Frankentown (15 page)

Everyone Frank passed in the train station shot him a dirty look. Looking for his train across four different tracks, he realized he actually liked the tar smell that lingered in such train stations.
As he found his train on the last track, he was taken back to being a kid and heading places with his family. The memory stuck to the tar smell.
Another, less welcome and slightly more disturbing memory interjected.
The alien.
This was almost exactly how the alien smelled.
With only petty cash left in his pocket, he purchased a ticket that could only take him as far as SFO International Airport. The train wasn’t about to leave for another 45 minutes, but he was eager to get into the last car to shield himself from hungry eyes. Why was he being chased?

He sat down on the train with sunglasses on and his head hidden under a hat. He came to SFO with the intention to fly elsewhere and to hide out.
 

It had taken about as long as it took for the train to start departing for Frank to finally realize that even if he could buy a ticket on a flight with his credit card, he’d be found in a matter of minutes or less.
It truly wasn’t the idea of the year.

But traveling by plane was the best way to escape, and there was another way to get on the plane. It wasn’t too hard, actually. All he had to do was steal a reflector jacket like the baggage handlers wore from the staff lockers, sneak outside, find a luggage train, open a big suitcase, throw everything out of it, climb in it and close it as well as he could from the inside.
Then a baggage handler picked him up less than ten minutes later and put him on a plane, destination unknown. The baggage area of the planes were less drafty than Frank remembered them to be from when Lyle put him in a suitcase on a flight to LAX when he was six years old, and even with hot breath inside the suitcase, it was still freezing.

It wasn’t an entirely bad memory somehow, because at least it was a memory of his brother, of which he had fewer and fewer.
Back then, the town seemed like the whole world, parks as forests, ponds as oceans. Not having travelled outside California in years, Frank had plenty of time to reminisce and revisit bittersweet memories.
When he was younger, he would go with his dad two and half hour drive south of Carson city to visit his aunt Chida, his dad’s sister, in a small place along the Interstate 95.
He’d only known her as Chida, which was short for Arachida.

The weekends at Chida’s place were long and drawn out.
What that usually meant was, that his dad and his aunt would sit around on the couch, watch TV, chain-smoke and eat chips and talk ‘grown-up talk’, which he either blocked out by the TV, or more often, escaped from to see Laura, the girl from next-door. She was a year older than Frank, which at the time made all the difference...but now?
Perhaps it was because it was the worst environment for a kid to be in, that Frank actually enjoyed staying with Chida for the infinite number of

“This will put hair on your chest” moments he’d have with them both. Ironically, he always thought it put hair on Chida’s chest, too.
The real treat were the the routine Vegas visits which always followed.

Those were the young and rebellious days.
First time they went, Lyle had felt the weekend in Vegas wasn’t worth the gulag that was his aunt’s house, so he’s gone with them only once.
The whole time they stayed in Vegas they were alone. Walter would stay out gambling, drinking himself silly, or worse. Frank and Lyle were alone in the hotel room to order pizza and watch a movie. Lyle enjoyed solidarity, but he never sought it the way Frank did.
Now he certainly could appreciate the effect, only too well, unfortunately.
The plane landed and soon the suitcase Frank was in was being thrown twice, knocking the wind out of him inside. Being thrown between baggage handlers can get one truly sick to their stomach. Frank had a lot to do not to vomit inside the small cramped space.

One of the baggage handlers in reflective jackets looked at his watch and saw he was off his shift. Looking over the shoulder, they saw their replacements walking out toward them, flashlight in hand.

When there was no movement the next few minutes, he expressed the smallest amount of pressure and the suitcase flew apart.

Flimsy, crappy suitcase.
Frank finally landed, in Las Vegas; Nevada. Whether this was by coincidence or alignment of cosmic harmonies he’d never know.

As soon as rubbed his eyes to squint, he saw the familiar miniaturized buildings; all built with meticulous attention to detail.
It was as though America had abducted world’s infamous landmarks and held them hostage, at the point of the gun of the casino patrons, who all willingly paid for the bullets.
 

It had been 20 years since the last time he’s seen Chida. Last time he did was when he drove her back from Walter’s would-be funeral. They had the option to bury an empty casket, but it made no sense, so they just met around a memorial headstone with nobody under it.
They knew he may yet still be out there. Somewhere. Neither Frank nor Grace never gave up hope, at least until Grace was shot down in a local deli.

There was nobody around, and even though a couple of guys saw him from the tower, he was still dressed a lot like other baggage handlers were.
He sneakily left the airport without anyone noticing and walked along a long road, considering maybe hitching a ride.

My head hasn’t been aired out right.
If he just calls from a pay-phone, they will not have any way to track him.
About a mile away from the airport, he stumbled across a nasty looking gas station with a row of coin-fed phones on the side.
One of the few remaining quarters in his pocket disappeared down the slot.

He was in Vegas, so it only made sense to contact Chida.

Maybe he can hide out there. He knew she’d be there, and although they haven’t seen each other in years, he knew he could come speak to her anytime. She’d always said so, on so many occasions, as though Frank harbored some international secret from her.

There was no way to rent a car because, again, he would give himself away with any sort of ID or credit card purchase. Car renters make credit checks and he’d be full circle. He has to either steal a car, or find a better way to get to Chida’s place: like asking her.

“Hi. Arachida?”

There was uneasy silence on the other end.

“Frank?” Chida exhaled on the other side.
The uneasy silence was in all likelihood her wait to exhale smoke, after her lungs got their fill.
“Correct. Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping in touch. How are you?”

“I’m well, Frank. What’sup?”

She didn’t beat around the bush.

“Uh, could I come see you? I need to talk to you.” He said, attempting to be as diplomatic and efficient as possible.

“Sure thing, come on over.”

“Great! Great. Great.”

He paused for several nervous seconds.
 

“Any chance you’d give me a lift?”

“Oh, I can’t. Sorry. I literally can’t.”

She was probably drunk.

“Where are you?”

“Vegas.”

“Oh!”
It was too far away, anyway.

“It’s okay. I’ll grab a bus. I’ll see you later. Hopefully tonight.”

He headed for Conville, where Chida, his dad’s sister from-another-mother lived. Frank knew where to get off; past the first thick woods, after the second stop from when desert ended.

Conville was not a regular town, its population could be counter on one man’s digits, but it was a small collection of houses that were, in their own way, beautiful. Another reason Frank liked going there.

 
Her house was on a nice but dark edge of the woods and she lived only with her cat. Frank looked out of the window for trees, but all there was now was a bizarre prehistoric scene.
 

A huge forest fire had burned the old forest down like a giant box of matches. The blackened bones of the trees now stuck out of the ground unceremoniously, some fallen over in their hot black smoky death. At was 112 degrees and escalating, and Frank was sweating like a pig, even having ditched the coat in a hobo’s lap on the way, with only his wallet in his pants.

The sun baked fiercely.

Chida’s house, now a solitary spot in a new desert, was silent and nobody was about on the single street that constituted Conville. He sneaked up to the front of the house and looked around for the loose shingle to get the spare key out. He always got the wrong shingle the first two times.

As soon as he got inside he saw her cat, who she had called ‘Gray’.

Frank smirked at the newfound irony in the name.

Gray came to greet him with a couple of well-articulated meows.

“Peanut?” he said out loud down the living room, hoping for an answer.

“You know I hate it when you call me that.” Chida’s voice came from behind. He turned around and discovered they weren’t alone.

Two soldiers in tan uniforms accompanied her with semiautomatic rifles swung over their muscular shoulders.

“This is confusing,” Frank complained once handcuffed.
 

“Who are they and what is going on?”

Frank felt threatened, and rightly so.

Before he got an answer, one of the guards placed a wet napkin over his face and muffled him to ‘sleep’.

Chapter Seventeen

0101

Frank woke up to a now-familiar sensation: being violently shoved awake.
“Good Morning Dear.” he said as soon as the thrashing stopped. It was Chida, shaking him awake like.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he exploded.
When no immediate answer arrived, he continued
 

“What philosophy do you justify
this
shit with?”
He was now wide awake, and even though he couldn’t see all that well without his glasses on, the blur was unmistakable.

They were back at the base.

In the past he had been kind of fond of Chida.
She was his dad’s sister and apart from his mom and brother, just about all there was left of the family.
Chida was insecure, but craved attention. Frank just wasn’t buying what she was selling. After a while she would always talk about something random and then he’d zone out. Frank pitied her. She was a prisoner of her own mind.
It may have been an involuntary twitch for Frank, but she felt too insecure about her lifestyle to believe otherwise.
Frank didn’t think much of it either, and even less so now that she’d helped hunt him down,
like some common fugitive.

“You’re with them?”

“It’s complicated.” Chida said without a sliver of guilt in her voice.
Frank threw her the look that he always did to
 
annoy her when he was a kid; the very same look that had always driven a wedge between them.
“Great to catch up. I have to go." He said as he turned on his heel to escape.
“Can you talk to them?“ she sincerely wondered.

“I don’t think so.” Frank replied, resigned.

“Don’t bullshit me Frankie. I know you’re lying. You got that look on your face like when you said you didn’t eat my cookies, remember?”

It was actually ‘Walter’ who raided her cookies.

“Whether you can talk to them or not, they’ve chosen you for one reason or another.”

“So what?”

“So what? Nobody speaks to them except you and one other person who died.”

Frank recalled the General mentioning this.

“Alabaster? Sergeant Alabaster?” He asked.

“My late husband, yes.”

At first it was hard for him to imagine Chida actually being married. Mainly because she’s always appeared to be so miserable, spinning a drink and a smoke in front of the TV. Then he just added a male version of her on the couch next to her and it all clicked.

“I’m sorry Chida.”

“Yeah, well
…
me too.”

“So- are they infected?”

“Yes.”
“So why don’t you do something about that? Tell them to get back to their own planet.”
“Frank, this IS their planet. They’ve been here much, much longer than we have. They made us.”
Chida laid it on thick as usual and Frank had a hard time swallowing it all.
“Save the enthusiasm, you can tell them to go elsewhere yourself.”
Chida stared him in the eye, scanning his face for micro-emotions. She wanted to trust him.

Rafael interrupted their exchange by leading Frank to see the book itself.
The huge bible was the only thing on top of the sturdy-looking podium.
The history of our planet; written out by hand in meticulous detail, put together through scattered clues; a big scrapbook filled with a compilation of memorabilia that very few would believe..

The first five pages chronicled the human evolution and when the Grays were involved.
It was all there, in drawings and notes and sentences, retranslated ancient scriptures.

Chida unlocked the book from the podium on which it laid and carried it to the kitchen,
then she threw a blanket across one of the small tables and laid the book there.

Its cover was leather with strange alien runes and symbols debossed into it, the meaning of which you could only make uninformed assumptions and half-assed guesstimates about.

The awesome-sized leather bound book, with each page protected in a plastic sheet, contained the evidence of extraterrestrial tampering with the human civilization since long before the stone age, when the early man was made.

‘The Cro-Magnon’

Frank was so taken aback by everything that his jaw slacked. Usually when it did this, if he wasn’t careful, his jaw would get stiff. And he might have started drooling.

Chida narrated.

“At the beginning, life formed as it always does. Gases and inanimate matter build into microorganisms, cells, macro-organisms, fish, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and simians.”

Frank was still making a stupid face.

“I know you had sophomore biology,”
Frank wanted to interject, but it was obviously long since they’ve caught up so he let her go on.
“so you’ll know simians are monkeys.

But not dumb little monkeys. Apes.

 
Smart monkeys. Us.”

The idle buzzing of the enormous fridges in the back room underlined that there was a gap in Frank and Chida’s understanding between one another.
Frank was getting annoyed and took the box of cigarettes out of the pocket of her lab.