(Author's Note: Entered in the Science Fiction Writers of
Earth short story contest. I had the idea for this after
reading an article in UFO Magazine [after picking it up at a
friend's house who is an amateur conspiracy theorist], and I
finally decided to exorcise the demon. This seems to be more
espionage-horror, and it has creeped out a few of my pre-
readers.)

----------------------------
"Near Groom Lake"
by Jillian Parks
----------------------------

 The desert landscape slipped by the windows. Winds whipped
at the orange sands and rocks, then the wind quieted down to
a deathly stillness. Nevada was nothing but a long expanse
of sand and rock and deep blue sky, stretching on forever,
bathed in the light of the scorching sun.

 My cousins and I reached the area known as Lincoln County.
To our surprise, the speed limit signs posted the limit as
seventy miles-per-hour. Amy gladly stepped on the gas, but
Mike told her to keep an eye out for a left turn, a dirt
road going northwest, hidden by sage brush.

 I had an odd feeling in my gut, the kind that said there
was something there, watching. "Just because you think
you're being watched, doesn't mean you're not." So said
Rumiko-obachan.

 I turned around to look out the back window. About a
distance of nearly three-hundred yards was an unmarked
police car following us. They kept a fair amount of
distance.

 I leaned forward to Mike, whispering to him, "We're being
followed."

 "I know, Jiru," he breathed back, running his hand through
his dark brown locks. "Happens every time. I bet you also
know it's the police."

 "Yup. The tag in front. What did you do the last time you
camped out here?"

 "Nothing. We followed the speed limit and eventually he
loses interest in bothering us, there's only two of us kids.
There being four now, who knows?"

 "Just wondering."

 "Don't mention it to Amy."

 "Hai."

 I sat back, biting on a nail. This was too odd, being
followed by an unmarked, non- descript car. Whatever is
going on out near Groom Lake, it was certainly making sure
those poking around were looked after.


 An hour later, we arrived at a somewhat rocky area. It was
a good area, since the rocks provided shelter from any
sudden winds from blowing a fire out to ignite the dry
brush. We pulled into the site, and the guys and I turned to
watch the car speed by.

 "So," Amy began in her Shampoo impression from the anime
series 'Ranma 1/2'. "You tell Shampoo what going on being
followed."

 "Cut it, Amy-pie," Richie replied. "Don't worry about it."

 "Watch it, little boy," she retorted. "I'm the one driving.
Wouldn't aunt Patty be upset that her little Richie was left
to fry in the desert? So, what the hell is
going on?"

 Mike sighed, and Richie held his dark blonde head in his
hands.

 "Listen, cuz. We're going saucer hunting tonight."

 "And why couldn't you tell me that earlier?" she asked. "I
would have brought my own camera. Should have known, since
we're so close to Groom Lake."

 Richie shrugged and stated, "You're big and scary."

 "Oh, thanks, you little twerp."

 "Excuse me," I chimed in as politely as I could. "But let's
set up camp before nightfall."

 Everyone opened their doors in agreement, and we started to
pull our gear out. It wasn't long at all until we heard a
car coming down the road.

 "Do you guys get much traffic out here?" I asked Mike.

 He shook his head, "Nope, not at all. This is unusual. Can
you keep yourself quiet in case something happens?"

 "Of course," I replied, shoving his thin frame. "What about
Richie?"

 "I'll take care of him. You know that Amy can play mute."

 I nodded, watching as a Lincoln County sheriff's car pulled
into the campsite. Amy went into mute mode and the boys
pulled on their good-old-boy grins.

 The sheriff came out, looking at us all carefully. I
plainly read his sunburned face. 'A bunch of kids looking
for flying saucers. Sheesh.'

 "Good evening, sir," Mike looked up from the back of the
truck. "Can I help you with anything?"

 The sheriff plastered the fakest smile I've ever
encountered in my twenty-one years of life across his face.

 "Nothing at all, just wondering if I can be of assistance
to you. Did your SUV break down?"

 "No, sir, we're just camping here."

 His dung brown eyes ran over Amy, and she started writing
furiously in her notepad. She handed it to him to read.

 "No, young lady. But I have a better suggestion of where
you kids can camp out. This area is just a little too rocky
for comfort."

 "I hear you, sir," Mike grinned. "Laying on rocks ain't
fun."

 "A little bit further up the road is a knoll you kids can
use. Just don't go near the cattle trough up there, health
hazard. Make everyone's lives a little easier... "

 He trailed off, gazing hard at us each in turn. Mike and
Richie nodded, giving him their dumb-as-cabbage grins. Amy
stepped into her driver's seat and I only smiled shyly. We
were all actors, thanking Mrs. Nathanson of the community
theatre for her classes.

 "Before you go," he fished in his back pocket for his own
notepad. "I need some information, just in case there are
any accidents and such."

 He started with Amy, who was obviously the driver. She had
to pull out her driver's license and social security card,
which I thought was entirely too odd for an officer, even a
sheriff, to do. I supplied mine, saying "Buta no baka."
(Jerk Pig) and he looked at me, puzzled.

 "Oh, sorry," I added. "I'm used to speaking my native
language. I said 'I don't have a driver's license'. I
haven't learned to drive yet."

 "That's okay, ID will do," he took down my numbers,
mumbling under his breath about being too damned short to
reach the pedals.

 I pretended not to hear, instead I made like I was about to
hit the doofus with a mallet as he leaned over his carhood
to take the information down. I'd prefer to being called
"cute" than "short". Ugh.

 He finally left us with a general warning about keeping an
eye on our fires and to not wander far from the campsite, as
we were near an Air Force installation that didn't like kids
running around and playing war games.

 Mike turned to the rest of us and asked, "Any questions,
fellow cousins?"

 He was bombarded by one Amazon cussing in Yiddish about his
manhood and myself in Japanese about his sanity.


 An hour later, Amy and I were able to piece together Mike
and Richie's stories about their previous camping
experiences. It seemed that mid-evenings, after dark, the
ridge to the south put on a spectacular night show complete
with red globes silently floating, surrounded by smaller
strobes whizzing around it. During the night, Blackhawk
helicopters also flew around, some even blatantly shining
their lights right on their campsite. Then there was the
black Blazer sitting a bit of distance away, doing nothing
but observing.

 "The security forces are tight, but they never harrassed
us," Mike explained. "Rick and I just stayed in our camp
area and took the telescope out to look at the stars away
from the ridge area."

 "If you follow the road more," Richie continued. "There's a
sign that says 'Don't go any further'. This just basically
looks like any other Air Force Base, but the lights are a
whole different story."

 I nodded, feeling my blood pound in my ears. I was
fascinated by the strange and unusual, but I always kept my
sense of skepticism open for rational explanation. I now
realized what the boys intended to do: document the
experience. It explained all the video and recording
equipment in the back of Amy's truck. Why Amy was
specifically chosen to come along, because of her job at the
magazine sharpening her observation skills, and why I was
brought along, being the most rational and least suggestable
to conclusions of alien space craft. We were near Groom
Lake, the legendary location of Area 51... and we were a
bunch of kids, posing as a bunch of kids looking for a cheap
thrill.

 It was flawless.


 The knoll was incredibly windy. The only windy place in all
of the desert, which we thought was a little too odd. We set
up our tent, one of the larger one-room dome tents us
cousins had always used when we were younger. We gave up on
trying to light a fire with all the wind, and just pulled
out the flourescent laterns when it became dusky. We got the
telescopes out and pointed them towards the east and north,
locating the major stars and close galaxies.

 I prepared dinner inside the tent on a camp stove, while
Mike looked over the camera he brought with him.

 Richie poked his head in to say the Blazer was already
here, about a hundred yards south of us. Shortly thereafter
a helicopter roared overhead.

 "Jiru," Mike handed me a small tape recorder. "Unzip the
floor of the tent and dig a hole big enough to hold this.
Make sure the microphone faces up. It should record up to
eight hours with both sides by setting it on slow speed.
Remember to turn it on when we go to sleep."

"Got ya'," I went to prepare it. "Mike, just in case, did
you bring your gun?"

 "You got a bad feeling?" he asked.

 "Either that or I have a weird sense of paranoia. I don't
trust these security people to leave us alone tonight. Not
with your camera around and such."

 He nodded, patting his jacket. "I got it in a shoulder
holster. I just need to put the magazine in... just in
case."

 Several years back, when we were about fourteen, he and I
were dirt biking up in Northern California while visiting
one of his uncles who owned quite a bit of forestland. We
had a bad incident when we ran into some drunk trigger-happy
trash. Mike was a skinny matchstick and I was only four-and-
a-half feet tall at the time, so it was a miracle we escaped
unscathed. Since then, we camped with protection of some
sort.

 Mike took one of the cameras out and set it up outside of
the tent, facing the south. I called dinner was ready, and
we ate dinner outside the tent on sleeping bags, enjoying
the wind and the sky shining with thousands of stars.

 We forgot about alien craft and paranoid security forces
and just had fun as we were. We tuned the radio into a local
station and blared Weird Al's "The Saga Continues" (a spoof
of The Phantom Menace set to the tune of "American Pie")
while laughing and screaming the lyrics. Then we got into an
argument over the lyrics in the song "One Week" by Bare
Naked Ladies ("He mentioned Sailor Moon! I told you so!"),
which led into a spoof version of the song by Amy and Richie
called "One Airhead" due to the Sailor Moon reference
("She's the one airhead fighting the evil queen!").

 Suddenly, near nine o'clock, Mike told us all to shut up
and pointed toward the south.

 Our eyes followed, and over the ridge came a brilliant ball
of white light, moving slowly and steadily, never wavering
in its ascent.

 "Hoooleeeee crud!" Amy breathed, pulling her reddish-brown
locks back to let her see the show better.

 I held my breath, fumbling for the latern next to me to
turn it off. Richie had already jumped up to the camera,
following the globe up.

 There was a quick movement to our right, and two smaller
blue spheres began to circle the white one, slicing through
the atmosphere like insects bobbing around. The large white
light started to descend over our side of the ridge, and
floated gently over the water of the lake. The
blue lights swirled around, dipping close to the water.

 "Are you getting this?" Mike asked.

 "Hell yes!" his brother replied.

 "Time mark!"

 "Nine-oh-seven p.m. July eighth," I replied.

 "The ridge is about a quarter mile away," Mike continued,
getting up to the camera's microphone. "The white sphere
looks to be about the size of a one story house, the smaller
blue spheres about the size of a compact car. The temperture
is about seventy-eight degrees and the
air is rather dry. The reflection is from the lake... "

 "Oh, my God," Richie commented.

 I studied the lake, and saw a gold light, smaller than the
blue ones, appear to be coming out of the water. It was
silent as well. It glowed, like a light bulb or a lamp, and
was slowly climbing up to the top of the ridge. The white
light with the two smaller ones looked like they were
helping it up or something. I grabbed for a pair of
binoculars and trained them on the lights. I couldn't make
out their shape, but I noticed strands of electrical energy
exhanging between the gold light to the other white and blue
ones.

 My head spun, overwhelmed with the possibilities.
Forthright in my mind was the fact that this was simply
experimental air craft designed by the Air Force. Back
during the fifties and sixties, the SR-71 was considered an
alien craft when it was in its experiemental stages. A lot
of people seem to forget that UFO stands for "unidentified
flying object", not "alien space craft".

 But the question of "how" experiemental were these
particular craft was the issue. Even such out-of-the-way
places as Smallville, Russia, saw these things flying
around. Hell, they saw them in Medieval Europe and Imperial
Japan.

 The light show lasted almost an hour, as Mike and Richie
noted red flag (Air Force exercise) similarities in the
lights' maneuvers. The lights all disappeared over the
ridge, and we were left in complete silence with the wind
blowing around us.
 "Hole-lee sheet," Amy concluded.

 "My sentiments exactly," I added.


 We all dove into the tent and settled in for the night,
whispering quietly about what happened. Amy and I were
crushed between the guys, as we all held each other tightly,
feeling like we were all ten-years-old again when we thought
we saw Big Foot outside the tent when we had camped out up
in Washington state.

 "Damnit," Amy whispered. "What the hell is going to happen
now? We witnessed some Air Force craft... "

 "Nothing, Amy-pie," Richie replied. "They let us go without
incident. The last time, they left us early in the morning
before we left."

 "But we have a camera this time," I added, squeezing Mike
tighter. "They probably know about us using it."

 "Most likely, but what are they going to do?" Mike patted
my cheek, telling me to calm down. I heard him load the
magazine into his gun.

 I closed my eyes, listening to the others argue it out.
Then remembered to hit the switch to the tape player under
the tent floor above my head. Eventually, they quieted, and
we all fell alseep to the wind blowing outside.


 Crunch, cruch, crunch.

 My keen senses picked up the sound before I was awake. I
strained my head up, hearing a car or truck or something,
tires crunching on the rocks outside of the tent. I pulled
my eyelids up, forcing them open. I felt Mike stir beside
me.

 "Remember," he murmured quietly to himself, then became
silent.

 I forced my head to turn around and look over my shoulder
toward the flaps of the tent. I felt everything in me want
to go back to sleep, but I remained in a daze, forcing
myself to look.

 Flashlights bobbed, footsteps crunching on the rocks. A
hand went to unzip the flap, and the flashlight pierced my
eyes, burning my retinas.

 A male voice said, "Go back to sleep, Jap."

 I fell unconscious.


 I woke up to the smell of frying bacon the next morning. My
eyelids snapped wide open and I sat straight up.

 Amy was still asleep beside me, clutching her sleeping bag
around herself. I sat up and shook her.

 "Amy-chan, wake up."

 She moaned, and turned her back to me.

 I shrugged and got up, stretching. I pulled on a heavy
jacket and went to look for the recorder under the tent
floor.

 Gone.

 Last night's dream came back to me, and I tore out of the
tent.

 "Guys!"

 "Morning, Jiru," Mike said, sipping a cup of his Cowboy
Coffee. He added another teaspoon of coffee grounds to his
cup.

 The sound of snoring came from the recorder that was next
to him.

 Richie was on the camp stove, fixing bacon and eggs.

 "Whew!" I sighed, settling next to him. "I was wondering
where that went. Anything on the tape?"

 "Nothing so far... " Mike giggled. "But do you know you
snore?"

 "Me?" the idea that I, a skilled martial artist, snored was
ridiculous. "Can't be."

 "Then who was it?"

 "P-chan over there," I pointed at Richie, chortling. "He
turns into a little black piglet when splashed with water."

 "Unlike cousin Keneda," Mike added, chuckling. "Who turns
into a puddle of water when splashed."

 "So that's why he's such a drip!"

 We three went off into hysterical giggles.

 This was odd. Normally, we all woke up rather grumpy and
foul, but we were giggling like little girls. I chalked it
up to the desert air.

 Indeed, the air was clean and fresh, slightly chill with
the morning sunrise. I checked my watch, seeing it was only
seven-thirty. The morning light painted the sands a warm
orange, and the dried brush appeared as delicate lace.

 "I noticed something," I commented.

 "What?"

 "Have you guys seen any living creatures out here? I
haven't seen any desert hares or snakes or lizards or
anything."

 Richie snickered, "Maybe they all fell into Spring of
Drowned Paranoid Security Forces."

 "Can the Cursed Springs jokes, bro," Mike told him. "Yeah,
we noticed. The only thing we ever saw were crows."

 He moved to check his gun. I think it's called a "Desert
Eagle" or something. He pulled it out of his
jacket, and the magazine fell out of the piece.

 "I heard you load it last night," I said, sobering up.

 "I did. I know I did."

 "What the hell... " Richie got up and went into the tent to
get the camera. He came out with it playing back.

 He cussed in Japanese. Perfect accent, too, for a white
boy. Due to the graphic nature of his curse, I shall remain
silent on what it entailed.

 "What's wrong, Rick?"

 "The bastitches erased my tape!" he shoved it in our faces
to see the snow.

 "Did you set it up right in the first place?" I asked.

 "Of course I did! I played it back last night after the
show to make sure I got it!"

 "Hey, what are you all yelling about?" Amy asked, poking
her head out of the tent.

 Richie started growling unintelligibly, and she settled
next me.

 "Who peed in his hat?"

 "Mike, you think we were--?" I started to ask, but my ears
caught the sound of the recorder. The sound of tires
crunching on rocks.

 "Shh!" Mike hissed, turning the volume up.

 At least they didn't get the recorder, I thought.

 We heard Mike saying "Remember." and then the voice that
told me to go back to sleep. Then the sound of our bags
being moved around, our camera being messed with, and
someone saying something that had the word "gassed" in it.

 We all looked at each other, startled over this bit of
missing time. From the sounds whoever these people were
making, we would have definitely woken up. *Were* we gassed?

 Then a clear voice came through, a voice we recognized. The
sheriff that had stopped by us yesterday, chuckling
deviously.

 "Happy birthday; you're dead, red."

 Amy began to scream hysterically, going into shock.

 Her birthday was next week.


 Several hours later, after Mike and I attended on Amy in
the tent, the guys and I sat huddled together.

 "We were definitely gassed last night."

 "No duh. After what happened."

 "But I don't feel any different."

 "True. Clear-eyed and nothing muddled."

 "Do you remember what happened?"

 "I remember the moon bobbing around and then I fell
asleep."

 "I heard a Blackhawk pass overhead sometime during the
morning hours."

 "That wasn't the moon, it was a flashlight. The moon is
dark now."

 "What the hell was the sheriff doing there, too?"

 "They knew we were recording. They erased the tape. I'm
surprised they didn't find the recorder."

 "You told me to bury it under the tent."

 "Good of you to do it, too. What do you make of it?"

 "This is no longer about aliens, it's about paranoia."

 "Yeah. Gassing civilians... "

 We looked around us, spotting the Blazer still parked where
it was the night before.

 "Violation."

 "Whatever crap they got out there, it must be pretty hot to
have to gas a bunch of kids."

 "Let's get the hell out of here."

 "I agree. Pack everything up. Put Amy in the backseat;
Jiru, you sit with her. Richie, when we get back, I want you
to check every millimeter of Amy's truck for any plants.
We'll check all of our gear as well. I'll drive."

 Less than two hours later, we were on the road heading back
to California. I held Amy's head in my lap, making sure she
was alright.


 I'm not sure what really happened out there. Alien space
craft? Who knew. Air Force experiemental air craft? Most
likely. Paranoid security forces? Of course. Gassing us?
Inconclusive. It wasn't a dream that we all shared. We had
proof, sitting in the tape recorder in Mike's bag. We were
drugged, violated, and any proof of our work was erased.
Someone had pulled the magazine loose from the gun.

 I write this stealthily on my laptop, afraid of being
caught now. Amy got better, but only with hypnotic therapy
to forget what happened. Mike and Richie had found one plant
under the rug between the seats of Amy's truck. Another was
located inside the lining of one of Mike's bags. We keep the
tape buried in the backyard of one of our friend's houses,
never to be revealed to another soul.

 We have given up on finding out what happened out near
Groom Lake. We resumed our normal lives; of watching
Japanese animation and going to college and hosting Dungeons
and Dragons games and everything we do as young people.

 But we always look over our shoulders, wondering if the
sunburned men behind us are following us. We never go out
alone at night anymore. And we never camp out in the deserts
of Nevada at all.

 One night, I heard a tapping at my window, and I pulled the
blinds up to see a shadow moving across the yard. If it was
them checking up on us, I don't know.

 All I do know is that something is going on out there, and
we aren't meant to know what it really is.

"DELETE ENTRY"