John Miller - Inside Out

“No shit, Sherlock,” Matt said.

“Think they're going to fix this place up again?”

“Naw, it's way too fucked up. Maybe they got a UFO in there. Shit, what if those men are aliens and we're gonna be invaded unless we can stop them and be heroes and get millions of dollars and be on television?”

George said, “We better get out before they catch us.”

“Split?” Matt exclaimed. “You nuts? We can sneak into the little part of the big building and see what they're up to.”

“If they're in that part, too…”

“Don't be chicken. If they do have a UFO, they can move it later and we couldn't prove it was here,” Matt said. “I'm going to spy on them.”

George was terrified, but he wasn't about to back out.

They approached a familiar entry point and knelt beside the sheet of weathered plywood covering a window. George gripped the corner of the thin board and held it up while Matt propped a cinder block under the bottom so they could climb inside.

What had once been offices now served as crowded storage rooms for the equipment not worth taking when the base had closed. The boys moved as quietly as possible through narrow aisles formed by dozens of dust-covered desks, adding machines, light fixtures, typewriters, file cabinets, and boxes stacked to the ceiling.

They made their way cautiously through the maze created by the stored equipment, using the weak light that entered the room through a grime-encrusted transom window.

Because he was the heavier of the pair, Matt boosted George up onto a file cabinet. George then planted one foot on the cabinet and the other on Matt's shoulder. From this position, he could peer through the narrow wedge at the side of the transom window.

“See any aliens?” Matt asked hopefully.

“Shhhhh. Just a bunch of guys working on airplanes and stuff.” George opened his backpack and removed the binoculars they had found in the tower. The lens on the left side was shattered, but the other side made a perfectly good telescope.

Even without uniforms, the men inside the hangar looked like soldiers to George. He knew that adults usually joked around when they worked, smiled some. But it was almost like these men had never learned how to smile, each concentrating hard on what he was doing.

“There's two airplanes and an army helicopter,” he reported. “There's a guy up on a ladder painting numbers on the big plane.”

“What else?”

“Aw, man, there's some tables full of really, really neat stuff.”

“Like what?” Matt demanded.

“Some machine guns. Bombs… or diver's tanks.”

“You're lying. I wanna see.”

“And all kinds of boxes. There's this real old man that must be the boss, because he's just looking at a computer and writing stuff down. These guys are so cool.”

“I want to see!” Matt whispered.

The old man closed the laptop and called out, “All over here!” The seven men in the hangar walked over and sat like students in chairs that had been set up.

“There's seven Army men plus the wrinkly guy,” George reported.

“Hurry up, my shoulder's gonna fall off.”

“Just a minute, he's going to talk. Be real still, and quiet.” George was so excited he almost spoke above a whisper. This was way better than a new video game. He strained to hear, hoping the discussion would be about UFOs or something just as exciting.

The old man spoke loudly and then more softly. It was hard for George to get most of it.

“What's he saying?” Matt asked, impatiently.

“Talking about… the teams and… two possible points of insertings. He doesn't know yet which one they will do. Marshals and devils. Whipstick has never been… breached.” The old man went on talking, but the words became harder to decipher.

Matt sneezed and George almost fell, but he grabbed the edge of the transom just in time, and regained his balance by shifting his weight onto the file cabinet.

“Damn it! I almost fell.”

“Sue me, I sneezed from the dirt mite poop in here.”

When George raised the binoculars back to his eye, he was struck dumb by what he saw, or didn't see. The eight men were gone-vanished. George scanned the space frantically, but to his horror, he saw nothing.

“I heard something,” Matt insisted.

“Shut up!” George hissed. “They're not…” His binocular lens went dark. He opened his left eye, which he had clenched shut while peering through the single lens, and found himself staring straight into incredibly deep-blue eyes, inches from his own. Before George could scream, Matt suddenly twisted under him and George fell to the floor, landing hard on his side. When George opened his eyes again and looked up, a large man with a crew cut was looming over him, holding Matt by the arm. The man was also holding the scariest knife George had ever seen.

“What's clickin', chickens?” the knife man asked. Matt started blubbering, a high-pitched squeal that quickly became a cry. His whole plump body was trembling.

Like ghosts materializing from shadows, men suddenly filled the room. The sight of them, the knife, the sour smell of their sweat, made George feel very weak. As one of the men bent down toward him, the boy was aware of a warm wet spreading underneath him.

Five minutes later, now seated in one of the metal folding chairs in the hangar, George Williams was embarrassed, frightened, and physically uncomfortable. His clammy jeans clung wetly to his legs and bottom, and the stench of his urine was embarrassingly obvious to all. The old man and the seven others standing behind him looked fierce and evil. Matt sat on a similar folding chair inches from his.

The old man was really angry. “You boys are trespassing on a restricted military complex. That's a federal crime. Prison. Government can take away your parents' houses, cars, anything of value. You two hooligans will be in a youth facility with hard-core, butt-boogering, rap-talking, gold-toothed niggers who'd as soon cut your throat as look at you.”

George was certain this was the worst moment of his life. Why did I come through the fence? Why did I peek into the hangar? Why, why, why?

Matt snickered. “What's a hoolican?”

The old man's face abruptly reddened and became so contorted with rage that George was sure he would simply explode. “You little twit! Do you think this is a fucking joke? Do these men look like comedians?”

Terrified, the boys fell silent, stunned and trembling. George wasn't thinking about the men or their weapons. He was thinking about two years earlier, when he had been caught shoplifting and the store's manager called the cops, who called his father, who took him home and thrashed him with a belt.

The old man pulled a chair in front of the boys, then took a folding knife from one pocket and an apple from another. He sliced the apple down the center and handed each of them half. They stared down at the fruit in their hands, confused. George's father often went from ranting to silence in the blink of an eye. Maybe the old man was tired of yelling.

“What are your names? Please don't lie to me or you will be very, very sorry.”

“George Williams.”

“Matthew Barnwell.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve,” George said.

Matt nodded. “Me… too.”

“Did anyone come here with you?”

Both shook their heads.

“No one at all?”

“Nope,” Matt said.

“Does anyone know you're here?”

“No, sir,” George said.

“Where do you boys live? How far from here?”

George said, “Three miles. Green Meadows subdivision.”

“How did you get here?”

“On our bikes.”

“You've been in here before?”

“No,” Matt said.

“Don't lie to me,” he snarled.