Artifact 31: With Atomic Bombs and the Best Damn Army in the World

John and Rusty go to meet the radio host to reveal their finds. The two of them consider that the strange beings are more powerful than the USA.

 

            John finally had a chance to speak with Robert Mavel, the host of radio’s “Truth Talk Show” by using the pretense of seeing a fictional “Gugalac.” Thus, he got the host’s attention, but what sealed the deal was the fact that Mavel saw that the US Army had released a report of finding a crashed flying saucer on John’s property. John and Rusty confirmed to secretly meet Mavel out at the crossroads.

 

John’s statement regarding the Army’s report of finding a crashed flying saucer got Rusty’s full attention.

“What’s a flying saucer and how did Mavel know anything about the Army being out here?” Rusty asked.

            “A flying saucer is what they’re calling a pie plate-shaped aircraft from outer space, “John said animatedly pointing up. “And best of all…” he accentuated with a smile, “the Army released a newspaper article announcing the crash of one, the very one we’ve seen on this property.” John turned his hand from pointing up to stubbing his forefinger several times downward on his desk for added emphasis. “Mavel said that the newspaper article will be printed in local papers by today’s afternoon edition, and then it’s going worldwide so everyone will know about the crash here on this property. That’s when something great will happen to you, Rusty�"everyone will want to talk to you!”   

            “Well imagine that!” Rusty said, leaning back into his chair in glee, but he sobered rather quickly. “But for now, what are we going to do? The Army will be comin’ back here at sunrise, and it’s surprisin’ they ain’t here already. If they see these crash

pieces and start askin’ ME questions?” He looked to the floor with a fearful stare. “I might spill my guts, and I wouldn’t like that to happen, boss.” 

            “I agree with what you’re saying there, Rusty,” John said with a calm even confident tone. “That’s why I decided to talk to Mavel away from here. We’ll take the pieces with us, so if the Army is on their way out here, we can talk to Mavel without them getting their uptight military noses in it!”

             “Good idea. So you didn’t tell Mavel what we got?”

            “No. You heard most of it. Just that we have proof of the�"flying�"saucer�" crash and that you saw the bodies,” John said, putting air quotes around the term, “flying saucer.” 

             “Hmm, I was wonderin.’Will Mavel think my spying on the army like I did less believable than if I had stood there lookin’ right down at the body?”

            “We can try avoiding that detail, I reckon.”

             “Agreed.”

              John started picking up the pieces they had collected from the crash and thought a few seconds. He bent over behind the desk and pulled out an old brief case. Looking it over, he opened it up, pulled some papers out of it, and put them in his desk. John then carefully examined the pieces before placing every one of them in the briefcase.

            “Do you have any more pieces from the crash?” John asked as he continued.

            “No, the only thing I got are these here binocular caps,” Rusty said holding the army green caps out before stuffing them back in his pocket.

             “Alright. Here is your drawing,” John said holding it up and put it in the case as well.

            “You all set? I’m going to fill a canteen and then we can get on the road.”

            The two men went out to the yard. Rusty went around to the passenger side of John’s sedan as John filled the canteen from the hand pump at the watering trough. John walked over to Rusty and stopped, studying his sedan.

            “Let’s take my pick up, Rusty,” John said, with nod toward his Ford truck parked under the large oak’s canopy.

            “But what about Mavel?” Rusty asked, a bit confused. “He’ll be lookin’ for your sedan out there.”

            “Well.” John said, with a drawn-out pause. “I was thinking�"I’ve heard folks say the telephone operators listen in what’s being said between parties�"especially important gossipy things. You know what I’m sayin?”

            “Gotcha, boss,” Rusty agreed with an added thought. “Ole’ Mavel will be slowin’ down out there looking’ for your sedan, so we can just flag him down.”

            “We’re thinkin’ alike again, Rusty,” John said, climbing in the truck.     

             The men were soon on the road. The dark still enveloped them except for the slight glow of twilight to the east even though sunrise was still an hour away. The crescent moon neared the southwestern horizon and the brightest stars still shone brightly across the sky. Begging for their attention, Venus hung low on the eastern horizon. John pointed out the bright orb.

Rusty sat quietly in the passenger seat, numb with tiredness yet piqued with anticipation. He had no idea what the future held in store for him and John. His thoughts of the near future shifted from widespread renown to a tragedy of imprisonment or worse. He could feel his face flush. John spoke up almost as if he was reading Rusty’s thoughts.

            “You’ll be famous for what you seen after this is all sorted out.”

             “Hmmm, maybe?”  Rusty asked a bit uncertain.

            “Well, this sort of thing has never happened before, so newspaper and radio folks are going to search you out to get your story. It could even be turned into a book or a movie or something like that! Robert Mitcham could play you, do you think?”

             “I�"I don’t know about all that publicity stuff. Never did like crowds or talkin’ all that much, you know.”

            “You might have to change your ways, old friend.”

            They continued driving a couple minutes when John said, “Hey, that’s mighty unusual. Looks like something big along the road up ahead.” They continued to drive but slowed some. “Is it the Army truck and jeep that was at our place, Rusty?”

 With bewilderment, Rusty sat up in his seat attentively and looked over the parked vehicles in the truck’s headlights.

            “They sure do look to be the same, but why are they out here along the road?  No one inside of ‘em, no one around,” Rusty said. He held up a hand. “Stop the truck, John!”

 Rusty got out of the truck and leaving the door wide open, he walked around to the front of the jeep and confirmed no one was there. He looked inside the jeep and oddly, all the equipment, other than the bolted-down radio, was gone. Rusty then went to the back of the truck where the headlights shone brightly into the truck’s cargo bed. Stepping up from the bumper hitch he stood and tentatively looked into the bed. Empty. No bodies, no stretchers, nothing remained. Rusty stood up there pondering the situation a good minute until John walked up to the back of the big army truck.

            “What ‘ya see in there, Rusty?”

            “Nuthin,” Rusty said down to John. “Just nuthin.’ They took everything, the bodies, stretchers, medical equipment anything that I remember that they had out there at the crash.” He turned his gaze back inside. “So what happened here? Why did they leave the trucks out here?”

             John looked around at the ground behind the truck. 

             “Look at the ground here Rusty, it’s all worked up like lots of movin’ around, steps, sliding around. Lots of men were here.” John stepped out into the road and squatted down. “Here ‘ya go Rusty, tire tracks on the road from trucks that turned around right here,” John said, sweeping his hand across the road in an arc. “It appears they came from up the road, turned around, and loaded everything up. Maybe that’s why the Army ain’t returned yet, ‘cause those Army men you were with done broke down out here and waited for help. The help took them back to the post. You know Rusty, this is plain ‘ole good luck, eh?”

             “Maybe boss, maybe. I don’t know. It ain’t right for some reason; it just doesn’t add up,” Rusty said scanning about. “But there’s nothin left here to see, so let’s just get on down the road.”

 Rusty took the few short steps back to the idling pickup truck. He went to the opened truck door and went to get in but then stopped. Leaning on the top window frame with chin on hand, Rusty remained in deep thought. Inexplicitly, a tear welled up in the corner of his eye because something unearthly in that spot bothered him innately. He quickly wiped the wetness away with a sleeve as John opened his door and sat down, slamming his door shut.

             “Something else to check that you can think of, Rusty?” John asked, noticing Rusty’s hesitancy to get in.

             Rusty didn’t answer; he just sat, closed the door, and leaned on the open window sill. He gave a half-hearted gesture for them to press on.

             As they pulled away, all was quiet for a while. 

              “You know, finding the trucks like that means nuthin’ to us if it is botherin’ you,” John said matter-of-factly. ”But whatever happened to them, I think gave us some extra time to meet up with Mavel.” 

             Rusty didn’t answer but became more lucid after a few more moments.

“Boss, those trucks sittin’ there broken down is botherin’ me in a whole curious way. Why’d both of them end up sittin’ out there?” Rusty said, staring out the windshield before turning to John with a deep-seated look of distress. “This idea of ‘outer space flying saucers’ on top of seeing that dead�"person�"being is a little more than upsetting to me. Miz’ Thompson even said something about our “out-of-this-world” business. Just unsettling it is. Think about it boss, what if these strange people are powerful in some way, like breaking trucks and things like that�"things we don’t understand like death rays and such. If those Army guys are�"” he swallowed hard. “Gone�"If they, those strange�"people come from the moon or Mars or somewhere out there means they can do all that travelin’ around the stars, and we American’s can’t. Us Americans with big, powerful atomic bombs and the best damn army in the world!” 

Rusty gritted his teeth and pressed his lips tightly together. He shook his head and looked out the window. John glanced over at his foreman.

 “You’re right, now that I ponder it all a bit. Maybe, maybe they, them outer space beings, stopped those trucks to get their friends and took off in another one of them saucers.”

            John watched Rusty nod in the dim morning twilight. “But what became of them Army soldiers? Did they take them too?” Rusty swallowed hard, and continued, “away up there?” He pointed out the open window. 

            “We won’t ever know if�"if it doesn’t happen to us�"God forbid.”

Rusty turned to John in speechless shock because that possibility hadn’t crossed his mind until that very moment.

John and Rusty scanned the sky out the windshield where the stars slowly disappeared one by one in the intensifying morning glow. They didn’t really know what they might see out there, maybe both hoping that they didn’t see something�"unexplainable.

 In the bright headlights, John caught sight of a young jackrabbit running across the road, but he didn’t let up on the accelerator. A million of them were out here during high rabbit population cycle years, John thought as the single rabbit safely bounced into the ditch and into the Yucca shrubbery in the pick up’s wake. John wondered about the growing human population and�"

            They continued on towards the crossroads. The droning of the engine seemed relaxing to Rusty, so much in fact, that he began to nod off. He snapped awake with a jolt when he slumped over in his seat and his head bumped on the window frame. In his in-between sleep fog, Rusty wondered if more nightmares will come.

            The twosome arrived at the designated crossroad meeting point with plenty of time to spare. John pulled the truck off the shoulder well out of the way of any early morning traffic not that there was all that much out there. The sun’s first glare threw long shadows as it rose above the gentle rolling hills. Rusty’s eyes grew tired during the wait, and he again drifted off to sleep. John decided to just let him be.

 John wondered if anything of note will really happen during or after this meeting with Mavel. Will we become famous? Or become infamous? Or disappear off the face of the earth? John realized that Rusty’s musings had spooked him. We can’t see into the future and there isn’t any previous event like this to base an outcome. It is what it is...”

John knew that he knew very little about this Mavel man except what he has heard on his show�"those few times he had listened. John doesn’t know if Mavel has connections with the newspapers to publicize this meeting whatever may transpire with the three of them. John guessed that they’ll just play it by ear to see what develops. He supposed they could bow out if�"his mind flew back to what Rusty said about beings from outer space who could wield more power than Americans with atomic bombs and the best army in the world.

Suddenly, this notion bothered John like he had never been bothered before. John Thompson grimaced in pain and holding a strong, gnarled hand to his chest, he bent forward against the large, hard unforgiving steering wheel.