IT CAME FROM THE SKY: Black Suits

BLACK SUITS

by James McConnaughy

The creature ran its hands across the floor, pulling at more and more objects and waving them at Billy. Billy pressed himself up against the wall, as the objects were arranged on the floor. It took him a moment to realize that the creature, the alien, was arranging the objects in the shape of letters.

When it was done, the objects spelled out XELL. The creature tapped the ground below the letters and then pressed a misshapen hand to its torso. “Xell,” he said, pronouncing the X like a Z. “That’s your name?” The creature clicked loudly, in what sounded like an affirmative. Billy smiled and knelt next to it, rearranging some of the objects so they spelled out Billy. “That’s me,” said Billy, tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m Billy.”

The two of them were so intent on the objects that they didn’t hear the door open, didn’t realize they weren’t alone, until they saw a pair of canisters rolling across the floor, spraying green gas everywhere. Outside Bruce, a man in his late 30s wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, slammed the door shut and leaned against it, glancing at his watch, before running his hand through his short, greying hair. “Alright,” he said when he heard a thump from inside. “We wait another minute or two for the gas to dissipate, then we go in.”

“Why not now?” Dave, a considerably younger man in a similar outfit asked. “I mean, we’ve got these,” he said, holding up the gas mask hung around his neck.

Bruce sighed, the special sigh he reserved for when Dave didn’t know something, which was quite often. Dave was rapidly learning to hate that sigh. “Because the gas we chucked in is designed to go through gas masks, at least at first. A lot of people wear gas masks around aliens.”

“Oh. How does it go through gas masks?” asked Dave quizzically.

“Fucked if I know.”

With the matter settled, they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, Bruce looking at his watch, Dave staring at the door. Finally Dave could bear it no more, he wanted to talk, even if it was about nothing. “So. You see the Devils’ game last night?”

“I don’t watch hockey.” Bruce was still terse, and didn’t seem to want to look up from his watch.

“I thought you were from Jersey,” said Dave, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

“I am from Jersey. We don’t all watch hockey.”

Dave cast around for another subject. He’d only known Bruce a few days, but he was determined to, if not bond with his mentor, then at least communicate with him. “Where in Jersey are you from?”

Bruce yawned loudly, not even bothering to cover his mouth. “Weehawken.”

“Oh. Alexander Hamilton was shot in Weehawken you know,” said Dave faux-cheerfully. His girlfriend had recently become obsessed with the Hamilton musical, and he’d been treated to all kinds of Hamilton trivia.

“I know where Hamilton was shot,” said Bruce finally looking up. “Hamilton started up our agency.”

That was some trivia that his girlfriend had left out. “Wait, really?”

“No,” said Bruce, looking back at his watch. “Alright, it’s show time, put your mask on.” He reached down to his neck and began pulling his mask up.

Dave followed suit, glancing at the closed door. “Hey, who did start this agency?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know. Coolidge, I think, you’d have to ask one of the higher ups.” He secured his mask around his face with the quick efficiency of long practice. “I’m not paid to know the history of the thing, I just round up the aliens.”

He waited several moments while Dave struggled to get his gas mask into place, and then turned to the door, pulling out his pistol. Dave had been issued one as well, but he didn’t pull it out. While qualifying for an Extraction and Information Team only required 30 hours of range time, Bruce had made it very clear that Dave wasn’t to use his until he had at least another 20 hours, unless it was an absolute emergency. It wasn’t, he’d explained, because he didn’t trust Dave specifically. It was just a rule he’d had about his partners ever since his first one had clipped his bicep on their first mission out.

Bruce pushed the door open with one hand, holding his pistol out with the other. He entered the small shack slowly, checking the two corners on either side of him before advancing into the room. Dave remained at the entrance, as he’d been instructed. After a second he heard Bruce’s voice inside the room; “Aw fuck.”

Dave bounded inside immediately. “What, what is it?” he asked, looking around frantically.

“The fucking piece of shit made fucking contact with a fucking civilian.” Bruce swore like a sailor at all times, but even in Dave’s brief experience with him, he knew that when he was annoyed he ratcheted up the profanities.

“Oh.” Dave had, in the handful of seconds it had taken him to run into the room, convinced himself there was some grave danger that he was going to rescue Bruce from. It took him a moment to realize that he had his hand on his pistol. He slid it off, grateful that Bruce’s back was to him. “So?”

“So? Now we gotta extract the fuckin’ kid too, and prep him for Memory Rewrite and…” he trailed off, rubbing his forehead. “There’s going to be so. Much. Fucking. Paperwork.”

“I could do it for you,” said Dave helpfully.

“We both have to do it.” He exhaled hard through clenched teeth. “Alright, we’ve got room, help me pick up the fucking alien.”

20 minutes later (the teen had turned out to be heavier than they’d expected) Dave was inside their truck, adjusting the medication required to keep both teen and alien asleep. It was the only thing he did better than Bruce, and he suspected the primary reason he’d been assigned to mentor with him. Bruce was outside the truck talking on the phone with the cleanup team, his half of the conversation straddling the line between obvious and confusing for Dave.

“Yeah; Yeah, we got it, but it had a civilian with it; I don’t fuckin’ know, when did we lose track of it last?; Okay, then maybe 6 to 8 hours, max?; How the hell should I know?; Like 16, 17; Yeah, I know; Yes, we have them both, god; Alright, I’ll punch in the coordinates. Bye.” Bruce climbed into the front of the truck, which was disguised as U-Haul truck, a moment later, looking stressed. He always looked stressed.

“So, when they gonna come clean the building?” asked Dave as he settled into the passenger’s seat.

“Know the DeCon team? Probably next month. Hand me my fucking cigarettes.”

Dave complied slowly. “We’re not supposed to eat, drink or smoke within-”

“Half a mile of any retrieval site, yes thank you, mother. Also sleep or screw, but they don’t usually mention those. I’m not going to light up, I just want the thing in my mouth for when we get outside the circle.” The engine roared to life as he pulled a cigarette from the pack. “We are going to catch such hell for letting the thing make contact with a civilian.”

Dave shrugged, glancing back at the building as the truck pulled out. “What do they care, can’t they just hit him with a wipe?”

“Yeah, but they’re worried he’ll get Crank-ified.” Bruce said this like Dave was supposed to know what the hell he meant, but luckily Bruce caught a glimpse of his confused face before Dave could ask a stupid question. “You know, he’ll wind up as a weirdo crank, writing long internet posts with no paragraph breaks about how the government is hiding aliens or some shit.”

“Oh.” Dave was unsure of what the mechanics of Crank-ification were, but he didn’t think it mattered. “But the government is hiding aliens.”

Bruce lit his cigarette with one hand as they broke past the half mile mark. The flame briefly licked his hand when they took a bump hard and he hissed in pain, closed the zippo and shoved it down into the cup holder. He took a long drag before responding, smoking curling out of his lips as he did. “Yeah, but they don’t know that.”

************************
Thomas, the Mexican-born scientist who ran the El Paso facility, greeted them at the door, his body language sympathetic, his face annoyed. “Bruce, what the hell happened?” he asked as they stepped out of the truck. “How could you lose track of the thing in the middle of Texas?”

“You issued us the goddamn heat trackers, and the thing is cold blooded,” sniped Bruce back, turning it into an accusation. “By the time I adjusted, the motherfucker had given us the slip.” He walked around to the back of the truck, Thomas trailing slowly behind him. “I think it went looking for a civilian because it thought it would prevent us from extracting it.”

He opened the back of the truck, yanking hard on the door to reveal boy and alien, still deep in sleep. Thomas chuckled. “Showed him, huh?” Bruce fixed him with a blank stare, that Dave had no idea how to interpret, but which caused Thomas to cough uncomfortably and turn to Dave, asking for the report on their anesthetic.

Dave watched Thomas read the report, quietly soaking up each nod of approval the scientist gave, while Bruce pulled the two beds from the back of the truck. He was closing the truck when Thomas turned back to him. “So no weapon discharge, just the two gas canisters?”

Bruce nodded. “They weren’t exactly paying attention to us.”

“Alright, then it looks good.” He handed the report back to Dave, who stood back as a pair of grey clad twenty-somethings walked in and began to wheel out alien and teen. “I have another assignment for you.”

“I figured,” said Bruce, reaching into his pocket for his cigarettes and then stopping, remembering he was forbidden from smoking in the building. “Can I get a smoke first?”

“Of course, and I’m sure you’re both hungry. You also have some-”

“-paperwork to do,” Bruce finished in time with him, causing Thomas to smile. “Yeah, I know. Can you just send the fucking papers to my office and I’ll fill them out while I eat?”

“Hm? Oh yes, of course. Shall we meet in my office in say, an hour?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Bruce, already retreating towards the exit.

This left Dave standing awkwardly with Thomas, watching the two stretchers get wheeled into the back of the building. Thomas, who was apparently immune to awkwardness, began to walk away. “Hey, who started this organization?” yelled Dave after him.

He paused at the door. “Charles Hughes I believe.”

Dave had no idea who that was.

************************

“Here’s the thing Bruce,” said Thomas, looking a lot less insecure and quiet now that he was sitting behind his desk. Bruce was watching him with disinterest, or a feigned emotion that was nearly indistinguishable from disinterest. Thomas coughed and kept going. “We have a lot of evidence that the teenager isn’t the only civilian the creature made contact with. In fact we know it made contact with one other person, and we think it made contact with more.”

“And?” asked Bruce, clearly unwilling to commit to something without more information.

“Well you’re the closest EIT, the second nearest team is all the way out in Connecticut. Stamford, if you can believe it. I mean, when was the last time we had an entity land that close to a population center the size of New York? I’ve been trying to coordinate with London to figure out why-” Bruce was waving his hand lazily in a circle, trying to get Thomas to the point, and their boss stuttered to a stop. “Y-yes of course. Anyway, with all of our EIT teams either spread out or on leave after the uh, incident in February, we were, I was hoping-”

“We could handle the Information part of EIT,” finished Bruce, a sour look on his face. “I was hoping to give this guy a little more training on the other part before he started on that,” he said, gesturing in Dave’s direction.

Thomas smiled sympathetically. “Yes, I was. I’m sorry, I know it’s asking a lot, but given how understaffed we are, I thought you’d understand and-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Bruce, standing up and stretching. “Is that all? I want to get this shit started.” He gestured at Dave, who stood hurriedly, his chair scraping backwards loudly across the floor.

“Oh yes, yes, of course, time is of the essence. I’ll forward you the address of our known contact, and if Deidre and Alan find anything else, they’ll let you know.” Thomas smiled, a weirdly genuine smile. “Thank you so much.”

“Yeah, you got it,” said Dave, slapping his cigarette pack against his palm.

When the pair of them were a few yards down the hallway, Dave turned to Bruce. “So what’s the uh, incident in February?” he asked, mimicking Thomas’ vocal inflections.

A flash of amusement crossed Bruce’s face, but only briefly. “If you weren’t involved, it’s classified. Also depressing, and very, very stupid.”

************************

“The essence of a disinformation visit is to determine what they know,” said Bruce as they pulled off the 31 into Corsciana. They had utterly failed to talk about the subject of their assignment for the entirety of the drive, but now Bruce had decided they needed to discuss it. “How long their encounter with the entity was, what it did in their sight, you get the idea. Depending on their exposure, we might have to pull them in for a Wipe or something more formal, but usually we can just disabuse them of some notions and head home.” He pulled a cigarette from his pocket. “But you gotta act weird.”

That last part threw Dave for a loop. “We have to act...weird?”

Bruce nodded, lighting the cigarette. “As I said, more often than not, we don’t have to pull them in for anything formal, but we don’t want them to sound super credible when they describe the interaction.” Dave cocked his head and Bruce sighed, pulling into a McDonald’s parking lot. “Look, they’re already gonna sound kind of weird telling people they ran into an alien, right? Well we want them to sound weird, so their friends won’t believe them. So if their encounter with us sounds really fucking weird…”

Dave nodded, understanding. “They’ll sound less credible, got it.” He glanced around the parking lot as Bruce turned the car off. “Why are we stopping here, is the guy we’re here to see here?”

“Hm? Oh, no, we’re not going to see him until after dark. Our rooms in the area are there,” he pointed at the Comfort Inn across the street. “And I’m fucking hungry.” He took another drag off the cigarette, and reached for the door. “You want something? My treat.”

Dave, who was still under the impression Bruce didn’t like him, was taken aback at the offer. “Yeah, I guess. I’ll go in with you.”

As they crossed the parking lot, Bruce resumed his lecture. “You want it to be surreal enough that they sound wacky describing it, but you can’t force it. Go too strange and they’ll figure out you’re fucking with them and react badly. I knew a guy who got a gun pulled on him in Tulsa.”

“So what do you recommend?” asked Dave, trying not to sound too eager.

Bruce shrugged, taking another drag off his cigarette. “Everyone has a different gimmick. There’s this buddy of mine who works California, he looks exactly like Isaiah Mustafa so he…” Bruce trailed off when he saw Dave look confused. “Black dude? From the Old Spice ads?”

Dave raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean Terry Crews?”

“No, no, no the other one. You know ‘Hello ladies,’ those ads?” Bruce seemed torn between annoyance and amusement.

Something clicked in Dave’s brain and he remembered. “Oh yeah, I remember those, they were funny, yeah.”

“So he looks exactly like that guy, so when he goes and talks to people, he talks like Mustafa, voice, word choice, does the whole bit. And then when he goes to tell people about it…” he trailed off, gesturing for Dave to finish his thought.

“He says he ran into the Old Spice guy and sounds like a lunatic.” Dave chuckled. “Clever.”

“Yeah, there’s all sorts of ways. A guy I know up near the Canadian border has his partner repeat everything he says in that backwards talk from Twin Peaks. You just need to throw in details that you can actually do, but that will make the subject sound totally nuts if they tell someone else.”

“So what are we going to do?” asked Dave as Bruce finished his cigarette.

Bruce pressed the butt against the top of the trash before flicking it inside. “I am going to do my usual thing of overly formal speaking and mispronouncing names. You are going to stand there, eyes wide and threatening, and try not to blink in front of him. If you do blink, do it several times, like you’re not used to it.”

Inside they chewed their burgers in silence while Bruce checked his phone and reads some local papers, scanning for news items that might be related to their search. Then they checked into the hotel, a room that doesn’t allow smoking, much to Bruce’s consternation. And so the pair tried to get some sleep while Bruce made frequent trips down to the parking lot to get a cigarette.

As night fell they donned the black suits that gave their organization its unofficial name among the population and went to go see a man named Danny.

************************

Danny was a heavyset former football star, who according to the medical information they had on file, had blown out his knee during his senior year of high school when he’d taken a tackle badly. The profile they had on him indicated that he was a salesman at a middling office supply company, that he was probably a borderline alcoholic and that he’d already had several run ins with the law, mostly speeding tickets, with a drunk and disorderly mixed in there.

Dave was more nervous than he’d initially realized, feeling like an actor who’d been thrust on stage with no time to learn his lines. Bruce seemed to regard this whole business with the same mild mix of contempt and disinterest he regarded everything, so he was no help. Dave was on the verge of asking what he was supposed to say to Danny, when he remembered that Bruce had instructed him to say nothing.

When they arrived at the small, one story house Danny lived in, Dave walked up the door confidently and knocked hard, a full upper arm, police knock. The sound was loud enough to set Dave’s nerves on edge, sure that the entire suburb was going to hear them.

But if they did, no one else came to investigate, and a moment later Danny opened the door, looking incredulous. “I don’t want a friggin’ vacuum,” he said, snorting a half beat later at his own joke.

Bruce pushed hard against the door with his shoulder, putting extra weight on Danny’s bad leg, and causing him to back away from the door, wincing in pain. “We are not here to sell you an appliance Daniel.” He pronounced Daniel oddly, turning a simple name into Dan-ie-yell, forcing each clipped syllable out like it was its own separate word. His voice was different, a clipped, halting voice that put emphasis on odd points in words. “We are here to speak with you regarding the encounter you have been posting to Facier-book about.” The sudden mispronunciation of Facebook was amusing enough to Dave that he had to physically resist grinning.

Bruce advanced slowly on him, and even though Danny had six inches and close to a hundred pounds on Bruce, he stumbled backwards, quailing under the older man’s unbreakable gaze. Dave followed staring unblinkingly at Danny. “I-I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered out, still stumbling backwards slowly.

“You mean you haven’t been posting regularly to the social media website about seeing a shadow that you took to be an alien entity of some description?”

Danny face hardened suddenly and he straightened, moving toward Bruce. “It wasn’t a goddamn shadow,” he shouted, stabbing his finger into Bruce’s chest hard.

Daniel was pushing 30, but when Bruce spoke, it was with the tone of a parent who had to assure a small child that there were, in fact, no monsters in their closet. “It was a shadow. I’m sure I’m not the first to say this.”

“Yeah, everyone tells me it was a goddamn shadow, but I saw it.” He sank into a nearby armchair, rubbing his forehead. “And you two,” he glanced back at Dave, “you two know it’s not a shadow. You know it’s real, and you know it’s got something to do with those murders that keep happening.”

“Truly? Truly? Truly?” Bruce said, each word rapidly spat out in the exact same tone and inflection, but still subtly increasing in menace with every syllable, as he moved towards Danny, tilting his head every time he spoke. The other man’s height advantage seemed to evaporate and he stumbled backwards, his eyes wide with fear. “If you know something about the cause of the murders, why have you failed to report your knowledge to the authorities? Or perhaps you are hoping that by pointing the finger of blame at this unknowable shadow, you are hoping no one will think of you.” Bruce smiled, his eyes dead and cold. “Perhaps we should search your basement?”

Danny ability to argue seemed to be running low. “You-you can’t, you need a search warrant,” he began stammering under Bruce’s gaze.

“Search Warrants can be obtained all sorts of ways Dan-ie-yell, some can even be postdated to this afternoon. But it is irrelevant, you permitted us to enter your house, anything we find is permissible as evidence.”

Dave had to restrain himself from interjecting that that wasn’t strictly accurate, especially since neither of them were, traditionally speaking law enforcement, but the words had the desired effect. “I-you-he...whatever, you won’t find anything and you fucking know it.”

Bruce’s smile widened, looking for all the word like the cat who ate the canary, even as the smile still stubbornly refused to reach his eyes. “Will we not? I wonder.” The question hung in the air for a moment, the implicit threat settling on Danny like a damp towel. “All sorts of things can be found in a basement. Illegal pictures, drugs, dead bodies. Perhaps we’d find you in the basement.”

The threat moved from implied to outright stated and Danny glanced around the room, looking for something to defend himself with. Bruce stood, his hands clasped behind his back, his face a practiced neutral expression. Dave had no idea how this conversation was going to go, but he certainly hadn’t expected this direction. “You-you-you can’t-” began Danny, finally looking back at Bruce, but he stopped mid-sentence, unsure of what to say.

Bruce had no problem with what he was going to say. “Can’t I?”

Danny swallowed hard, gripping the side of the chair. “You-my girlfriend will be home soon and she knows that I’m not depressed, so no one would bel-”

“You are openly homosexual and you have been whining about how much being single sucks for the last few months, up to and including three nights ago. If you had a live-in girlfriend, I would be very surprised.” He paused for effect. “Also, you are a terrible liar.”

Danny sat back down in his chair, staring up at Bruce. “So what, you’re going to kill me? Disappear me?” he whispered, staring up at the shorter man.

Bruce smiled, completely coldly. “Of course not. We just wanted you to know that all you saw was a shadow, nothing more.”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone else says,” said Danny, in a huff, crossing his arms and looking away.

“Excellent. It was wonderful talking with you Dan-ie-yell. I doubt we’ll speak again.” Bruce turned on his heels and marched out the door. Dave waited until Bruce had passed, staring straight at Danny, before turning in the exact same way and following Bruce out.

As they walked out on the lawn, he heard Bruce say under his breath. “Do not turn around. At all. 10 to 1, he’s looking out the window at us.”

This of course turned Dave into the proverbial Orpheus, desiring nothing more than to turn around. It took all his strength of will to walk to the car, his eyes fixed forward. He felt himself stiffen as he worked his willpower to keep himself facing forward, quietly hating Bruce’s ability to casually walk away, his body language as relaxed as if he was strolling down the street.

When they finally reached the car, Bruce started the car, pointedly leaving the headlights off as they drove off into the night. Dave gripped the door tightly, gritting his teeth as they sped through the darkness. “Why are, why are you leaving the lights off?” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“Seems more mysterious, just until we turn the corner.” 

True to his word, as they rounded the corner, the lights came on and for the first time since they’d knocked on Danny’s door, Dave was able to relax, slowly releasing his grip on the door. “Where did you learn to drive with the lights off like that?”

Bruce was digging into his jacket for his cigarettes, so it took him a second to respond. “Lots of practice.”

“So you um...you do this a lot? I mean, I guess now we do this a lot but...this is a fairly common occurrence?” Dave asked, trying and failing to keep from rambling.

Bruce shrugged as he lit the cigarette. “I guess? More than most other shit, since one entity can result in multiple sightings.”

“And they usually go like that?”

Bruce nodded, taking a long drag off the cigarette. “More or less. Sometimes more shouting on their part, more threatening on mine, but that’s the gist.”

When they pulled into their hotel parking lot at close to midnight, Dave was still unsure how he felt about that.

************************

Dave had been enjoying a dreamless sleep, when he felt a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back and forth until he crawled out of his dream. “Wha-” he said, the last letter of the word disappearing into a breath of air as he looked into Bruce’s exhausted eyes. Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught a glimpse of the alarm clock, and thus the time; 5:02. Professionalism went out the window and he sunk back into the pillow, whining loudly “Noooooo.”

“Yes,” sighed Bruce, sounding exactly as tired as someone who had been awoken at 5 must be. “We got a call and we need to go. Come on, get up.” His voice was gentler than it usually was, almost sympathetic, but it was still firm.

As Bruce stood up and moved away from the bed, Dave sat up slowly, slowly acclimating himself to the room. Bruce, he realized, was fully dressed. His hair was wet and the smell of coffee permeated the room. In a few minutes, when he was more fully awake, he would realize that this meant Bruce had let him sleep while he got things ready, and he would be deeply grateful, even touched. At that moment however, when every blink created a massive chore to get his eyes open again, he was merely exhausted and resentful.

Bruce turned on the TV, immediately bringing the volume down low and leaning back on the bed, rubbing his temples. Dave stood up and stumbled across the room to the half-full coffee pot. Several sugar packets lay open and empty, scattered around the table. Bruce apparently took his coffee heavily sugared. Dave, who prided himself on taking his coffee black with no sugar, poured some into the cups the hotel provided and took a sip.

He immediately regretted it, visibly wincing at the taste. He turned to his partner, one eye closed against the light from the TV and impulsively asked “Has anyone ever told you your coffee tastes like shit?”

He immediately regretted that too. But, to his great surprise, Bruce didn’t seem to take offense. Indeed, after he took a moment to let the statement sink in, his face broke into a grin. “Yeah, yeah they have,” he said, beginning to chortle. “In fact, every-fucking-one who has had some of my coffee, has told me some version of that.” He leaned forward, now openly laughing. “Everyone.”

Dave, who was briefly convinced that his comment would piss the older man off, grinned sleepily and took another brave sip of his coffee. Bruce shook his head. “Don’t fuckin’ bother, we’ll grab something on our way out. Just go shower and get ready.”

Forty-five minutes later, the pair of them were pulling out of the Starbucks drive thru sipping iced coffees and looking generally miserable. “Alright, you promised you’d explain what the hell we’re doing up so early after we’d had some coffee, so spill.”

“I got a call this morning, from our boss. They found the entity’s craft, and since we’re the only EIT in the area, we gotta go Disarm and Dismantle it,” responded Bruce, as calm and casual as if he were talking about picking up a hammer from the hardware store, rather than stealing the guns off a space ships and destroying it.

That took Dave more than a little aback, but he took it in stride. “Where is it?”

Bruce was sucking on the straw of his coffee, so he tossed his phone out of the cup holder into Dave’s lap. Dave took one look at the city name and immediately panicked. “What?! We’re driving to Vegas?”

“What? Oh, no. Well yes,” said Bruce, putting his cup down between his knees. “But,” he reached over and pointed at the initials following the name of the city. NM. 

Once again, Dave was taken aback. “There’s a Las Vegas in New Mexico?”

“Apparently. It’s a small town outside of Sante Fe.”

Dave hadn’t looked at their estimated time of arrival but he suddenly feared to. “Sante F-that’s still like 10 hours!” he yelled turning to look at Bruce.

“I’m aware of how long a drive it is.”

Dave looked down at the coffee in his lap. “Then why did I need coffee? Couldn’t I have napped during the drive?” Bruce shot him an angry look. “Or, or, or, I could nap for part of the drive, and you could nap for the other part of it.”

“That’s the plan,” said Bruce, taking another sip of his coffee. “But I need you awake at first. We need to stop in Dallas to pick up some shit and I need your help carrying it. You can nap after.”

Dave sighed, leaning back and covering his eyes. “Jesus, they’re so, we’re so understaffed that they have to wake us up at 5 after getting in at midnight. Do they ever give out...I dunno, like, alien speed to help us cope with the lack of sleep?”

Bruce stole a glance at himself in the rearview mirror, self-consciously rubbing the crow’s feet under his eyes. “No. You just get used to being tired all the time.”

************************

Their stop in Dallas turned out to be a storage unit filled with different tools and chemicals, which Bruce explained, they had a version of in most major cities in order to ensure they had whatever tools they needed. Bruce took the opportunity to drop off the equipment they’d used to apprehend the entity earlier and chose out two large jugs of a strange red liquid. Dave looked at them nervously. “What is that?” he asked, making sure to give it a wide berth.

“I dunno what it’s made of, but we need it.” He hefted one of the jugs, grunting. “Help me will you, these things weigh a fuckin’ ton.”

Dave walked over to the other jub and lifted it up gingerly. “It’s not like...toxic is it?”

Bruce glanced back at him incredulously. “Well I wouldn’t drink it, but in my experience it’s not gonna take your skin off, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Bruce turned back around. “And grab that bag.”

Dave yanked a black duffel bag off the table and followed Bruce out the door and into the deserted parking lot. “So they don’t tell you how any of this stuff works?” he asked as they loaded the jugs into the trunk of their car.

“Nope,” responded Bruce firmly, slamming the trunk closed. “And I don’t ask.”

“You don’t want to know?” asked Dave as he got in the passenger’s seat.

“No,” said Bruce, his voice filled with a dead finality. “You can take your nap now.”

************************

“Jesus fuck, I hate this fucking climate,” gasped Bruce, squatting with his hands on his knees and breathing heavily. They had been hiking for a little over an hour since they’d arrived at the southern edge of the Las Vegas Wildlife Preserve, and Bruce’s iron hard sense of infallibility was beginning to slip. 

Bruce had let Dave sleep for a little over four hours and then made him take over. Dave, who saw cups of coffee from at least two more stops at various coffee places, had expected the caffeine to keep the older man up for a while, but Bruce had curled up on the passenger’s seat and immediately fallen asleep. Long practice, Dave suspected.

Upon his waking, they’d briefly discussed a subject that had been bugging Dave. “So I assumed that this job was a little on the cushy side,” he’d begun carefully, not wanting to offend Bruce. “What with the high pay, and the four months paid vacation every year.”

Bruce, who had been lighting a cigarette, chuckled. “Yeah, that’s how they get you. It’s not really four months’ vacation, it’s two months on, one month off, to keep this schedule from wrecking you. And when you’re on during those two months, you’re on all the time. Wake up calls at 4:30 are pretty standard. And sometimes, in emergencies, they’ll pull you in off your month off. I once did eight months of this schedule.” He chuckled. “You know, when you divide out the pay by the hours you work, it’s actually not all that much.”

Dave had been quite impressed that anyone could do this kind of schedule for eight months, but now that he saw Bruce doubled over, gasping in the heat, he was a lot less intimidated. Dave, having been born and raised in nearby Louisiana, was much more comfortable. “Come on man,” he yelled back, jokingly. “I thought you were with the FBI before you were here, don’t they make you run all those obstacle courses?”

“Not in fucking 100 degree heat,” gasped Bruce, rising to his full height. “And I haven’t been in the FBI for about 10 years.” He exhaled hard and ran his hand through his hair. It came out drenched in sweat and he grimaced. “Fuck. Gimme a second.” He knelt back down and pulled his bag off his shoulder, yanking a bottle of water out of the side pocket.

The sight of the bag reminded Dave of why they were out in the middle of the desert, and he sighed. “Shouldn’t we get going? What if a civilian stumbled across it?”

Bruce swallowed a massive mouthful of water before answering. “We’re not going to get there any faster if I collapse of dehydration. And anyway, I doubt a civilian will find it. We’ve got contingencies in place in case they do.”

As Bruce stuck the bottle back in the bag and rose to his feet, Dave decided he’d rather not know what those contingencies were.

It took them the better part of 2 hours to find the spot where the craft had landed. Dave had expected a crash, but the craft had touched down perfectly, with nothing more than a handful of scattered underbrush to show it had come down here. It was a small black craft, shaped a little like an egg that was going through an awkward stage of its adolescence and thus had flattened out its rounded sides into bladed edges, and had grown a handful of insectoid legs to stand upon. A thin, black tube stuck out of the bottom of it, looking undeniably phallic, and Bruce made a beeline for it. “Hand me a blowtorch,” he said, kneeling beside the craft.

Dave complied, absently pulling a blowtorch and mask from the shoulder bag he’d been carrying and handing them to Bruce. Bruce strapped on the helmet and waved him away as he lit the blowtorch. Dave didn’t need to be told twice, as he was eager to circle the craft, to get a sense of it.

As sparks began to fly from the front of the craft, Dave ran his hand along the sharp edges. He had somehow expected it to be cool to the touch, despite the heat, but it was quite warm. The sharp edges weren’t actually sharp, they just looked that way, but the whole thing was quite small. Dave was fairly sure he could fit in it, but only just. “How would you fly halfway across the galaxy in this thing?” he said to himself, quietly.

“What?” snapped Bruce, pulling the blowtorch away from the craft and raising the mask.

“Oh, I was just talking to myself,” responded Dave sheepishly. He hadn’t expected Bruce to hear him.

“Oh. Well do it quieter, I need to concentrate.” The mask came back down and a moment later, the sparks were bouncing off it.

A little while later, Bruce had mostly separated the gun from the ship, and was hacking away at the wires connected to it with a knife, snarling in frustration. “There’s a black rubber, son of a whore, black rubber bag inside the bag we brought with us, pull it out and open it will you?” he said, gesturing with his elbow.

Dave managed to get the bag open just as the gun finally came free. “I thought you needed some training or something to use a blowtorch like that?” asked Dave, trying to take Bruce’s mind off his frustration.

“They’ll train you in shit like that eventually, they just want to make sure you’ll make the cut first. Hold it open. No, all the way open, goddammit.”

Dave held the bag open as far as it could, as Bruce shoved the gun unceremoniously into place. “So if I last long enough, at least I could get some training out of it, huh?”

Bruce laughed darkly. “Nah. Usually if you wash out, they usually don’t let you leave with the training you got. I mean, they’ve got the memory eraser thing.”

The sun was still extremely hot, but Dave felt like he’d been reassigned to Minnesota. “Th-they use that thing on their own agents.”

“I don’t fucking know, I’ve never had it done to me,” sighed Bruce, pulling the bag closed. “I mean, I assume I haven’t, maybe I just-” The final word died in Bruce’s throat as he caught a glimpse of Dave’s face. For a long moment, there was no words exchanged, just the two of them, sitting in the New Mexico desert, a bag that held an alien weapon between them.

Finally, Bruce broke the silence. “Look, the authorization required to non-consensually use it on even a civilian requires a list of forms and probably causes as long as my leg. I’ve never been asked to sit in on a hearing requesting use of it on an agent, so I have to imagine it’s twice as long.”

“But they do use it on agents sometimes,” Dave said quietly.

Bruce nodded, unwilling to lie to him. “Yeah. If they think you’re a security risk, or you go rogue or something.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Dave contemplating if he’d made a terrible mistake, Bruce lost in thoughts of his career at the Agency. Finally, he yanked the bag closed again, and stood up. “But hey, if you do what I tell you, you’ll be fine right. I’ve been here for years and they fuckin’ love me. Now hand me one of the jugs and let’s finish this shit up.”

Dave rose slowly, still unsure of what to think and handed it over. “What do you call this?” he asked as Bruce began splashing it on the ship.

“Red dye. Come on help me.”

“Red dye? Very original,” Dave laughed as he circled around to the back of the ship. He still hadn’t located the engines, and it looked like now he never would.

“Fuck off, they named it before I got here.” Bruce’s tone was a tiny bit too light, but Dave appreciated the effort.

“So how does it work?” asked Dave, when they were nearly done. “It melt it down or something?”

“No idea of the chemical components or any shit like that, but what it does, back up, is make the whole thing really fucking flammable.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a flare. Dave backed up several paces more than was probably strictly necessary as the lit flare hit the ship.

The fire went up like a shot, turning the solid metal of the atmospheric craft into papier mache. As the fire spread, carving holes in the ship, Dave approached again. “So you have no idea how any of this works?”

“Not a fucking clue. Pretty though.”

As they watched the funeral pyre for Xell’s craft, Dave had to concede it was pretty.

************************

“So you really have no idea how they got the information out the entity?” asked Dave, apropos of nothing, as they approached the Texas border. They had stopped in Las Vegas for the night, but had been awoken at 7 in the morning by a call, summoning them back to Texas. “Like, how they compelled it to tell them where its craft was or how they understood it?”

“Nope,” said Bruce, not taking as eyes off the road.

Dave glanced at him for a moment, until the older man pulled his cigarette pack out and lit one while it was in his mouth. “And what they’re doing with it, what they do once they’ve got it captured, why they feel the need to hide it, you don’t know any of that?”

“Nope. And I don’t want to know,” said Bruce tightly, not taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

Dave continued to stare for a moment until he realized that Bruce wasn’t going to add to that. He shrugged and sat back in his seat. “I dunno,” he said quietly. “I just think it would be useful information.”

Dave had no idea how Bruce would react to those words, but he certainly didn’t expect Bruce to swerve hard off the road, pulling onto a shoulder. Dave grabbed the side of the car, bracing himself until it came to a stop. Bruce turned to him, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and poking Dave in the chest. “Listen to me asshole. I don’t want to know, and if you know what’s good for you, you don’t want to know.” Dave began to respond, but Bruce cut him off. “Nah-uh, the whole reason, the whole fucking reason they have this system set up the way they do is so that nobody knows everything. Thomas doesn’t know everything, Thomas’ boss doesn’t know everything, and we sure as shit don’t know everything. Worrying too much about the big picture is how you wake up in some 300 person town in the middle of fuck-all Alaska with a new personality. Or worse, it’s how you end up wrapping your lips around your own fucking pistol.” His voice broke slightly on the second to last word, and in an instant, he was done talking, turning his face away and breathing heavily.

The car was deeply, uncomfortably, silent, for several long moments, the only noise Bruce’s deep, heaving breaths. Finally, when Dave could bear it no longer, he asked quietly, “Is that uh, is that what happened to your other partners.”

“First day, what did I tell you about my other partners?” asked Bruce, his voice brittle and flat.

“That you don’t want to talk about your other partners,” said Dave, just as flatly.

“Exactly. So just...just fucking respect that,” hissed Bruce, pressing down on the gas pedal and moving them back onto the deserted highway.

Dave wavered between wanting to bring the subject back up again and not wishing to see his partner react like that again. As they crossed back into Texas and Bruce hummed along with Dani California on the radio, Dave had almost resolved to bring the subject back up, when they stopped at a gas station in Sierra Blanca for coffee. 

On his way through the store, Bruce stopped at the newsstand and pulled a face that was so different from his usual mix of disinterest and disdain that even the clerk seemed to notice. “What?”

“I think I know why Thomas wanted us back in so fast,” hissed Bruce, under his breath. He gestured with one hand at the paper. “He said it had to do with this particular assignment.”

Dave took one look at the paper and had to physically restrain himself from blanching as hard as Bruce had. Sitting on the front of a local paper, underneath a caption blaring “Still Missing,” was a picture of the teenager they’d pulled in with the entity.

************************

“Why the fuck hasn’t he been wiped and returned yet?” Bruce snapped as he walked up to Thomas’ desk.

Thomas closed his eyes in silent frustration before responding. “Come on Bruce, you know why. He’s 16, he was exposed to the Entity for more than six hours and he’s completely unwilling to be wiped. He hits all the risk factors for PMR.”

“PMR?” asked Dave, glancing back and forth between Bruce and Thomas.

“Partial Memory Reconstruction,” said Thomas, as if that cleared it all up.

When Bruce saw his confusion he sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Crank-ification. He’d partially remember six months, a year, five years, whatever, down the line, and what he doesn’t remember, pop culture or more likely whatever lunatic he starts following, would fill in the gaps.” He looked back at Thomas. “But I don’t see how that’s that much of a problem.”

“We have had six ‘Cranks’ as you so colorfully put it in this general area in the last eighteen months alone,” responded Thomas. “And this particular spate of EBEs shows now signs of abating. If we keep up at this rate, we could have 50 in the next 5 years. We are rapidly reaching critical mass here, and if they start meeting or communicating, things could go very far south, very, very quickly.” Bruce turned around, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Hey, I’m not going to be responsible for another suicide cult out in the desert. And this is Texas, we’d be lucky if they were only interested in killing themselves.”

“Another suicide cult? Has-has that happened before?” asked Dave, unable to keep the alarm from creeping into his voice.

“That’s classified,” responded Thomas tightly.

“So what do you want me to do?” asked Bruce, crossing his arms in a silent indication that he knew his argument didn’t hold water.

Thomas looked uncomfortable for a moment before speaking. “What my superiors want is for me to handle the problem. What I want you to talk to the kid. See if you can get him to consent to the wipe. It’s the biggest risk factor, medically speaking, and you’ve always been the best at convincing people to consent to the wipes.”

“If I fuck it up?” Bruce asked, raising his eyebrow. “ACD?” Thomas hesitated for a moment, before nodding. Bruce glared at him for a moment, ignoring Dave’s confusion. “Have him in an interrogation room, with magnetic cuffs. Don’t turn them on though, set them to him reaching across the table.” With that, he turned on his heels and walked out the room, leaving Dave standing in the cloud of awkward silence in his wake.

 “ACD?” asked Dave finally, forcing himself to grin. “Are they gonna play Highway to Hell for him?”

“ACD stands for Acceptable Collateral Damage,” replied Thomas, not looking at him. The grin fell off Dave’s face. “Someone should teach you all the acronyms. We’ve got a lot of them.”

************************

When Bruce finally walked into interrogation the room with Billy, Thomas and Dave had been sitting in the observation room for the better part of 10 minutes, Dave’s nose buried in an unacceptably large book of the various acronyms they used. Bruce had left Billy standing in the room, shouting at nothing for the majority of that time, when he walked in calmly, wearing a newly pressed suit and carrying a file. “William,” he said in a neutral tone. “Please, sit down.”

Billy was surprised enough to see another person that he sat down, hard, causing Dave to put his book down and watch. “I want to see Xell,” said Billy, staring straight at Bruce. Bruce sat down across from him, and opened the file, acting like he hadn’t heard. “Did you hear me? I want to see Xell, and I’m not going to-”

“You’re not going to what?” asked Bruce, looking up from the file. “What leverage do you imagine you have?” Billy opened his mouth, gaping like a fish briefly, before sitting back in his chair, crossing his arms.

There they sat, for several long moments, Bruce reading the file quite comfortably. “You can’t do anything to me,” Billy said, finally, his voice quiet but easily cutting through the dead silence that had settled over the interrogation room.

“Hm?” said Bruce, having certainly heard him.

“You cannot do anything to me,” Billy repeated louder. “If you think my parents will stop looking for me you can-” He was cut off as Bruce calmly pulled his gun from his holster and placed it gently on the table in front of him, before going back to reading the file.

Billy was staring at the gun, like it was his last lifeline in a storm. Bruce was still calmly reading the file, half facing away from Billy, and didn’t seem to be watching. Finally, after several agonizing seconds, Billy dove for the gun. The result was instantaneous, as the magnetic bracelets on his wrists activated. The one on his left wrist, closer to the chair, slammed into the armrest immediately. His right arm remained stubborn partially extended for a moment before slamming hard into the chair.

Billy struggled against the cuffs futily, as Bruce calmly put down the file. “The situation is this WIlliam,” said Bruce, leaving the gun where it lay. “You have three options. Option one, you go willingly into a procedure where we wipe your memories of the last few days, and they are replaced with something else. Binge drinking in Dallas, that sort of thing. Option two, you go unwilling to said procedure, and have a great chance of the implanted memory fracturing at some point in the future, making you essentially insane. Or, option three, your body is found in the desert tomorrow morning, having apparently died from exposure.” That caught Billy’s attention and he looked up, the blood draining rapidly from his face. “And I have been instructed by my superiors to avoid option two.”

Billy stammered, glancing around the room as if searching for a place his friends could jump out of, informing him this was all a prank. “You-you can-”

“I can’t what?” Bruce smiled and leaned forward over the table. “You have been missing for three weeks. Your parents have been searching, but there’s no way for someone who doesn’t know where this place is to find it. No one who cares about you knows you are here, and you would be far from the first to die of exposure after visiting here.” Billy had actually been there for less than a week, but Bruce knew his ability to tell time inside the facility was limited. Bruce tapped his finger on the file. “But I don’t want that. I know you don’t want that. And the Entity you were exposed to, Xell you called it? I don’t think Xell is worth it.”

“You don’t know Xell at all!” spat Billy, sitting forward in his chair.

“I know it killed and skinned a couple outside of Sante Fe last month,” said Bruce, as calm and as level as if he was commenting on the weather. “We’re still not totally sure why, but preliminary intelligence seems to indicate it thought that if it put on their skin, it would pass as human. It evidently didn’t as when the couple’s daughter came home, it killed her too and fled.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone, pressing a few buttons to bring up a map of Texas and New Mexico, a series of dots on the map. “We’ve tracked it for 48 days leading up to its capture, nearly a dozen incidents. It always tried to make contact with a human, and it always ended in violence.”

“I-” Billy was at a loss for words, trying to figure out how to retort to, or handle, this information. He eventually settled on the predictable choice of the first stage of grief. “You’re lying!”

“You are far too irrelevant to be worth lying to William,” responded Bruce curtly, leaning over the table. “If you truly wish to give your life, or your sanity, in the service of an intergalactic criminal, who has killed upwards of 20 people, then I will respect your decision. But I’d ask you, why? Why would you give up your life for that thing?”

Dave, who had been watching Bruce’s face with rapt attention, spared a glance at Billy, and saw that he had tears streaming down his face. He stared down at the table, unable to even look at Bruce. “Because...because he’d do it for me.”

Bruce sighed and leaned back in his chair. “If that was so, then why would it make contact with you, knowing what would happen when we caught up with you?”

Billy completely collapsed, his head hitting the cold steel table, weeping bitterly. Bruce nodded curtly at the window, and a moment later two men entered the room, hauling Billy off swiftly, but gently, to have his memory erased.

Bruce didn’t move however, and when Dave entered the room, he found him sitting there, staring wordlessly at the gun. His face was turned away from Dave. When Dave moved around the table to look at him, he stopped, and found himself unable to speak. For a long, painful moment, Bruce looked much older than he was.

Then Thomas strode in the door and the spell was broken, Bruce standing up swiftly and holstering his gun. “Well done Bruce, well done,” he said. “Listen, I know you’re probably tired, but we need someone to transport that piece of EWT you just got to our office in Los Angeles. If you do it, I can pull some strings and get you two a rotation in Honolulu.”

Bruce rubbed his face. “Yeah sure, load up my car. Just give me a few minutes to change outta this suit.” Thomas nodded and headed for the door. “Oh and Dave and I have some rec-”

Thomas stopped at the door. “Oh, yes, yes, receipts. Be sure to leave them on my desk and we’ll have you reimbursed before you reach LA.” With that, he swept from the room.

Thomas nodded and swept from the room. Dave couldn’t contain his grin. “Two months in Hawaii? Shit yeah!”

“Don’t get too excited,” Bruce said, shrugging off his jacket. “Hawaii has a ton of activity for some reason, and if we’re out there we also have to cover Guam and Alaska, plus probably liaise with the Japanese.” He stood up, heading for the door too. “On the plus side, much less driving, much more flying.”

************************

Half an hour later, Dave was sitting in the passenger’s seat of their car, as Bruce stalked into the garage, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. Dave watched him incredulously as he sat down, sighing loudly and began fishing in his pocket for his keys. “Hey uh, I didn’t know all that stuff.”

“What stuff?” said Bruce distractedly.

“About that entity killing people or being an intergalactic criminal. I dunno why you didn’t share it, but it’s good to know. Good to know we’re doing something important.”

“Oh. I made all that shit up,” said Bruce, pulling out his key. He caught a glimpse of Dave’s falling face out of the corner of his eye and quickly walked back his statement. “I mean, it was a dangerous creature to have loose in the state. I think I read in the file it killed some people in Las Vegas, and if it landed here, I’m pretty sure that it was wanted somewhere outside our solar system so…” he trailed off as he fumbled the key into the ignition.

Dave sighed, glancing at him. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just... how can I know if any of that is true.”

Bruce jammed the key into the ignition hard and stopped, gripping the steering wheel tightly and staring straight ahead. After a second he glared at Dave. “David, we have an alien laser gun in the fucking trunk. What the hell does true even mean?”

--

Bio: James McConnaughy is an Alaskan born, Connecticut based cinephile, with an obsession with Nicholas Cage, a god complex and a life-long love affair with science fiction. When not writing prose, he can be found writing movie reviews under the screen name Elessar for www.criticalwrit.com. His tumblr can be found at footballintuxedos.tumblr.com, his twitter at @elessar42 and he also has a blog where he is reviewing every episode of The X-Files at iwanttoreview.blogspot.com. If you're wondering how he finds the time to do all this, his blood is about 80 percent caffeine at this point.