Old Wounds, New Spears

By JM Williams

One day a woman came to my door asking for sugar. It was a rather stereotypical thing for a new neighbor to do, and yet, there she stood, on my front porch, dressed in a faded t-shirt that was emblazoned with a scene from an old science fiction film. Everything about her seemed out of place.

This woman was in her late 20s, I guessed, young and attractive, with a slim build and straight brown hair that went down to her shoulders. Her eyes were an odd shade of green that I found fascinating. She was taller than me and carried herself erect and confident. That was the first thing I really noticed about her, besides the shirt of course. It was something I had seen many times before, working as a photojournalist around the world— a sort of alert battle-hardenedness. I couldn’t help but wonder how someone like her, in a quiet place like this, would have developed such a sense.

It’s not that I was bothered by the visit. Quite the opposite, in fact. A week had already passed since she and a few others had moved into the derelict beach house next to mine, and I was happy for the chance to finally speak with one of them. I was certainly curious.

To my disappointment, the woman rarely spoke, and when she did, it was with a thick accent. Her offerings were mostly limited to “Allo” and “May we pleeze have some shugah.” By the look of her face and the accent of her words, I assumed she must have been from Eastern Europe or thereabouts. But she had a kindness to her expression that I couldn’t help but appreciate, especially since I hadn’t been blessed with any visitors in a long time. It was a relief to have someone to talk to, even if I was doing most of the talking.

She told me her name was Sarah. She didn’t look anything like a Sarah. My time in Asia taught me that people visiting the English world often adopted English nicknames —usually Biblical names— when they thought their given ones would be too difficult to pronounce or remember. I assumed this to be case here.

I welcomed “Sarah” into my home, asking her to wait in the entryway as I went to fetch the goods. She ignored the request. When I came back from the kitchen, I found her wandering around my living room, staring at everything with rapt attention. She studied the photographs I had framed there and was particularly interested in the torn section of Afghan carpet hanging on one of the walls.

“Here you go,” I said, handing her a sealed plastic container. She took it absent-mindedly, her eyes still on the rug. “If you’ll excuse me now,” I said with a bit more severity, “I have some work to do.” She did not answer. “Sarah?” She spun around in surprise.

“Oh. Thank you,” she said, raising the sugar up in both hands. “Thank you. Would you please come to dinner.”

It sounded like a statement rather than a question, but I considered the request. I was rather eager to see what they were doing inside that old house.

“Sure,” I said. “When?”

Sarah only smiled and nodded, returning to the door. I stood there on my porch and watched her disappear like an old memory. It left me with an odd feeling for the rest of the day.

In that way she came into my life, and by the end it would prove a more fateful encounter than I could ever have imagined.

It was around the middle of May when I had first seen them, moving their things into the house next door. That rickety old place had been abandoned for as long as I could remember. Never did figure out who owned it. And yet they came, five of them —three men and two women— all in their late 20s or early 30s. I assumed they were tourists, or perhaps migrant workers. But how they came to be lodging there, in that broken down house, I couldn’t fathom.

The structure must have originally been a shade of maple brown, but it had been blackened by time and humidity. Some of the windows had been broken by local vandals, and the doors were boarded up. The best way to explain the look of the place would be to mention I had sold a photo of it to a horror fiction magazine several years earlier. As far as my property values and I were concerned, the place was a nightmare.

In the week before Sarah appeared at my door, I could hear much noise and commotion coming from inside. The problems on the outside were largely ignored. The yard was still a savannah, the siding still in need of replacement. They dealt with the broken windows by covering them all with heavy shades. I was ultimately disappointed they didn’t do more.

Sarah came back that evening to collect me for dinner. Except, it turned out, she required more than just my company. In not so many words, she asked me to drive her to the local grocery store to buy food for a barbeque. It seemed a neighborly sort of thing to do for visitors from so far away, so I agreed.

At my direction, we returned with a cooler full of burgers and beer, something suitable for people her age. Beer wasn’t exactly my drink of choice, and anyway, I couldn’t help but imagine the beer in their country —wherever that was— would be a step up from the generic local offering. But Sarah was insistent.

We met the other four in the back on the patio. I was surprised to see the rusted old grill, which featured prominently in my horror photo, had been polished to a shine. She introduced the others as John, Paul, George, and Mary. This only convinced me that they must be using English nicknames. I even wondered if there was a Ringo hiding in the shadows. They were rather bland choices for names, too, in my mind, though easy enough to remember.

The others proved even quieter than Sarah, at least in English. The five talked among themselves— in a language I didn’t recognize, but which did seem European enough to satisfy my anxiety for a time. Sarah relayed what parts of the conversation she could. I showed them, with gestures more than words, how to light the coals and cook the burgers. The men copied the way I leaned against the railing, a beer in one hand, gazing out at the sea. The women whispered quietly on the far side of the patio, occasional giggles cutting across the empty space between us.

Over time though, I grew more uncomfortable with their language and isolation, my mind trying to fit these people into the context of current political tensions. The talking heads on TV were suggesting we might be on the verge of a new cold war.

A couple beers in, I was overcome with the need to urinate. It took some negotiation to convince them to let me inside to use the bathroom. John led me through the house, the inside of which was much less restored than I had imagined. The furniture looked old and worn, some parts even broken. The only exception was the door to what must have been an internal bedroom. It had been replaced with a huge slab of new steel. The replacement door was very Soviet in appearance —as out of place as a thing could be— and yet somehow fitting for these odd foreigners.

The bathroom too, was rather decrepit, appearing to only have been sanitized in the most basic manner. I wondered how the women could endure just the smell of the tiny room, let alone the grimy appearance. As I did my business into the cracked toilet bowl, I wondered if these conditions were just normal where they came from. But if so, how had they ever managed to afford a trip to this middle-class coastal town? It was all an enigma. My mind returned several times to the large metal door and the mystery that it was protecting. That door intensified my discomfort more than anything else I would see for some time.

I returned to the patio, and we finished our meal without speaking. Their expressions seemed to suggest they were at least impressed with the food. When the grill was finally beginning to cool, and the silent sea-watching had become tedious, the man called Paul came over to speak with me.

“It is very nice,” he said, pointing to the pink glow of sunset blanketing the ocean. “Impressive.”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed, sipping from my beer. He copied the gesture. “Where are you from?” I finally asked.

He looked at me confused. I didn’t know if it was because he could not understand the question or did not know how to answer. Regardless, the man who called himself John interrupted us, dragging Paul away to the other side of the patio where the women still stood, surely gossiping among themselves. The five of them had a heated discussion in their own language.

After a short while, Sarah came over to me. “Thank you for helping dinner,” she said, smiling, her green eyes glowing in the dim twilight. “Tomorrow, you would take us to town.”

Again, not a question. But having little of importance to do the next day, I simply shrugged and nodded.

The next morning, I woke shaking with terror. Another nightmare of Afghanistan, but one where I never came back.

 I splashed water on my face and poured myself a morning whiskey— my remedy in those days. I carried the glass out onto the beach, watching the reflection of the morning sunlight creep across the ocean. I replayed the memory in my head, reconstructing it from the fictional horror of my dreams.

I had been embedded deep with a Special Forces unit running missions in the mountains, living a harder life than I had ever experienced, but also learning a lot. About the world. About men and their motivations. The photos won me a few awards, though nothing too grand. The injury garnered me a decent pension, but my career was pretty much over after that. Twenty years of hard work rubbed out in the blink of an eye.

The day it happened had been unnaturally warm, and the heat only grew more oppressive as we drove down into the nearby valley. The body armor I was wearing did not help with ventilation, nor did the two large special operations soldiers on either side of me. I sat in the back of an old, off-brand SUV, stuck between these two gladiators, sweat dripping down my face like a leaky faucet.

“Drink water,” the guys would say to me every five minutes, looking like they would force feed me if I refused.

We were headed for a nearby village, where a tribal elder was waiting impatiently to speak to the army officers about concessions. You build us a new school, we will tell you where the bad guys are. That sort of quid pro quo was the way of doing business, and it was the special operations forces that brokered the best deals. These guys were trained to work with the local populace, to influence hearts and minds into thinking favorably of the occupation. They wanted an independent photojournalist along to document the signing of the agreement. It would be great for public relations.

We never made it to the meeting.

As we approached the village’s main street, an RPG barely missed the lead vehicle. In an instant, the troops were out of their trucks and returning fire at the roof of a nearby building. It took me only a few moments to realize I was sitting in a bullet-magnet, one without any armor. I slipped out the side opposite the fighting, behind one of the soldiers— a grizzled sergeant named Davis.

I turned my camera on and started shooting. When our truck started to rattle with bullet impacts, Sergeant Davis dragged me to the front of the convoy. The CO was already there, ordering one of his teams to conduct a flanking maneuver through the nearby alleys. The man sped off behind the corner of a small hut of a building, leaving me alone with Sergeant Davis.

I felt the shot before I heard it. The impact knocked my leg out from under me, sending me face first into the dirt. Looking back, I don’t think the sniper intended to shoot me. Davis had been in front of me just moments before, but bounded after his officer the instant before the bullet came. It was bad timing. Or maybe just bad luck.

And yet there I was, writhing in agony on the ground, blood spurting from my thigh.  One of the team medics came around and pulled me behind the lead truck, sniper fire still sparking off the vehicle and nearby walls. The medic put his hand to my wound, but the blood squirted out between his fingers.

He did some sort of magic on me, as my current liveliness can attest to. He even managed to save the leg. Though from that day on, I would be plagued with a limp and with nightmares.

I finished my drink with a final gulp and headed back inside.

Later that day, I took my new neighbors into town. On the street, they proved a lot more energetic than their skinny bodies suggested. With my gimpy leg, I had extra trouble keeping up.

The six of us drove around town in an old Jeep they had acquired somewhere as I pointed out the sights to them, not that our town had many sights worth indicating. They were particularly interested in a few specific places. We stopped for a long while in the heart of old downtown, as they took hundreds of photographs of the city hall and other nearby buildings. The women posed for the shots, but never seemed satisfied with their looks, always asking for new shots at new angles. A few times, they asked me to take pictures of the five of them together.

After that, we headed over to the bayfront park, where local concerts and festivals were often held. That day was relatively quiet. Again, they took lots of photos— of the big, canopied stage at the center of the park, the buildings surrounding the grassy yard, and the nearby pier. There were several banners hung about regarding some upcoming event, a big one it seemed, but I paid them no concern. I was too engrossed by my strange guests.

We sat for some time on the beach, watching the sail boats drifting in the wind. Sarah sat uncomfortably close. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive. Indeed, she was. She was also much too young for me. Just the idea of an old guy like me with someone like her was almost shameful. Still, I didn’t reject the attention.

We all sat there together, only Sarah and Paul speaking to me, and even then, rarely. We watched the evening come to the sea, and I wondered what they could be thinking. I wondered if they had ocean beaches like this in their country, if they had ever seen the sea before coming here. And I wondered why I never took the time to just look at the beauty of the world around me. I was always looking from behind a lens. Such a view is too constricted, too focused and curated, maybe even a bit dishonest.

Finally, it grew too dark to see much of anything, so we piled back into the Jeep and headed home.

The next day, I went to pay my new neighbors a visit, but they were gone. The front door was locked tight, and the windows were all covered by those heavy drapes. I assumed they must have taken another trip into town, no longer needing my guidance. I returned home to work on some photo submissions that were close to being due.

From behind her, I locked eyes with John. He rushed over to the door, saying something angrily to Sarah in their language. She shouted back to him, defiant, but ultimately lost the argument. Before I realized what was happening, John had me by the collar. He dragged me into the house, past the living room —where those high-tech looking crates were stacked— and into the kitchen, shoving me into a chair.

“Sit,” he said roughly. It was the first English he’d ever spoken to me.

I saw the TV on the kitchen counter. An older model, no more than 30 inches in size. On the screen was a local news bulletin about an event currently happening at the bayfront park. A political rally. For the president!

I also saw that damned metal door was open. They had been taking things out of the sealed room. Those crates. I took a good look at them and realized they were very similar to the ones I saw at the army camps in Afghanistan. Weapon crates. And the TV, showing the president at a rally at the bayfront. It was all too perfect to be a coincidence. Thoughts of cold war espionage and red agents came screaming back into my head.

I looked at my five neighbors, who were now having the most furious argument I had yet witnessed. Sarah seemed to be the odd one out. I tried to stand, but John stepped quickly over and shoved me back down.

“Sit,” he said again. This time it felt like a threat.

Sarah argued with John. Finally, she shouted in English, “Show him!”

He slapped her.

She stared at the floor for a quiet moment, breathing heavily, before glancing at me then back at the other four. They were having a calmer discussion with Sarah removed. She lifted her shirt, and I saw she had some sort of sash around her waist, with a digital display on one side. My nightmares called to me.

Bomb!

The room went silent. The others looked at her, Paul shaking his head hard, Mary and George opening their mouths to say something. John turned to grab her, but Sarah proved too quick. She slipped out of his range and pressed a button on the display. The room was filled with an electronic hiss. I closed my eyes and made a selfish prayer.

I felt nothing. When I finally opened my eyes, I was struck mute by what I saw.

Sarah was no longer the young, green-eyed brunette I had grown fond of. Now her skin was a deep blue, her eyes teal, with slender pupils like that of a cat. Her hair was entirely gone. Her ears —if you could call them ears— lay flat against her skull. Protruding from her forehead were two lumps like the stumps of severed horns. Her alien eyes watched me as I gasped for a breath. John yelled at her again, but his presence diminished with rapid resignation. The others deactivated their disguises, one by one, but nothing could be as shocking as seeing the woman I thought to be a friend turn out to be something so very different.

“Your name isn’t Sarah,” was the only thing I could think to say.

She frowned, as much as her alien face seemed able to frown. “No, it’s not. My name is Eela. I’m sorry, Ethan.”

“What are you...what are you going to do to me?”

“We won’t hurt you. I promise.”

How could I believe such a thing? The promise of an alien? How could I believe anything, even my own sanity? What the hell was happening?

The aliens continued their work, leaving me in my stupor. They unpacked the crates, laying what were clearly weapons on the nearby tables. As they worked, John kept a close eye on me, and if I even stirred in the slightest, he made it clear I shouldn’t. I had no will left to flee. I could do nothing but sit frozen in that chair, struck dumb by horror and confusion, watching the political rally on the television, waiting for the president to come to the stage, terrified about what these strange visitors were planning to do.

After they had prepared themselves —checking their weapons, strapping digital readouts to their arms, and donning transparent visors and light rucksacks— we left the house together. Sarah had told me it was best for me to come along, that something might happen to me if I ran off. I had trouble believing my kidnapping was for anything but their benefit. John dragged me out of the house and put me in the back of the Jeep. Eela sat in the front, seeming to want to avoid any contact with me. She looked ashamed. I thought she should be.

We drove off, and I could tell from the direction of travel that we were headed to the bayfront park. I was seated between two armed males, and it brought back those dark memories of my last days in Afghanistan. It was that thought which finally brought all the pieces together. I realized what it was they were doing here, in my little town.

The special operators I worked with in Afghanistan called it operational preparation of the environment— deploying small teams ahead of the main force, to gather intelligence and set conditions for future missions, laying the groundwork for direct action strikes or even an invasion. John and his team were part of something bigger, but as to what I still didn’t know. I didn’t want to know, but I was sure I would soon find out.

John drove the Jeep towards those buildings adjacent to the park, the ones that had drawn their attention so forcefully those many days ago. The whole area was charged with energy. There were people wandering around for the festivities, and when we approached, they scattered like frightened birds. It wasn’t my friends they were scared of, but rather the night-black spaceships cutting across the sky above us.

The alien soldiers exited the vehicle, weapons in hand, as a swarm of black-suited men and women came screaming out of a nearby building. They all crammed hurriedly into black SUVs that were waiting nearby. The Secret Service. What also quickly became obvious was how outmatched our best and brightest were. Eela and her comrades opened up on the trucks with energy pulse weapons of some kind. The vehicles stopped dead. As the agents came out to respond, they too were stopped by electric pulses.

In the chaos of the fight, my captors lost track of me. I still wasn’t capable of flight, or perhaps part of me wanted to stay. As if by instinct, I turned on my camera and start shooting the unbelievable scene.

The entire Secret Service quick reaction force was taken out in a matter of seconds. The aliens seemed either too fast to hit or simply impervious to our weapons. After the fight was over, I ran to check on one of the fallen agents, who I found to be breathing, her pulse strong, but she was unable to move a muscle. She was alive though, which only left me more confused. Eela led Paul and Mary into the building, eliminating any resistance that remained as they charged up the stairs.

Staggering to follow them to the roof, I took random shots with my camera, documenting the chaos. I emerged at the top just as a ship —which looked something like a gigantic raven— dropped down out of the sky. On the far end of the grassy park, I saw a man I was sure to be the president, coming down from the stage, all his black-suited bodyguards lying helpless on the ground. More alien special operators approached on the president’s flank. The giant spacecraft landed with a quiet hum a short distance in front of the old man.

Eela ran to the edge of the roof and tossed something into the air. The drone spun to life and sped off towards the ship, towards the president, who seemed unable to flee due to the mess the panicking crowd was leaving in its wake.

I snapped pictures of it all.

Dropping her rucksack, Eela pulled out a flexible, transparent sheet, which she laid against the roof’s stone edge. It was a display for the drone. The nimble aircraft swung around the large black ship, as a landing ramp extended from its side. Another blue alien, in an ornate green and pink dress, with what looked like Victorian ruffles, strode down the ramp, flanked by two large soldiers. The camera panned and zoomed out, revealing some of the Secret Service agents around the president stirring, reaching for their weapons.

It was an explosive moment, only lacking the tiniest spark.

But that spark never came. The president, glancing down at his agents, waved them off. Then he strode forward, directly towards the alien emissary. The two met where the ramp touched the grass, and the president, standing as tall and confident as I ever remember seeing, reached out a hand in greeting. There was a long moment, as the alien leader seemed to consider the gesture, finally taking the hand and shaking it.

At this, the tension fled the air. And like soldiers everywhere —who hope for peace in times of conflict— Eela sighed a deep, almost human, sigh of relief. She leaned back against the stone edge and smiled her awkward smile at me.

It proved a life-changing experience in many ways, beyond the obvious implications of extraterrestrial contact. I finally got the Pulitzer that I had be striving for all my life. For photos of alien special operations forces in action. The “Tip of the Finger,” they called it— a jibe, or perhaps homage, to the motto of the United States Special Forces. There were other alien teams on the ground that day besides Eela’s, but I had been the only human standing there with them. Their mission had been to set conditions to ensure that first handshake happened, or to control the situation if it didn’t.

Tip of the Spear.

I followed a delegation of visitors as they traveled the world, bringing human society together in a way that we had repeatedly failed to do ourselves. The word they used to refer to themselves was all but impossible for us to pronounce —the sort of gurgle a drowning chicken might make— so we started calling them Trappesians. We chose this name based on their home star. It seems these aliens had grown nervous after the sudden and heavy attention we paid their home system in recent decades. So, they decided to check in on us.

Eela followed me around the world for some time, but eventually she abandoned me for a new wave, human-Trappesian, post-contact art group. I can’t say I was surprised by her choice. John —whose real name turned out to be Johen— told me she was quite young for one of her species, almost a new recruit when the operation had been launched. I think it must have been her youth that made her so bold. Bold enough to come to my door. Bold enough to argue with her CO on the day of the operation, wanting to protect a foolish old human. Over time, she became like a niece to me. After she left, I missed her dearly, but was much too busy to be sad.

Everything changed on that day, myself included. I’m still trying to sort out what it all means. Johen checks in on me from time to time, but I have students now who demand most of my attention. I never thought I’d be a teacher, but then again, I never expected to be surrounded by young aliens who think still photography is greatest abandoned artform in the galaxy.

I’m sure I’ll get along just fine.