Dulce Base (The Dulce Files Book 1) (10 page)

“Oh, c’mon!” Stu nearly shouted, and both Ellis and Carl fell into laughter.

“Alright, Stu,” Ellis finally said when he’d pulled himself together, “we’ll let you in – but on one condition!”

“Which is?”

“That you don’t come in until the top level is secured.”

“And the lower levels as well,” Carl added, and Ellis nodded.

“The lower levels,” Stu did shout this time, “you’ve got to be kidding! How are you going to secure those lower levels?”

“We’re working on a plan now,” Ellis said while giving a frown to Carl.

“And we’re not getting too far on it standing here and flapping our gums,” Carl replied. “Let’s get back to Blue Lake and leave you here, Stu, to reverse-engineer this sucker.”

Stu smiled for the first time that day. “Oh, now
that’s
something I’ve been looking forward to!”

16 – Drawing Lines

Blue Lake

Wednesday, May 23, 1979

“What the hell just happened back there?”

Turn slammed his helmet down on the floor and it bounced against the opposite wall, the steel clanging around the room.

“Take it easy,” Robbie said, “we just got hit by the Psy’s, that’s all.”

“The…’Psy’s’?”

Across the room Tommy shook his head and muttered something under his breath, and that just made Turn want to punch someone’s lights out even more. David must have noticed this, for he spoke up.

“He means Psychics,” he said, giving Tommy a nasty glare, although that just resulted in the hard-headed soldier smacking his hand into his fist and looking tough.  David brushed it off with a scoff and looked back to Turn. “They’ve wiped out hundreds of us that way…maybe thousands.”

“
Thousands?
” Turn said quietly.

“Oh, don’t be all melodramatic,” Robbie said with a laugh.  “Turn, they’re not as dangerous or as powerful as you might believe, they’d want you to believe, or,” he looked around a bit and then lowered his voice before pointing up toward the surface, “
they’d
want you to believe.”

“Don’t give me that horseshit,” Tommy said, pounding his bunk for good measure, something that caused it to skitter across the hard concrete floor a bit, “if those aliens wanted to wipe us out they could, any moment, any way.”

“Then why aren’t we dead?” David said.

Tommy scoffed.  “They’re toyin’ with us.”

“Yeah,
toyin’
with us,” Robbie mocked, “and I guess that’s why we just wiped out a whole nest of ‘em in Montana and plan to wipe out a base worth here in New Mexico, huh?”

“A nest?” Turn laughed. “Give me a break – we killed seven Grays, nothing more than a drop in the bucket.”

“Drop in the…I’m sorry, but can someone please explain what Turn means?”

Tommy looked over at Fred and shook his head then laughed.

“Ah, hell,” he said, “I’ll explain it, but I can guarantee you’re not going to like it.”

Fred nodded.

“Alright, here goes. The Grays abduct humans and animals in order to acquire the bodily fluids they need to survive. They implant small devices near the brain which potentially gives them total control and monitoring capability, ensuring once a host is taken, it can always be taken again.”

“Like collaring a dog,” Robbie laughed.

“These devices are very difficult to detect,” Tommy continued. “When we’ve analyzed the devices the best our experts have been able to come up with is that they use some sort of crystalline technology combined with molecular circuitry, and together these ride on the resonant emissions of the brain and the various fields of the human in question. Information is entrained on the brain waves and each and every time we’ve attempted to remove the implants it’s resulted in the death of the human that we’re trying to save.”

“This is usually due in part to the fact that the implants are attached to major nerve centers, and once attached the nerve tissues grow in and around the implant essentially making the implant a part of the nervous system,” David said, standing up for a moment. “When relatively unsophisticated medical procedures are used in an attempt to remove the implants, major nerve centers are damaged as a result, causing severe injury or even death.

“Who do they take most?” Fred asked.

“I can tell you that the most common abductees are petite women in their early twenties or early thirties, dark haired boys between five to nine, small to medium size men in their mid-twenties to mid-forties,” Jerry said with a sigh from across the room, as if he was saying something he’d rather not. “But, let me stress that there are all types of people being held against their will in the Dulce Base! There are tall heavy men and women, teenagers, elderly folks and very young girls in the cages and the vats. I only mention the most common age-size are the small young men and petite women. The boys are favored because at that age their bodies are rapidly growing, and their atomic material is adaptable in the transfer chamber. The young small women are frequently very fertile. The men are used for sperm. I have no idea why they prefer small to average size men.”

Fred’s face lost a bit of color.  “Jesus!”

“Yeah, but don’t you think it’s funny that none of the briefings we had over the past week or so have mentioned why the Grays are here, why they broke that treaty, and why we need to get back into that base so bad?” Lewie said from across the room.

“You know why,” Tommy said, looking over at him with narrowed eyes and in the calmest voice Turn had heard him use yet.

“Don’t be–”

Lewie was cutoff as Carl suddenly strolled into the room.

“Listen up, men,” he said, coming to a rest just inside the door, his hands behind his back, and seemingly oblivious to what they’d just been talking about, or at least acting that way, “we’ve got new orders already.”

“What?” David nearly shouted. “How could that–”

Carl raised his arm and David fell quiet.

“After that attack last night we’re not taking any chances and we’re not letting them change up their defensive or offensive capability – we’re going in.”

He looked over and gave Tommy a stern look, but the hard-headed soldier wisely held his tongue.  Carl glanced around the room at the others, nodded, then turned to leave. “Be ready to move soon,” he said, then was gone.

17 – Different Views

Blue Lake

Thursday, May 24, 1979

Turn rushed to the door in the white storage tank, the gravel crunching under the heels of his boots. He reached it faster than he’d ever run before, and it surprised him. He often had no idea his legs could do what they could, but he wasn’t going to gloat over it now – he whipped his hand down and grasped the doorknob and turned and…nothing – it was locked.

“Shit!” he said, then looked back over his shoulder.  It was then that the flash gun hit him and he vaporized into a fine black powder, one that started to blow away on the wind.

BEEP!

The buzzer sounded, indicating the simulation was over, and a moment later the virtual reality goggles lifted off Turn’s head.

“Second time,” the soldier manning the sim-chamber said as he set the goggles down on the table next to the dentist’s chair Turn was sitting in – it was technically called the V-Chair, but technicalities didn’t usually fly too well at Blue Lake.

“What the hell was that?” Turn said, then looked up at the man standing over him.  He wasn’t wearing any kind of military uniform, and in fact had on an oil-stained wife-beater and pants that didn’t look much better –
was that blood?

“That, my friend, is a common problem we get at the HUB drop-off points,” the main said, then stuck his hand out in a gesture to help Turn up. “Name’s Zates, Major Jake Zates…I don’t think we’ve met yet…at least besides that initial meet and greet…”

“Which wasn’t really much of either,” Turn said, then smiled and put out his hand.

“Turnicot Dupree,” he said, then screwed up his face. “Zates?  Sounds…hey, what kind of name is that, anyways.”

“Beats the fuck out of me,” Jake said, “maybe Pollack – I dunno. What the hell kind of name is Dupree?”

Turn laughed. “Cajun, what else?”

“Louisiana boy, huh?” Jake said with his best New Orleans Cajun accent, which was close-up to the worst Turn had ever heard.

“Mississippi,” he said, smiling nonetheless, then narrowed his eyes and became serious. “I thought I was on a military base in that sim? What the hell was that back there?”

“Oh, you’ve probably thought a lot and made up a lot of assumptions on where you’re going,” Jake laughed, “but let’s just clear all that rubbish away now, eh?”

Turn frowned and was about to speak up when another voice beat him to it.

“Don’t scare him, Zates – not yet at least.”

Both Jake and Turn whipped around to see the Dutchman standing there.

“Ah…Major,” Jake said, then nodded deferentially as Ellis approached. 

“I’m glad to see you’re training,” Ellis said as he came near, ignoring Jake completely but stopping beside him, “I wish more of the men felt the need.”

“Where we’re going?” Turn scoffed. “I don’t see why they don’t.”

Ellis frowned, glanced over at Jake, then nodded.  “Not that it really matters – we’ll be heading out tonight.”

“What!” Turn said, nearly bolting up from the chair even though Jake was still working on the last of the connections to him.

Ellis nodded. “We’ve got word that an alien transport ship is coming into the Dulce port tonight, one that’ll ensure the port is open to us, and one that’ll give us some extra cover to boot.”

“That’s
one
way of putting it,” Jake said with quite the audible sigh, another way is to say the Grays will have more…’men’ in that port area than they’d usually.”

“You sound like you know a lot about the aliens, Jake,” Turn said, “I thought most of you regular recruits were in the dark. Well,” he said with a laugh, “at least until I heard some of you talking last night – what the hell is going on with you boys?”

Jake gave a nervous glance to Ellis, and the Dutchman nodded before putting his hand on Jake’s shoulder.

“You know that not every mission we sent into Dulce had a 100% casualty rate, right, Turn?”

Turn looked to Jake, who’s eyes flitted about nervously, like he was picturing something he’d rather not see. Turn nodded, said nothing.

“Now Jake here,” Ellis said as he tousled the young man’s hair, breaking a bit of the tension, “Jake here was working in Dulce
before
’75.”

“
Really
?” Turn said, narrowing his eyes at the young soldier.

Jake nodded and adjusted the glasses on his nose. The young soldier couldn’t have been much past his late-20s, yet his hard and chiseled face and that faraway look in his eyes said he’d seen a lot more than his young years might have supposed. He ran a hand threw his blonde flattop haircut and shook his head, in exasperation more than anything.

“I was on one of the lower levels,” Jake said, looking past Turn and probably past the previous few years as well.  “My job wasn’t critical, just working the switches for the trains that run down on Level 7.  I didn’t even know that something had happened up on Level 2 until the Reptilians began coming through about an hour later, doing the mop-up work.”

“Jake, you don’t have to–”

“No, it’s alright,” Jake said, waving away Ellis’s words as well as the steadying hand that’d been moving toward his shoulder, “I
need
to do this.”

Turn looked from Jake to Ellis and then back again, but remained quiet.

“They took out Lonnie and Chuck first, two of my best buds, guys that’d just been doing their shift and checking on one of the connection tubes as the routine called for. The problem was the Grays sent the lizards out to do their dirty work, and we all know they can’t do anything right.”

Jake laughed at that point as he looked at Ellis, and the Dutchman gave a slight smile. Jake’s smile quickly faded and he continued.

“I heard the gunfire first, and it certainly wasn’t M16 fire – that was clear right away. So I called it up to the next level, but there was no answer. That’d never happened before, and that’s when I knew something was wrong.”

“What’d you do?” Turn asked when Jake paused for several moments, lost in the memory of that day.

“I powered-up one of the spare trains and set it on auto-pilot for New York,” Jake said with a sigh. “I ran, that’s what I did.”

“You got out, and gave us a helluva lot of information on what’d happened,” Ellis said quickly, this time grabbing Jake by the shoulder and turning him to look in his eyes.

“Yeah, but–”

“Shut up!” Ellis shouted, slapping Jake across the face, hard. Jake’s eyes went wide and he looked at the Dutchman in shock. “Listen, we’re going to be heading back to Dulce tonight, and you’re coming, Jake, and you’re going to give those damn lizards some payback for Lonnie and Chuck, aren’t you? Aren’t you!”