"The Truth" Chapter 3 - The Discovery (part 2)

Bryan fell to his knees and lunged at his father to hug him. He then realized that his dad was injured. He appeared to have burns on his neck, arms, and presumably his hands; there were small blisters on all of his exposed skin. His hands appeared to be covered by makeshift bandages from what had been his dad’s undershirt. “Dad Are you OK” Bryan managed to say as he looked at his father. His father smiled a half smile and said he would be fine if he could get to the creek for some water. At that point Bryan had three canteens pushed into his field of vision. It seemed with the yell of a live person everyone had run to assist.

Bryan Held his fathers head carefully and gave him a drink from the canteen in sips. With each sip of the water his father seemed to come back to life. Bryan had a thousand things running through his mind. He asked his dad how he had gotten here and what had happened. His dad said, “Slow down son. Let your old man wake up a little before you grill me over the fire. What time is it anyway?" Bryan laughed a laugh of complete relief. His dad was OK. Injured yes, but he still had his sense of humor. That told Bryan he was really OK no matter what he looked like.

Richard Foster, his father, was the toughest and kindest man Bryan had ever known. He was the kind of man that could be in tremendous pain and never let it show. He was what Bryan wanted to be like. Tough as nails but with a heart as big as the ranch he dedicated his life to. When Bryan was about 16 he had seen his dad kicked in the chest by a bull. His dad got up off the ground and punched the bull right in the snout. He had seen his dad knock a full grown bull down with a single punch. As the bull tried to shake off what had just happened Rick went to his truck and got the rifle. He shot the bull in the head with one shot as he said some off hand remark about never being able to trust that bull again anyway. Rick then assigned the ranch hands to butcher the animal and bring the meat to the house, then after a second thought, he told them to cut a few of the finest cuts into steaks for the men at the bunkhouse that evening with his compliments and his thanks for all the hard work they had accomplished. Then he told Bryan to drive him to the doctor in town. The doctor said his dad had two broken ribs, in addition to the deep purple bruise that covered most of his chest. The doctor wrapped and taped his chest and then ordered Rick to lie in bed for a couple of weeks and take it easy for a while. Rick thanked the doctor for the advice and for patching him up, and then they headed back to the ranch. Rick never even winced from the pain that Bryan knew he was in. When they got home Rick didn’t even slow down he told Bryan and his older brothers that he wouldn’t be lying around while there was work to be done.

As he was remembering this Rick had asked Bryan something. He then asked it again and by this point Rick hit Bryan in the arm, and yelled “wake up boy”. Bryan apologized and then asked what he had said. Rick asked if they had seen the others yet. Bryan said “just the dead one over there”, and pointed in the direction he had come from. Rick was getting to his feet and said “I must have missed that one, I was talking about those”, and pointed at a grove of trees a little farther up the ridge line that was behind him. Everyone’s attention followed his finger and then they realized there was a small group of bodies laying in a row lined up in the trees. As they walked to the trees, Rick explained that he had burnt his hands while he was recovering the bodies and moving them up here from the crash site. He said the ground had still been hot when he came over the ridge. After he had moved the bodies he had sat down against the tree to bandage his hands. He wanted to get to the creek but the fumes had made him a little dizzy. He was so tired from the heat and exertion, and still a little fuzzy from the fumes, he had apparently passed out while he was wrapping his hands.

Rick looked at Bryan with the most serious expression Bryan had ever seen him make, and said something that Bryan would remember for the rest of his life. “Aliens, Real aliens crashed on our ranch!” Up until this point, this had all been a blur, a nightmare of sorts for Bryan. The vocalization from his father, his mentor, his hero, had brought the reality home to him. Bryan felt sick again. Rick continued by saying “I have never in all my days thought that the stories of little green men from mars were actually true. I thought these stories were someone’s imagination, or a comic book fantasy. Who was ever going to believed this?” He continued in somewhat of a hushed tone, “We have to call the sheriff and get him out here right away, before those government folks get wind of this." As he said this, Rick realized he was actually surrounded by the same “Government Folks” he was talking about. He looked around at the soldiers with him, who were all smiling at the comment he had just made, and said with the most serious face, “No offence fellas” They all burst into laughter.

As the laughter faded and, he could hear his dad’s voice again, He was shaking his head and muttering something about Leprechauns being next, but Bryan’s attention drifted else ware and he wasn’t hearing his father any more. His focus was now on the five bodies that were lined up in the trees in front of him. As they approached the row of bodies that Rick had gently placed there, one of the aliens moved. Rick had thought it was his imagination, or a reflection from the lights at first, but when everybody froze as if the world had just come to a stop he new it hadn’t been. In a flash they fanned out and trained their weapons on the alien. When it rolled over and sat up in to a sitting position, it realized that it was not alone, and it also remained motionless. They all stared at each other for several minutes, but it actually seemed like an eternity.

Rick was the first to break the silence. He whispered to Bryan, “I can’t believe one of them was still alive, I had no idea. I didn’t know how to check and they all appeared lifeless”. The alien then moved for the first time since realizing it wasn’t alone. It raised its small hand in what appeared to be a gesture of greeting. Then it put its hand to its small mouth and then pointed at Bryan with the same hand. Bryan nodded and grabbed a canteen from the soldier next to him. Mike Slager said to Bryan, “what are you doing”, Bryan replied, “I’m giving it the water it just asked for”. Mike argued, “Bryan, that thing didn’t make a sound”. “Sure it did, I heard it, plain as day, and it even speaks English”. Bryan replied. Rick said, “Son, your friend is right, it didn’t make a sound”. As his father’s words echoed in his ears, Bryan heard the sirens coming in the distance; coming from the direction where they had opened the fence and entered the ranch. At that moment he realized this was going to be a really, really long night.

He had been relieved of the command of the scene 4 hours ago, when the sheriff had arrived. He had walked back to his Jeep and still had no communications with the other patrols or the Desk Sgt; nobody’s radios seemed to work here. He drove the jeep over and picked up his father and then backtracked to the last spot he had had communications with the post and reported in. He briefed the Desk Sgt. The Desk Sgt, not believing what he had just heard, ask Bryan to “say again all last transmission”. Which if translated to civilian terms, means the Desk Sgt is telling him he’s full of crap, stop messing around give him the real story. Bryan repeated what he had said and after a long pause on the radio, the Desk Sgt responded with “Roger, Wait.” After about fifteen minutes Bryan was contacted and informed that there was a team coming from Washington D.C., as well as investigators from the FBI office in Albuquerque and that they were enroute to conduct their own investigation. He informed the Desk Sgt that as he was scheduled to be off for the weekend and his shift was long since completed, that he would stay out here pending the arrival of the investigators from the FBI and then he would be enroute back to Post. The Desk Sgt confirmed his request and told him to report to the Provost Marshall’s Office before he ended his tour of duty. Bryan acknowledged the transmission with “roger, wilco and out, which means “understood, will cooperate, and ending transmission.” Then he headed back into the area.

After the Base Ambulances, under escort by four soldiers from 4th platoon had left to take the Alien that had spoken to Bryan without speaking, and the other bodies back to the base Hospital, Bryan had taken his father back over the ridgeline to where he had been camping. He checked Shadow, and then had to convince his dad that he should get some rest. He left him comfortably lying on his bedroll, while Bryan went to fetch a medic to properly dress the burns his father had suffered. Upon his return Bryan had found his father sitting in the creek, in his skivvies with Shadow standing next to him. He begrudgingly left the creek and let the medic put some salve on the burns and then properly bandage his hands. The medic then said he would be fine with some rest. He retied Shadow to the tree and helped his father get comfortable. Then sat by the remenants of the fire, rested himself and tried to obsorb all that had happened this night.

At twilight over the ridgeline, Bryan observed for the first time the full magnitude of the crash site. The oblong crater was about 400 feet long from the craft to the edge of the furrow and burnt grass and 25 feet wide at it’s widest point. The earth had been pushed aside to carve a gouge from level at the beginning to about 9 feet deep at the end of the furrow. Pieces of the craft had broken off on impact and were strewn over the entire pasture, Bryan found and collected a few small piece of metal with some kind of writing on it from the dirt, and some sort of cloth material that he thought was part of the alien’s uniform. It was about a 9” X 9” piece. It had been hanging from a branch of one of the juniper trees when Bryan collected it. He decided he would keep these items and folded them up together into the cloth and placed it in his uniform pocket. After all this was his families land and Bryan thought he would study the things when he got them back to the Post. As he stood on the ridge overlooking the scene, Bryan was again awestruck by the sheer magnitude. There were now over a hundred people moving through the area sifting through evidence, taking lots of pictures, policing up and loading pieces of the craft into 2 ½ ton trucks. Bagging and loading body parts and pieces of the alien crew that could actually be identified as alien, and marking areas with stakes and twine, then taking measurements. They were also inventorying, photographing, and stacking the bodies of the dead cattle.

Bryan thought he should probably get a head count of the cattle for his father who was fast asleep. He mentally put it on the list of things he still had to do, but it felt small, like it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Then Bryan saw the suits. The feds had arrived. Bryan decided it was time for them to leave and go home. He woke his father who was in a really deep sleep. When he was completely awake, Bryan filled him in on what was currently happening. He helped his father get his things together and sent him strait home with a promise that he would finish here with what needed to be done. They packed Shadow and Bryan promised to be home this evening and they would all talk about what had happened. He told his father that his mom would worry herself sick if he didn’t get home before lunchtime. Rick agreed and headed out over the other ridge. He had planned on bee lining it back to the house. He yelled back at Bryan over his shoulder to make sure the feds didn’t destroy anything. “And fix the fence after they leave Bryan, we don’t want the cows getting out.” It was the last thing Rick said to him before he disappeared in the trees at the top of the ridge. Bryan was alone now with nothing but his thoughts.

Then Bryan felt it. He felt the enormity of the change that had occurred in his life in the past 9 hours. He was tired, really tired, like he hadn’t slept in a week. He also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that life as he had known it for 26 years had now changed. There was life on other planets. Bryan had actually communicated with it. He had touched it, and now he began to question the human belief system he had come to trust. Human nature took on a whole new meaning. How different was the human species from that of this alien he had communicated with a couple of short hours ago. Bryan decided he was going to find out. He looked forward to the challenge, and the wonder of it set in. How was this life form different from the human race?
He looked around again at the empty camp site, the fire was out, the grass was trampled, and dad had left his handkerchief. Bryan picked it up, and looked down at the fire pit. He stirred the cold coals with a stick to make sure they were out and thought of Ashley Olson. Bryan Smiled, maybe he would invite her to the BBQ this weekend as well, if she wasn’t already busy?

He headed back down to the stack of cattle carcasses, and counted them. Then without even speaking to the Feds, Bryan got into his jeep and left the ranch the way he had entered. He told the guard at the fence to make sure when everyone left to close it up again, and then showed him how to do it. He left the soldier, heading back towards the post with three things on his mind….a Game of Pool, Sleep, and Cherry Pie!

(To Be Continued)