It didn't take Paint long to carry me into town. He crossed the creek, his hooves clacking on the water-worn stones and his legs splashing in the fast-running, shallow water. As we crossed, I could see some brook trout hovering in the eddies near shore, waiting for an insect to land on the water. I glanced back at Liz and saw her waiving again. I could see her mouth open, but the gurgle and chuckle of the water kept me from hearing her shout, “Goodbye!”
We took the old jeep trail and followed it into town, finally arriving at the town center. The first person I saw was William Smith.
He had showed up a couple of months past, claiming that he'd come over the pass from the area west of Vail. A couple of the dedicated downhill skiers in town had spoken with him and they thought that he didn't seem to know enough about Vail to have come from around there. It didn't matter, though. In this post-apocalyptic world, people sort of reinvented themselves and he wasn't the only one who had changed their background story.
He greeted me congenially and inquired about Liz and our homestead. He'd been nothing but innocuous in all of our interactions, but for some reason, I didn't have a good feeling about him. Perhaps it was due to the shifty feel of his energy field.
I should explain that my enhanced mental ability doesn't allow me to read thoughts accurately without others knowing about it. I can sense general energy fields, but in order to read a person's thoughts, I'd have to intrude in a way that they would consciously recognize. It's a lot easier to link with those with whom I have an emotional bond. Tapping into a stranger's conscious level of thought is difficult for me. Invading a stranger human's mind hadn't been difficult for the Ancient-One, but I thought that the Pug-bears naturally had very powerful psychic abilities. I believed that they must be stronger that way than humans, even though I hadn't met any humans with my mental ability, at least as yet.
William said that the Sheriff was over at the Courthouse and I headed that way. As I rode off, he ingratiatingly said, “Tell Liz 'Hi' for me.”
I nodded and thought, “As if she'd be even slightly interested in hearing from you!” His idea of friendliness just grated on me. He was over-familiar without any basis for it and I didn't like it. I also didn't like the way he looked at Liz. A couple of times I'd observed him looking covetously at her when he thought I wasn't watching.
When I got to the Courthouse, the Sheriff was just coming out. “Hi, Dec!” he greeted me with a smile.
“Hey, Dave! What's up today?”
“I'm getting tired of being called into court on account of Mrs. Perkins' chickens,” he wiped his forehead with a stained handkerchief. “She keeps losing them to coyotes, but every time she claims that it's Ralph McKinley's dog. She keeps trying to get the judge to order me to put down the best varmint dog in the area!”
The Sheriff and Ralph McKinley had a kind of varmint hunting club. They'd get together one or two nights during the week and go out with their dogs to run various wildlife. Raccoons, mostly. The dogs didn't care. They just loved to chase things. Dave and Ralph didn't care either. I suspected that they mostly used it as an excuse to get drunk and stumble about in the woods. I just hoped that Dave didn't fall in a hole and break his neck some night. He was a great Sheriff, not given to getting too excited, but very effective at keeping the peace.
“Sheriff, I've got a favor to ask of you,” I told him.
He turned serious, instantly, “You know that I'd do anything I can for you and your wife, Dec.”
“Did you see that fireball that crossed the sky about ten o'clock last night?” I looked up and traced an imaginary line along the path the thing had taken.
“No, but I heard something about it from several people. A couple of the guys were coming out of the tavern and they were kinda excited about a meteor. I just thought they'd had too much to drink,” he said, deprecatingly.
“Liz and I saw it cross the sky. I'm sure that it landed over around Estes Park. You know that was where the aliens landed on Earth originally,” I was just stating a fact that I was sure he knew.
“Yep! I remember that's what you told us when you first got here,” he recalled.
“OK. Well, I'm dead certain that wasn't a meteor. It was a spaceship that they sent back to the same place. There's a reason that they landed there in the first place and it has to do with some kind of radioactive ore deposit deep underground. I believe that this landing will re-establish their matter transporter link to Earth and, if I'm right, we'll shortly see them coming back in force.”
It was asking a lot of him to believe that I was correct, but he knew enough about me to realize that I wasn't joking about it.
“You're kidding, aren't you – No, I can see that you're not!” was his response.
“No, Sheriff, I wish I was joking, but I'm afraid that we're going to be up to our necks in aliens unless something is done.”
“What can we do? The last time, only a few of the Pug-bears showed up around here. Are you thinking that there will be more? Will they try to take over and what kind of force will they have?” He took his hat off and mopped his brow again.
“That's just the problem. I don't know for sure that they'll bother us in force very soon, but I do know that the damned things have taken over at least fourteen planets and eradicated almost all of the life on them.”
“Wait a minute! How could you know such a thing? It doesn't seem likely, now, does it?” He looked at me carefully with his law-enforcement expression.
I knew that I needed to be very precise with what I said next. I'd told him before about my encounter with the Ancient-One, but I hadn't gone into details about the mental battle we'd fought and the resultant effect on my mind.
“OK. Dave, I haven't told you this yet, because it sounds unbelievable, but when I killed the Pug-bear's leader, he was trying to dominate my mind with some kind of mental linkage.” He nodded as he recalled the story. “When I found the strength to resist, it shocked him and he accidentally opened his memories to me.”
“Well, but you couldn't have learned much in that short a time, could you?”
“That's a good question. The time was short, but thought is very fast. What happened was that a large number of his memories, I think maybe all of them, leaked into my subconscious and were stored. All I have to do is to ask the right question now and I can usually recall enough information from him to answer it.”
“But, how do you know which question to ask?” Dave was sharper than he looked, no question about that.
“That's the issue. I often don't. I don't know what I know until something cues the recall, but here's the point. I do know that the aliens are deadly and mean us no good. Even if they let some of us live, we'll be no better than slaves at best and probably more like beef cattle, since they will eat humans along with just about anything else that moves.”
“We've got to do something about this!”
“That's what I was getting to,” I responded. “I'm preparing to go against them again.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked, getting back to specifics.
“I'm going over the pass to see if I can't stop them from coming back,” I said. “I'd just like you to keep an eye on Liz and Michael. They're going to stay at our place. It's too dangerous for me to risk her going with me and she has to take care of the boy anyway.”
“That's no problem! You know I'll keep an eye on them. You've got a lot of friends in this town and we've learned that we either stand together or we won't survive,” he responded.
“Times have been tough, haven't they?”
“Yeah! I've got to admit that I didn't believe everything you told us when you first showed up, but things have gone just about the way you said,” he shook his head in regret.
It was true. Times had been tough. We lived in an isolated community and we'd had to develop our own food sources. There was no way anyone would send supplies to us. There wasn't really even anyone who knew or cared where we were.
“Listen, Dec, are you sure you should go alone? I can get some of the boys and we can – ” he started.
I held up my hand and interrupted him, “No, you can't. You're the Sheriff here and the town needs you and all of the able-bodied men available for defense. I know that no one has attacked us in the last few years, but there's always the possibility that the Eastern Slope Warlord or some other gang will decide to move into the North Park area. I'd like the help, but I'd rather you and the guys stayed here and protected the town and my family. Besides, I'm experienced at fighting the creatures and most of the people here aren't.”
He bridled a bit over that, “Now, hold on a minute. We've killed our share of Pug-bears.”
“I know you have, but none of them have been the smart kind and, if they're coming back, that's what will come along with a lot of their soldiers. Those are the man-like ones I call Pugs. You haven't seen them, but they're tough and hard to kill and the big thing is, they can shoot back. The Pug-bears can't.”
“OK. You've made your point. I'll just make it my business to keep a close eye on your place while you're gone.”
“Thanks, Dave! You're a real friend. I knew I could count on you!” I turned Paint and rode off towards the general store. I'd promised Liz that I'd get some woolen fabric so she could work on winter clothes. You don't know how convenient it is to simply buy clothes off the rack until they aren't there any longer. Grand Lake had run out of garments a couple of years ago. Fortunately, a couple of the locals had developed fairly sizable flocks of sheep and we'd all learned to make do with woolen clothes. They didn't even itch much due to the colder climate in the mountains.
We'd learned that wool is a great survival fabric. You can get it wet and it still keeps your body heat in. Cotton will kill you in sub-zero temperatures if it gets wet. Wool won't; it will keep you warm and, even if not totally comfortable, it will keep you from freezing. We all wore wool shirts, pants, and socks as a matter of necessity.
While I was selecting some cloth in the store, I overheard a couple of young women talking. They were from the far side of town and I didn't know their names although I'd seen them a few times. They gave the overall impression of less prosperity than the average. I mean that, given the circumstances, we were all poor in comparison to where we'd been prior to the alien attack, but these two had threadbare clothes and their moccasins were just about on their last mile. One of them had holes in both toes where the leather had given out. This was not usual in town. Most of the people took good care of their clothes and equipment, so these two stood out.
Anyway, they were chatting excitedly about William Smith. One of them seemed to have romantic aspirations for him and the other was encouraging her.
“He's just so handsome that I could just die when he looks at me,” she said.
“I'll bet that he'd be a good provider, too. He told me that he always has meat on his table,” her friend chipped in.
“I hope that he asks me to the next dance. He told me he would,” the first enthused.
The clerk who was assisting me just shook her head and spoke quietly to me, “Those girls don't have the first idea about that guy. I've heard that he's made a run at every single woman in town, especially if they have some nice property. Neither of those two have any prospects and their fathers are both kind of shiftless, so they won't have anything that would really attract him.” She was shaking her head in disparagement as she spoke.
“Well, Molly, I don't know them or their fathers, so I can't say, but I've been keeping my eye on Smith. His story didn't seem square when he first arrived in town and I can't say that he's been an outstanding addition to the community, for all his talk about his hunting,” I was, perhaps, a little over-doing it. He hadn't been a liability to the town and he did bring in the odd deer or elk. He worked mostly as a hand for one of the sheepherders and didn't have a place of his own.
“Nothing good will come to those girls if they get to hanging out with him,” she said as she measured my selection. “That will be five dollars, Dec.”
We had continued to use the old currency. There wasn't any government backing it, as far as we knew and the paper and coins were worthless, but they'd been mostly that way before the attack. It was a convenience that allowed us to keep track of transactions. We simply pretended that the currency had value and it did, as long as people were willing to trade it for food and supplies. Of course, we'd also take food, gold, ammunition, and anything else of value in barter, but we always tried to reduce the transaction to dollars and cents to make it easy to balance out.
“Here you go, Molly, and thank you,” I said as I handed her five silver dollars and left.
On the way back, I rode past the school. It was in session and I could see Nancy standing in front of the chalkboard
through the window. She and Mike's decision to stay in Grand Lake before the EMP had proven to be a great benefit to the town. They had taken over the school and the local children were getting a great education as a result.
She looked out the window and I waved, not expecting a response, but she waved back. I could see some of her students turn curious faces to the window as she did.
It wasn't long before I got back to our place.