Closest Encounter (7 page)

“Okay.”

She thought she heard something in his voice. Something almost like sadness.

“What?” she said.

“What what?”

“Why did you say ‘okay’ like I had just kicked a puppy across a room or something?”

Brad glanced at her, smiled crookedly—almost wistfully, she thought—then turned his eyes back to the road.

“Do you know why I didn’t fuck the waitress?” he asked quietly.

“Because pancakes make you logy?” She tried to say it lightly. She wanted to see him smile again, hear him laugh. He did neither of those things.

A moment later he answered. “Because she wasn’t you.”

“Oh,” Beth said, as something familiar but long missing fluttered in her chest.

“Yeah, oh,” he said.

She turned her head toward the side window so he would not see the grin she could not, at that moment, keep off her face. What he had just said had pleased her—more than she would have guessed and much more than she cared to let on at the moment.

“No,” she finally said in a controlled voice. “I think that’s good. I felt the same way about the cook.”

“The cook was hideous.”

“He was,” she admitted. “So I had an easier time of it, I guess.

He laughed and the sound of that made something unfasten inside her.

Chapter Ten

The road was narrow and unending—at least for a while, rising and falling along gentle hills with bucolic scenes of cows and farms sliding by. Beth took it as a good sign that she did not see anyone fucking said cows as they passed.

And Brad seemed to be getting the hang of the whole truck driving thing.

“Hey,” he even said. “This may make a fine career for me once I get fired from my current one.”

“Fired for what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Behavior unbecoming a Special Agent. Extreme fraternization.”

“Are you kidding? You were the only one at your warehouse that didn’t develop an unhealthy relationship with either a sandwich or a Thermos. Plus, you just turned down what looked like a perfectly adorable waitress with a hand on your cock. To my mind, you should get some sort of medal for extreme restraint in the line of duty.”

“I’m not sure what we just did was an example of restraint.”

She glanced at him. “I don’t regret what we just did. One, it worked. Two, it was fun. Three, it was a
lot
of fun. If you get fired for any of that, I’m right there with you. And I haven’t bothered to learn the first thing about driving a truck. ”

“It
was
fun,” he said, and Beth thought she caught a certain quality to his voice, matched by a tenderness in his eyes.

“It was very fun,” she reminded him.

“I know.”

“And maybe we can do something like it again sometime. Off the clock, and free of strange object influences. Maybe even in a bed.”

Brad smiled, drove on in silence for a while before saying, “A bed would be nice.”

“It would be.”

She opened the map and began plotting the most desolate, unpopulated route possible.

“Anyway,” she said. “The key, I think, is to not sleep anymore. I’m pretty sure it was my dream that triggered the”—she searched for the right word—“effect. So maybe it’s me… Maybe I’m causing all this…”

“I thought ‘diner orgy’ was my dream.”

“True. Maybe. I don’t know how the thing works at all, but I have a feeling that my connection with the object is a little stronger. Maybe from when I touched it. I guess that’s something for the lab coats to figure out. We just need to get this thing safely underneath a mountain before we accidentally trigger a fuck-alypse.”

Brad laughed despite himself at the distinct possibility that the world could end in anarchy and orgies. “Fuck-alypse… That’s good. You think of that yourself?”

“Yes. Thanks. I also minored in creative writing.”

“It shows.”

The truck drove on, over hill and dale. Past fields of not being fucked by farmers’ cows.

Chapter Eleven

Beth took her turn behind the wheel, figuring it out with a little less difficulty than Brad.

“It’s not so bad, once you get into the higher gears,” she said.

Brad frowned and said, “I broke it in for you.”

“I don’t think that’s how machines work.”

“No, probably not,” he said, then leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes and promptly fell asleep.

An hour or so later, Beth spotted the dozen or so vehicles forming in a line in the distance behind them—all dark blue, all the same manufacturer, all mid-sized SUVs. They moved slowly closer, not so quickly as to cause a normal, less observant person alarm. Beth didn’t know whether to speed up or hit the brakes. Either would have given away the game, and sometimes the best and safest thing to do was to let the game play out unnoticed.

“Hey,” she said, and Brad stirred in his seat.

“Is it my turn to drive?”

“No, but I think we’re being followed.”

He sat up, rubbed his eyes and checked one of the mirrors.

“By who?”

“I was hoping you might know.”

“They don’t look like any of ours. Not that I know every car in our department’s fleet, but we tend to go in for white vehicles for some reason. Even our helicopters are white.”

“That’s disappointing.”

“Tell me about it. Could they be your people?”

“There aren’t that many people in the entire Department of Ufology, even if you include the cleaning staff.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah. Hmm. So what do you think? Speed up, slow down or stay the same?”

Brad seemed to be thinking about it before shouting his answer with a startling burst of energy.

“Stop!”

She hit the brakes immediately, the wheels shuddering against the pavement as momentum threw them both forward in their seats. She felt the force of the truck’s trailer pushing behind them then beginning to angle, its tires screaming against the road. She released the brake a little to prevent what felt like an inevitable jackknife and wrestled with the steering wheel like it was a bucking animal. They finally stopped, about a hundred yards away from the large black semi-truck blocking the road in front of them.

The caravan of dark blue vehicles that had been following them slowed to a stop a hundred or so feet behind them. For a moment, that was it. No car doors opened, no sirens flashed, no loud speaker announcements punctuated the air. Then, from the dark truck in front of them emerged three figures wearing bulky black outfits that resembled nothing so much as spacesuits. The spherical helmets that contained the figures’ respective heads were of a particular non-reflective, opaque black.

Beth and Brad climbed out of the truck, walked up the road to meet the approaching figures. Brad had his hand resting on the butt of his gun. Beth didn’t bother. She had a feeling that this was not a situation anyone would be shooting their way out of.

One of the strangely dressed figures came forward, holding something in his hand for them to read. As they got closer, Beth read the ID out loud. “Global Initiative for Terrestrial Integrity.”

Brad sighed and said, “What is that? GIFT? It sounds like such a nice organization…”

A man’s voice filtered through an electric speaker on the suit answered, “GITI, actually. And we are a very nice organization… If you consider protecting the entire planet from outside forces ‘nice’.”

“I guess that seems pretty nice,” Brad said. “So… Thanks?”

“So what are you guys? Part of the UN?” Beth asked.

“Not exactly,” the faceless man said. “But let’s say that that’s close enough. The point is, we represent a conglomeration of world authorities and thus outrank any jurisdiction you might think you have in this matter.”

“Yeah,” Beth said. “I kind of figured that by the giant truck blocking the road. Do you guys have any idea what you’re dealing with here?”

“We’ve been kept apprised.”

“Then I hope you have some special NASA chastity belts in those get-ups,” Brad said.

The man from GITI made a noise that could have been a chuckle or just static on his speaker.

“We’re well prepared, I assure you,” he said, gesturing to the other figures behind him, who now approached the truck—ostensibly to examine its alien cargo. One climbed into the truck’s cabin, started the engine and pulled it forward toward the GITI truck, which was large enough to contain the entirety of their truck in its storage. Doors at the back of the GITI truck opened with an automatic hiss. A ramp descended. The smaller semi drove up the ramp and the doors closed again behind it.

“I imagine you have your own hole inside a mountain you can store this thing safely in then,” Beth said.

And the man in the black spacesuit said, “We have prepared a facility for the purpose. But we thank you for your efforts in getting the object this far, Agent August. You are a hero.”

“Gosh, thanks,” she said, not quite rolling her eyes.

“You’re welcome from me too,” Brad said and the speaker on the man’s spacesuit either laughed or clicked again.

Not long after that the truck was gone to parts unknown, and one by one the caravan of blue vehicles behind them followed, leaving Beth and Brad at the side of the road until the last SUV pulled over and a tinted window slid down. Inside was a driver wearing a blue suit. He had something that looked like a gas mask over his face, but he pulled it off to reveal a visage of no particular interest or enthusiasm.

“I’m your ride back,” the man said. “Take it or leave it.”

They took it.

Chapter Twelve

After filing all the necessary paperwork and being debriefed by the governor, Beth slept for the better part of the next three days. She had never felt so thoroughly exhausted in her life and was grateful that the dreams she had then did not feature living black oceans or multi-tentacled translucent creatures.

Mostly, they featured Brad. Also, a lot of driving.

At first the dreams had been mostly variations of the sex they had had on the warehouse floor or in the truck—or in some other place they had never actually had sex in. But then other scenes, both remembered and imagined, began to replay in her head—and not always when she was asleep.

She remembered drinking awful wine with him out of paper cups in her hotel room. Beth remembered watching his face as he drove in the night. The memory of his dark eyes alone were enough to make a shiver run through her. And the sound of his laugh, the kindness in his voice when he was warning alien-possessed fuckers that he was moving the car they were fucking against and he didn’t want them to fall into the street.

Beth found herself smiling often. Then, as she remembered that this day, too, would be another day without seeing him again, the smile would fade.

She was glad when she was cleared to get back to work and could bury herself in the job again—distract herself with whatever bit of the heavens would come crashing down to earth next.

But the governor noticed the change in Beth and mentioned it one day when they had been left behind in a conference room after a presentation about a possible UFO sighting that sounded a great deal like yet another weather balloon.

“You okay, Beth?” the governor asked, but not in her governor voice. This was Beth’s old college friend Alice talking now. “You seem a bit distracted lately.”

“Maybe I’m just concerned about all these rogue weather balloons. What do they want? What are they up to?”

“Seriously, Beth. Something has been different about you ever since that sphere.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that security guard.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And he wasn’t a security guard. He was an agent. You read the report…”

“I read the report. Did that guy get under your skin somehow, Beth?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“You understand I am not speaking in double entendre right now, Beth. I mean, emotionally. Are you in love with this guy or something?”

Beth looked Alice straight in the eye before speaking.

“Something like that,” she said. “Is that dumb? Maybe it’s just a residual effect from the object.”

“Or maybe you’re just in love with the guy. Dumber things have happened, you know, even to people like you. Have you told him?”

“No. Haven’t seen him since we got back. You don’t happen to have the directory for the federal Department of Xeno-Cryptology, do you?”

“Not on me.”

“Okay.”

“Or anywhere.”

“I figured.”

And that was that. There was nothing to be done about it. Beth left the conference room and the next day went to another reported crash site. It was a weather balloon.

“I swear to Christ, I’m going to start arresting meteorologists in a second,” she told the governor over the phone.

The governor said, “Never mind that, Beth. A car is going to be picking you up outside your apartment tomorrow morning at seven. You are on temporary loan to another agency. I think you could use a change of pace right now.”

“Are you doing this as my boss or as my friend?”

“A little of both,” the governor said.

“All right,” Beth said. She considered arguing, but it would have been more from habit than feeling. Anyway, it would be nice to have some different scenery for a change. Maybe even some normal human interaction and something slightly more interesting than a deflated weather balloon to look at.

“Pack an overnight bag,” was the last thing the governor told her.

* * * *

The car was outside her apartment building the next day at the appointed time. She opened the passenger door and her heart leaped inside her ribcage.

Brad was behind the wheel. His grin was impossibly large and school boyish.

“Where are we off too, Agent Henry?” she asked, in what she hoped was a calm, collected and thoroughly professional voice.

He started the car, pulled into traffic.

“Call me Brad, please. I would have called you sooner, you know, but my superiors ordered me not to.”

“Good soldier, Brad.”

“Oh come on. It’s not like you looked me up. And I’m on Facebook.”