the tough skin of its head.

Then it dove toward me. I ran left and dove to the ground myself, feeling the impact of the asphalt all the way through my teeth. I rolled sideways as I emptied a full magazine of 5.56 mm rounds into the alien’s torso.

That slowed it down, but it kept coming.

I scooted backwards and then was on my feet, snapping free the empty, and slamming home a full magazine.

I heard the crack of two 9mms firing from behind the Cray.

The alien spun, crouching to take off.

I fired into its back, letting the magazine drain to nothing even as smoke poured from the barrel.

The Cray turned its head to see me and I felt an alien presence in there watching me. Was it one of the masters? My brain tickled as something tried to find a home. Then it took flight, wings moving weakly but effectively.

Strange. I’d never known a Cray not to fight to the death. It made me wonder if maybe it was not under its own control.

Crefloe came up to me, holstering his pistols.

“You okay, boss?”

“Peachy,” I said, sliding in a fresh magazine in case the Cray decided to return. “Just fucking peachy.”

In the distance, Sir Ferrari and his men stood beneath a palm tree, watching.

I shook my head. A few moments later we returned to our gear. As we put it back on, I became aware of Suzie humming and singing something. I leaned in close to listen, and smiled at what I heard.

“Brave brave Sir Robin, brave Sir Robin ran away.”

We hugged the mountain ridges until midnight, then turned west. We reached Calabasas shortly before dawn. Crefloe directed us to an empty field just off Mulholland Highway at the end of a cul-de-sac. He cursed under his breath when he saw the house.

“It was empty last time I was here, say six months ago.”

“It looks like someone’s moved in,” I said.

A dull light burned in one of the second floor windows. Something a candle might make.

We found a copse of trees to camp a football field’s length away.

I ordered Crefloe and Suzie to stay put while I conducted a three-sixty-degree recon of the area. A lone horse stood on one edge of the field. It appeared to be in good health, which made me wonder if it wasn’t being cared for. I never saw any other evidence of habitation, either nearby or over at the house. I returned to our hide and pulled out my binos.

Crefloe had curled into a ball, hugging his pack, a blanket drawn over him, instantly asleep.

Suzie lay on her side, her eyes wide, unsleeping.

I saw movement at nine through my binos.

A girl. She couldn’t have been older then eleven or twelve. She climbed out of a basement window of the main ranch house. Her hair was pulled back into pigtails. She wore a soiled shirt, shorts, and sneakers with no socks. She remained on all fours for a long minute, turning her head left and right like an animal. Then she suddenly straightened, stretching her back when she came to full height. With one fearful look back at the house, she headed toward the corral.

I ignored her a moment and instead trained my binos on the main ranch house. I went from one upper window to the other. It took a few minutes, but then I saw it. A hand on a curtain, pulling it back. I never saw a face, but one was undoubtedly there in shadow. Watching the girl, or watching for something else.

I looked toward the girl, who was petting the neck of the horse. She seemed to be whispering to it, saying something only they could know.

Suzie rose to her knees and peered out from between a branch.

I switched my gaze to the window. The hand was gone. I searched the front of the house and noted that where before the house had seemed empty, now it seemed full. Windows stared back at me, no… not at me… at the girl and the horse.

Suddenly the front door burst open.

A narrow man with a scarred face filled the doorway, the heat of his gaze so hot that the girl felt it, turning toward the man.

Her face lit with fear.

The horse felt it. It snorted, shook its head, and danced a few feet away from the girl, as if to say, you’re on your own.

I noted suddenly that Suzie was by my side, watching.

The man turned and went back in the house, leaving the door open.

The girl bolted, running pell mell toward the house. She dove on the grass and skidded in front of the window. She clawed at the latch, then hauled herself inside.

Suzie gasped.

I switched back to the door. Still open. Still empty.

Then I heard a thin peal of scream from somewhere inside.

Crefloe was instantly awake and by my side.

“What was that?” he said.

Suzie covered her face and wrapped herself into a ball.

I thought about what I’d seen and what it might mean. Then eventually I said, “None of our business.”

Suzie cried beside me.

We waited four more hours during which time two men and a woman left the building and headed into the barn presumably to take care of the horses. I had Crefloe do a three-sixty on our hide sight to make sure there wasn’t any counter surveillance. I didn’t like being so close to this place. Whatever was going on inside, as unsavory as it seemed, could probably be explained if those inside felt the need to explain, which I doubted they did. When Crefloe returned, he pointed to a route that would keep us concealed until we were far enough away to move with purpose.

Suzie didn’t want to move. I spent ten minutes cajoling her, trying to get her to get up, but try as I might she wouldn’t have any of it.

Crefloe gave me an eye as if to say, we gotta get out of here.

I shrugged. What was I to do? We suddenly had a hundred and thirty-pound anchor that wasn’t going to let us move.

Then I grinned sadly.

WWWSD?

What would William Shatner do?

I scrolled through my list of his love conquests and tried to find logic within.

Miramanee appeared first — a dark haired woman from a tribe of space Indians who believed Captain Kirk to be their god Kirok. Although he had amnesia at the time, Kirk successfully convinced her that he was a god, proceeded to impregnate her, then watched helplessly as both her and his unborn child got stoned to death by her people when he couldn’t figure out how to use the magic obelisk.

No lesson learned there.

Sheesh. I’d forgotten how harsh the original episodes could be after the politically correct Next Generation series.

Then I remembered Shayna who was his flirtatious love during the episode The Gamemasters of Triskilion. She didn’t understand the feelings that were butterflying inside of her and didn’t understand this strange thing called love. In the end, he taught her that she didn’t have to fight, but instead, surrender. It wasn’t lost on me that surrendering to Kirk in the arena was a metaphor for surrendering oneself to their emotions. Michelle was the one who’d pointed that out back when we were in our cells… back when everyone was much more innocent.

No help there either.

Then of course there was Rayna Kapec from the third season episode Requiem for Methuselah. Although she turned out to be an android created by a human who was born in Mesopotamia in 3834 BC and couldn’t die, Kirk fell so hard in love that he couldn’t live without her. His love was so all-consuming that Spock had to wipe her from his memory with a Vulcan mind meld.

I sighed.

I know what William Shatner would do, but it wasn’t helping. And then an idea struck me. Unless, the solution was an amalgam of all the three women. Miramanee, Shayne and Rayna and how Kirk approached each of them.

I knelt beside Suzie and asked, “What would William Shatner do?”

She ignored me, staring instead at the ground and sobbing.

I prodded her with my right hand. “I’m asking you a question, what would William Shatner do?”

She made a noise and rolled away.

I couldn’t believe I was on a mission where one of my people was on the ground throwing a tantrum and wouldn’t get up. No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t a tantrum. It was a symptom of something larger. I already knew she was having nightmares. She also continuously fell into fugue states where she was reliving the circumstances that most affected her. This avoidance and reluctance to leave was something new altogether. As if part of her didn’t want to see what was going on, but the other didn’t want to leave without doing something. And I had no one to blame but myself. Knowing I never should have brought her wasn’t helpful. I could stare at the past with 20/20 glasses all day long and make the perfect decision, but that wasn’t how life worked.

“Hey, Suz. Come on, talk to me. What would William Shatner do, huh?”

“Fuck William Shatner,” she mumbled.

I laughed. “From what I hear, you’ll have to stand in line for that.”

I thought she’d rise to the comment, but instead, she buried her head in her hands.

“Mase?” Crefloe asked, coming up beside me. “What’s the ‘what would William Shatner do’ mean?”

I sighed. “It’s an old game Suzie and I had before the invasion. We’d see something that needed to be done and ask, what would William Shatner do?”

“You mean that old actor used to be on Star Trek?”

“He’s not just an old actor, Crefloe. He’s the heart and soul of Star Trek. There wouldn’t have been a Jean Luc Picard or a Katheryn Janeway without him.”

Crefloe shook his head. “I’m not understanding what you’re saying. It was a TV show, right? You do know there’s no more TV much less Hollywood.”

“I know about Hollywood because I was the one who blew it up.” I sighed, staring at Suzie. “And I know there’s no more TV but that doesn’t change the lasting effect they have on us.” I turned back to Crefloe. “Let’s take you for example. What shows did you watch?”

“Brother, I didn’t watch television. I was on the street selling poppers by the time I was seven.” Seeing my look, he added, “Call it the family business or whatever. When you grew up where I grew up, there was one way to survive. But my Auntie watched television. Montel, Oprah, Sanford and Sons, that sort of thing.”

“Do you mean that you never watched TV?” I asked. “Never?”

“Well, there was football and basketball.”

“Who was your favorite basketball player?”

“Truth?”

“Truth.”

“Jordan. Smooth as can be.”

“Remember his Nike motto?”

“Just do it?”

“You ever thought about not doing something and then remembered Jordan’s motto?”

Crefloe nodded.

“And did that change your mind?”

“I guess.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it did. Others it didn’t”

“And that’s what I’m talking about. It’s the same thing with William Shatner. For good or bad, he had an effect on people. You see, there’s this thing where he’s ultra-heroic and wants to help anyone in need, except when he does, he does it so dramatically.”

Crefloe nodded. “I think I get it. But shouldn’t your game be what would Captain Kirk do? After all, it’s the character not the actor you’re talking about.”

I blinked at the amazingly lucid and super logical statement, realizing that Crefloe was actually right. What had Suzie and I been thinking? Still, we’d been playing it for so long you couldn’t change the name of the game. “But that’s what everyone thinks about when they think of William Shatner. They think Captain Kirk.” Then I stepped forward and pointed a finger at his chest. “And don’t even think for a moment about mentioning TJ Hooker because that show doesn’t count.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” He looked long at Suzie, then glanced toward the barn where two men exited, riding horses, heading away from them. “So when are we leaving? I mean there’s those aliens we need to investigate and we’re so close to these people that they’re going to eventually find us if we don’t move.”

“I totally get that and you’re right. The longer we stay here the greater the chance we’ll be caught.” I stared meaningfully at Suzie who was watching me with her right eye. “But it’s not up to me.”

After exactly one hundred and thirty-six seconds of staring at her, Suzie said from her place on the ground, “You do realize you’re being juvenile.”

“This coming from a girl who won’t get up.”

“I have a syndrome. I can’t help myself sometimes.”

“Are you about over your syndrome?”

“It’s not like that, you should know.”

“Can you at least get up, maybe wipe the grass off of you?”

She pulled herself to a sitting position and drew her knees up, but that’s as far as she got.

Another scream came from the house.

All three of us looked in that direction.

Worry chainsawed through me as I measured the weight of the problem against the three of us and our ability to deal with it.

“You want me to do something about this, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, her voice no louder than a breath.

“If I do that then you need to share your origin story.”

“No,” she said with equal power.

“Then this is where the rock meets the hard place.” I sat on the ground, but didn’t look at her. Instead, I picked up a piece of straw and began to pick at it. “I stuck my neck out for you. Black Johnson said you’d destroy the mission. He said you shouldn’t come. But I argued for you. I fought to get you on the mission. Did part of me think we might have an event or two?” I nodded. “Yes. Definitely. But that same part of me felt you wouldn’t want to hold up the mission and would find a way to figure it out.”

Now, I did look at her, and saw her face redden and her eyebrows buckle. Her lips got tight like they do when she’s getting pissed.

“Did that same part of you think that holding people hostage just to find out what some fucked up people did to me was a rational and sane idea?”

“That’s the spirit,” I said, smiling probably a little too maniacally. “I knew you’d buck up. So tell me, darling Suz, how is it you managed to lose your arm and eye. Was it a card game?”

“Fuck you.”

“Or was it a horse race?”

“Double fuck you.”

“Not something William Shatner would do, I don’t think.” I snapped my fingers. “I know. You’d just gotten done watching a rerun of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and decided to pit praying mantids against each other.”

“You’re not funny.”

“To some I might be. Crefloe?”

She held up a hand. “Don’t answer him if you want to live, Cref.”

Crefloe looked at me, then turned away, surely wishing he was anywhere else but here.

“Come on, Suz. Origin story. Every super hero and super villain has one. What’s yours? What made you into the person you are today?”

She continued staring at me, but something inside broke. Her anger faded to sadness. “You did Benjamin Carter Mason. You’re the one who made me into the hot killer bitch I am today.”

I felt my grin slip, but laughed just the same. “Ha ha. Very funny.”

“I’m not laughing,” she said in a frigid voice.

I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

She sighed, grabbed the piece of straw from my hand and rubbed it between her fingers. Finally, she said, “I loved you so much. We were so good together. Then you left and went back to Afghanistan.”

I’d had two weeks of mandatory pre-deployment leave they’d just given me. I’d attached another twenty-five days of personal leave onto it giving me almost forty days. I’d met Suzie the third day and we’d been inseparable. It had been an awesome time. But she had to have known I had to return. I know I told her.

“But you knew. I told you.”

She shook her head.

“Seriously, Suzie. This isn’t funny. I know what I did. I’m absolutely fucking certain I told you and you said that was okay because it was just a fun fling. You said that. Fun fling. Are you saying you don’t remember that? At all?”

She shook her head again, but I could see worry lines form at the top of her nose between her eyes.

I felt my anger rise. Not only was it ludicrous that I was being blamed for her missing an arm and eye, but that she’d forgotten how we’d ended our relationship. No, not just forgotten, entirely reframed the narrative. I kept my voice low, but I couldn’t keep the anger out of it.

“You remember the month we had together, right?”

She nodded.

“You remember our dates. Seeing Matrix Reloaded. Santa Monica Pier. Ventura. That party off of Laurel Canyon Drive.”

Each date got a nod. Somehow she remembered those but not the way it ended.

“Do you remember dropping me off at the airport?”

She shook her head.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“You promised to marry me when you returned from deployment,” she said softly.

I shook my head. “What? Marry you?”

My words struck her like a slap to the face. She turned her head and opened her mouth, unwilling to look at me.

“You want to keep it down, boss?” Crefloe asked.

I nodded. “Got it. Just watch our six.” Then to Suzie I said, “Marry you? I have never once said that to you or any other woman on the planet. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Suzie. That never happened.”

“You never wrote. You never sent an email. It was as if you’d fallen off the face of the planet.”

“You said it was just a fling.”

“No, I answered your question with ‘Yes’.”

“What question?” My blood pressure shot through the top of my head. “Suzie,” I whispered harshly. “I never asked you to marry me. That never ever happened.”

She glanced at me as if I were a piece of gum on the ground she was about to step over, then looked away.

I stood and went to Crefloe so I could cool down. “How many?”

“I counted three men and two women. The women are never left alone. It could be nothing or it could be something.” He shrugged.

“Weapons?”

“Men have pistols. Two hunting rifles.” He glanced behind me. “You know, we really should be moving on.”

I nodded. “I know. But we can’t. I want you to get inside the barn and report to me.”

He looked at the hundreds of feet of open ground between here and the barn. “You have got to be kidding. They’ll see me right away.”

“That’s the idea.”

He did a double take.

“When they come after you, run to the wood line. I have a plan.”

“Can I return fire?”

“Only if you have to. This might all be for nothing”

Crefloe shook his head. “I heard that scream. That was not nothing.”

I guess me trying to find out how Suzie lost her arm drove her bat shit crazy. She wasn’t moving until I did something about the girl and somehow, in some alternate universe, she believed I’d asked her to marry me. I’d done some things to the girls of planet Earth to get into their pants that I’m not exactly proud of, but proposing marriage and running wasn’t one of them.

Crefloe and I had come up with a plan. We’d even involved Suzie, although I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pull her part off. The plan wasn’t exactly complicated, but it did have some moving parts, so I’d have to make sure we were careful.

It was early afternoon. I’d have preferred it be darker, but I didn’t want to stick around here longer than we had to. As it was, I was only doing this to ameliorate Suzie’s needs.

Crefloe waited for my signal. I squelched my walkie and he began walking across the grass toward the barn. One foot in front of the other, easy as you please, as if he was out for a stroll. Just a guy with military grade weapons, a pack on his back, walkie on his belt with receiver-transmitter affixed to his chest, and dressed in black who means no harm. He could have been a militant Mormon marching up to a door in the days of yore or perhaps even a Seventh Day Adventist who was going to force his neighbors to convert at the point of a gun. He was anything but a decoy out to do lots of harm.

But I wasn’t watching him. I was watching the house. I was looking for the hand. And there it was, pulling aside the curtain. This time I saw the face — old, wrinkled, one side sagging from what had probably been a stroke. His mouth moved and ten seconds later the front door opened and two men poured out onto the porch. They both had hunting rifles.

One of the men brought his rifle up to his shoulder and I said, “Down,” into the walkie just as the man fired.

Crefloe had listened and now picked himself off the ground and began trotting toward the barn.

The other man lifted his rifle and prepared to fire.

“Down.”

This time Crefloe dove to his left.

The man fired and missed.

This wasn’t good. I was playing chicken with a human being.

Both men swore, leaped off the porch and began running toward the intruder.

Crefloe turned and ran straight for the wood line.

I watched as he juked and jived, diving and rolling to the safety of the trees. Our plan truly was a piece of magnificent shit. We should have just walked away or else gone in blasting but Suzie had thrown me so off with her crazed nonsense that I was having trouble thinking straight.

I eased myself out of the copse, glancing once at Suzie who was curled into a ball, sucking her thumb. Black Johnson’s words rang through me and I cursed myself for being too proud not to heed them. With the trees screening me from the house, I crouched and made it to the woods as well. I could hear the two men crashing through saplings and brush, eager to get to Crefloe. I squelched my walkie twice, then continued to move through the wood, careful of each footfall.

When I made it to the immense oak I’d seen earlier, I flattened myself on the other side. The tree had probably seen the rise and fall of Los Angeles, witnessing not only the first settlers in their wagons and from ships, but the invasion and placement of the hives, and the eventual destruction of them by me and the other team. It was as wide as two people, the bark rough like the ridges of the fingers of an ancient man.

Thirty seconds later, Crefloe ran past, limping extravagantly. He kept going about twenty meters, then stopped, edging himself mostly behind a tree, bent over, hands on knees, huffing and puffing.

The sounds of crashing drew closer. I flattened myself even more, becoming one with the tree. Making sure my elbows were in, I held my M4 against my chest, barrel straight up, my nose tickling the ACOG scope.

The men stopped behind my tree.

“Drop your weapons,” one shouted, pressing the barrel of his .306 along the left side of the tree, close enough for me to grasp it.

Another barrel pressed forward from the right and looked to be a .30–30 Winchester.

“Yeah. Throw ‘em down.”

Crefloe, who I could just make out, peered around his tree. “Can’t you just let me go? I wasn’t doing no harm.”

“How do we know that?” asked .30–30.

“What were you doing by our barn?” asked .306.

“Looking for someone so I could introduce myself.”

“He’s bullshitting us,” .306 whispered.

“Let’s hear him out,” .30–30 whispered back.

“I mean of course I was walking toward your barn,” Crefloe continued. “Wouldn’t it have been more suspicious had I been sneaking about?”

“He makes a good point,” whispered .306, “but I still feel like he’s bullshitting. Something’s not right here.”

“Your spidey senses are for shit, Amos.” Louder, 30–30 said, “Who are you and where are you from?”

“Crefloe Johnson. I’m from Mother’s Compound.”

After a few moments of silence, “That the one over on Big Cienaga?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why you contacting us now?”

“Wanted to reach out to you as an ambassador, so to speak. Heard about you all. Wanted to let you know that we’re at peace with you, so to speak.”

“Sounds reasonable,” .30–30 said, “but why did you run?”

“Because you were shooting at me. Listen, I’m not a bad guy. I’m a scrounger. I’m sure you have scroungers too. I know where things are that people might need. I can’t carry everything with me, so I just mark their locations and know that I can always return. I can be of help. If there’s something you need and I know where it is, I can go get it or tell you where it is — in the spirit of cooperation so to speak.”

His words were met with silence. Even .306 wasn’t expressing his desire to shoot on sight.

Crefloe stepped out from behind the tree.

This was the moment. Was he going to be shot or was he going to get them to cooperate?

I’d left it up to him in the planning. He was sure he’d know the moment. We’d find out right now. I tensed, ready to grab one of the rifle barrels and begin firing.

Crefloe held his hands half-heartedly in the air. “Look. I have a pair of pistols, but nothing else.”

“We’re going to need those pistols.”

Crefloe nodded, his hands still up and began to walk slowly toward them.

The barrels of both rifles pulled back. I heard the men crunch leaves as they backed away.

Crefloe could have easily made eye contact with me, but he kept his gaze straight ahead instead.

“What’s up with your skin?” .306 asked. “Get acid thrown on you or something?”

“Vitiligo,” Crefloe said. “It’s a skin condition. Soon I’ll be white just like you.”

“Seriously?” .306 asked, wonder in his voice.

“Seriously. They have the reverse too… called Blavitiligo. It’s where people turn black.”

“Now you’re fucking with me,” .306 said.

“Wouldn’t do that to a guy holding a rifle on me.” They removed his pistols. “They think it’s something the aliens brought.”

“Is it contagious?” .30–30 asked.

“Dunno. It’s just a weird condition. Doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t tingle. But the whiter I get the more superior I start to feel.” Crefloe laughed. “Know what I mean?”

30-30 laughed with him. “You made all of that up, didn’t you?”

Crefloe chuckled. “Yeah. Sorry. Couldn’t help it. It was just the look on this guy’s face.”

“Amos, he’s right. I thought you were going to shit your pants right here.”

306, whose name was evidently Amos, sighed. “That was messed up, Steve.” Then to Crefloe he added, “Come on. Let’s get you in front of the Rev so we can clear you and you can get on your way.”

“Can I put my hands down?” Crefloe asked. “After all, you’re behind me.”

“I suppose so,” Steve said.

It wasn’t until they began moving away that I risked a look. They’d both shouldered their rifles and were walking behind Crefloe. Sure enough, he’d made them comfortable. He could sell crack to the Pope, given the chance.

Now it was my turn.

Go time.

I lowered my M4. “Don’t move.” Two simple yet effective words.

Steve and Amos stopped cold. Their backs tensed. Their hands went to their rifles.

“I’ll shoot you before you can even get it clear,” I said. “Now turn around.”

They both turned. Amos’s face was ash white beneath red hair. Steve’s was beet red beneath brown hair. Their eyes went from my M4 to my face, then back again.

“Crefloe, if you please.”

He turned around a big smile on his face. “Put your hands in the air.”

They both did.

Crefloe disarmed them, including regaining his pistols. He then frisked them, finding Steve’s ankle pistol and a pistol at the small of Amos’s back. Once completely disarmed, I had them remove their clothes. They tried to argue out of it, but I made my countenance such that they knew I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Once I had them sitting naked back to back, I began my interrogation.

Interrogations are strange things. No two are ever the same. There’s no magic word to make someone speak. There’s no defined method. Listening to what’s said and not said is as important as knowing what to say. Hollywood, as usual, got it wrong. Although I absolutely loved Crease’s interrogation of the kidnapper in Tony Scott’s movie Man on Fire. Cutting off Amos’s and Steve’s fingers, then cauterizing them probably wouldn’t be the best way to engender trust. Torture was basically useless. The only time I’d seen it used was in Afghanistan where a UK soldier went missing and his life was in imminent danger. Ten minutes, a knife, a threat to kill the man’s family, and a dedicated interrogator got the exact location of the missing soldier who was rescued alive. But those were on-offs. Normally, information gained from torture was unverifiable until it was too late. After all, if someone was torturing me, I’d tell them anything just to make the pain stop.

The greatest advantage an interrogator had was not fear and it wasn’t hope. Those were both palpable emotions to which one could latch on. No, the greatest advantage was uncertainty… and as long as I could keep uncertainty alive in the hearts of my two prisoners, the better chance at my success.

Using the hours of the clock, I stood at twelve and Crefloe stood at six. Amos faced nine and Steve faced three. Their hands were ziptied in front of them. They were told not to move, not to look anywhere but straight ahead, and to cooperate. The idea was to depersonalize the situation. Without me to focus on, it would be harder for them to mentally defend against my techniques.

We stood silently for exactly seventeen minutes and eight seconds before someone said a word. It wasn’t me, nor was it Crefloe. Instead, it was Amos.

“What’s going on? I thought this was an interrogation?” he said, trying to keep the quavering out of his voice. He had a big build. He wasn’t fat, probably only because McDonald’s had ceased to exist. His round face held a worried look that was akin to eating bad pudding.

Neither Crefloe nor I answered.

Two minutes twelve seconds later, “Seriously, what’s going on?” Amos turned to look at me.

“Don’t look at me,” I said leveling the M4 at his face.

His head jerked back and he once again turned to face nine o’clock.

“Shut up, Amos. This is a tactic,” Steve said.

“Actually, it’s not,” I said. “I’m waiting on someone. When she gets here the interrogation will begin.”

“Someone? Who’s coming?” Steve asked without turning.

“An asshole you’ll regret meeting,” I said. “I hate her methods.”

“Whatever you might think about them,” Crefloe said, his voice low and calm, “You have to admit that they work.”

I made a face. “But they don’t leave much.”

“What are you talking about?” Amos asked breathlessly.

“Shut up,” Steve whispered. “It’s a tactic.”

I checked my watch and yawned.

After thirty-three seconds, Amos asked, “If it’s a tactic then why aren’t they asking us any questions.”

I watched Steve as he tried to work through the question for the answer and failed. He frowned.

“Listen, man,” Crefloe said on cue, “If you’re so worried about their safety, then why not ask them what we want to know?”

“You know how she gets. I don’t want her mad at me again,” I said.

Steve shifted. His pallid skin was pulled tight on a thin frame. He had a tattoo on his right arm. USMC.

“She’s usually not this late. Want me to call her?” Crefloe asked.

“No. She wanted radio silence,” I said.

A minute and four seconds later, “Listen, maybe we can make a deal,” Steve said.

I shook my head. “It’s probably too late.”

“I mean, what is it you want? We don’t really know anything so if you want to know something, then we can probably tell you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. How do I know you’re going to honest?”

Amos licked his lips. He tried to look at me without moving his head. “There’s no reason to lie. We have nothing to hide. Look, I’m Amos Dayton and this is Steve Frembly. We’ve been friends for about a year and watch each other’s backs.”

“How many others live in the house?” Crefloe asked.

“Five,” Amos said.

Steve closed his eyes as he said, “There’s Emma Driscoll, Frank Spatz, Sara Wong, Rolando, Carl Upchurch and The Rev.”

“The Rev?” I asked.

“He owns the house and the barn out back. He let us stay and in exchange we help protect him.”

“Who is the girl?” I asked.

Steve snapped his mouth shut.

“See that. And we were doing so well too.” I said, making tsking noises with my mouth. “Who is the girl?”

Steve remained steadfast, but Amos spoke. “We’re not allowed to talk about her. She belongs to The Rev.”

“Why is she kept in the basement?” I asked.

“Shut up, Amos,” Steve warned.

“Here she comes,” Crefloe said.

At that moment, Suzie stepped out from around a tree. She simply stared at the two men, each of whom had turned to see who she was. I imagined their thoughts. Suzie was still mad at me and more than a little crazed, and here she came out of the darkness, her left arm missing, pirate patch over her missing left eye, face implacable enraged.

Amos wet himself.

Steve looked confused.

“They started talking already,” Crefloe said.

She turned to regard him with a single crazy eye.

“But then they stopped,” I said.

She looked at me.

“They won’t talk about the girl.”

She turned to them, her face somehow more twisted.

“WWWSD?” she said, spelling each and every letter.

When they didn’t respond, she repeated louder, “WWWSD?”

“I–I d-don’t know what that means,” Steve said.

“WWWSD?”

“Puh-please. Can you tell me what that means?” Steve asked, panic in his words

Crefloe shook his head. “It means you are shit out of luck, Steve.”

“It stands for ‘What Would William Shatner Do’,” I said. “Captain James Tiberius Kirk had a special place for women. What do you think he’d do knowing there’s a young girl being kept in the basement against her will?”

“It-it’s not against her will. That’s where she lives,” Amos screamed in frustration.

“Why does she live there?” I screamed back

“The Rev won’t let her into the rest of the house. She’s crazy,” Steve said, eyeing Suzie nervously. “A total fucking nut job.”

I wondered now who he was talking about — Suzie or the girl — or both.

I strode over to Steve and squatted beside him. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about the house or Suzie here will pretend she’s Captain Kirk and you will take the full brunt of her wrath. Phasers set to kill. Photon torpedoes. The whole fucking nine yards.”

One glance toward Suzie, whose eye seemed to be screwing out of her face, and Steve was spilling everything he knew. We found out a lot. Maybe too much. When he mentioned the monster in the barn, that made us all stop and wonder what the hell was going on.

They hadn’t actually seen the monster, but they knew it existed because of its howling. Turned out Amos and Steve had only been with the Tribe for two weeks. They hadn’t suitably progressed far enough for the Rev to tell them everything. But the relationship between the girl and the Rev was definitely a strange thing. They weren’t allowed anywhere near the girl, but had brought her food on several occasions, which they left for her at the top of the basement stairs.

Rolando, last name unknown, was the barn master. He handled the horses and apparently the monster. Carl Upchurch was his assistant. Wherever Rolondo went, Carl was at the man’s side.

Emma Driscoll, Frank Spatz, and Sara Wong took care of the day-to-day runnings of the house.

And the Rev, well, he didn’t seem to do too much at all. He stayed in his rooms on the top floor and had his food brought to him, except for Sunday services. As it turned out, he was called the Rev for a reason. It seemed he had been an actual Catholic priest before the invasion. I was frankly stunned he was still practicing. After all, if one were to believe in a god, you’d have to figure that a total fucking invasion of the planet might be enough reason to show yourself and save your worshippers. But that argument was for another day.

“We just going to leave them here?” Crefloe asked.

It was getting on toward night. I’d stayed longer than I’d wanted. I stared at the naked prisoners sitting on the ground. I know what I should do to them, but I didn’t want to do it. Arguably, what was another stain on my soul? I was already a mosaic of what I’d seen and done. Still, killing them was unnecessary and I wasn’t going to do it.

“WWWSD,” Suzie said under her breath. Her hands were balled at her sides. Her entire body was rigid, punctuated by a single furious dot of hate that had once been her eye. She wouldn’t stop repeating herself. She’d performed her part of the plan admirably, but somewhere along the way she’d lost what little sanity she had. “WWWSD?” she hissed.

What would William Shatner do indeed? He’d let them live. He’d put them in a position where they couldn’t do any harm, then let them live.

“We’re going to leave them.”

Crefloe nodded. “I can do them if you want me to,” he said, meaning if I was too soft to do it. “Don’t mean shit to me.”

“No, Cref. If I wanted them dead, I’d do it myself. Let’s leave these two alive. It certainly won’t hurt anything.” I knelt and stared Steve in the eyes. “You don’t owe the Rev any fealty. You don’t owe them nothing. If you want to live, you need to go away. Anywhere but here, understand?”

Steve and Amos both nodded.

“I don’t want to see you again.”

They both nodded again.

I stood, adjusting the strap of my pack on my back.

I heard a twig snap in the growing darkness of the woods. I slammed myself to the ground right as a shotgun blasted, chunking the tree I’d just been in front of.

I rolled to my left and brought my M4 up. I fired three controlled bursts — left, right, and middle — then rolled to my knees and put a thick tree between me and whatever was out there.

Crefloe ran into the woods behind me.

I wasn’t worried about him running away. He was probably going to circle back and try and get behind my attackers.

The shotgun fired again.

But as I aimed toward the spot, automatic gunfire erupted from a spot ten yards away, peppering the tree, digging divots in the earth. I felt a warm breeze on the side of my head, followed by a burning pain. Blood immediately began to seep free. I stood and dove deeper into the woods, rolling first right, then backwards, then left. I low crawled toward a wide tree and pulled myself behind it. I touched the side of my head and felt warm blood. I’d been grazed.

Then I realized that I’d left Suzie.

Shit!

I waited for the sound of movement.

One minute.

Five.

Ten.

Fifteen minutes ticked past with only the sound of the wind in the trees.

Thirty minutes later, I began to pick my way back toward the clearing. When I got there, I noted that Steve and Amos were gone, their cut zipties in a pile where they’d sat. As was Suzie. There could be only one place they’d take her. And I’d go there, even knowing they were expecting me.

The barn was lit up like a Christmas tree. Two guards stood sentry at the main door. What I hadn’t expected were all the people. There must have been a hundred filing into the barn. The only explanation was that they’d come from other nearby homes.

What day was it, I wondered.

Was it Sunday?

Was that what this was all about?

Was the Rev going to have one of his services?

I’d bandaged the wound on the side of my head and then grabbed some mud to blacken my skin so its sheen would be dulled even in star light. I’d also stashed my pack in a hide site. I needed to move fast, and its bulk could only hamper me.

I’d also tried to call Crefloe but either his radio wasn’t working or he was intentionally ignoring my requests for conversation. He hadn’t seemed like the type to run away when things got tough. I could only hope that we could link up in time to try and save Suzie.

I shuddered as a memory shattered past, leaving me with a single image of a young girl, holding the hand of her mother whose body had been blown to bits. Everything completely unrecognizable as human except for her hand.

My damn memories were like old time South Central LA drive-bys, gang bangers drilling unsuspecting pedestrians with bullets. But instead of bullets, I got memories of all the shit I’d seen, my mind having taken snapshots, saving them for reliving later on. Lucky me. I’d trade them for bullets any day. A bullet was so much more preferable than a memory to the head.

Snapping myself out of my fugue, I moved along the inside of the tree line until the house was between the barn and me. I scanned the windows with my ACOG, putting the glowing reticle on each window, searching for movement. Seeing none, I crouched low and ran across the dark space until I was at the rear of the house. I pressed by back to it and listened. A minute ticked by. Nothing.

I slipped up the back steps and tried the door.

Locked.

I pulled out a roll of duct tape and placed an X on the window in the door. Then I applied a piece of tape to the window with my left hand to hold it and hammered the butt of the M4 into the glass with my right. A dull thud told me I’d failed to break the glass. I swung harder this time and was relieved to hear a crack. It took a moment, but I was able to pull the glass free of the window using the length of tape. I tossed the taped broken glass into the dark grass by the stairs, then reached in and unlocked the door. I moved quickly inside.

The air was redolent with the smell of onions.

I eased my way through the kitchen and into a living room. All empty, I padded softly up the stairs, listening intently for even the smallest sound. The master bedroom suite was indeed large. It smelled of medicine and sweat. The bedside table held a tray with various medications including a syringe. Checking outside the window, I had a clear view of the barn. This had to be the window I’d seen the hand move aside the curtain. It must have been the Rev’s room. I vaguely wondered what was wrong with him?

I turned and my head erupted into a galaxy of stars. I fell sideways, my arm reaching out for balance, knocking over the meds.

A dark figure came on me, kicking me in the ribs.

I tried to bring my rifle to bear, but the strap was tangled around my right arm.

Another boot to the ribs, then I kicked out, catching my attacker on the side of the knee.

He stumbled back.

I started to climb to my feet, but he tackled me for my trouble.

He had a sheet in his hands and wrapped it around my face and head, then pulled me to the ground, positioning himself behind me.

My right arm trapped by my rifle, I flailed with my left, first trying to pull the sheet free. Unable to do that, I reached down and grabbed a knife from my belt. I stabbed at my attacker, but couldn’t get close enough. In desperation, I opened my mouth as wide as I could, then jammed the blade between my lips. The keen-edged K-bar parted the fabric which had been smothering me and tickled the tip of my tongue which I’d pulled as far back in my mouth as I could. I adjusted my grip on the knife, but felt a hand chop down on my wrist hard enough to make it go dead.

The knife fell free, clattering to the ground.

I began to kick frantically with my legs. Finding purchase on the stout wooden leg of the bed, I was able to push my assailant against the wall, pinning him there. I realized I had just enough freedom with my right arm that I could use the elbow, so I began to piston it into the man. He held onto the sheet, but I could tell his strength was waning.

I could breathe through the hole I’d made, but I was completely blind. All the while my right arm was elbowing him, my left hand was flailing for a weapon, anything I could use. Then my hand fell on the syringe. I grabbed it and was able to shift my body enough that I could slam it into soft flesh behind me. Once, twice, three times and buried the needle into my attacker’s soft parts.

He screamed and let go of the sheet.

I scrambled to my feet, ripping the sheet away. I fell once, but picked myself back up and got my rifle around.

My attacker lay in a fetal position, the needle stuck into his crotch. In the light from the barn, I could see that it was the narrow-faced man I’d seen earlier. His mouth was open in wordless scream.

I spied my knife on the ground and snatched it up. I slit his throat from ear to ear, listening for the escaping air as it began to bubble the blood.

Fucker thought he had me.

I spit on him, then walked out the door.

Once I’d cleared the upper floor, I went to the basement. I found her standing, chained to a wall. I shined my light on her using the lowest setting. She wore a football helmet. Her mouth was covered with a gag. What the hell was going on with this girl?

She watched me approach with wide eyes.

“Can you hear me,” I asked softly.

She nodded.

“Can you understand me?”

She nodded again.

I checked the windows. They had heavy shades across them, so I braved more light. I flashed the light on her face and saw that something wasn’t right. I got closer and noticed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Something about her eyes bothered me.

I reached in and removed her gag.

She licked her lips and coughed gently, then blinked her eyes at me, the straight lines of her lips curling into a gentle smile. “And who might you be? My knight in shining armor?”

I blinked. What had I just heard? That easily wasn’t the voice of a child.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Old enough to know a few ways to make you moan.”

I shook my head. The juxtaposition of the young girl and the words coming out of her mouth were stunning. But then she wasn’t a young girl, was she? Part of the reason I’d thought she was young was her stature. She couldn’t be five feet tall. Flat breasted with elfin features, she could easily be mistaken for a child. But this was no child. This woman was in her late thirties.

“Why the helmet?” I asked.

“Keeps me from hurting myself,” she said. She waggled her wrists, causing the shackles to clank against the stone wall. “I’m not happy with these without a safe word.”

I shook my head again. This was not at all what I’d expected. My idea was to grab the girl in the basement and publically trade her for Suzie, believing they’d want to keep the girl alive. But this… this was something different altogether. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what to do with her.

“Are you going to stand there and undress me with your eyes,” she purred, “Or are you going to unchain me?”

I approached and removed the helmet. Her blonde pigtails were mussed much like bed head. She hooked a leg around mine and pulled me to her, so I could feel her bony frame beneath mine.

“I want you,” she breathed.

I felt myself growing hard and hated myself for it. My hard on was stranger because it wasn’t until a few seconds ago that I’d thought she was a little girl.

I pushed away from her angrily.

She eyed my crotch and smiled. “Is that for me?”

Bonkers. Totally. Fucking. Bonkers.

I turned away, trying to figure a way out of this, but there wasn’t one. I just had to get it over as quickly as possible. Suzie’s hissed WWWSD klaxoned through my mind, only to be replaced by an image of Shatner kissing green-haired Shayna from The Gamemasters of Triskelion in a chaste embrace, then dissolving into Kirk face sucking with the drop-dead gorgeous Deela from Wink of an Eye, then to Marta, green-skinned seductress from Whom the God’s Destroy body surfing Kirk’s chest, then finally to a five-foot blonde woman in a football helmet who looked like a fifth grader.

A shudder rattled through me.

I turned back around. “What’s your name?”

“DeLorean.”

“Like the car?”

“Yes, like the car.”

I pulled out zipties from my cargo pocket. “Okay then, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take you out of your shackles, but put these around your wrists.”

“Oh please,” she begged. “Can we have a safe word? Pretty please can we have one? Huh? Please?”

I sighed inwardly. “Tiberius is your safe word. If things get too scary or painful for you, Ms DeLorean, just say Tiberius.”

She blinked happily.

I removed the shackles, barely managing to keep her from kissing me or touching me. My traitorous hard on lingered, but I ignored it. I managed to hold her arms behind her back and snap the zipties around her wrists.

“We’re going to the party?” she asked.

“Not sure what we’re going to. I guess we’ll find out together.”

We hadn’t gotten but three steps when she stiffened, her eyes rolled in the back of her head, and her knees bent, making her fall. Because I was holding one of her arms, I was able to keep her from hitting the ground. I was barely able to reach around with my other arm before her entire body began to jerk and spasm. As I held her, I glanced over at the discarded helmet. Now I got it. Seizures. It was to protect her from bashing her own head in while she was chained to the wall. I held her for a good five minutes as the spasms finally slowed. She’d gnashed her teeth the whole time. I was afraid she’d swallow her tongue. Eventually she stilled, only her heaving chest evidence that she was still alive. I took the moment to put the helmet back on her head.

Several minutes later, her eyes fluttered open.

She looked at me, not as a sexual object, but as a person. “Tiberius,” she whispered.

“Are you okay?”

“I had a seizure didn’t I?” she asked.

“Yes. It looked pretty bad.”

“I can tell because all of my muscles feel as if I’d been in a wrestling match against ten people and lost.”

“Do they come often?”

“Only when I get excited.”

“Then let’s not get excited.”

She seemed about to respond, but then her face went blank for a moment. Her lascivious smile returned. Her eyes narrowed. “Now that you have me here on the ground with my helmet on, don’t you want to finish what we started before?” She rubbed my crotch. “You can bang my head against the ground as hard as you want. I see you’re still flying the flag for me.”

“Tiberius,” I said, more forcefully than I wanted. I stood and hauled her to her feet. “Come on. I want to get this done.”

“Take me to your leader,” she whispered.

“That’s my line,” I said, then marched her up the stairs and out the door.

The two guards saw me coming and lifted their rifles.

I held DeLorean with my left hand and pressed the barrel of the M4 into her neck. I’d taped it in place with a roll of duct tape I’d wrapped several times around her neck as well as the barrel of my rifle. Duct tape was also wrapped around my hand and the trigger well, so I couldn’t let go even if I’d wanted to. She still wore her helmet. She was whispering to me as we walked, promising to do things to me I didn’t know were possible.

The guards looked at each other, unsure of what they were seeing.

“Hello, boys,” I said. “Got room for two more inside?”

They nodded and stepped aside. Clearly I hadn’t been part of their guard shift briefing.

We proceeded through a small door inset into the larger barn door. The first thing I noticed was that the barn was far larger than it should have been. The rafters above were cloaked in darkness. Bright generator-powered lights speared the rest of the interior, bathing it in an almost painful light. Someone had removed the floor and dug down at least fifty feet, making it more into an indoor theater, something from one of those old eighteenth century doctors’ pictures where a single person was at the bottom operating on a body, while a host of dozens looked on. But in this case, a man sat in a wooden throne at the bottom while a hundred other people in all form of dress stared eagerly in his direction, each one seated in stone-made benches formed in concentric circles from top to bottom.

But that’s where all normalcy ended.

Beside the Rev at the bottom of the operating theater was a nine-foot monstrosity that had been chained to a metal cross, crucified. The Cray’s hands and feet had been removed, as had its knee and elbow spikes. Part of its chest and legs were raw with open wounds that seeped blood. Its head hung, not with the predatory gaze to which I’d become so keenly accustomed, but instead into something whipped into submission, light gone, soul caged, much like the look I’d often seen in Suzie’s single eye.

And as much as I hated the Cray, to see it treated like this brought forth my fury.

The Reverend spoke, “Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this flesh to offer, which you hath given and human hands hath made. It will become for us the bread of life.”

He pulled a knife from the side of his altar and cut a chunk of meat from the Cray’s thigh.

The alien mewled, screeching only once at its agony. By the look of its wounds, this was far from the first time.

“Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood,” the Reverend said as he drained blood from the meat into a goblet.

Then the congregation said, “Blessed be God forever.”

“Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of your divine intervention. It will become our spiritual drink. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.”

I almost wretched as I watched the Reverend take a bite from the meat, ripping at it with his teeth, then taking a sip of the blood to wash it down. I was seeing a profane version of the Eucharist.

The Reverend placed the meat on a silver tray and a woman came, took the goblet and the tray and began to pass it around. One after the other, the members of this unholy congregation took a bite of the Cray’s thigh and drank from the cup, crossing themselves, then lowering their heads in prayer when they were done.

As the offering passed from one to the other, the Reverend prayed. “Pray, my brothers and sisters, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.”

“May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands,” the congregation said.

“Pray that He shall protect us and come down upon these invaders like He did with Noah and the Great Flood.”

“May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands.”

“Pray, my brothers and sisters, that the Earth will be once again cleansed and returned to the hands of the faithful.”

“May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands.”

I’d been searching for Suzie throughout the entire farce. It wasn’t until the end that I saw her, locked in a cell behind the crucified alien. Even across the great space between us, I could see her looking at me, her mouth moving over and over speaking something silently. It took me a moment to make it out and when I did, I smiled.

WWWSD.

Confronted with such a scene, I knew exactly what William Shatner aka Captain James Tiberius Kirk would do. There was a single bible quote I knew and it wasn’t because I went to church. No, it was a quote from my favorite Quinten Tarantino movie and I said it now, filling in the silence where the last of the congregation was eating and drinking of the flesh of the alien, believing that some celestial transubstantiation was making them part of god.

In my best drill sergeant voice, channeling Samuel L Jackson as best I could, I let my voice fill the barn as I cried, “Ezekiel 25:17. “

All eyes snapped to me.

I continued, “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.”

I pushed DeLorean forward so everyone could get a good look at me. “Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.”

“What is this intrusion?” demanded the Reverend.

But I shouted even louder and said, “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers! And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!”

One side of the Reverend’s face had fallen and no matter how active the other side was, this side refused to move. I knew exactly the cause of it. Stroke. The great leveler. But as still as that side was, the other was animated in fury.

“How dare you blaspheme in this house!” he seemed to try and stand, but failed.

“Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle, old man?”

“Get this blasphemer,” he ordered.

I pushed DeLorean forward. “Anyone comes closer and I’ll blow her away.”

This stopped the man and woman who’d been coming toward me from my left and right.

“I have my finger on the trigger and if anyone so much as shoots me, as I’m falling my body will cause the trigger to be pulled, killing your daughter.”

The Rev stared at me, anger mixing with uncertainty.

“Poor Daddy, doesn’t know what to do,” she said.

“If she has a seizure, you will kill her,” the Reverend said.

“Want me to pretend to have one, Daddy?” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Get rid of me once and for all? I know you hate having me around. I know you wished I wasn’t — what was it you called me — a blaspheming sexpot bitch.”

His face reacted as if he’d been struck as the congregation turned to him. I’m sure the last thing he wanted was for this super-personal soap opera to be playing out.

“You know that’s not what I want,” he said.

“Yes it is, Daddy. I’ve heard you talking with the others.”

“No it is not,” he said, bringing his hand down on his throne, knocking free the bible which fluttered to the feet of the alien. The Rev looked around as if he noticed for the first time that everyone was staring at him. “I just want her to be normal,” he said, frustration filling his words. “I just want you to be normal,” he said to her.

“I am, Daddy. This is the new normal.” She spread her hands. “This is how we cope. You have your way, chowing down on alien lunch meat, and I have mine, trying to replace the images I have in my mind with something closer to love.”

“That’s not love,” he said.

“It’s closer to love than anything you’ve shown me since Mother died,” she cried.

For this he had no response. The Rev slouched back in his chair, head down for several moments. Then, as if it took all of his energy, he raised it. “What is it you want Righteous Man?”

“I want her,” I said, pointing to Suzie.

“Is that all?”

I looked at my helmeted captive and at the congregation, much of them with blood-smeared faces. I knew what I saw was wrong, I knew what they were doing was terrible, but how could I limit their free will? This was their desire. This was their belief. Who was I to stop them? But there was one more thing I could do.

“Free it,” I said.

“What?” he said, staring at his Alien Christ. “That cannot be done.”

“Is this not the blood of Jesus? Is this not his flesh?” I asked.

Several of the congregation nodded, and then looked to the Rev to see his answer.

“Transubstantiation. This thing is not Christ until I say the Eucharist. Then it becomes him.”

“So is it not now Christ?” I asked. “Do you hold your own god captive?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he said dismissively.

“Let me tell you who I am. I am Benjamin Carter Mason. I am Hero of the Mound. I’m the one who brought down the first hive on the plains of Africa. I’m also the one who became a zombie only to return. Many of you lost family to the spore. I can tell you that they felt and heard everything that happened when they were zombies.”

Several of the congregation sobbed and broke into tears. Probably those who’d been forced to kill those who’d become infected.

“I’m also the one who took a squad of mechanized infantry and brought down the Hollywood Hive. I’m the one who went in there. I’m the one who fought Cray — man to alien. I’m the one who blew that hive off the face of the planet. I above all should hate the Cray and god knows I do. But as you say, I am a righteous man. Kirk is a righteous man. And neither of us would allow a creature to be kept in so much pain and suffering.”

I saw both fear and wonder on many faces.

“So yes, I would have this thing be free. So free the damn thing and find something else to pretend to be Jesus then you can eat that too.”

I realized that by the end, I was shouting, especially when the last three words echoed in the silence several times.

“That was impressive,” DeLorean said, her voice empty of the seductress.

“It’s merely the truth,” I said.

“But I don’t get one thing,” she said.

“And what’s that?”

“Who the heck is Kirk?”

“That’s a longer story that I don’t care to tell.”

The Rev gestured for a man to free Suzie from her cell.

I pushed DeLorean down a set of stairs. I met several pairs of eyes as I descended to the bottom. No one was angry. All seemed to be in wonder. These weren’t bad people, they just wanted something to believe in. Anything. Instead of what they’d been doing, I showed them there was a different path. A righteous path. I doubt they’d all follow it, but maybe some would.

At the bottom of the theater/church, I stood but a few feet away from the Rev. Up close I could see how the stroke had ravaged him. He’d looked to have been a large imposing man, but was half that now, his right side totally immobile.

“Do you want your daughter back?” I asked.

“Of course I do,” he said.

“No,” I paused to lend emphasis to my words. “Do you want your daughter back?”

He stared at me.

“It means don’t chain her up in the basement.”

My words caused a few gasps from the congregation.

“It means help her deal with her issues. Let her help you deal with yours. Jesus, at this point don’t you think we can all just get along?”

I glanced at the Cray who seemed to be looking at me as if it understood everything that was going on. I felt a tickle in my brain and knew that a master was trying to communicate through it, perhaps even control me. I fought against it, sending it images of the dead and wounded, hoping each one would be enough of a road block to keep it from doing so.

The Rev looked for a moment as if he was going to do the right thing. Then said instead, “Trap sprung. Amos. Steve. Kill this man. Emma, Frank, Sara, Rolando, Carl, to me.”

The man who had been about to unlock the cell door stopped and stepped away.

Amos and Steve both stood from different places in the congregation. They held pistols, pointing at me. Two men and two women descended the stairs toward us, but of the fifth there was no sign.

“Rolando. Where is Rolando?” cried the Rev.

“If he’s the one I killed in your bedroom, then that’s where he is,” I said. Then I said, “You’re absolutely sure that you want me to kill your daughter?”

He gave me a disbelieving look. “You played your part too well. You said it yourself, you’re a righteous man. Righteous men can’t kill in cold blood. Especially someone like my daughter.”

Damn it, but he was right. I’d played my part too well indeed. I’d never planned on his calling my bluff. I weighed my options as the four drew closer and closer. I snatched my K-bar from its sheath, and sliced away at the tape holding my hand on the weapon. I managed to cut myself doing it, so the tape soon became slick with my blood. But I was able to jerk free of the weapon at the last moment, pushing DeLorean into the oncoming four, while spinning behind the Cray and behind the Rev. I placed the bloodied edge of the knife against his neck and screamed, “STOP!”

And everyone did.

Everyone, except DeLorean, who’d fallen on the ground and was busily trying to free herself from the tape at her throat.

“What now?” asked the Rev. “Look around you. Do you think these people will let you out?”

“I was hoping some would. After all, ‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.’ That’s you, Rev. A tyrannical, evil man. To follow you is to go against the teachings of Ezekiel, of Jesus, and of God.” I felt the heat of a hundred eyes on me, but didn’t turn to look at any of them. “And remember, ‘blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.’ Who among your congregation believes they are their brother’s keeper? You see, you can’t be both. You can’t be both a righteous man and someone who follows an evil man. That’s like the Ghostbusters crossing the streams. Bad shit happens.”

Then I did turn to look at the congregation.

“Come on. Do the right thing. Stop these people from killing us.”

And then it happened. Not everyone. But some. And those that didn’t made no move to stop those that did. Gently, the men and women around Amos and Steve rose from their places and grabbed them. They were too far away to hear, but they removed their weapons. Amos and Steve were nodding and soon took their seats.

Likewise, a wall of people rose up before me and those coming down the stairs. Again, conversation occurred in hushed tones and again, everyone sat peaceably.

“Come on,” shouted the Rev. “What are you waiting for?”

But the congregation remained silent.

“I think you have your answer,” I said.

I left the Rev and went to the cell door. It was held by a lynch pin, which I removed. Suzie stumbled out and into my arms.

A rope uncurled from the rafters and Crefloe slid down it and landed next to me.

“I was wondering where you were,” I said.

“I was here if you needed me. Seems as if you handled it well with your speechifying.”

“I might have handled it better if you’d been here.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Doubtful.”

He held out a hand to Suzie. “Will you join me for tea at the top?” he said, doing a poor imitation of a bow.

She looked at me and I nodded.

Soon they were climbing the stairs unmolested.

I went to the back of the cross and saw where the Cray was affixed. It took a few twists to release the chains, but they came free enough. Without the weight of the chains, the Cray fell to its knees. I went in front of it and saw the familiarity in its eyes. Something from somewhere was watching me through them. I took my K-Bar and held it before one of its eyes. It stared at me unblinking. Then I pushed the tip deep into its brain. I felt the tickling gradually vanish as the light left the alien’s eyes.

I glanced at the weapon in my hand and left it where it was. I turned, took one last look at the Rev then marched up the stairs.

It wasn’t until I got to the top that I heard DeLorean shout at the top of her lungs, “Tiberius,” and then bullets began to fly.

I whirled, and watched as DeLorean was in full seizure, her body bucking. Somehow she’d gotten the tape free from her neck and had my M4 aimed at her father. The onset of the seizure had caused her finger to convulse and pull the trigger. Whether she’d meant to empty the clip into her father, I’d never know… I didn’t want to know.

But she’d used our safe word.

We stood on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Behind us were several homes that had probably belonged to movie stars, or directors, or someone else who could afford the multi-million dollar views they offered. A slight breeze tickled our hair. I could feel moisture in the air from the spray of the crashing waves far below.

Crefloe had returned to Mother to give her our report. I’d gone onto the ocean with Suzie. She’d made her desire known and I’d felt that it might help her open up. In fact, along the way she’d promised that she’d finally tell me what had happened to her… what had happened to take a care-free life-loving girl and turn her into someone so broken she could only exist as a self-crafted construct. She’d been queerly sane since I’d rescued her from the Rev. I was frankly enjoying her company. It was almost like the time before.

She inhaled the salty air. “Being near the sea reminds me of my parents. They used to take me and my little brother to Torrance Beach. I loved to sit in the sand and let the water slam over me.”

I inhaled as well. I had similar memories, but mine were also mixed with memories of loving girls along the cliffs of San Pedro and Rancho Palos Verdes. We’d find someplace secluded and make love to the music of the waves.

“I know I promised to tell you what happened to me,” she began, her voice drifting off.

I turned to her. She’d definitely promised.

“But I realized that I don’t want to tell you.”

My eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

“Right now when you look at me, I’m the culmination of your memories of me. Of the good and the bad. Of when we dated and were happy and when I was insane, trying to turn my wish that you’d asked me to marry you into a reality.”

I wanted to argue with her, but her admission derailed my train of thought. “You wanted me to marry you?”

She nodded wistfully. “I gave you so many hints.”

“I’m a dolt when it comes to those.”

“Yeah, you really sucked at that. But in my mind, I believed it had happened. Ninety-nine percent of the time I was mad at you for leaving me, for promising to marry me and never doing it.” She pulled her hair out of her eyes from where the wind had teased it. “Then one percent of the time I actually knew the truth of it and whenever that happened, I scurried back into my crazy hole because it was so much better to have loved and been jilted than to have loved and not been loved in return.”

I turned to stare at the rocks. “I loved you as best I could. I just had to… had to return to my men. Return to the only job I’ve ever been good at.”

“Blowing shit up and breaking things,” she said, using the words I’d so often used to describe my daily activities. But she left one part of it out.

“And killing people.” I sighed. “Can’t forget that. Listen, Suzie, I’m sorry for everything.”

She shook her head. “Don’t apologize. You came back for me. You were here when I needed you. I think being around you I felt more sane than any other time after…” Then she shrugged the nub of her missing arm.

“And you won’t tell me how it happened.”

“I don’t want that to define me.”

I thought about the nature of memories and how they could affect a person and reluctantly understood her logic. So I didn’t push her. Instead, I stared out at the ocean, letting the breeze heal me.

“What were you doing in the beginning?” she asked after a while.

“In the beginning? Probably minding my own business.”

“No. You told me when you first joined OMBRA… what was it you were doing?”

Ah, that I remember well. I was dressed in black, hugging the frame of the Vincent Thomas Bridge thinking it was my love of movies that made me want to kill myself there. Not only had the bridge been the filming location for such movies as Gone in Sixty Seconds, Lethal Weapon 2, To Live and Die in LA and The Island, but it had also been the place director Tony Scott had chosen to commit his own suicide. He’d directed Top Gun, True Romance, The Last Boy Scout and Man on Fire, four of my top ten favorite movies of all time. Each of those movies featured a man who’d once been on top of his game, broken, in need of redemption. In each of those movies, Tony Scott had found a way to redeem them. But in the end, much like Tony Scott had come to realize, not everyone was redeemable. Not everyone was the hero of his own movie. So just as Tony Scott had decided to remove himself from the film of life, so had I… that is until Mr Pink stepped into it and convinced me to join OMBRA.

“I was trying to kill myself.”

“Why were you doing that?” she asked.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Which was true, but she deserved a better answer than that. “I had too much going on in my brain. I couldn’t make it stop. It was just so overwhelming.”

She nodded, adding, “No matter what you did, your brain kept trying to figure it out by replaying over and over what it had seen.”

“Yes. It was like a computer that was so overloaded with programs that it needed to be reset.”

“The ultimate reset,” she said. “How to control-alt-delete your life.”

I stared out at the Pacific, the water crashing against the cliff beneath us and realized why she’d wanted to come. Mother had known all along, as had Black Johnson only I hadn’t listened. My heart sank into my stomach. “That’s what we’re doing here, isn’t it?” I asked the obvious question, if only to put it into real words. “You want to control-alt-delete.”

She sighed as a wave crashed below. “WWWSD? He’d control-alt-delete.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Sure I do. Look at how he was at the end of The City on the Edge of Forever. When he let Joan Collins die, he could barely live with himself. Of course, he couldn’t really do what he wanted to do. That was the last episode of the first season. If they ever wanted another season, he’d just have to deal with it. So really, they cheated.”

She was right of course. Kirk was passion incarnate. No other character perhaps in the history of television wore his heart so far up his sleeve. My only hope was she wouldn’t mention Rayna, but that hope was dashed in her next words.

“Then there was Requiem for Methuselah. He’d fallen so in love with Rayna that he didn’t want to live without her, despite the fact she was an android. Remember what he did?”

I stared out at the water hating William Shatner as I said, “He had Spock erase his memory. Vulcan mind meld.”

“Control-alt-delete. Return to earlier iteration.”

“One in which he’d never known Rayna.”

A wave crashed far below.

“Do you remember before you left? Do you remember our date at Grauman’s Chinese Theater?” she asked.

“We saw Matrix Reloaded,” I said.

“And invented the WWWSD game,” she said.

“You know you can’t go back, right? We aren’t computers. Our life is a straight line from birth to death.”

“Maybe somewhere I can find it. Maybe somewhere I can go back. All I know for now is I can’t find it here. This timeline is set.” Then she turned and smiled — an honest to god smile from the before time as if nothing had ever happened to her… to us. It was so true, so powerful, so infectious, I couldn’t help but smile in return. Then she nodded, waved at me once with her right hand, then leapt.

My heart stopped and my mouth opened, but I didn’t watch her fall. I didn’t see what happened. One minute she was there, the next she wasn’t. We were too high for her to survive. The rocks and the waves were too unforgiving. But then again, so was life. What would William Shatner do? He’d kill himself and hope to come back in a less complicated time. He’d proven so with Rayna.

What was I to do? Was I to be next… go back to the place it had all begun, me ready to jump from the Vincent Thomas Bridge? To end it all just like Tony Scott had? Should I join her?

WWWSD?

WWWSD?

WWWSD!

I screamed into the wind.

Fuck that game!

Fuck William Shatner!

I grabbed my ruck and turned to go. Then I paused, hurling it to the ground. I wasn’t going to jump… that I knew… but I wanted desperately to see below, wanted to check and see if she’d died, hoping she’d somehow survived the impossible. I balled my fists and shook my head hard enough to become dizzy. Bo. I knew better. She knew better. She’d orchestrated it perfectly. She’d said as much, making sure the last image I wanted to see of her was a live one, of her truly happy, and not one where she was tossed and battered on the rocks.

WWWSD?

He’d move on, just like he always did.

He’d leave the scene of the drama, return to the captain’s chair and log it.

Yeah.

He’d do that.

He always did that and things turned out all right.

And I guess, so would I.

I wiped the moisture from my eyes, picked up my ruck, and headed back to where’d I’d come, or at least to where I’d been.

All ahead full.

Aye, Aye, Captain.

Prepare for warp drive.

Aye, Aye, Captain.

Engage warp drive.