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ROUTE 207, ALASKA
19 NOVEMBER
1:23 AM, LOCAL TIME
Judie Noble cursed as she drove through the bumpy road towards Kowee, the only decent-sized town within any major distance. Night was coming to northern Alaska, a night that would last for over two months. It was fast approaching, perhaps even here; only a faint trace of sunlight was still on the edge of the horizon. The stars were bright overhead, far from any air pollution or city lights and with no major snowstorms en route. That was part of the reason Judie had moved up here.
She had always loved looking at the stars.
She was in no hurry, of course. She didn't seriously think that she was going to be killed out here if she was caught by nightfall. Her Jeep had more than enough gas, and bight enough headlights, to make her feel secure. No snowstorm was on the warning reports, and even if there was one, she had her radio and survival gear. She had no cause for alarm, whatsoever, and felt none. Soon she would be back at her boyfriend's apartment in Kowee, with nothing to do over the long night but fuck.
Then, the car stalled.
"What the fuck," Judie cried out, more in irritation than fear. She turned the ignition several more times, and was rewarded with the lights in the Jeep's cabin suddenly all going out. "Oh, fuck," she repeated. She calculated how long it would take someone to reach her from Kowee. Hours, probably. And cost an exorbitant amount for towing and repair - if they were even able to tow it. Shit. She couldn't afford a new car. She would sue them in they said they had to leave it out here...
The radio suddenly turned on, causing her to jump. "Huh?" Judie reached over to turn it off - and no matter how many times she toggled the knob, it had no effect. She was spooked enough to yelp when the Jeep's car alarm suddenly went off. Then, the front lights began flashing erratically, followed by the turn signals and every other light in the cabin. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" blared from the radio.
"Shut up!" Judie slammed her balled fists into the dashboard. "Shut up! Turn off! Stop it, you fucking piece of shit car, stop it!"
Suddenly, as if on queue, it obeyed her. Every single light and noisemaker and doodad in the Jeep suddenly turned off.
In their place was a dim electric-sounding hum, and an orange glow coming in from outside. Judie hadn't been frightened before, not fully. That was changed now. She tried to convince herself it was an aurora - maybe a strong sunspot had flared up suddenly, that would cause her car's electronics to fuck up, the static energy could be humming, the aurora coming out of nowhere...
The source of the light, growing even brighter, began to move. It slowly seemed to...to settle. To land. Judie was quaking now.
She felt a drip. Looking down, she saw that her nose was bleeding.
"No...no, no, no," she repeated to herself, looking up again. She froze at what she saw. Was it her imagination, or were there...It was undeniable. From out of the glow, two figures seemed to be making their way towards her Jeep. They were both short. And something seemed off with their heads.
At that point, Judie blacked out.
KOWEE, ALASKA
20 NOVEMBER
11:35 AM, LOCAL TIME
"Well, I'll be." Sheriff Winston Pepper had been taught when growing up not to swear. But if there was a case that could have ever tempted him to swear, this would have been it. "I'll just be."
"Yessir, Sheriff. It looks just like the other ones." Deputy Mason Bridges seemed to read his thoughts. "Six cars, trucks, what have you - seven, now." He nodded towards the abandoned Jeep, several others from Kowee's law enforcement and emergency staff swarming around it, mobile floodlights illuminating the scene now that night had fallen. A number of searchers were panning out to explore the general area - not that they would find anything, most likely. They hadn't with the others.
"Abandoned. No sign of any sort of struggle. As if they just stepped out for a quick piss - and never returned." He laughed. "Stepped off, with the engine still running and the doors closed, and with a dozen miles of ice in any direction. Ice and snow that show no signs of footprints - and with no fall to disturb them."
Pepper silently chewed his tobacco, letting Bridges talk. It seemed like the younger man just needed to get it out of his system. He didn't blame him. This was right peculiar, no matter how you split it. It deserved to be talked over.
"No signs of a struggle. No call over the radio - the radio that works. No alcohol or drugs in the vehicle. None of the survival supplies missing. Nothing in the...victim's?...background to suggest she was fleeing from anyone or would have any cause to kill herself or disappear. Nothing." He let out an exasperated breath. "Nothing at all."
"It is the most peculiar thing I have ever seen," Sheriff Pepper agreed. "And that is saying something."
"Sheriff...Winston..." Bridges seemed like he was struggling with something.
"Out with it," Pepper spoke.
"Winston, you don't think this had anything to do with the...lights, people saw, did you?" Bridges seemed like he was forcing himself to say something he didn't - or didn't want to - believe. "I mean, the people here know the Northern Lights, and they know airplanes, and they say that wasn't them. And I trust them to be sober enough, at least so far, not to be off their rocker. And there...there were the same sightings around the time the other six incidents..." Bridges stopped himself there, obviously satisfied by saying what he had, and unwilling to make the next step. Here, he was just laying out the facts of a case. Going the next step...well, that was just craziness.
Pepper laughed, more of a forced sound than anything truly jovial. "You think men from Mars did this?" Pepper was old enough to remember when the traditional description of aliens were little green men, bug-eyed monsters from Mars, rather than whatever sort of conspiracy theory mumbo-jumbo types were in the vogue now. "You think a flying saucer swept down and did this?" He would be lying if he claimed that the idea had never occurred to him - or any other of the town's thousands of inhabitants - so he simply didn't make that claim. However, it just couldn't be true. It was crazy. This whole case was crazy, true, but there weren't really aliens from outer space who swept down and stole up Earthlings from their cars. This case wasn't that crazy. He wasn't that crazy.
"I know that we called the Air Force after the second or third disappearances," Bridges began. "But...classified refueling and training exercises? Just so happening to be every time someone here disappears?" He voice grew lower. "You don't think..."
"You're old enough to remember the Cold War. Bombers being sent over the North Pole to patrol the airspace border with the Russkies. Things the way they are now with Putin, who's to say they ain't doing that again?" Pepper snapped, harder than he intended. Conspiracy theories involving flying saucer men were one thing, but to say the American government - the American military who had died to save this country - were involved...That was too far. He gestured towards the chief paramedic.
"Why don't you go ask Bill about this, take down his official prelim statements?" Not that Bill would have anything major to say, of course, but that was the point. Get Bridges off his back for a second. Let him think.
The darnedest thing was, just like the others, the car's locks - the manual locks, none of the automatic or remote control nonsense here - the locks had been locked when they found it.
From the inside.
With the keys still in the ignition.
Just like in all the other cases.
A shout went up from one of the area searchers. In a whirlwind, what seemed like the entire crime scene staff had converged on the man. It was several hundred feet from the Jeep, outside of the range of the floodlights. The dozen or so searchers all had powerful torches with them, but even then they were isolated islands of light in a sea of darkness. They were lucky to have found anything.
Much less Judie Noble.
"Get some blankets on her God damn it!" Pepper yelled. But in the back of his mind, he wondered if it was even worth it. She was naked - no sign of her clothes - naked in the middle of the night in northern Alaska, possibly had been for hours. Yet, she was still breathing, even shivering - that was a good sign, it was when someone stopped shivering when it became a problem. However, as Pepper got closer, he didn't think her quaking had anything to do with the cold. Her eyes were open - eyes that seemed vacant on first glance, but after several seconds of contemplation...
She was terrified.
She was also, he noticed after several moments, covered in what seemed like some kid of...residue.
"What the hell happened here?" Bridges breathed, as the paramedics finally arrived, hoisting her up onto a stretcher. She came alive then, yelling and screaming and kicking with amazing vitality for someone who should be on the last stages of hypothermia, if not an ice cube by this point. "What the hell happened to her?"
"Search me," Pepper shrugged. "But one thing's for certain. This is way beyond my pay grade." He looked over at his deputy. "I think it's time we called in some outside help."
J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC
21 NOVEMBER
8:51 AM, LOCAL TIME
To call it an office would be generous. During the Cold War, it had been a supply room. After Clinton became president, it was refurbished - quickly, cheaply - to deal with the shortage of suitable personnel working space. As such, it was deep beneath the foundations of the FBI headquarters building, the only lighting coming from a wan lightbulb overhead, the walls and floor dull unadorned concrete and half the already-tiny room was still devoted to haphazardly packed and stacked cardboard boxes.
The latter were not the fault of the building's organizer, however. Those all belonged to the room's sole occupant.
At the moment, Special Agent Jeff Atherton had his jacket on, and was at the door, blocking the entrance of the room to a somewhat younger man. The intruder was holding up an invoice.
"Can you explain this, Atherton? Ticket to some godforsaken hellhole in Alaska? Request for full field kit? Getting ready to go on another one of your jaunts, huh? But Alaska...Change of scenery. Roswell, Area 51, Aurora - too much desert sun, trying for something more exotic?"
"Nice job, Stanton. You'll grow a personality yet." Atherton was nonplussed. He had tangled with the Assistant to the Deputy Director a number of times before. "A number of their townspeople have disappeared in what can only be described as incredible circumstances. One of them, the first, has just been found. Strange aerial activity has been reported in the area. They requested government help. The military says it is classified and outside its jurisdiction. DHC - come on, that's a joke. And no one else in the Bureau seems interested, or even aware, of this Sheriff Pepper's request. Funny thing about that, huh? You should ask your boss."
"The Deputy Director is looking into the matter." Stanton was ignoring Atherton's usual paranoiac rant, instead stealing glances over his shoulders at the room within. Each time he came down here, the room was almost worth the migrane speaking with Atherton caused. It was like a temple to conspiracy theorists worldwide. A model UFO, obviously bought from a dollar store, hung from the ceiling near the light. A poster of the Face on Mars was on the wall, blown up and "cleaned up" to show outlines of cities and pyramids and forts in the general proximity that NASA had obviously edited out of the initial picture in order to suppress the knowledge of intelligent face-building Martians. On the opposite side of the wall was a dartboard, with a face that Stanton couldn't directly identify taped to it. Half of the darts were in the picture, the other half on the desk, competing with an ancient word processor and a number of books and papers cluttering it up. Opposite the desk, a billboard had been put into the wall. Tacked onto it were a number of newspaper clippings with such provocative titles as:
FBI ARRESTS SUSPECTED...
MILITARY BLACK BUDGET INCREASES...
PRESIDENT REFUSES FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST...
CONTACT LOST WITH LUNAR PROBE...
STRANGE ANIMAL SIGHTINGS IN...
GOVERNMENT DENIES KNOWLEDGE...
"The bottom line, Stanton, is that the Deputy Director can't refuse me going there. It is a legitimate FBI investigation - especially for my branch." Atherton's branch consisted solely of him, but wasn't that the point they had had in assigning him here? He smiled to the weaselly little politico. "And besides, it'll get me out of DC for a few days at the least. Isn't that worth anything to your boss?"
Stanton smiled thinly. He held out the invoice. "You have a point. And the Deputy Director has authorized your assigned."
Atherton reached out to take the paper, and Stanton pulled it back. "There is a caveat, of course."
"There always is." Atherton stared at him through heavily lidded eyes. "What is it?"
"We're assigning you a partner. Someone to...help you with your investigation. Someone with an outside perspective."
"Someone to spy on me and drag me down if necessary, you mean." Atherton laughed. "Good luck with that. Remember what happened to your last mole?" He stared at Stanton for another second, then shrugged. "What the hell. Worst comes to worst, I'll ditch 'em. Nothing I do is against regulations. You learned that last time, but if you're still not satisfied..."
"That's right, the Deputy isn't." And nor was Stanton, at how easy that had been. He had been looking forward to some sort of confrontation. Wearily, he waved in his direction. "Your new partner is waiting for you in the Deputy's office. You can hit the airport taxi from there."
As they were in the elevator, Stanton couldn't help but look over and ask. "Flying saucers, Bigfoot, Area 51 and all that shit...Do you really think that's all true?"
As the elevator dinged when they hit the right floor, Atherton gave him a smile that could have been either condescending or pitying.
"Let's just say...that I want to believe."
ROUTE 207, ALASKA
19 NOVEMBER
1:23 AM, LOCAL TIME
Judie Noble cursed as she drove through the bumpy road towards Kowee, the only decent-sized town within any major distance. Night was coming to northern Alaska, a night that would last for over two months. It was fast approaching, perhaps even here; only a faint trace of sunlight was still on the edge of the horizon. The stars were bright overhead, far from any air pollution or city lights and with no major snowstorms en route. That was part of the reason Judie had moved up here.
She had always loved looking at the stars.
She was in no hurry, of course. She didn't seriously think that she was going to be killed out here if she was caught by nightfall. Her Jeep had more than enough gas, and bight enough headlights, to make her feel secure. No snowstorm was on the warning reports, and even if there was one, she had her radio and survival gear. She had no cause for alarm, whatsoever, and felt none. Soon she would be back at her boyfriend's apartment in Kowee, with nothing to do over the long night but fuck.
Then, the car stalled.
"What the fuck," Judie cried out, more in irritation than fear. She turned the ignition several more times, and was rewarded with the lights in the Jeep's cabin suddenly all going out. "Oh, fuck," she repeated. She calculated how long it would take someone to reach her from Kowee. Hours, probably. And cost an exorbitant amount for towing and repair - if they were even able to tow it. Shit. She couldn't afford a new car. She would sue them in they said they had to leave it out here...
The radio suddenly turned on, causing her to jump. "Huh?" Judie reached over to turn it off - and no matter how many times she toggled the knob, it had no effect. She was spooked enough to yelp when the Jeep's car alarm suddenly went off. Then, the front lights began flashing erratically, followed by the turn signals and every other light in the cabin. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" blared from the radio.
"Shut up!" Judie slammed her balled fists into the dashboard. "Shut up! Turn off! Stop it, you fucking piece of shit car, stop it!"
Suddenly, as if on queue, it obeyed her. Every single light and noisemaker and doodad in the Jeep suddenly turned off.
In their place was a dim electric-sounding hum, and an orange glow coming in from outside. Judie hadn't been frightened before, not fully. That was changed now. She tried to convince herself it was an aurora - maybe a strong sunspot had flared up suddenly, that would cause her car's electronics to fuck up, the static energy could be humming, the aurora coming out of nowhere...
The source of the light, growing even brighter, began to move. It slowly seemed to...to settle. To land. Judie was quaking now.
She felt a drip. Looking down, she saw that her nose was bleeding.
"No...no, no, no," she repeated to herself, looking up again. She froze at what she saw. Was it her imagination, or were there...It was undeniable. From out of the glow, two figures seemed to be making their way towards her Jeep. They were both short. And something seemed off with their heads.
At that point, Judie blacked out.
KOWEE, ALASKA
20 NOVEMBER
11:35 AM, LOCAL TIME
"Well, I'll be." Sheriff Winston Pepper had been taught when growing up not to swear. But if there was a case that could have ever tempted him to swear, this would have been it. "I'll just be."
"Yessir, Sheriff. It looks just like the other ones." Deputy Mason Bridges seemed to read his thoughts. "Six cars, trucks, what have you - seven, now." He nodded towards the abandoned Jeep, several others from Kowee's law enforcement and emergency staff swarming around it, mobile floodlights illuminating the scene now that night had fallen. A number of searchers were panning out to explore the general area - not that they would find anything, most likely. They hadn't with the others.
"Abandoned. No sign of any sort of struggle. As if they just stepped out for a quick piss - and never returned." He laughed. "Stepped off, with the engine still running and the doors closed, and with a dozen miles of ice in any direction. Ice and snow that show no signs of footprints - and with no fall to disturb them."
Pepper silently chewed his tobacco, letting Bridges talk. It seemed like the younger man just needed to get it out of his system. He didn't blame him. This was right peculiar, no matter how you split it. It deserved to be talked over.
"No signs of a struggle. No call over the radio - the radio that works. No alcohol or drugs in the vehicle. None of the survival supplies missing. Nothing in the...victim's?...background to suggest she was fleeing from anyone or would have any cause to kill herself or disappear. Nothing." He let out an exasperated breath. "Nothing at all."
"It is the most peculiar thing I have ever seen," Sheriff Pepper agreed. "And that is saying something."
"Sheriff...Winston..." Bridges seemed like he was struggling with something.
"Out with it," Pepper spoke.
"Winston, you don't think this had anything to do with the...lights, people saw, did you?" Bridges seemed like he was forcing himself to say something he didn't - or didn't want to - believe. "I mean, the people here know the Northern Lights, and they know airplanes, and they say that wasn't them. And I trust them to be sober enough, at least so far, not to be off their rocker. And there...there were the same sightings around the time the other six incidents..." Bridges stopped himself there, obviously satisfied by saying what he had, and unwilling to make the next step. Here, he was just laying out the facts of a case. Going the next step...well, that was just craziness.
Pepper laughed, more of a forced sound than anything truly jovial. "You think men from Mars did this?" Pepper was old enough to remember when the traditional description of aliens were little green men, bug-eyed monsters from Mars, rather than whatever sort of conspiracy theory mumbo-jumbo types were in the vogue now. "You think a flying saucer swept down and did this?" He would be lying if he claimed that the idea had never occurred to him - or any other of the town's thousands of inhabitants - so he simply didn't make that claim. However, it just couldn't be true. It was crazy. This whole case was crazy, true, but there weren't really aliens from outer space who swept down and stole up Earthlings from their cars. This case wasn't that crazy. He wasn't that crazy.
"I know that we called the Air Force after the second or third disappearances," Bridges began. "But...classified refueling and training exercises? Just so happening to be every time someone here disappears?" He voice grew lower. "You don't think..."
"You're old enough to remember the Cold War. Bombers being sent over the North Pole to patrol the airspace border with the Russkies. Things the way they are now with Putin, who's to say they ain't doing that again?" Pepper snapped, harder than he intended. Conspiracy theories involving flying saucer men were one thing, but to say the American government - the American military who had died to save this country - were involved...That was too far. He gestured towards the chief paramedic.
"Why don't you go ask Bill about this, take down his official prelim statements?" Not that Bill would have anything major to say, of course, but that was the point. Get Bridges off his back for a second. Let him think.
The darnedest thing was, just like the others, the car's locks - the manual locks, none of the automatic or remote control nonsense here - the locks had been locked when they found it.
From the inside.
With the keys still in the ignition.
Just like in all the other cases.
A shout went up from one of the area searchers. In a whirlwind, what seemed like the entire crime scene staff had converged on the man. It was several hundred feet from the Jeep, outside of the range of the floodlights. The dozen or so searchers all had powerful torches with them, but even then they were isolated islands of light in a sea of darkness. They were lucky to have found anything.
Much less Judie Noble.
"Get some blankets on her God damn it!" Pepper yelled. But in the back of his mind, he wondered if it was even worth it. She was naked - no sign of her clothes - naked in the middle of the night in northern Alaska, possibly had been for hours. Yet, she was still breathing, even shivering - that was a good sign, it was when someone stopped shivering when it became a problem. However, as Pepper got closer, he didn't think her quaking had anything to do with the cold. Her eyes were open - eyes that seemed vacant on first glance, but after several seconds of contemplation...
She was terrified.
She was also, he noticed after several moments, covered in what seemed like some kid of...residue.
"What the hell happened here?" Bridges breathed, as the paramedics finally arrived, hoisting her up onto a stretcher. She came alive then, yelling and screaming and kicking with amazing vitality for someone who should be on the last stages of hypothermia, if not an ice cube by this point. "What the hell happened to her?"
"Search me," Pepper shrugged. "But one thing's for certain. This is way beyond my pay grade." He looked over at his deputy. "I think it's time we called in some outside help."
J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC
21 NOVEMBER
8:51 AM, LOCAL TIME
To call it an office would be generous. During the Cold War, it had been a supply room. After Clinton became president, it was refurbished - quickly, cheaply - to deal with the shortage of suitable personnel working space. As such, it was deep beneath the foundations of the FBI headquarters building, the only lighting coming from a wan lightbulb overhead, the walls and floor dull unadorned concrete and half the already-tiny room was still devoted to haphazardly packed and stacked cardboard boxes.
The latter were not the fault of the building's organizer, however. Those all belonged to the room's sole occupant.
At the moment, Special Agent Jeff Atherton had his jacket on, and was at the door, blocking the entrance of the room to a somewhat younger man. The intruder was holding up an invoice.
"Can you explain this, Atherton? Ticket to some godforsaken hellhole in Alaska? Request for full field kit? Getting ready to go on another one of your jaunts, huh? But Alaska...Change of scenery. Roswell, Area 51, Aurora - too much desert sun, trying for something more exotic?"
"Nice job, Stanton. You'll grow a personality yet." Atherton was nonplussed. He had tangled with the Assistant to the Deputy Director a number of times before. "A number of their townspeople have disappeared in what can only be described as incredible circumstances. One of them, the first, has just been found. Strange aerial activity has been reported in the area. They requested government help. The military says it is classified and outside its jurisdiction. DHC - come on, that's a joke. And no one else in the Bureau seems interested, or even aware, of this Sheriff Pepper's request. Funny thing about that, huh? You should ask your boss."
"The Deputy Director is looking into the matter." Stanton was ignoring Atherton's usual paranoiac rant, instead stealing glances over his shoulders at the room within. Each time he came down here, the room was almost worth the migrane speaking with Atherton caused. It was like a temple to conspiracy theorists worldwide. A model UFO, obviously bought from a dollar store, hung from the ceiling near the light. A poster of the Face on Mars was on the wall, blown up and "cleaned up" to show outlines of cities and pyramids and forts in the general proximity that NASA had obviously edited out of the initial picture in order to suppress the knowledge of intelligent face-building Martians. On the opposite side of the wall was a dartboard, with a face that Stanton couldn't directly identify taped to it. Half of the darts were in the picture, the other half on the desk, competing with an ancient word processor and a number of books and papers cluttering it up. Opposite the desk, a billboard had been put into the wall. Tacked onto it were a number of newspaper clippings with such provocative titles as:
FBI ARRESTS SUSPECTED...
MILITARY BLACK BUDGET INCREASES...
PRESIDENT REFUSES FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST...
CONTACT LOST WITH LUNAR PROBE...
STRANGE ANIMAL SIGHTINGS IN...
GOVERNMENT DENIES KNOWLEDGE...
"The bottom line, Stanton, is that the Deputy Director can't refuse me going there. It is a legitimate FBI investigation - especially for my branch." Atherton's branch consisted solely of him, but wasn't that the point they had had in assigning him here? He smiled to the weaselly little politico. "And besides, it'll get me out of DC for a few days at the least. Isn't that worth anything to your boss?"
Stanton smiled thinly. He held out the invoice. "You have a point. And the Deputy Director has authorized your assigned."
Atherton reached out to take the paper, and Stanton pulled it back. "There is a caveat, of course."
"There always is." Atherton stared at him through heavily lidded eyes. "What is it?"
"We're assigning you a partner. Someone to...help you with your investigation. Someone with an outside perspective."
"Someone to spy on me and drag me down if necessary, you mean." Atherton laughed. "Good luck with that. Remember what happened to your last mole?" He stared at Stanton for another second, then shrugged. "What the hell. Worst comes to worst, I'll ditch 'em. Nothing I do is against regulations. You learned that last time, but if you're still not satisfied..."
"That's right, the Deputy isn't." And nor was Stanton, at how easy that had been. He had been looking forward to some sort of confrontation. Wearily, he waved in his direction. "Your new partner is waiting for you in the Deputy's office. You can hit the airport taxi from there."
As they were in the elevator, Stanton couldn't help but look over and ask. "Flying saucers, Bigfoot, Area 51 and all that shit...Do you really think that's all true?"
As the elevator dinged when they hit the right floor, Atherton gave him a smile that could have been either condescending or pitying.
"Let's just say...that I want to believe."
