Chapter Nine

Samyaza was inside the dome again. The noonday sun pierced the construction tarps and gaps in the geodesic cells enough to light the interior. Bright patches of sunlight alternated with near-total darkness over the surface of the stacked machinery. The Prophet sat cross-legged on the floor at the center of the maze. He stared up at a glowing panel of violet crystal that crowned the pile in front of him.

There were now three generators—two of them new, humming along effortlessly in the corner. Several full jerry cans of gas were stacked beside them. He had taken every precaution he could. It was inevitable that those assholes would be back to make a second push. When they did, Samyaza doubted that any upgrade in Earth technology would be able to help him, but it was all he could do. In his despondency, he came here every day to watch for a change.

Plip. A green dot splashed in the expanse of purple, then evaporated like a raindrop on a summer sidewalk. Samyaza gasped and doubted his senses. It had been so abrupt, so brief. He had been staring at the crystal for hours; it wasn’t impossible that his mind was playing tricks on him. 

Plip! Another splash. The generators’ hum grew incrementally. No. It was real. It was happening. 

Goddamn it! Samyaza tore out of the dome. His followers lazed and ambled about the compound, complacent as ever. Poor dumb bastards! Even if that brat brought her egghead father in this very minute, smiling and ready to help, he wouldn’t have time to figure out any of the shit that Samyaza had pulled from the wreck! He damn sure wouldn’t have time to fix or replicate any of it.  

The sky was clear, horizon to horizon. Not a cloud or spaceship in sight.

Plip! Behind him, the machine continued to wink out its warning. The signals were faint, intermittent, but they were becoming more frequent. He pulled the tarp closed behind him. The bastards, their direct assault frustrated, were trying something more subtle. It wouldn’t be long before it reached fruition.

Biker Steve rounded the corner of one of the trailers. Exactly who Samyaza was looking for! The Prophet plastered on a friendly demeanor and loped toward the denim-clad giant.

“Hey, Steve! How are you doing?” he bellowed as he clapped the bearded man on the back.

“Aw! Prophet! ’nother day in paradise! Thanks for—” 

“Real quick, Steve,” Samyaza cut him off. “You’re ex-military, right?”

“Well, they gave me a bad conduct discharge and bounced my ass out of there when I ‘deserted.’” The big man sneered and made air quotes as he said the word. “But, yeah, I was in a couple of years.”

“But you know guns and stuff, right?”

“Haw haw haw! Damn government won’t let me own ’em anymore since the discharge, but I was an expert before I even joined up! This one time when I was sixteen, my cousin and I went down to the dump with my dad’s AR-15 ...”

This fucking putz. Samyaza remembered the story of Steve’s discharge now. He had blubbered about it endlessly in the BS therapy sessions that had been part of his initiation. Steve had somehow managed to get his hands on drugs and alcohol while on leave in Dubai. Technically punishable by flogging, the rules were different for American servicemen. Getting fucked up alone wouldn’t have resulted in an international incident, but when Steve sobered up days later with his buddies nowhere to be seen, he ran from any MP he saw rather than turning himself in. He crashed around Dubai for weeks before being brought in by the Emirates police. The scandal had been a big enough headache for the Army that it had made the news in the U.S.

No, Samyaza couldn’t trust Steve, especially with something so important.

“Let me tell you, they weren’t happy we shot those dogs, but what were we going to do?” Steve laughed as he wound up his inane story. 

“Cool story. See you later, Steve.”

The ex-biker started at The Prophet’s sudden change in attitude. “W-What was it you wanted to know about guns?”

“Just testing you, Steve. It’s cool, you passed.”

“Oh ... Do you mean I need to try to be less violent or ...”

“I said you passed. I’ll find you if I need you.”

Steve chewed his lower lower lip like a worried child as Samyaza marched away from him. Goddamn it! Why were all of his followers such fucking losers!? Even worse, most of them were limp-wristed, “peace and love” sissies! Fucking new age horse shit. He desperately needed someone capable. Someone with balls!

Slam! Samyaza saw a man in black close the trunk of a car parked next to one of the dorm trailers. Cardboard boxes were piled beside the wheel well. It was that priest. Of course! He was moving in permanently today after getting kicked out of his church for bringing so many of his parishioners here. He hadn’t been with Samyaza long, but he was already the most effective recruiter in the family. It was true even if you discounted everyone the priest had won over from his old church.

Samyaza watched “Father Mike” as he ascended to the porch carrying one of his boxes. It was him. It had to be him.

*

The room was small. Plain. Clean. A single white-curtained window dominated the entire outer wall. It’s all I’ve ever needed, Mike Heany thought as he arranged books on the desk/shelf combo. It was the only furniture in the room besides a single twin bed. There were probably less than ten cubic feet of open floor space.

Mike had left the door to his room open, half out of new-resident friendliness and half so that he’d have room to unpack. He was kneeling on the floor, folding undershirts and placing them in the drawers below the bed, when he heard someone shuffle to the doorway behind him. They didn’t say hello. Mike could sense them standing there, silently watching him unpack. “Hold on.” He groaned as he shut the drawer and stood on popping knee joints.

“Agnes?” he queried.

It looked like Agnes Ross, but it also didn’t look like Agnes Ross. It could have been that she was standing up straight and wearing street clothing rather than lying in a hospital bed. This was the first time he’d spoken with her since her miraculous recovery. There was something more, though. Maybe it was her wretched demeanor. Her head was slumped between her shoulders, face pointed at the ground. She leaned on the doorframe and wrung her hands. 

“Is it true, Father?” It was unmistakably Anges’s voice.

“Do you mean about me leaving the church? I’m afraid so, Agnes. They made me choose.”

“Then there’s really no way back now.” She sounded way too miserable for the cause to be Mike’s quarrel with the Bishop. Had her cancer come back? He took a step toward her.

“Agnes? What’s botheri—” She looked directly at him and he gasped. She appeared even younger than she had the night Samyaza had presented her to the family. She could pass for thirty! Even stranger were her eyes. Mike could have sworn they had been dark brown. The unwrinkled, agonized pair that stared at him now were pale blue.

“It’s not that you left.” She stammered. “It’s a whole lot of things. The Prophet says I can’t leave.”

“I don’t like the sound of that!” Mike thundered. Between his overwhelming concern for Agnes and his shock at her further altered appearance crept a painful, personal splinter of doubt. 

“Go home to your daughter and I’ll talk to Samyaza. Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding.”

She shuffled her feet. Swallowed. “That’s just it. I tried. I-I can’t leave.”

“What do you mean? Did they lock the gate on you?”

“No! No one’s keeping me.... It’s just—ever since I became Star Touched, it’s like I’m not my own person anymore! I can feel them around me, I—” 

She stopped dead in midsentence and stared blankly at the floor. Mike grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. 

“Agnes. AGNES!”

She rattled like a ragdoll, a dead expression in her eyes. Drugs. It had to be drugs. There was no other explanation. Mike led her to the bed and made her lie down. She writhed and moaned like she was asleep and in the middle of a bad dream.

Her head rolled toward Mike. The blue eyes snapped open. “I think The Prophet needs to see you.”

“What?”

She didn’t reply. Her eyes slowly closed, and she relaxed into a normal sleeping position. Mike stared at her, thinking. Fear nibbled his testicles with mentholated teeth. The irreversibility of how much he had changed his life struck home like the tolling of a bell. Agnes’s recovery had been the catalyst. Was it all a drug-fueled lie? But her face ... No drug could do that. No drug on Earth, at least.

He needed to talk to Samyaza. Samyaza! He had never lost his reservations about “The Prophet.” That was it. Just because a man stumbles over a discovery doesn’t mean he’s worthy of it! Agnes Ross’s recovery was real. The positive change in Mike’s life was real. Samyaza was the problem. Once Mike wrested The Prophet’s secrets from him, whether they were drugs, contact with extraterrestrials, or anything, he would break with the man and use those secrets for the good of the entire world!

The creak of the trailer’s main door broke the silence and took Mike out of his scheming. He poked his head out of the room. Sister Love was framed by the doorway at the end of the hall. Backlit by the setting sun, she appeared shadowy and indistinct. 

“Mike, The Prophet wants you.”

“Good! Where is he?” He advanced into the hall. As Sister Love came into focus, Mike noticed that her robes were less revealing than normal. She was swaddled in white cloth, the same way Samyaza had been when Mike had first visited. The face that poked out of the tight chin-to-crown headwrap was puffy. Glassy.

“The shed, southeast corner of the compound. Five minutes.” She slammed the door behind her.

Mike ducked back into his room. Agnes was sitting up in bed, rubbing her forehead. She didn’t look like she was in any immediate danger.

Mike gently closed the door behind him and stormed out of the trailer.

*

By the time Mike reached the shed, the setting sun had been cut in half by the mountains lining the horizon. The lurid pinks and oranges reflecting off the normally colorless trailers turned the matte-green shed into a dingy blind spot. It was big, more like a long garage than a shed, but you could look right at it and not register its presence if you didn’t have business there. 

One of the roll-up steel shutters was open. From inside came the awful racket of someone throwing around wooden boxes and metal tools. Mike stopped a dozen feet from the opening and planted his feet.

“Sam!”

The noise stopped. The Prophet’s footsteps clacked and echoed on the shed’s concrete floor as he stalked out of the shadowy interior. 

“What did I tell you about my name?” he hissed.

 “We need to talk.”

“Yes,” spat The Prophet, “we do.”

He turned on his heel and stomped back into the shed. Mike followed at a distance. Inside it smelled like motor oil and rusted metal. A single swaying hook light provided illumination. As Mike’s eyes adjusted, he made out a row of banged-up Jeeps and dune buggies amid the general clutter.

Samyaza stopped at a metal shelf weighed down with a riot of boxes and industrial junk. Some of the racks had been cleared. Their contents were in a heap to the side. He took a crowbar to an unopened crate on top of the pile.

“I need your help,” he spoke slowly and without aggression, but his voice was ragged with tension.

Mike, arms crossed, answered defiantly. “Never mind that. What have you done to Agnes Ross?”

Samyaza threw the crowbar down and leapt toward the older man. He yelled straight in his face. “We’re in danger! All of us! I can’t let Agnes leave! She could get killed outside of Home Ranch!

“What!?”

“Good! You’re listening.” The Prophet closed his eyes, tensed, and took a breath. He leaned wearily against the shelf before continuing. “The spaceship is going to come again tonight.”

“I don’t understand. Don’t we want that to happen?” Mike was doing his best to hold on to his resolve, but his grip was slipping. 

“Listen. There are good aliens and bad aliens,” Samyaza spoke quickly and conspiratorially. “I’ll explain everything when you get back, but there’s no time now!”

“When I get back? When I get back from what?”

“I need you to drive it off for me.”

Samyaza threw open the lid of the long, black crate he had pried open. Many, many oily black and dull metallic guns were jumbled together. He reached inside, below the smaller handguns, like he was searching for a prize in a box of cereal. Other guns rattled and fell away as he drew out a massive, evil-looking rifle. He held it in both hands, palms up, and presented it to Mike. 

“Take this and a Jeep. I don’t know what kind of chance you have, but this thing fires .600 overkill rounds. They can take out a helicopter, so it might work for a spaceship, too!”

Mike’s eyes nearly popped from his skull. “W-When—where did you get all those guns!?”

“Not now, Mike. It’s hero time.” Samyaza stepped forward and pressed the flat of the rifle to Mike’s chest. “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker.”

Mike backed away from The Prophet and his gun in horror. He stopped when he butted into one of the dune buggies.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not going to hurt anyone with that thing!”

“Are you going to let people get hurt then!? Anges, Alex, Martin, Brother Love, me ... you. It’s easy to be against violence when the lives of the people you love aren’t threatened!”

Samyaza thrusted the gun toward him once more. As he slowly released it into Mike’s crooked arms, the old man was forced to tighten his grip or let the rifle fall. It was immensely heavy. He had to stiffen his back so he wouldn’t tumble forward with the weight of it. The gun was covered in sharp edges that dug into his arms and chest. He held it like an awkward piece of furniture.

Mike’s bewildered eyes swept the gun cradled in his arms. His thoughts coalesced slowly, and as they did, his eyebrows knitted into a scowl. He shook his head violently.

“What threat? It’s only your word that any of us are in danger! Who are you trying to get me to shoot?” Unconsciously, he adjusted his grip to hold the rifle more comfortably. His left hand found the stock and his finger slid through the trigger guard.

Nervous laughter split Samyaza’s mouth. “Aliens! Bug-eyed monsters! I’m not asking you to shoot at a person!” His head sank to his chest. “You won’t have to worry about it, I swear. When the time comes, if you see something in the crosshairs that looks human, by all means don’t pull the trigger. But if you refuse ...” Samyaza’s voice dropped to a whisper, “You’re going to wish you had that gun.”

Everything in Mike Heany wanted to defy this man. He didn’t like him. It would feel so good to throw his stupid gun on the ground, grab Anges Ross, and drive off Home Ranch, never to return. If it were that easy, he wouldn’t have this awful feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

He couldn’t ignore the things he had seen. The UFO was real. Anything Samyaza said sounded like a con to Mike, but he didn’t doubt that the man was experiencing honest terror. Mike drifted to the open shutter and looked out at Home Ranch. Night had fully fallen. The trailers were shapeless black hulks obscuring a sky brilliant with stars. He didn’t notice that he was still carrying the rifle.

Someone squeezed Mike’s shoulder. He turned to see Brother Love’s gentle face. It was pale and puffy. He was bundled tightly into voluminous white robes that covered everything but his face. Mike nearly broke into sobs.

“What’s going on?” he moaned.

“We need your help. Please.”

“I-I’ve never even fired a gun.”

“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”

“But where will you be?”

“I’ll be here with Sam, keeping everyone safe. We called the whole family. They’re already starting to arrive.”

Mike screwed his eyes closed. He tightened his grip on the rifle and swallowed.

“Okay ...” His eyes opened wide. They stared unblinking into Brother Love’s face. “Okay! But when I get back, The Prophet’s going to answer my questions!”

Brother Love enveloped Mike in a slow hug. The gun fell against the door frame. Minutes passed. Brother Love broke the embrace but still held Mike by the shoulders. His eyes gazed deeply into his lover’s.

“It’s fair. He’s proud of you and you deserve it. When you return, everything will be explained.”