Majestic (25 page)

"I'm going to get a pine box," Steinman said. "It's all I have available for a child. I'd have to order a nicer coffin from San Antonio or somewhere." He gave me a sad, lost look. "We don't get many dead children in here."

The moment he left Will wrapped the body in the rubber sheet that covered the table. Bundling the uniform, carrying the specimen jar and the body, Will took everything out to the Chevy and drove off.

As he left he saw Steinman standing on the front steps of the Gawter Funeral Home, looking angry.

Steinman never revealed what he knew, and Will has no record of what may have happened to him.

My supposition is that Joe Rose did his work well, and the funeral director took the story of the government man and the strange little child with him to his grave when at length he became one of his own corpses.

July 12, 1947

CLASSIFICATION TOP SECRET ULTRA

Central Intelligence Group

EMERGENCY REPORT ON MISSING MILITARY PERSONNEL

Prepared by Field Headquarters Unit, Los Alamos

Central Intelligence Group

Copy 1 of 1

FOR IMMEDIATE TRANSMISSION

Circulation: The President; the Secretary of Defense; Joint Chiefs of Staff; Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Director, Central Intelligence Group

To be passed by hand and destroyed on return to CIG

Purpose

The purpose of this report is to assess the significance of the

disappearance of two military personnel in connection with extraterrestrial alien activity within the borders of the Continental United States.

Background

1. Burleson, Charles, PFC 0998721943, USA, 53rd Inf. Sta. Ft. Bliss.

Disappeared during nighttime maneuvers on Fort Bliss 7/8/47.

2. Flaherty, Michael, PFC 549112174, 1395th MP Company, RAAFB. Disappeared while on sentry duty at the site of a crashed alien disk in southern New Mexico at approximately 0335 on the night of 7/10/47 .

Detailed Analysis

1. PFC Burleson

PFC Burleson disappeared during or after a night of unusual flare or light activity reported during field training maneuvers by a detached squad of 4

Platoon, D Company. There was no indication of any morale problem. Private Burleson was absent at squad muster at 0.600 hours 7/9/47. A search was made of the squad bivouac area without results. The search was extended by the squad to nearby ravines and gullies , also without results . As there were no roads out of the area it was assumed that the soldier had met with a mishap. No trace of this soldier has been found.

2. PFC Flaherty

PFC Flaherty was detached for sentry and guard duty at the site of an alien object crash near Maricopa, New Mexico. He was part of a six-man unit under the command of S/Sgt. Peter Dickson . PFC Flaherty had four years experience as an MP and had a series of highly successful evaluations. He had a K-Type Security Clearance and was cleared to serve posted guard duty at nuclear weapons depots and in secured armed nuclear weapons storage locations. PFC

Flaherty had no charges or negative comments in file, had never been AWOL or on charges of any kind. He was a bachelor age 23 . He did not drink or smoke

. He had received a high school diploma and had plans to study civil engineering after his period of service. He was on his second tour of duty.

On the night of 7/10/47 PFC Flaherty disappeared, apparently into the night sky. Despite a wide air and ground search over a 72-hour period no trace at all has been found of PFC Flaherty.

Conclusion

We conclude that both of these disappearances were the probable result of unknown alien activity. This conclusion is based on their known habit of causing bizarre disappearances, as per "Intelligence Estimate on Flying Disk Motives" prepared for limited Top Secret distribution 7/8/47. In both cases, there was apparent alien activity in the area.

Recommendation

It is urgently recommended that the following actions be taken:

1. No nighttime military maneuvers to be conducted in areas where flying disk activity is being observed by the military or reported by the public.

2. All nighttime guard duties throughout all military commands to be placed on War Alert status until further notice, all sentries to be briefed and armed and to move in squad formation only.

Chapter Eighteen

The Chronicle of Wilfred Stone

I drove north into a fierce afternoon. As long as the car was in motion I had the wind, so the fact that the car stank of formaldehyde and rot wasn't unendurable. The merest whiff of it bothered me, however. My impulse was to light a cigarette but I was already half sick from too much tobacco and coffee.

It was just me and this road and the thing in the backseat. The previous night obsessed my thoughts. What had happened out on that desert? I remembered the enormous, glaring eyes of that owl, the impossible flight

- I was hit by a bout of shaking worse than a malarial ague.

It was all I could do to get my foot onto the brake and get the car pulled over to the edge of the road. Mike Flaherty's screams were thrashing me.

All of a sudden I was just so afraid.

And I couldn't talk to a soul about it. By doing such odd things to me the aliens had isolated me from my peers.

They were breaking me, and I knew it. The devils were out to destroy my mind.

The minute the car stopped the stink became overwhelming.

I jumped out and went a little into the desert. The heat almost took my breath away. It was as if the sun was actually squeezing me. I crouched down, instinctively covering my head. The smell was in my clothes, clinging to my skin, making my insides crawl with disgust.

To the east Haystack Mountain rode in sunlight. On another day I would have enjoyed a view like this, but today its empty silence was oppressive.

There was no movement at all, no sound except the lazy rasping of grasshoppers. Away from the car the air smelled of hot, dry grass. I imagined cowboys riding this range, silent in the heat, restless for booze and poker. Fifty years ago that had been the norm. Fifty years, barely a generation. And here I was in a car and carrying an alien corpse in the backseat. What would they have thought? Would they even have begun to comprehend?

A sound startled me - echoing in the silence, carrying from far away. It rose, desperate, a woman's scream.

Sophie.

No. A rabbit being attacked by a hawk.

Then there came a buzzing, low at first and insistent, the kind of thing you felt in your chest rather than heard with your ears. I searched the skies, expecting to spot a small plane swimming from horizon to horizon.

When I saw that the sky was empty I had my first twinge of fear.

The sound got louder. I tried to identify it as something familiar. If not a plane, then what? Oh, God. I didn't want this to be happening. I wasn't going to be able to handle this.

Instinctively I clapped my hands to my head and ran for the car. What if they were coming after their fallen soldier? God help me. I was alone out here in the middle of nowhere. Who the hell knew how they regarded their dead.

How stupid I'd been to just take the thing and come out here like this. I was miles from Roswell and there wasn't another soul around.

The buzzing got louder, began to pulse in my ears. I grabbed at the car door, fought my way in. When I fumbled for the keys they seemed to hop out of the ignition on their own.

They jangled down under the seat. I bent, trying to force myself to be calm. The buzzing got louder and louder as I scrabbled. I sobbed and shook, fighting to control myself, to somehow grab - and then I had them. I had the keys.

All right, calmly now, put them in the ignition.

The buzzing became an angry whine.

Turn on the engine.

Now it was a roar, shattering, massive. Something huge was landing right on top of me.

The engine turned over once and then just plain died.

I screamed into the hell of noise as a huge shadow obscured the sun.

And a trailer truck loaded with sheep rumbled past, leaving the Chevy rocking in its wake.

A man can slip so easily over the edge.

I wished to God for talk. Just casual conversation. "How about Dewey? Think he's gonna announce?"

An SS officer had once said under interrogation, "You learned not to get near them when they were dying. A human being will do anything if he is dying. Once a girl was being hanged in the women's section. The bindings came loose. A female officer reached up to tighten them. Before anybody could stop her, the girl had torn the woman's arm off."

Where had that man been stationed? Was it Sobibor? Belsen? I can't remember if we hanged him or promoted him. I can't ever remember. What is justice?

The man's fate came to seem very, very important. I thought of his boots, of his black uniform, of the excessive politeness that marked him in my eyes as a killer.

I was hanging over the steering wheel with tears tickling my face. The car was a prison cell in an infinity of light.

Finally I sat up, took a deep breath, re-started the car. I could hear the engine nattering to itself, could hear the grasshoppers again, could hear my own breathing. I lit a cigarette and returned to the road. I flipped on the radio.

The first thing I heard was the Vaughn Monroe song "Ghost Riders in the Sky." I turned the damn thing off.

I started singing to myself like I had in Algiers and Marseilles when the Gestapo was breaking my networks. I would walk in the back streets and sing under my breath in English a song from childhood, "Oh, slow up, dogies, quit roaming around, you have wandered and trampled all over the ground. Oh, move slow, dogies, move slow."

My father seemed to be in the car with me, singing again on an early summer night. I was small and lying upon his lap and the whippoorwills were calling.

I had been safe then and, oh, how I longed for it now. I knew that somebody was talking to me as I drove. I had known it for some time. I just hadn't been ready to look at the fact that I was alone in a car with a dead body and someone was talking to me.

I remembered hide-and-seek in our enormous yard, laughter in the night, cool and mysterious, and where I hid somebody else hid, too. . . They touched me with cool hands, cool and little and white. I drove on and on, the tires pounding on the pavement. I was in a white world. My body was tingling. Some part of me told me that I was nowhere, not in the desert, not in the car. And yet I heard the engine throbbing, throbbing. . . .

Suddenly the shadows were long.

I'd driven all day and hardly noticed it. Where had the time gone?

I stepped on the gas. Fifty, sixty, beating toward Santa Fe and Los Alamos beyond. Los Alamos. It was Spanish for "the Cottonwoods," known to locals simply as "the Hill." A bastion of science and power hidden atop a mesa. It was my City of God, the place where the truth would be discovered. Why was this road so long?

I did not want to be out here in the dark, not with the thing in the backseat and the memory of what had happened last night still fresh.

I felt such an overwhelming poignance, as if in some secret part of myself I had touched my ancient childhood.

Evening became night and the road seemed to stretch ever longer. Soon my world was a glowing dashboard and a smear of light on the highway.

Outside the desert seemed to sigh, restless in the dark. It appears peaceful, the desert, but it is actually a place of endless terror. There is fierce competition in the desert, all the time. The snake stalks the mouse and the mouse captures the roach. And everything is always a little thirsty.

It is man alone who brings light to this world. Nature is dark, brooding and cruel. What compassion there is in the earth flows from the sterling heart of man.

Slit a man's throat and his dog will lap up the blood. Slit the dog's throat and the man will save him if he can.

What did we do with that SS officer?

I was hungry and thirsty. In fact I was so hungry and thirsty that I was shaking like a leaf.

There had been somebody in the car with me, somebody sitting right there on the seat beside me. A woman.

She was little and pale and I think in that moment I loved her enough to sweat blood. She'd been so sad!

A horrible thought crossed my mind, but when I pulled over and checked the bundle I found that everything was perfectly in order. My precious cargo hadn't been taken from me by some cunning deceit.

Still, I felt that the aliens had been with me. I knew they had. But when? Didn't my thoughts stretch back unbroken to morning. A long, hot day of driving . . .

There were lights down the road. Distances are deceiving, though, on a desert night, and it was another half hour before I reached the town of White Lakes.

There was a gas station and thank God a little place warmly lit that had a sign in the window, CAFE.

I pulled the Chevy up beside a couple of Fords and went inside. There were a few tables covered with checkered oilcloth and a counter. The place smelled of hamburgers and cigarettes and coffee.

"Burger basket, and gimme a Coke. Cherry pie and coffee after."

I was surprised at how crowded the place was, considering that it was nearly nine P.M. I had to take an end stool at the counter and I was lucky to get that. I'd already ordered my burger when I noticed the intense buzz of conversation around me.

"It was silver. Shiny."

"You seen it closer than me, then. I just saw a big disk."

"It was a blimp. One of them German airships like they had before the war."

Had I heard that right? "What's the stir?" I asked the man beside me.

"We seen one of them flying disks, that's what's the stir!"

"Really?"

A woman at one of the tables chimed in. "It was unearthly!"

"Godless," her husband muttered.

"Big! It came up the highway not ten minutes ago. You musta seen it."

I knew my blood was draining from my face.

"You seen it, traveler?" a man called out. He had a Stetson on the back of his head. The homey country voices were getting mean.