The Signpost up Ahead

     In retrospect, Tom Doherty thought, they should have seen in it coming.  A community of free Americans should have read the clues, should have believed the rumors, the nightmares and put two and two together.  Looking back now it was hard to believe it had happened, that it had been allowed to happen.  After all, the signs had all been there.  He had watched their progress each day on his way to work, for the last two years.
     The most obvious work had been the continuing projects at an old abandoned portion of the Mobil Oil refinery bordering the Wampanoag Trail, otherwise known by it’s official name, route 114 in East Providence, Rhode Island.  As a young boy, growing up in the neighboring town of Barrington, He and his friends used to hike across the ice on Hundred Acre Cove and then up the meandering Runnins river until they got to the dam which held back the river into a large pond. They would walk across the top of the dam and onto oil refinery property.  The property consisted of a half dozen huge cement tanks holding waste oil in different stages of viscosity.  Tom and his friends used to walk across the disintegrating cement walkways that separated the tanks.  Their favorite was the first tank, which seemed to hold crude oil.  This was thick black sludge, similar to what you saw when the Exxon Valdez ran aground.  The surface was littered with dead animals and birds that had the misfortune of falling into its black gooey embrace.  They used to walk the crumbling concrete, seemingly oblivious to the obvious danger, going from one tank to the next.  As they progressed from one to the next, the oil seemed to become thinner and clearer, until the last tank seemed to have been magically transformed to pure water, which flowed unrestricted into the Runnins River and eventually into the cove.  The site was eventually declared an EPA super-fund site when it was discovered that the tanks were merely enclosures, which allowed the oil to leach into the ground and become successively diluted with rain-water, until the last tank was mostly water.  Tom remembered the time; he had tried a sip on a dare.  It tasted of Gasoline.  When the Town of Barrington brought a lawsuit against the city of East Providence and Mobil Oil for contributing to the pollution of Hundred Acre Cove, the cleanup was accelerated.
     And so it was that massive amounts of work were observed over the better part of a decade.  Work on or near the site, came to be accepted as a normal part of life.  The vast tanks were pumped, supposedly, and covered over with an immense mound of clay. Nearby, a network of test wells was drilled and surrounded by small, chain link fence enclosures, ostensibly to protect the well water monitoring equipment contained therein. 
     Next came the digging of trenches and the burying of miles of some sort of black vinyl conduit along side the road from Barrington to the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Providence.  The cemetery just happened to be directly across the road from the working portion of the oil refinery.  Tom watched this progress with only the slightest interest.  He imagined that the black vinyl pipe was some sort of drainage or possibly something to hold fiber optics for the cable giant determined to take over the East Bay towns of Barrington, Warren, Bristol and East Providence.  On a few occasions though, he noticed trucks from National Grid Electric Company parked at the side of the road.  He thought this a bit odd, especially on the day he was stuck in traffic next to where one of the crews was working.  He was able to see inside one the trucks.  He noticed that the boxes of equipment and supplies were not the usual bright yellow, typical of National Grid.  What he saw instead, were the olive green boxes typical of the U.S. Military.  On the sides of some of them was stenciled NOREASCOM.  He dismissed it almost as soon as he had noticed it, telling himself it was nothing more than electric company supplies or equipment in Army surplus boxes.  It was easy to dismiss anything out of the ordinary in the land of the free.
     Next came the signpost.   A mile or so past the Barrington/East Providence town line, in the median strip separating the Northbound and southbound lanes of the highway; there appeared a massive metal post.  To say it appeared out of place would have been an understatement.  Whereas most of the signposts along the highway were fashioned of a pressure-treated 4 X 4 timber with a sign attached, this new one was enormous, more appropriate for an interstate highway than a two-lane secondary one.  It was fashioned of a fifteen-foot upright aluminum column approximately twelve inches in diameter.  Attached to this were two cross members made of the same aluminum tubing albeit of a lesser diameter.  It was an ominous looking structure.  More than one local motorist thought to themselves that it just didn’t belong there.  Most people assumed that the signpost would have something to do with a multiyear, several hundred million-dollar highway relocation project, slated for route 195 which lay up ahead. In advance of any highway project in Rhode Island, detour and construction-related signage was always put up and left covered with burlap until the project began and the signs were needed. Some thought it was the framework for the one of the new Amber Alert message boards due to be put into place soon.  Tom still remembered the day he and his wife had driven by the thing, conjecturing as to its purpose as they normally did. She had turned to him and said, “I don’t know what it is about that thing but it gives me the creeps.”  When, some months later, after the general public seemed to have gotten used to this metal monstrosity, an electrical transformer was installed five feet away, motorists barely noticed.  By then they had other things on their minds.
     It all started when an eighty-six year-old widow named Irma Pollard, called police to report that someone had been in her house during the night.  She told the nice young officer that she had been afraid, or perhaps unable to report this during the night it happened.  She was not all that clear on that.  What was clear to the patrolman was that this poor woman was terrified and profoundly affected by what had happened the night before.  It seems she was awakened by some small sound – she didn’t remember exactly what, but she opened her eyes to find a group of men in her bedroom.  “No, I don’t think they were here for that,” she answered the officer when he asked if they had sexually assaulted her in any way.  She told them they had actually not been there very long at all, at least as far as she could recollect.  It seems they had used some sort of gas on her, an anesthetic that had sent her to the moon and back.  She remembered one of the men coming at her with what looked like an oxygen mask, “Only that weren’t no oxygen,” she explained.  “I have never been that messed up in all my days, and I went to Woodstock, young fella!  No that definitely was not oxygen!”
     She went on to relate that she had awakened or more accurately, had come to her senses a short time later, having some vague recollection or feeling that they had implanted something into her brain.  When the patrolman inquired as to how she knew this, she said she had had a bloody nose upon regaining her faculties.  When the officer seemed a bit perplexed at this, she explained that they had implanted the probe up through her nose, or least she thought they had.  He asked if she remembered anything of there appearance, their height, skin color, hair color etc.  She replied that she could not be certain of any of those things, as they were all dressed in the same sort of uniform or costume.  When asked to elaborate on this she answered, “They were all dressed like those Ninja warriors you see in the movies, dressed all in black, wearing black leather gloves and even black stretchy masks which covered every bit of their heads, necks and faces.
     The officer dutifully jotted all this down, promising her he would look into it and would be back in touch if he found out anything.  This last bit of information troubled him, but only for a second.  He felt sorry for Mrs. Pollard and wondered if this was what Alzheimer’s was like.  This was just too damn bizarre to be real.  Back at the station he wrote up his report and saved it in the folder reserved for highly unlikely occurrences, sometimes referred to as the loose screw file, as most cases in it were reported by people who probably had a screw loose upstairs somewhere.  They were kept on file but never really followed up.  The police had real crimes to solve and couldn’t afford to spend time on cases such as these.  Patrolman Todd Wilcox would never have guessed when he filed his report here that in a month’s time this folder would become the largest folder in the file system.
     The explosion in the number of these odd cases seemed to have begun when the first case, Irma Pollard’s case was reported in the pages of the Barrington Times a week later.  All police calls were reported on a weekly basis in the town’s newspaper as were fire and rescue calls.  The report on the Pollard experience said merely, “Report of intruder or intruders at 61 Ferry Lane.  No signs of forced entry were found.  Caller stated she woke up and found strangely clad men in her bedroom.”  Police department phones seemed to ring off the hook after that.  Many people were calling to say that they too had had an experience similar to what was reported in the Times, but were afraid of being considered “out to lunch” by the police if they reported their experience.    The details in the cases were identical – All involved people waking up to find a strange group of darkly-clad men in their bedrooms, the use of anesthesia and resulting blackout, and the feeling that they had been subjected to some sort of implantation. Some had even had X-rays done and no evidence of any foreign body was found.  By the time two weeks had passed, they had over thirteen hundred cases.  One of the officers renamed the Loose Screw file and it became known as the X-file.  People were demanding answers and more importantly, they were afraid.  People were routinely babysitting each other to ensure each other’s safety.  The Rhode Island State Police were called in to see if they could solve this mystery and arrest those responsible.  Stake-outs were set up around town but not one of them produced any witnesses or evidence of anything strange, although on more than one occasion those assigned to a stake-out were off the air for extended periods of time.  These officers could not explain why they were off the air.  Upon questioning of those involved, it was discovered that they had a significant amount of "lost” time – time for which they could not account for and had no memory of.
     Then in the midst of all this came a clue from within the ranks of the Barrington Police Department.  It was over two months after taking the initial report from old lady Pollard, that Patrolman Todd Wilcox awoke at 3 AM to find a group of men in his bedroom.  He found himself unable to move, as his mind became instantly alert.  He remembered the Pollard case and how she had described the men.  Her description was a perfect match for the beings surrounding his bed at the moment.  Just as she had described, one of them held a mask of some sort near Todd’s face.  Todd caught a faint whiff of something that smelled vaguely like almonds, and no matter how hard he resisted, he lost consciousness.  He felt as if he were swimming in a sea of motor oil.  He could feel a pair of hands grab his nose and insert something, some sort of device which seemed to stretch his nostril open.  He swam off into the inky blackness, struggling to remain cognizant of his surroundings, knowing it was a losing battle.  He was jarred back to the border of reality a moment later by a sharp stabbing sensation far up in his nostril.  Any other human would have drifted back into the depths of unconsciousness but Todd Wilcox had one advantage the others had not – a strong dose of adrenaline rushing through his system, and the knowledge gleaned from hundreds of interviews.  He fought to stay awake, to remain cognizant of his surroundings, and it paid off.  As he struggled to gain control of his muscles, his arms jerked and he heard the briefest of comments by one voice.  “El Tee,” it sounded like.  His eyes closed, his brain wide awake now, he struggled to decipher what he had heard the man say.  What the hell was El Tee?  And then it struck him like a bolt of lightning to his cerebral cortex, not El Tee, but LT, military jargon, short for Lieutenant.  He was surrounded by military men!
     And now he struggled to do just the opposite of what he done before.  He struggled now, to be still, to appear unconscious.  He made his body relax, and slowed his breathing to assimilate the slow, relaxed breathing of someone fast asleep.  He heard them withdraw from his bedroom, aware of this by the soft muffled creak of a loose floorboard under the wall to wall carpet of his bedroom.  He listened intently, and as expected, he heard a louder creak near his front door.  He dared to open his eyes to the smallest of slits and verified that he was alone in his room once again.  He heard the front door open and he heard the sound of footsteps on his front farmer’s porch.  Seconds later he heard his deadbolt lock from outside.  Evidently whoever it was had some sort of master key, he thought.  He got out of bed and stealthily crept over to the vicinity of his living room window.  What he saw astounded him.  There in the middle of his front yard sat a helicopter, small, totally black, devoid of markings, with smoked glass windows.  He watched as the ninja-like men, or he thought more aptly, commando style men, climbed in the open side door of the ‘copter.  It began to ascend immediately, as soon as the last man’s foot left the ground, and he noticed with amazement, that the chopper made no sound.  He noticed with a shock that there were no rotors whirling furiously.  It gently lifted off as if it were a hot air balloon and headed out to the Northeast, toward nearby Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  He watched silently as the dark ship disappeared into the night sky.  He felt a bit of wetness near his left nostril.  He wiped it with his hand.  It was blood.
     The next day he went to see the chief of police, Chief Edward Wilkenson.  It was not as if the chief disbelieved all of the towns people, but when one of his own officers experienced this same strangeness, that just added a touch more credibility to the mystery.  As soon as he had finished with patrolman Wilcox, he got on the phone and called the FBI.  He explained to Special Agent Louis Littleton, that he had it on good authority that U.S. Military or some other type of Government operatives were performing some sort of experimentation on the citizens of his town.  Littleton told the chief he would be down to see him in under an hour.
     Fifteen miles away, in a concrete underground bunker, part of a vast, ultra-secret military complex under the town of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, Colonel David McGinty listened in on the call between the Barrington Police Chief and the FBI.  He turned to face two commandos dressed in black from head to toe and spoke.  “Eliminate Littleton and warn Wilkenson. We can’t have those bumbling FBI bastards fumbling around into this operation.  This is a matter of national security.”
     That night Chief Wilkenson had visitors, only he didn’t wake up in his bed.  He came to in his back yard staring at a tree in his back yard.  From one of the limbs hung the hog-tied, gutted body of Special Agent Littleton.  His tongue had also been cut out.  A voice told the chief, “This investigation is over.  There is nothing more to find, nothing new to show.”  He slept soundly the rest of the night, remembering nothing of the visit or the carnage he had seen.  He called the men together at morning roll call and announced, “The time has come…to call an end to this investigation.  We are no longer in the dream investigation business.  This is a real town with real problems.  We’ve got underage drinking and drugs to ferret out, and I want some police presence over at Saint Anthony’s School.  They’ve got some wacko kid over there assaulting girls, and no one wants to step up to the plate and punish him."  I want that damn sorry excuse of a headmaster brought in if he refuses to do anything about this.  In short, ladies and gentlemen, we need to concentrate on the everyday problems this town faces and leave the dream interpretation to the shrinks.”
     The dreams themselves seemed to have stopped after two more weeks, and there were no more calls to the police about nocturnal boogiemen.  Tom Doherty thought that this was probably because by then, they had gotten to everyone in town.  He knew that had to be the case.  He lay on his back behind a small hill of dirt, chest heaving, trying to catch his breath.  He heard footsteps crashing through the brush, coming for him, searching him out.  He rolled onto his back and crept over to the edge of the hill, trying to peek at the man who was hunting him.  A burst of automatic weapons fire tore away part of the mound of dirt, narrowly missing his head.  Tom slid to the bottom of the hill and closed his fist around a large rock.  He thought he would have one chance at this and he would either be successful or be shot dead.  Either way he was running out of time.  If he didn’t act quickly, the decision would be made for him.  He moved over to the same side of the hill he had just peeked from.  He clutched the rock tightly in his left hand and with his right he grabbed another good sized rock and threw it at the side of the dirt mound, displacing a large amount of dirt and causing a second burst of gunfire to be unleashed.  At that exact instant, he stood up over the top of the hill, found his assailant and hummed the rock straight at him.  He looked to be a Mujahideen or some other such garbage, dressed in rags and sporting a black and white checked turban on his head.
     Tom jumped to the bottom of the hill not waiting to see if he had hit him or not, knowing he must know run for his life.  Judging from the screams of pain coming from behind him, he knew he had probably hit him, hopefully in the face or the head.  He ran like hell and didn’t hear anyone pursuing him right yet.  He ran as fast as he had done as a kid, running through the woods from the police for one crime or another.  He ran through the muck of rotting vegetation at the base of the trees, and headed straight for the huge mound of clay that had been dumped into and over the huge vats of waste oil as the final solution to the problem as mandated by the EPA.  He ran along the right side of the mound.  He knew he would be out of site of his attacker on this side for a while, as long as his attacker remained slow to resume his chase.  So far, no sign of that though, and if he did, Tom thought he had a good hiding place in mind.  He ran like the wind until he came to a wall overlooking the small dam that held back the waters of the Runnins River.  As a boy he and his friends had caught snapping turtles in the pond behind the dam.  In March and April of each year they would descend upon the dam with fishnets.  They would spend hours scooping dozens of migrating herring out of the water below the dam overflow and dumping them up-river, on the other side of the dam, giving them a helping hand on their journey to spawn.  He ran over to the small building that at one time had held some sort of office or control room, and waited there, catching his breath once again.  His mind was spinning. 
     Just an hour and a half ago he had been on his way to work.  He had rounded the curve adjacent to the radio towers for WHJJ, towers he had climbed as a kid, and noticed some sort of accident up ahead.  There was a car off the road ahead, actually more than one.  He saw their operators on the ground next to their vehicles, injured or perhaps dead.  Proceeding forward slowly now, Tom noticed something odd.  There were no ambulances, nor were there any police vehicles.  There was however a phalanx of soldiers dressed head to toe in black, standing in line behind Jersey barriers that had been positioned across both lanes of the highway.  There was something else as well, something ominous.  The strange signpost that he and hundreds of East Bay citizens had wondered about for the past few months was now glowing with some sort of eerie purple charge.  It looked as if it was electrified with several hundred thousand volts.  He drove off the road onto the shoulder and jumped out of his car, noticing several others doing the same.  After all, there had been some kind of an accident.  This was just what you did.  He reached into his suit jacket and grabbed his cell phone.  As he walked toward the carnage he dialed 911 and pressed the send button.  Holding the phone to his ear he heard nothing.  He tried again - nothing.  He switched the phone off and turned it on again, paying attention to the battery display.  The battery was OK.  What was not OK was the NO SIGNAL displayed on his phone.  That was impossible.  There were cell towers all over these small towns.  The town of Barrington had even made a deal with Verizon to allow four towers near the Barrington High School athletic fields as long as they also installed high-intensity lights to facilitate night games.  As he continued walking forward, he noticed a man in front of him fussing with his cell phone also, apparently having the same problem.  There was a small group of men and women walking down the highway now, as all traffic had stopped.  He watched in amazement, as one by one, each person’s hair seemed to stand on end.  He barely had time to consider this when the entire group of people was knocked to the ground as if by a bolt of lightning.  He watched in horror as they rolled on the ground clutching their heads in pain.
     He broke into a run, heading to this group of people rather than the scene of the accident.  As he approached them he was struck by an intense tingling sensation in his head.  It seemed to get worse the more he ran forward.  He strove forward, the pain increasing tenfold with each step.  It seemed to spread down his neck, through his chest and down his arms, making his muscles twitch.  He came to a complete stop and backed up a few steps.  He noticed that the involuntary muscle spasms seemed to go away immediately. The tingling sensation in his head went away when he backed up even further, specifically when he backed away from the strange metal tower, which glowed with all the brightness of Saint Elmo’s Fire.  He yelled to the group of people asking if they could move back, crawl back to where he was.  As it was a few of them managed to raise their heads, moaning as they did so.  He noticed his neighbor, Paul Gontarz among the group. 
     “Hey Paul!” Tom yelled, “Can ya move?  Try to get back to where I am.  It’s something to do with this damn signpost or whatever the hell it is.  He saw his friend struggle to his feet holding his head in both hands, yelling at the rest of the people,
“Come on!  You heard him.  We gotta get back.”  He reached down and grabbed a woman’s hand, screaming, “NOW!” as he did so.  This seemed to have some effect on the group as they slowly began standing or in some cases crawling toward where Tom stood.  Just as he had experienced, they got better and became less pain-stricken as they moved back away from the strange metal post.  And then it hit Tom right between the eyes.  This was some sort of invisible fence, meant not for dogs but for people.   Only instead of collars like those usually worn by dogs, the citizens of the East Bay had had something implanted into their brains.  Anyone passing the tower got one hell of a jolt to the brain.  He helped his friend as soon as he got close enough and the two of them shepherded the rest of the people off to the edge of the highway.  Tom looked back at the soldiers or whatever they were, guns at the ready, yet not taking a single step to help people in distress.  He was turning his attention back to the terrified group of people, when his gaze fell on a Military HumVee parked at the edge of the road.  Stenciled on the door in white paint was something he had noticed before, a few months ago in the Electric Company truck - NOREASCOM.
     He stood there dumbfounded, looking at this for a brief moment, wondering just what the hell the Government was doing here.  His thoughts were shattered by the shrill blast of an air raid siren, a sound he had not heard since the sixties when they used to test them periodically.  Its effect on the crowd was immediate.  They stopped dead in their tracks, increased fear in their eyes, as they scanned the skies, looking for the danger they had been conditioned to think would be there.
     The crowd was startled yet again at the sound of racing engines and yelling of some sort.  They turned en masse toward the source of that sound.  There, roaring out of the entrance to the Mobil oil refinery, were several small trucks, mostly Nissan, Toyotas and Suburus, each packed with a dozen screaming men who looked to be of Arab decent.  They were all brandishing automatic rifles, and as the trucks sped across the highway, jumping the median, they began firing at the terrified crowd.  A third of the innocent civilians were cut down instantly.  A few more ran for the imagined protection of the soldiers, only to be slaughtered like dogs as they fell, writhing in agony, under the influence of the sadistic, mind-numbing electric fence.  The rest scattered into the woods or down the service road that lead to the dam on the Runnins River.  This is where most of them perished, as there was a locked chain link gate, blocking access to the overgrown road.  The sad thing was that there wasn’t actually a fence going through the woods, just a gate meant to block cars from proceeding down the road itself.  This had been put up mainly to prevent teenagers from driving down there and parking.  Had the people only run to the left or right into the woods a bit, they could have run around the fence and had access to the road and perhaps safety.
     Tom had made a split second decision and had run off in the opposite direction away from all the commotion and the approaching trucks.  He had hid behind his own car briefly to avoid being spotted.  When he heard the carnage up ahead at the service road, he bolted from the relative safety of his hiding spot into the woods near the old pollution site.   It was as he approached the woods, that Tom had felt the first bullet fly by his neck, missing him by inches.
     And now as he hid out of sight in the back doorway of a brick building, adjacent to the dam, he heard footsteps approaching.  He managed a quick peek through the remnants of a broken window, and saw his attacker, bloodied, but still coming, albeit quite a bit more cautiously.  In the brief instant he had to survey his enemy, he saw that he had apparently scored a direct hit on the man’s right eye, or very close to it.  He saw the same checkered rag that had adorned the man’s head, now wrapped around the right side of his head, and soaked through with blood.
     Tom felt a burst of adrenaline in his body at the thought that maybe he had a chance.  Maybe, he had evened the score a bit, with his earlier rock.  He knew he had to get inside or hide somewhere or he was toast. Just as this thought hit him, he heard a soft whistle from behind him, from inside the building.  He whipped around and saw his friend Paul at the door to the building.  Paul opened the door, saying “Dude, get in here quick!”
     Try as he might, Paul was not able to succeed in closing the door without its old hinges uttering a squeak.  This caught the gunman’s attention and he began running in their direction.  They developed a plan of action without speaking a word.  Tom opened the door to what happened to be a tool closet, and retrieved a hefty pipe wrench.  Paul grabbed a good-sized pry bar and they two men assumed their positions.  Moments later, when the rag-headed warrior entered the alcove that protected the doorway; he was met with the sight of Paul standing there in the open.
     “BOOGA BOOGA,” Paul said, before disappearing around the corner.  The man screamed unintelligible words of rage before riddling the door with gunfire, actually blasting the metal door from its hinges.  His rage got the best of him and he made a fatal mistake by charging into the room in hot pursuit of his prey.  Tom brought the pipe wrench down on the man’s skull with a sickening crack.  The man dropped his weapon and went down in a pool of blood.  As Paul joined his friend near the body, a most unusual thing occurred.  The man’s body flickered and for the briefest of moments, became translucent, before solidifying once more as some sort of odd green-scaled creature.  They quickly backed away, lest it come back to life and attack them again.  When this didn’t happen, Tom reached forward with his wrench and flipped the thing over.
     They found themselves staring at a horrific creature, some sort of bipedal reptilian thing, with a face full of needle-like teeth. Paul reached out with his pry bar and knocked the weapon from the creature’s hands.  They jumped in unison as the creature moved reflexively and began snapping his teeth like some two-legged barracuda.  Their fear unleashed some primal killing instinct as they both began smashing the face, head and body of the thing until all that was left was a sodden pulp of green scales, blood and guts.
     When at last they stopped, they were covered in gore.  They barely had time to consider this when they realized they were not alone.  They heard a loud hissing sound, and turned to see another of the reptilians in the doorway, the tattered remnants of Muslim terrorist garb hanging from its green scales.  It snapped its teeth and hissed at them.  The two men dove to the floor as they saw the muscles in its right arm flex as it applied pressure to the trigger of its weapon, this time not a military rifle but some unknown device of otherworldly origin.  Paul threw his pry bar at the thing’s head as he went to ground.  Tom dove for the automatic rifle the first reptilian had dropped, grabbing it and rolling in the blood of the animal.  Man and Reptile fired at the same time, Tom eliminating the reptile’s face in a fusillade of bullets, as the walking lizard pulled the trigger on its weapon, unleashing a beam of blue light in the direction of its smashed comrade.  Paul screamed in agony, as both of his legs were cut off, one above and one below his knees.  Tom winced as the acrid stench of burned flesh filled the room.
     He crawled over to grab the weapon from the dead reptile, before moving quickly to his friend’s side.  He noted with horror that the remnants of Paul’s legs were sealed over, seemingly cauterized by the intense heat of the Reptilian’s ray weapon.  The amputated portions of his legs were similarly sealed over.  Tom thought grimly, that these creatures had taken the blood out of war.  He moved up by Paul’s face and began telling him that he would take care of him, though he knew not how.  Paul’s face was white from shock, and despite the lack of bleeding, Tom knew he would not make it.  Paul seemed to come to this same realization and whispered to Tom to leave him.  He pointed in the direction of the door and said just one word, “More” before he closed his eyes and died.
     Tom had no time for grief.  He stood and walked to the doorway, gingerly stepping over the second dead reptile and making his way down the small alcove that protected the entryway of the building.  At the end, he paused and peered carefully around the corner to the outside.  As he did, he saw a group of 4 Mujihadeen come around the edge of the clay hill toward his very position.  As if on cue, he saw them all morph into the reptilians they actually were.  He thought it possible that the two casualties had emitted some sort of pheremonal alert into the air as they were mortally wounded.  He didn’t hesitate a second before gunning them down with their own ray beam.  He ran toward them, trying to get near the dam and hopefully across to the other side of the Runnins River.
     He came to the cement wall that marked the end of the old waste oil facility, and jumped to the ground about 5 feet below.  He stood there, with his back against the wall, catching his breath and wondering just what the hell he should do.  He only had a few moments peace before he heard screaming.  He turned and peeked over the top of the wall and saw a mass of about 50 people running down the side of the clay hill straight towards his position.  He didn’t think for minute that they knew he was there.  They were obviously running for their lives.  Seconds later he watched in horror as a hoard of reptilians crested the hill in hot pursuit, hissing and chattering their strange lizard sounds. 
     Then there came a site that filled his tortured mind with glee.  There up in the sky came 4 black military helicopters.  They had no markings and he noticed with some astonishment that they had no rotors and made no sounds.  Regardless of this, he knew the cavalry was here to kick some reptilian ass.  The approach of the mystery copters seemed to put the entire scene on pause.  He could hear a cheer rise up from the crowd of scared humans.  This seemed to die out as he saw the copters begin dropping not bombs but some sort of leaflets as they spread out across the area.  The assembled reptilian masses also paused.  Tom used this pause to unleash their own weapon upon them.  He stood up and began mowing them down, screaming at them,
     “Take this you reptilian bastards!  Uncle Sam’s gonna give it to ya!  That’s what I’m talkin’ about ya filthy snakes!”

     There then arose such a tortured wail from the crowd of people as they began catching leaflets and reading what was on them.  This fear seemed to incite the reptiles, and they attacked en masse, leaping on the helpless humans and tearing at them with claws reminiscent of ancient velociraptors, ripping at their flesh with mouths full of needle-teeth.  Tom now turned his weapon upon this orgy of blood, cutting down friend and foe alike stopping only when a shower of leaflets blew in his direction.  He grabbed a handful and ducked behind the wall to read one.
Citizens of the East Bay

The creatures you face are an alien race that has been on this planet since before the creation of mankind. They are known as the Draconians and they come here originally from a planetary system of the star DRACO. These beings are the origin of ancient stories of dragons, devils, and even Satan, Baal, Lucifer and other demons of the Old Testament.
Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, actually planned and executed by these Draconians, your government has had to make some extremely hard choices. Unfortunately, this is one of those hard choices. These creatures feed not only on human flesh but also on fear itself. “Feeding” on either leaves them satisfied for quite a few years.
Recently, our government signed a treaty whereby they will leave our population alone as long as we fulfill their needs in some other fashion. Your sacrifice will buy us time to think of an alternate solution. Please know that your nation and its population, from sea to shining sea is forever indebted to you for this, the supreme sacrifice. You are all the highest form of patriots. May GOD bless you.

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY



     Tom slid to his butt in the sand and dropped the leaflet and his weapon.  He was stunned by what he had read.  All he had done was useless.  He had been taught from an early age to fight for what is right, to fight for his country if the need arose, and today he had done that.  He had fought not only for his country, but for his entire species, and the cowardly bastards had sold him out, “to buy time.”  Up above he heard the hissing and chirping of the approaching reptilian horde, and he knew that he had bought all the time he could.


THE END
THE BEGINING