Falling (AU, M/L Teen) Complete

[greywolf]

It was mid-August and the temperature was already over 110 degrees at noon as the police cruiser crunched slowly over the loose gravel. Deputy Jim Valenti saw the small assemblage ahead....a Recreational Vehicle and trailer with "UNM Paleontology" and a stylized picture of a tyrannosaurus rex painted on them, next to a couple of medium sized tents along the wall of the quarry. A generator was running in the distance, supplying electricity through a long cord. He'd heard about the dig that had been going on all summer and thought that as long as he was out here anyway looking for an area the Chaves Country Search, Rescue, and Recovery Team could do rappelling exercises, he could stop and take a look.

As the patrol car drove up next to the trailer, the deputy got out, and Susan Perkins got up from her desk and went to great him. Susan Perkins, PhD., was an associate professor of paleontology at the University in Albuquerque. She and two graduate students had spent the last two months on this dig, and she was rather proud of the finds the three of them had made....well, the five really, because they'd had some local help. It was unusual for them to have grade-schoolers help with a dig, but then it was unusual for grade-schoolers to discover a new species. They had so far recovered five different specimens of oreodont, and that had been adequate to show they were a previously unrecognized subspecies. They'd discovered a number of other excellent fossilized specimens of previously known species...all in all it had been a great summer dig.

Not only had the grade-schoolers found the site and carefully preserved it until the team arrived, but they worked tirelessly all summer volunteering to help. It was an unusual situation in Dr. Perkins experience....actually, it was a unique experience, to see elementary school kids as knowledgeable and dedicated as Liz Parker. Her friend was unfailingly polite and industrious, but it was difficult to see past little Miss Scientist to the quiet lad. Perhaps that's why she was struggling with a decision.

Susan had decided to name the oreodont Oreodontus Parkerus after Liz Parker, and she'd told the girl this morning. It hadn't gotten exactly the reaction that Susan had anticipated. Liz had told her that it was as much Max's discovery as hers...probably more, and that she didn't care to have it named after her because it would detract from the credit that Max deserved. Liz was an unusual and highly capable young lady and her devotion to Max was commendable, although from Susan's perspective it wasn't entirely warranted. She had been mulling what to do...right up until she saw the Sheriff's department patrol car. But right now she had another question on her mind.

"Hello Deputy," Susan said. "I'm Doctor Susan Perkins. Can I help you?"

"Deputy Jim Valenti, Ma'm.... Good afternoon. Actually, I just came out to look for a place for out Search, Rescue, and Recovery Team to do some exercises. While it's flat around most of Roswell, there are a number of places in the county where it's quite rocky. I thought the quarry might be a good place for us to practice some of our rescue and recovery techniques and I was just looking for a good place to practice when I saw your dig. How's it going?"

"Amazingly well. In fact, in about two weeks we intend to rebury the site to protect it and take what specimens we have back to Albuquerque. We're planning an even bgger dig next summer, we already have two grants approved for it. This summer there's just been the three of us...well, five really, counting Liz and her friend."

"I see them out working there...I didn't know you used child labor," Valenti said jokingly.

"We couldn't shoo them away so eventually we actually did give them jobs. We can only legally have them work for three hours a day, so we let them start work at 9AM, then try to get them to leave after lunch. Sometimes that even works, sometimes they just hang around and keep working. They aren't getting much more than minimum wage even for the time we pay them, if you divide that by the hours they actually put in here it probably is almost like slave labor," said Susan. "I wish all my students were that dedicated...and Liz is smarter than quite a few of my college students, even at her age."

"Yeah, my son's in their class. His teacher thinks that the odds are that Liz and Max are going to be valedictorian and salutatorian of the High School some day, both of them are really smart kids...honor students."

"Max is an honor student?" asked Susan, reevaluating her assessment of the boy. "I thought that Max was a remedial student...that Liz was trying to coach him academically or something. I had no idea that ..."

"That there was a brain in there? Oh, there is...he's quite bright, just shy. That's what Liz is working on. " 'At least, that's part of what she's working on,' Jim Valenti thought, fighting back a smile.
"Max and his sister are foundlings...their parents found them out in the desert when they were about six. They didn't speak English...didn't spaek ANY language, but they are coming along fine, although socially Max is a little behind his sister perhaps. But intellectually, they are just fine."

"He sure doesn't seem very....well, assertive."

Susan watched the deputy smile, his eyes twinkling as if he were thinking about some in-joke.

"Oh, Max can be assertive enough, if he's properly motivated. Fortunately, that doesn't happen all that often."

Susan looked at the deputy questioningly for a second, then decided to let it go. "As long as you are answering questions about things around here, Deputy Valenti, I have a little bit of a mystery for you...if you've got a second to look at it. "

"Sure, what can I do?"

Susan lead the deputy out toward the wall of the quarry. "I found a strange sort of geological formation...then I realized it couldn't be a geological formation...this is a quarry that's only been here about 70 years...too little time for wind or water to erode the rock, and of course being a quarry, there isn't any running water down here...not like a canyon or valley, and I'd think this area would be pretty well protected from the winds."

Jim saw the depression in the rock and knew instantly what it was. One of the aliens from the 1947 saucer must have taken shelter here...dissolved itself into the side of the quarry to get out of the weather..or just out of sight. But Jim had learned his lesson from what had happened to his father. Deputy Valenti wanted to someday be Sheriff, and you did not get promoted by talking to people about aliens.

"I'm not sure. I agree, it doesn't appear natural. This was all government property even during WWII. Who knows, maybe they did some sort of demolition practice here.."

"I guess, although it seems too smooth for that..."

"Your guess," Jim Valenti lied, "..is probably just as good as mine."

When they got back to the RV, Susan grabbed a bullhorn and pointed it at the four people working under the canopy by the quarry wall, laboriously cleaning dirt away from the current excavation site.

"OK everyone, it's lunch time and the weather is a balmy 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Time for everyone to take a break, come back here to an airconditioned vehicle that is only...that would be 94 degrees, have lunch and drink LOTS of fluids."

Jim Valenti watched as Liz came to the RV, Max trailing a couple steps behind her. Liz was filling out...her lanky frame becoming more feminine. She had, he realized, hit her growth spurt, and was probably an inch or so taller than Max. Her long legs were tanned, and her smile was radiant. Jim Valenti didn't believe he'd ever seen her look happier, and Max....well, as long as he was where Liz was, he seemed quite content.

"Hello Deputy Valenti," said the twelve year old girl. "Want to help with the dig?"

"No, actually I was out here to arrest Doctor Perkins for violation of the child labor laws. You and Max are going to be accessories.." It was of course, only a joke, and the sudden widening in Max Evans eyes instantly made Valenti wish he hadn't said it.

But apparently Liz had already anticipated Max's reaction, because without even looking behind her she replied, "That's a joke, Max. Besides, we are juveniles...too young to know we are being shamefully exploited by the University of New Mexico."

"I'll shamefully exploit you two...," said Sharon Perkins, chuckling. "Get in there and get your sandwiches and some drinks, and then cool off. It's getting too hot for anyone to be out working. The three of us," she said, indicating herself and the two grad students, "...have plenty of documentation to do here in the shade. I'd suggest that you and Max have your lunch and cool off in the RV, then head for the local pool."

"That's already on the agenda," said Liz. "Alex and Maria are meeting us there at 2PM."

As the two children joined the two grad students in the RV, Sharon walked Jim Valenti back to the patrol car."How I envy that young Parker girl," said Sharon "She really has it all...brains, beauty, personality."

"Well, almost all," said Jim Valenti. "I think she's working on it though. But you are right. She was an exceptionally pretty little girl. She's starting to become a truly stunning young woman."

"Yeah, if she were my daughter I'm not sure I would let her out of the house...too many perverts running around, but I don't suppose you have those down here in Roswell like we do up in Albuquerque."

"That's not entirely true. We had one here about a year and a half ago...from out of town, of course. He attempted to kidnap a fourth grade girl. One of her friends...stopped...him."

Susan looked at Jim Valenti and cocked her head to the side. "The way you said that, there has to be more to the story."

"The girl was Liz Parker. Max stopped the man."

"So he wasn't too shy to call 911?"

"Wouldn't have done any good, the man would have been across the border before we'd have ever got to him. No, doctor,.... Max chased the man down a hill on his mountain bike and finally caught him at the bottom when the guy stopped to duct tape Liz so she couldn't get away. He lunged at the guy off his bike...took him over an embankment with him down into an arroyo. They both hit after about a twenty-five foot fall. Max was knocked out..."

"...and the kidnapper?"

"The coroner's jury said it was justifiable homicide.."

"Max...killed him?"

"Yeah, like I said, Max can be assertive enough, if he's motivated. Have a good day, doctor."

As she watched the patrol car drive off, Sharon Perkins, PhD paleontologist, was talking to herself.

"Oreodontus Parkerevansei... It does have a nice ring to it..."

[greywolf]

It was two weeks later that Liz and Max helped pack the tents and canopies into the trailer, helped load the carefully crated specimens, and helped out with the raking as two big dump trucks full of sand were spread over the digging site to preserve it until the dig could be resumed next summer.

It had been, for Liz, the best summer of her young life, because she'd spent it doing something she truly enjoyed, but most of all because she had been able to spend it with Max. For at least six days a week, they had been inseparable, and they'd had their first dates. Well, not real dates maybe, but they'd gone to Saturday matinees together at least a half a dozen times, and still had monel left over from what the UNM had paid them. They also had three good friends from the UNM, one who would almost certainly be a full professor by the time Liz and Max were old enough for college.

Yes, the summer had been good for Liz...she'd grown...matured...and had pleasant companions. What's more, three months had passed. In a mere seven more she could devote more attention to turning her boy friend into a boyfriend.

Before the RV and trailer were completely out of the quarry, Liz and Max were at the top of the cleft at their bicycles, watching them depart.

"Want to go to the Crashdown and cool off, Max? I'll make you a sundae...any flavor you want."

"Jalapeno jelly?"

"Max..you are so weird sometimes," she said, grinning. "Sure...jalapeno jelly it is...with vanilla ice cream, or something else?"

"Do you have peppermint."

"Yuk. I hope not....but we'll see."

The two friends rode back to town. School would start in three days, but that was OK. This had been the best summer of their lives...for either of them and they'd even enjoy these last few hours of it. Next summer would not be nearly so pleasant.

[greywolf]

Ironic: Poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.
As Max sat in the booth drinking his second soda, he was reading his sixth grade vocabulary words, smiling at the irony that THAT word was in there. He was, after all, sitting alone in a booth in the Crashdown, pretending to be a human, waiting for his best friend, a human in the next room who was pretending to be an alien, to finish entertaining 22 first-graders so they could both go to the library and work on research for the junior science fair project they’d be doing this year.

It really wasn’t Liz’s fault that little Brandi Weber’s birthday party was running 45 minutes late, that was due to her mother, Mrs. Bambi Weber, and to little Brandi herself. Strangely enough, the word stereotype was on the vocabulary word list as well, and both Ms. Weber and her daughter were blondes. That wasn’t entirely fair, Max knew. He knew a number of girls like Maria, who was also in the party room with Liz dressed in alien outfits with dealey-bopper antennae who were not flakes at all, well…maybe a little with Maria with all the aromatherapy stuff she was getting into…she was always shoving sandalwood oil or orange oil or something under his nose, but Ms. Bambi Weber seemed, to Max at least, the epitome …Dang, that word was on the vocabulary list too, of the dumb blonde.

It wasn’t a complete loss. Max had been experimenting. The first soda … a cherry cola … Liz had brought him had been pretty good with a little Tabasco sauce, but the second one…something called a Lime Rickey, with one extra teaspoon full of sugar and four squirts of Habanero sauce was…. Out of this world…, Max thought, suppressing another chuckle as he finished the last of it.

“Max, I am SOO sorry,” said Liz, as she stepped out of the birthday room. It was almost two months into sixth grade…over five months since she’d used him as a stepladder to get to that fossil…and Liz had changed, and so Max realized, had he. Liz had always been pleasant to look at, but increasingly he noticed how beautiful she was, even dressed in a silvery uniform and wearing ping pong balls on the dealey-boppers on her head. The fluttery feeling came more often now, like when she gave him that embarrassed smile like she just did.

“First of all, Mrs. Weber had the invitations printed up with the wrong start time, so we waited around for a half hour, then the special cake she ordered was late getting here, then the special piñata…would you believe she had someone in a ceramic shop make it? And little Brandi has to be the most spoiled little girl in the world, she’s hit it twenty times already without breaking it and won’t let anyone else help her….”

“That’s alright, Liz. I’m just doing homework. I don’t mind waiting. You are worth waiting for.”

The warm glow and fluttery feeling in Liz deepened at those last words, and she couldn’t help but smile.

“Well, here…I brought you another drink to have while you are waiting. You are a sweetheart,” she said, setting the drink down beside him and giving his hand a brief squeeze.

The contact with her hand sent a swirl of warmth through Max, and the fluttery feeling threatened to overcome him. So much so that he didn’t even hear the next sentence, or see the sudden flush that came over Liz after she said it before retreating back into the chaos of the birthday party. Of course, the list of vocabulary words didn’t include the phrase, "Freudian slip.”

“It shouldn’t be much longer, Max. Remind me not to choose any alcohol-related names for our children…uh, that is, MY children.”

[greywolf]

[There’s one behind that trash can]

David Sullivan looked at the trashcan in the alley and jumped back in fear.

“Where?”

[They hate you…they ALL hate you] said the voices in his head.

“Why do they all hate me?”

David Sullivan was a homeless person, walking down the alley behind the Crashdown.

“Homeless advocates” tell us that anyone can be a homeless person and that certainly is true, at least in the sense that nothing is impossible. They also tell us that the homeless are just like ‘you and me’, and that statement is conditionally true. The homeless are just like ‘you and me’, if ‘you and me’ have significant substance abuse or mental health issues.

David Sullivan is schizophrenic. Somewhere just over one out of one hundred people will become schizophrenic sometime in their lives. Prior to 1954 almost every county in the United States had an insane asylum where people with severe mental health issues…mostly schizophrenia, were warehoused. It was much the same throughout the world. But in 1954 a drug called chlorpromazine became available, the first of the so-called major tranquilizers, and for almost twenty years it was if a miracle had happened, allowing the great majority of these people to return to their homes and family. That all changed in 1973.

David Sullivan had a home and family once. He still does, actually, they have been looking for him for six months. He doesn’t want to be found because he’s paranoid, a prominent feature of schizophrenics. David is 34 years old and has a loving wife and two daughters, nine and seven years old, and he’d been doing fine on his medication for almost three years until one day he forgot to take his medication.

People forget to take their medication all the time, and for most, it doesn’t matter much. The young lady who forgets her birth control pill one day will generally notice it the next day and…scared silly… have real incentive to remember it the next time. The schizophrenic who forgets to take his medication may wake up the next morning paranoid, convinced someone is trying to poison them, and throw the medication away. That’s what happened to David Sullivan.

Prior to 1973, David would have been noticed by the police talking to himself, picked up, had his butt filled with chlorpromazine, and been asking if he could call his wife to come pick him up eight hours later. That didn’t happen now, because Congress decided that even sick people had rights.

Oh, there had been some justification, there always was…, but the politicians had thrown the baby out with the bathwater, they usually do… The case involved two young ladies in North Carolina…two sisters, who had wound up in a mental hospital because they hadn’t taken their medication. Both of the young ladies had a couple of children that they were unable to care for who were in foster care, and it was the opinion of the hospital personnel that the two young ladies had already contributed adequately to the gene pool. The women had signed consents for the tubal ligations, but it was questionable whether either had understood those consents.

What had actually happened to those two women in North Carolina was that they had run afoul of the last remnants of the Eugenics movement, that had flourished briefly at the turn of the century, attracting the avid support of such notables as H.G. Wells, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg and Margaret Sanger. Even as notable an American jurist as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had been a believer of not only sterilization of "undesirables", but forced sterilization of those judged "genetically inferior."

But the horrors of the where this movement had gone in Nazi Germany had demonstrated the dark side of the whole Eugenics movement, and none of those in p[ower in 1973...including members of Congress who had once supported it, had wanted to address the legacy of the US's own Eugenics movement.

It was deemed more politically acceptable to view it through the filter of the 1970s politics ... a violation of human rights. So to avoid the obvious...that while it was a good thing for society to help these people, it was not acceptable to try to determine their evolutionary pathway, it was simpler to just say that crazy people had a right to be crazy, and that absent any IMMEDIATE threat to themselves or others, paranoids could refuse medications that could cure them. With that decision, the baby was indeed tossed out with the bathwater and the situation was created which condemned Mr. David Sullivan to a lifetime of lunacy living in squalor for the crime of forgetting to take his medication one time.

Two days ago, Mr. Sullivan had spent the night in a shelter in El Paso Texas with a drunk in DT's on one side and a gentleman with organic brain syndrome from drug use on the other. They had 'discussed' with Mr. Sullivan the voices he was hearing, and come to the conclusion that the voices were caused by Aliens from the Roswell Saucer that were using their antennae to put thoughts into his brain. People with active schizophrenia have a tenuopus grip on reality at best. With no more reason than that, he'd gotten on a bus and come to Roswell over night to get them to stop.

Sullivan had been attracted to the Crashdown immediately after he'd gotten off the bus, attracted by the large flying saucer above the door. David wasn't normally a violent man, but when he saw the alien come out of the door, dressed in black, with his space helmet on, he heard the voice in his mind...
[THERE'S ONE NOW]

...and panicked...and attacked.

Deputy Albright was the junior man on the Chaves County Sheriff's department, but he didn't mind that a bit. He'd been patrolling all morning on the motorcycle and was anticipating no trouble when he took his afternoon break for coffee and a piece of pie. The Crashdown was fairly quiet between the lunch hour rush and the dinner rush, except for a birthday party going on in the birthday room, but the two young girls managing that were at least keeping the chaos isolated in that one room. He finished his pie, and left.

Deputies are trained to be aware of their situation at all times, but it's difficult to do when you are putting your motorcycle helmet on. Deputy Albright had only a second to notice the man mumbling to himself, and assumed he was on a bluetooth headset until the man's ragged appearance struck him. But that moment of lack of caution was enough. The man plowed into him like a linebacker hitting a quarterback and before he'd recovered, his service Glock automatic was missing from the holster.

[greywolf]

Paranoid delusions are very real to the people that have them. David Sullivan looked at the strange weapon that the helmeted alien had been carrying. It seemed more plastic than metal, but somehow looked just as lethal anyway. He pressed through the doorway of the alien building, leaving the guard crumpled at the entrance. That alien wasn’t the one Sullivan wanted, he was just a worker-bee.

Entering the building confirmed his worst suspicions. There were strange pictures and symbols all over the walls, all of them alien related. There were a few people sitting in the booths waiting… [Future victims] …and Sullivan waved the weapon to get their attention and shouted at them to get away.

“Run…run for your lives.”

His words seemed to break whatever trance was holding them, and they left quickly, some out the back, some through the door he’d come through…and it was only after they were gone that Sullivan looked through the windows of the adjacent room, and saw what he feared most.

The two aliens were wearing silvery suits and their antenna swayed as they apparently conversed telepathically with one another. They were smaller than adult humans, no larger than a twelve year old, and one was holding some sort of a club. There was a shattered container of some kind on the floor, and their were about twenty little girls who were being threatened by the alien wielding the club. But Sullivan knew…it wasn’t the club that they had to fear…it was the antennae. [They are going to put the voices in the children’s minds]

[greywolf]

Deputy Albright recovered quickly after the assailant fled into the building, and his hand quickly found the back-up gun in his right ankle holster. He felt ashamed and guilty that he’d let the man catch him by surprise and the urge to charge in after the man, gun blazing, was very real. But at the police academy they’d told him that it was at times like that you needed to be especially slow and deliberate. Having already made one mistake, he didn’t want to make a worse one, and his instructor’s words proved true as he brought his gun to bear on a man running from the building…only to see it was the wrong man. Another followed the first, fleeing from the restaurant and a couple followed them.

Albright quickly called dispatch for back up and carefully looked through the plate glass window. Most people seemed to have gotten out, only the man who had taken his gun was remaining. But before Deputy Albright could do anything else, the man entered the birthday room. All at once the thought clicked in the young deputy’s mind. A hostage situation. He pushed the transmit button on his microphone and started to talk.

[greywolf]

The Law Enforcement Support Agency person in dispatch just shook her head in amazement. The restaurant was less than two blocks from the main Sheriff’s Office and most of the officers in this part of the county got coffee and pie there. Whoever chose that place to take hostages had to be crazy.

The Sheriff himself was at a meeting in Albuquerque but the information was quickly passed on to the senior officer present, Deputy Valenti. He was in a routine meeting with the county SWAT team at the time. They were in the van and out the door in less than 45 seconds.

It was already an awkward time in the birthday room. Brandi Weber had been unsuccessful with her 77th attempt to bust the damn piñata, and Maria had had enough.

“Let me just demonstrate the right grip…,” she’d said, taking the baseball bat away from little Brandi. “It’s like this, gripping the bottom of the bat loosely, and turning with your waist, shoulders and upper body as you swing,” Maria instructed, with her best softball form.

On the second swing there was a crack as the bat hit the piñata and an “Ooopps,” from Maria. Within seconds a tearful Brandi was being comforted by an irate Bambi Weber. Just as Bambi was finding her voice to yell at Maria, the door opened and a wild-eyed and poorly dressed man ran in, waving an automatic pistol and screaming loudly to “Stop the voices….” Bambi Weber took one look at the man and fainted. After that it started to get REAL interesting.

[greywolf]

As Jim Valenti and seven members of the Chaves County SWAT team arrived at the restaurant, they saw Deputy Albright with his back to the bricks, a small revolver in his hand, looking carefully in the windows in the front of the Crashdown. As the other SWAT team members dispersed to cover all the exits, while the designated sniper and Jim himself carefully joined Albright.
“What’s the situation?”

“One perpetrator, sir. He attacked me by surprise and wound up with my service pistol, then went charging in to the Crashdown. I think everyone got out except for the people in the side room where there was a birthday party going on…probably 20 nine or ten year olds.”

Valenti and the sniper looked carefully through the window. Across the restaurant, through another glass window, they could see a whole bunch of scared little girls, trying to hide behind Liz Parker and Maria DeLuca, with one little blonde girl clinging to a woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties who was apparently unconscious on the floor. A man was gesturing wildly and pointing a Glock at all of them, but mostly Liz and Maria.

“Did the perpetrator take out the woman?” asked the sniper.

“No, not that I could tell. I think she fainted,” replied Albright.

“Jaime,..” said Jim Valenti to the sniper, Jaime Lopez, “..what’s the chance of you taking the perp out with your rifle?”

“Not good, Jim. Not through two panes of glass. The glass bends the light…like a stick looking like its bent when you put it in water. It’s called refraction. The target isn’t really where it looks like it is because of that distortion. The bullet would go through both panes of glass in a straight line, but there’s no telling precisely where it would wind up. If it were just the guy, I’d take the chance, but I could just as easily hit one of the little girls. Besides, if I miss him, he’ll for sure start shooting.”

“Well, all we can do then is set up the usual hostage drill, and hope this guy is rational enough to negotiate with us.”

“From what the people who got out were saying,” said Albright, “..I’m not sure I’d count on that, sir.”

[greywolf]

Delusions seem very real to the delusional. As he entered the room, David Sullivan saw the young girls crowding behind the two aliens. That wasn’t the way it should have been. His girls didn’t flee when he approached. He did have girls, he now remembered…almost the same age as the ones looking at him with such fright. Where had HIS children gone? Why had these girls become frightened of him?

[It’s the aliens. They are controlling the girls minds, just like they controlled your daughters minds when they took them away from you]

He hadn’t thought of his daughters…not in six months…but he was thinking about them now, his daughters and the other helpless girls that were being compelled against their will to get behind the aliens so he couldn’t save them.

“I want the girls,” said David, brandishing the gun. “give them to me…give them to me now.”

Without so much as a spoken word between them, Liz and Maria had realized the moment that Bambi Weber swooned that they had somehow inherited responsibility for twenty-one smaller children. Both of the twelve year olds crowded the girls behind them, Maria brandishing the aluminum baseball bat that had just wreaked havoc on the piñata, Liz standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

But when the man demanded the girls, Liz’s mind could think of only the helplessness she’d felt when she herself had been kidnapped. She knew what the man had intended for her, before Max had intervened, and she’d rather die than let that happen to the younger girls.

“You can’t have them…Please, put the gun down.”


[Put the gun down. Put the gun down. Put the gun down. Put the gun down. Put the gun down.] David felt some of the voices trying to control him, echoing what the alien had said. But other voices yelled back, [Don’t listen. The alien is trying to control you]

David covered his ears with both hands, screaming, “Be quiet…go away!” Then he looked at Liz and pointed the gun, screaming in anger. “Make the voices go away…make them go away…”

Outside the Crashdown, the SWAT team saw the situation spinning rapidly out of control as the man pointed the gun at Liz Parker and appeared to scream at her.

“I’ve still got no shot, Jim,” said the sniper. Valenti was getting desperate. None of the hostage negotiating techniques seemed to apply to this case. In desperation he grabbed the bullhorn and pointed it at the man in the Crashdown.

“This is the police. You are surrounded, put the weapon down.”

[PUT THE WEAPON DOWN PUT THE WEAPON DOWN PUT THE WEAPON DOWN] the voices repeated in David’s head. It was like they were louder now…like they were mechanically amplified, and even though they seemed to come from outside the building, David knew they came from the antennae of the alien before him. [It’s trying to control you] the voices told him. David didn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wanted his daughters back…just wanted the aliens to give his missing daughters back to him. He grabbed the throat of the nearest alien in front of him.

“Give them back…give my girls back!”

When Jim saw the man grab Liz Parker by the throat he keyed the mike again. “Let go of the girls. Let them go and we won’t hurt you….”


[Let go of the girls. Let them go and we won’t hurt you] David shook his head as the loud voice struck at him again from the antennae of the alien whose throat he was holding. He wouldn’t let his girls go…not ever. The alien had to give them back…it HAD to. David forced the first alien against the wall and aimed the gun at the second alien…the one with the bat who was keeping him from rescuing all the little girls…little girls like his own daughters.

“Give them to me. Give me back my daughters, or I’ll shoot…”


Outside the restaurant the SWAT team was getting desperate.

“Can we make an assault with flash-bangs?”

“Sure,” said the SWAT team commander, “..but if he jumps and pulls that trigger when they go off, we are going to lose some hostages, and we may lose the girl he’s holding in the firefight.”

These decisions are never easy. Jim knew that. You never have time enough, never have personnel enough, never have good enough situational awareness, but you are only human. You do the best that you can.

The words…’do it’…were already on his tongue, when one of the spotters said, “We have someone else entering the room.”

[greywolf]

The brick building that housed the Crashdown was not originally designed as a restaurant. It was originally a large mercantile establishment with an office on the main floor, and a number of rooms on the second floor and a few rooms on the third floor that had once been a boarding house. It's hard to remodel brick buildings, but the hardest part is to change what are called the 'water walls', so called because they carry the water and drainage pipes in them. In more modern construction, these travel between studs. In an old brick building, these travel within the brick walls themselves.

It had been fairly easy to punch new pipes through the brick walls from the alley in the back of the building to support the grill and food preparation areas. Modifying the interior was much harder. For two decades before the Parkers bought the place, the restaurant had 'made do' with a single restroom not too far from what was now the birthday room. It was small, poorly lit, even more poorly ventilated, and was used by customers of both genders. For a structure that was built back when indoor plumbing was something of a novelty, it actually wasn't that bad. But when the Parker's had bought the place, Nancy had insisted that this was not an appropriate ladies room, and Jeff had certainly agreed.

Fortunately, there was an adjacent small storeroom, and it was possible to tear down one non-weight bearing wall to expand the original restroom into quite a nice ladies room. It had three sinks, three stalls (one handicapped accessible), a small sofa, and a long mirror that could be used to apply makeup without interfering with those who chose to use the sinks. The wallpaper was attractive, and there was a small vial of scented oil with wicks to provide a fragrant background aroma. There were disposable toilet seat covers in each of the stalls, as well as envelopes to discard used feminine hygiene products without clogging the toilets, disposable tissues on the counter by the mirror, and a vending machine that dispensed women's hygiene supplies for those who had run out, or forgotten their own. One year previously, at the behest of Liz and Maria who were on an environmental kick, the paper towel was removed and replaced by something called a ‘World Dryer,’ that used warm dry air...something that southeastern New Mexico had in abundance, in lieu of paper towels made from trees, something that was in rather short supply in the desert. The wastepaper basket was nonetheless retained for used facial tissues and bagged female hygiene napkins. The ladies room was clean, tidy, sanitary, and pleasant.

Max Evans in his entire life would never see the inside of that ladies room. Max was in the men's room.

The men’s restroom was considerably further down the hall from the women’s room, in what had once been the mercantile office and its own small restroom. It too had been torn up and extensively remodeled. It had two sinks with badly stained stainless steel reflecting surfaces above them, two stalls (one handicapped access), two urinals at differing levels mounted on vinyl paneling to catch any overspray. Except for two posters directly in front of the urinals, the walls were painted and bare of anything except for graffiti. The latter was present in abundance. There were empty disposable toilet seat cover dispensers in each stall, each with the words ‘Paper ass gasket,’ written on them in magic marker by some unknown graffiti artist. The paper a…that is, the disposable toilet seat covers themselves were lying damp in the corner of the restroom nearest the sinks, used as paper towels by the patrons who didn’t much give a damn about the environment, and subsequently discarded where the waste paper basket used to be. The place wasn’t particularly clean, certainly wasn’t tidy, definitely wasn’t sanitary, and smelled vaguely like stale urine, only partly overpowered by the smell of evergreen and something like mothballs, arising from the blocks of deodorant in the bottom of the urinals.

One might ask why Max was in such an unappealing location, rather than back up in his restaurant booth. The answer had to do with mathematics and physics…a word problem, really. How many times does a 16 ounce cherry cola, a 16 ounce Lime Rickey, and a 32 ounce Green River go into a sixth grade alien-human hybrid. The answer was once, but not for very long.

Max was certainly, to a degree, naive. But he was neither ignorant nor stupid. While he did not yet understand that Liz had decided he was the one, he did realize she was trying hard to increase his socialization, and he approved of that, not just because he knew she was his friend, not just because he loved her, but because it simply made sense. It was far easier for him to hide in the crowd if he didn't stick out quite so obviously from the crowd, and he knew the increased socialization was working.

He now actually had a few other friends besides Liz. As he looked looked at the urinal he had just gotten through using, he smiled. Two days ago, in the boys restroom at school, he'd watched two of his friends, Kyle Valenti and Alex Whitman, discussing urinals. Alex had hit his growth spurt and seemed destined to be tall and lanky, like his father. He had told Kyle that he was now using the higher urinal in the restaurants, whereas Kyle would likely never grow tall enough, and would be forced to use the lower urinals on the wall forever. Kyle of course had said that he would indeed be using the lower urinals, that he was Italian, and that the real purpose of putting the urinals lower was not for those of smaller stature, but rather for those whose penile size was so great that they needed increased clearance between themselves and the cold ceramic of the urinal. Sixth grade boy culture was like that. They communicated in body humor, good natured insult, bravado, silly contests, and sexual innuendo. It was their entire culture. Kyle and Alex had eventually settled the one-upsmanship contest by urinating for distance into the urinals at school. Kyle had gotten almost 9 tiles....about nine feet, from the urinal before starting to miss. It appeared that guys played the same games in this restrooom, thought Max, smiling as he noticed he himself had used the lower urinal.

Max reached up above the urinal to some graffiti, carefully noting there was no one else in the restroom, before using his powers to eliminate the graffiti there. In fact, Max didn't know Debbi Troy, Pamela's big sister, but he seriously doubted that she had approved of leaving her name and phone number there, and further doubted that she actually even did several of the things that were listed.

Max washed his hands and hit the button on the hand dryer, shaking his head in annoyance at the time it took. He looked for a disposable toilet seat cover...they were all used, then shrugged his shoulder and used his own powers to dry his hands.

As he walked back toward the dining room he walked right by the empty women's restroom. Had he looked inside, he would have no doubt been amazed. He might even have realized that the social gap between female and male humans was scarcely less than that between himself and Liz, and had he known that, the next year would have gone much easier for him. Maybe he could have even realized they had the possibility of a life together. Of course if he'd done that, Liz would have died by the hand of a schizophrenic who thought he was trying to force two aliens to release a bunch of little girls and the man himself would have died in a hail of police bullets causing the Glock to discharge twice, killing one more little girl and permanently crippling another. Given all that, it was probably just as well that Max didn't take time to peek in the women's restroom, not that the shy kid would have anyway.

Max got back to the dining room and looked around.

'Where'd everybody go?'

Then he looked inside the birthday room and saw the man with the gun, reaching for Liz's throat. Max knew...knew with total certainty, he wouldn't let Liz be harmed. He'd kill the man with his powers if he had to...even if everyone else saw him do it. He opened the door and walked into the room with a determined look on his young face...