Puzzled, disturbed by a feeling he would have found it impossible to articulate, the Colonel slipped back and crawled away from the farm. The aliens had come for a purpose, but what? Why had they come to the farm? There was no reason to check up on their pod person, was there? Or did they fear that the other Feds might not obey his orders properly and wanted to check it for themselves? Or…? There was no way to know, so the Colonel put it out of his mind. At least Toby had confirmed that the FBI didn’t know about his group, so they should avoid the initial sweeps unless they found something at Coleman’s house that led them right to the Colonel. Coleman had known the dangers. His house should have been clean.
Ten minutes later, he reached the place he’d stashed the car and climbed into the front. Starting the engine, he drove down the road and into Mannington. The small town was buzzing like a nest of angry bees, with policemen trying desperately to control the crowds. Blake Coleman had been popular; not everyone believed that he’d carried out the assassination and no one was keen on the idea of federal agents running through the town. Coleman’s house had been secured by the Feds and they were going through it slowly and remorselessly. The Colonel silently congratulated himself as he drove back out of town; at least Coleman’s family were safely hidden. They’d have to find some way to get them back into the mainstream without alerting the Feds, but it should be doable with Toby’s help.
He turned the corner and almost ran right into the roadblock. Two police cars had been parked to block the road, with a pair of policemen standing by the side watching the traffic. The Colonel almost reached for his gun before realising that they shouldn’t have anything on him, at least not yet. He watched the two policemen as one of them approached the window while the other stood back and watched, one hand on his holstered gun. The Colonel lowered the window and put on his best face.
“Yes, officer?”
“I’m afraid I need to see your driving licence,” the policeman said. The Colonel nodded and produced it. Legally, they couldn’t search the vehicle without his permission, unless they had a warrant or some other evidence, but he had a feeling that legality wouldn’t be the top issue at the moment. “We’re looking for a number of escaped criminals.”
The Colonel didn’t believe a word of it. He watched with considerable alarm as the policeman checked and rechecked the driving licence and then passed it back to him without comment. Instead, the policemen stood back and waved him onwards. The Colonel allowed himself a sigh of relief as soon the roadblock was out of sight. God damn it; it was like being in Russia, another state where ordinary people couldn’t travel without being harassed by the police. He’d met enough Russians who’d fled the state to know that Communist rule hadn’t been a worker’s paradise, whatever the socialists claimed. The Russian communists happily rewrote history to ensure that their version of events remained unquestioned.
He was still fuming when he reached the farm. As he’d ordered, one of his grandsons was keeping a watch from the gate. If the Feds came to visit, there would be some warning, for all the good it would do. The Colonel harboured no illusions about their ability to fight off a direct attack from anyone with the proper training and weapons. They’d planned to cope with raiders from devastated cities in the wake of a nuclear attack, not for attacks from federal agents and aliens. Most of their supplies had been carefully hidden, but if the agents decided to search the farm thoroughly, they’d be discovered. And then the shit would really hit the fan.
Inside, he ran into Bob Packman. The former CIA agent had been monitoring the internet and television channels, trying to pull the truth from the relentless barrage of propaganda on the mainstream media. CNN and Fox, opposites in so many ways, had united to condemn the terrorist attack on the school and support any government measures designed to hunt down and eradicate the terrorists who’d launched the attack. They were both screaming about casualties among federal agents who had tried to seize illegal weapons, demanding that the government impose even more draconian legislation to hunt down the terrorists and cut off their sources of supply. The internet was more balanced, with stories about deaths caused by federal agents and a number of people who’d been effectively kidnapped, taken away without due process. And the aliens, hovering high overhead, were clearly assisting in directing the operation.
“It’s getting worse,” Packman said, without preamble. “Anyone who’s ever been on a federal shit list is going to be targeted. We always feared that the government would come after us — now, they have the excuse they need to hunt down anyone who thinks that the government doesn’t know best. The sheep will bow and scrape as always; the ones who will fight will be broken and killed. And the aliens will inherit the world.”
The Colonel nodded, hanging up his coat. If the police officers manning the roadblock had known about his connection to Coleman, he would have had to kill them both to avoid capture. And the policemen would have been simply following orders. The true genius of the alien plan was easy to see. They would turn human against human and pick up the pieces afterwards. By using the federal government as their weapon, they would destroy faith in the federal government — such as it was — and in the country’s ability to stand up for itself. The organisations that could be expected to resist the aliens would be weakened by what was, in effect, a civil war.
“Do we have anything on where they’re taking the prisoners?”
“Not yet,” Packman admitted. “The scuttlebutt online suggests that they’ve been setting up prisons — detention camps, really — in the desert, but there’s no real proof. They could be handing them over to the aliens for interrogation for all we know. I wonder if they’ve learned all they can from anal probes…”
The Colonel scowled at him. He’d never had any time for people who’d claimed to have been abducted by little gray aliens and taken onboard flying saucers. Some of the claims were clearly nonsense, while others probably originated in the victim’s subconscious. But now there were real aliens and they might well have a use for human prisoners. Convert them into pod people and put them to work. The chances were that they could interrogate their pod people, find out everything they knew, and then start rolling up their contacts. It didn’t seem fair, somehow. No other invading force had ever had such an advantage.
He winced as a nasty thought struck him. Toby was right in the heart of Washington, close to the President and the bitch who would succeed him if something happened to the President. In such a position, wouldn’t the aliens consider turning him into a pod person? And Toby knew enough to track down the Colonel’s group if the aliens ever did convert him to their side. The thought was bitterly ironic. He’d spent years cursing Toby as a traitor, only to realise that his son served in his own fashion. But now he might be turned into an involuntary traitor.
And there was nothing the Colonel could do about it.
“Or maybe they’re eating us,” Packman added. His voice was light, teasing. He didn’t understand; he hadn’t seen what the Colonel had seen. The death of America itself. “Perhaps Roast Human is a delicacy where they come from…”