Undead L.A. 2 (22 page)

She's out there in harm's way looking for me,
Chad thought. A wave of anger surged through him.

“This is all your fault,” Chad screamed, pointing his finger in the General's face. “She told me all about what you did to her when she was a kid. That's why she doesn't want to be anywhere near you. That's why she ran away.”

“What on God's green earth are you rambling on about,” the General shot back, looking annoyed. “You’d better remember who you're talking to.”

“Your threats don't scare me,” Chad huffed, the fire of righteousness blazing in his angry eyes. “That's right, I know all about it. She told me how a tall shadow man with dark eyes would come into her room at night after she was asleep and touch her.”

“How dare you!” The General's face seemed to swell up as if his indignation was giving him some kind of allergic reaction.
 

“All those stories you fed her as a kid about your work with UFOs, how they lit up the skies on your long walks in the desert, the little green men—all of it was a cover-up,” Chad raged. “You make me sick. You hold yourself up in front of these people as some kind of leader, but wait until they hear the truth about you. You're nothing but a pervert.”

“One more word out of you and you will regret it! Just try me!”

“When she told me about being lifted up out of her bedroom in the middle of the night by a ray of light, I knew right away she was having some kind of suppressed memory,” Chad unabashedly charged on. “The truth is that you and your sicko pals probably fed her laughing gas and took turns raping her. That's why she tried to kill herself six times as a teenager. That's why she's got cut marks up and down her fucking arms! Because of you!”

“Sergeant Major, please restrain him!”

“With pleasure, sir,” Underwood replied, clasping his strong hands down on Chad like two iron shackles. The soldier pulled him back, but Chad simply roared louder. It was like a dam had burst and all the obscenities in the world were now flooding out. Chad was not going to go gently into anyone's good night—proverbial or otherwise.

“She said they did experiments on her in their ship,” he continued, fighting back with all the force he could muster as the Sergeant Major dragged him away. “She said they probed her, that they took turns gang-raping her. She said they all looked the same, and that it went on for hours, and when she awoke you told her it was all a dream. But I know what you did, General! You drugged and raped her and used hypnosis to convince her it was just a nightmare. Admit it!”

“STOP!”

Sergeant Major Timothy Underwood froze, and so did Chad. The hum he'd heard earlier returned and Chad could feel his heart painfully kicking around in his chest as he tried not to dry heave.

“Let him go,” the General said at last. “Give us a moment.”

Underwood seemed reluctant to give Chad up so close to being able to pummel him with impunity. After a few seconds he pushed Chad forward gruffly and grunted his disapproval. As he left, he gave Chad a look like he had just shit the bed at a sleepover. Chad's arms stung from where he'd been seized. He rubbed the spots and grimaced as he approached the General.

“She didn't run away because I was abusive,” Franks growled. “She ran away because she was afraid. She couldn't handle what was coming, and she still can't. Plain and simple. But not wanting something to happen isn't enough to stop it. Call it what you want, call it survivor’s guilt, but don't you dare blame me for her weakness. She gets that from her mother.”

Chad couldn't believe what he was hearing. The General's only daughter, his own flesh and blood, was out there in danger and he was making excuses. For all his anger and all his bluster he was nothing but a coward in Chad's eyes at that moment. Underneath the medals and the honors bestowed on him, resting on his chest like candy buttons, beat the shallow heart of a monster far worse than any Chad had encountered in his life.

“She found out that it was you all along,” I alleged. “Didn't she?”

“For the last time—no,” the General hissed, “and if you don't drop that nonsense right now I will crush your windpipe and leave you to asphyxiate back up in the creek bed overhead. You got that?!!”

The General's eyes looked glassy, as if he was fighting back tears as well.
 

“She is the most precious thing to me in the world,” he continued, his voice now choked up. “What kind of an animal do you take me for? I would never defile her. She is my own blood.”

“If it wasn't you,” Chad asked, his certainty wilting like a flower in the heat of the midday sun, “then who was it? You must know. Was it an uncle? A friend? Who did it to her? And why'd you lie about it?”

“I never lied! The truth was simply too much to bear,” his voice gave away his torment, turning and vomiting the words at me without pause. “Especially for a child! She was just a child! She ran away because I couldn't protect her. Do you know what that feels like? Having a daughter, a young, innocent, beautiful, creative daughter with a head full of dreams? And not being able to protect her from the monsters? No! You don't know that and you never will. You just walk around making accusations and dredging up the worst memories like it's nothing—but you don't know shit about shit!”

“Who did it? Were you being blackmailed by some kind of a kiddie porno ring? Come on, man. You owe me at least that much. Be honest!”

The General looked truly confused for a moment, the hint of disbelief creasing the corners of his eyes. He shook his head and laughed, tears leaking out in the process. It was as if he couldn't believe Chad didn't see it for himself yet, like the real answer was the most obvious one in the world.

“I did my best to convince her they were just dreams,” he went on. “I lied to her to protect her in what little way I could.”

“I know,” Chad started, but the General held his hand up and the words died in Chad's throat.

“No,” Franks growled in protest. “You don't know shit. I lied about them
being
dreams. They were real, son. They were absolutely real. They were visitations. Skylar was abducted. Repeatedly. She was probed and tested... and cloned.”

It was Chad's turn now to be stunned into silence. The General's demeanor didn't budge as he waited for Chad to respond to what he'd told him. Chad thought back to all the times Skylar had tried to tell him, how she'd tried to warn him that she was cursed, that they would find her no matter where she went.

I'd thought she meant him
, Chad realized.
I thought the General and his group of child molesting high-powered New World Order Illuminati devils were behind this whole thing. All that time she'd been begging me to just believe her and I was just like everyone else, telling her she'd imagined it, trying to make my version of events true when she'd lived the real nightmare. She'd been the one abducted and held down and violated.

Chad felt his heart sinking into the pit of his stomach as bitter acid rose in his throat, making him want to puke all over again.

“Bullshit,” he screamed, feeling his knees beginning to buckle.
 

“It's not bullshit,” Franks roared back. “What do you think we're doing down here? What is it exactly that you think is going on?”

“The military let out some kind of virus,” Chad mumbled, his brain racing to create a plausible scenario for why they were there. “Either that, or someone else did. You've been sent in to contain it, and it didn't work. That's why we're being held down here. Oh I'm sure you keep telling everyone here that they're special, that they're the future of the planet, but they're really just hostages, just like she was, waiting to see what's left of the world after you've cleaned up your mess!”

“Wrong again, Palooka,” he charged, shaking his head. “Strike three.”

“So what is it then? Enlighten me.”

“It's what I've always said it was,” Franks blurted out in frustration. “Aliens.”

For a split second Chad thought of the popular History Channel meme that featured the white guy with spiky brown hair waving his hands and insisting the answer to every conspiracy was aliens. It was ridiculous on every conceivable level.

“That's it? That's all you’ve got?”

“It's that simple,” the General explained. “I know it ain't easy to swallow, but if you think about it, it was just a matter of time before we were discovered. We may be way out in the middle of nowhere, but sooner or later something was gonna find us. That's what the scientists and astronomers kept saying. And eventually that's just what happened. They made first contact back in the 1950s. They've been with us ever since, walking among us, passing for other human beings. You'd never even know who they were in most cases, not at least until after the shift occurs.”

“You've lost your mind,” Chad said at last, shaking his head in utter disbelief. “You've all gone mad. No wonder Skylar believes this nonsense about aliens. It's not just a cover story for you. You actually believe this madness. You're insane.”

“Believe it or not, you're not the first person to suggest that very possibility,” the General smirked. “You'd think the trip through the river bed and into the facility would be enough to convince anyone, but the human mind is wired to block out what it can't process. And then be angry about it. I'm not surprised. It's a hardwired survival mechanism, not a weakness, so don't go getting all defensive on me. You need more proof? Fine. Can do. I'm going save us all a whole lot of hassle and just allow one of
them
to explain it to you.”

“Oh, this is going to be good,” Chad snorted, crossing his arms. “Bring it on. Bring on whatever robot prop you've built to convince skeptics like me of your bullshit excuse for playing out some false flag operation. I can't wait to see what you've got.”

The General pushed a button on the side of the control panel on the wall, and the metal door slid open with a hiss. What stepped through it made Chad's mind reel in terror. It was the thing he'd seen earlier on the monitor, the one that had made his skin crawl and his asshole pucker in fear. The alien stood over seven feet. Chad could see what looked like a living film made out of oil crawling over its soulless eyes. Up close he could see variations in color in the gray, amphibian-like skin. The mouth—or rather mouths—of the creature, with their tiny saw teeth, opened and closed, making a clicking sound that reminded Chad of the dolphins at SeaWorld. The loud humming returned with it and Chad gasped in pain once more. He fell hard on his ass on the floor, and instinctively began crawling backwards as the creature moved towards him.
 

“Get away from me! You hear me? Stay the fuck away!”

He backed up against the hard metal wall, but kept scrambling still—as if some latent animal instinct inside of him was unwilling to stop trying to flee despite being trapped. The creature drew nearer, cocking its insect-like head back and forth while it made more clicking sounds. Chad felt the urge to scream at the top of his lungs. His head began to pound as a pressure grew in the middle of his forehead. It was as if some unseen force was pressing into his brain once more. He curled his hands up over his ears as the humming grew in intensity, causing his head to throb with sharp slivers of pain. Then just as quickly as it had come it was gone, leaving a silvery liquid feeling in its place, like his head was floating in a narcotic cloud. He opened his eyes to find himself sitting on a bench in Griffith Park out in front of the observatory. It was day again. The sun was just starting to set over the glistening expanse of the Pacific Ocean to the west. A loud engine rumbled to life, and Chad turned to see the last few yellow buses filled with school children pulling away from the front of the Planetarium as they began their long, winding drive down the hill and back into the bustling city.

“Looks like we're all alone now,” a man's pleasant voice rang out nearby. Chad wheeled around in surprise to see an older gentlemen, one who looked remarkably like his grandfather Joseph, sitting next to him eating the last of a soft serve vanilla ice cream cone. The resemblance made him smile, and somehow set his mind at ease at the same time.

It's a trick
, Chad thought, not remembering how he'd gotten there.
It has to be. My grandfather brought me here, as a child, on a day just like this, but he's been dead for over twenty years now. It's a trick, or maybe it's a dream.

“First, let me assure you that you're not dreaming,” the man said, as if he was reading his thoughts.
 

“Then it has to be a trick,” Chad answered, his mind scrambling for some rational explanation to what was happening to him. It was no use. It was as if his thoughts were walking up a wall of slick wet tile covered in oil. “My grandfather brought me here when I was a kid. It was actually one of the best days of my life. So if this isn't a dream, then it has to be some kind of mindfuck. Either that, or I'm dead.”

The idea of him having already died began to make more and more sense to him.

“You're not dead,” the man laughed. “And you can call me Grandpa Joe if it helps.”

“You're not my grandpa,” Chad refuted, still smiling like an idiot.

“You got me there,” the old man said with a wink. “Why don't you go ahead and sit down? Take a load off, kid. You've earned it.”

Chad sat next to the old man as he noisily crumpled up the wrapper the cone had come in, and hurled it in a perfect arc into a trashcan several feet away.

“You see that,” the old man asked as he pumped his fist once in victory. “I'm like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar over here.”

“My grandpa loved him, but like I said,” Chad calmly repeated, “you're not him. So what the hell is going on?”

“Your mind can't handle our true form yet,” Grandpa Joe said with another wink. “So we've taken the liberty of assuming one more palatable for you. It's nothing to feel ashamed of, by the way. In our experience most humans require an adjustment to our appearance, and some never quite can handle it. We suspect it has more to do with your interpretation of us from years of bad Hollywood movies, more than anything else, but we can't discount the possibility that it is hardwired into you by evolution—like the fear of heights, or the fear of snakes and spiders. We've got to account for the possibility that we aren't the first to discover your little blue ball of water floating out in the middle of nowhere. There are signs that others have been here in the past, as well. Perhaps your ancestors crossed paths with them long ago. In that scenario the ones who weren't afraid of the strange visitors most likely didn't live long enough to pass on their genes to offspring, while those who hid in fear most likely did.”