Cam rolled his eyes. “Let’s show him the ship the prisoners escaped from and then he can help us track the ones who got out of the building.”
Would it do any good to tell you to stop reading my mind?
“No. But I’ll make a special effort to stay out of your head, given that I don’t want to be treated to any more images of you kissing my sister. Gross, dude.” Cam went to a wide door at the back of the building.
Wyatt shook his head, still half ready to believe this was all a dream. He winked at Valene and followed Cam. Valene, Diesel and Axel trailed him. On the other side of the door, a set of normal-looking stairs led down. Interesting. Most structures in this area didn’t have a basement. The water table was too high. As he descended the stairs into a rather cavernous space, he noted there was not a speck of water in sight. He followed Cam to the left as they walked into a long, large room. Wyatt tried to get his bearings. He figured the large underground space extended behind the truck stop and possibly into the woods.
It looked like an underground mall. There were eateries, shops selling all manner of earthly goods and kiosks filled with trinkets and baubles.
They passed a store window that displayed every type of Maxwell the Martian paraphernalia he’d ever seen in one place, save the truck stop’s gift aisle upstairs.
Wyatt never would have believed there was such a large underground area under the truck stop if he wasn’t seeing it with his own eyes. They continued down the central walkway toward a platform against the wall at the end of the cavernous space. Two staircases led off the platform, one a little grander than the other.
“You’re exactly right. One is for first-class passengers, the other is for everyone else.” Cam didn’t bother looking contrite for reading his mind and Wyatt decided it would save time to ignore any intrusions into his mind.
“What is this place?”
“This is where the spaceships’ passengers disembark.”
Cam headed for the non-first-class stairs, went up them and opened the door to outside. Wyatt reached the top of the stairs and crossed the threshold. He saw the spaceship immediately. It was dark outside, but the large black ship—which hovered several feet above the ground—looked like some sort of alien battleship with metal plating and gun turrets in strategic places. The ship’s lights were purple, green, blue and dark pink. Four thick metal chains ran from beneath the ship to hook onto iron rings driven into the ground. A piece of equipment that looked like movable airport stairs was snugged up to an open door on the alien spacecraft.
Behind the hovering ship, Wyatt saw the woods he’d learned tracking skills in as a kid. Never once had he ever seen any alien ships hovering around anywhere.
“How do you keep it from being seen by anyone on Earth?”
“Alien technology. It blocks any kind of human radar and field dampeners keep local earthlings from seeing anything except what they expect to see.”
“Right. What happens if someone does see it?” Wyatt did his best to curb his fantastic thoughts regarding aliens being in his life without his knowledge all this time. Even in his mind he likely sounded like a hayseed from the hill country, wide-eyed and awestruck by the thought of proving aliens truly existed.
“We have to erase their memories.”
“Erase memories? You can do that?”
“Yes.” Cam pulled what looked like a megaphone the size of a small water gun out of his pocket.
“I’m going to set this for ten seconds.” Cam pointed it at him.
“Don’t, Cam,” Valene’s impassioned voice said.
Wyatt’s vision went black for a full count of three. When the black screen in his brain faded, he couldn’t remember what he’d just said. What had they been talking about? The awesome spaceship?
“How do you keep the ship from being seen by the locals?”
Cam wore a Cheshire grin. He gestured with the small megaphone in his hand. “I shoot you with this and you forget. In fact, I just did it.”
“You erased my memory?”
“Yep. Only ten seconds’ worth, though.”
“This time,” Valene said under her breath.
“This time? You’ve used this on me before?”
“Not me. Axel blasted you the last time,” Cam said, his tone matter-of-fact, like erasing memories was standard practice. From the sounds of things, it was.
Axel sent his gaze to the sky, shaking his head as he dropped it to stare at everyone with a hostile expression. His agitation was clearly visible in his posture. “Focus, people. Fifteen escaped prisoners, remember? We should already be out there looking for them.”
Diesel asked Wyatt, “If you were about to look for fifteen escaped prisoners from the gulag prison ship you see here, what would you need to know to track them down in the surrounding terrain?”
