Thomas Cook - Taken

The other men stepped forward reflexively, then halted, frozen in terror.

“Shoot him!” the man cried. “Shoot him!”

They fired and John spun to the right as the bullets raked him, geysers of blood leaping like small red flames from his arms and chest as he tumbled to the ground.

The men ceased firing and stood, awestruck by their own violence.

“Go away.”

The men looked toward the station, where Allie stood, facing them in the doorway, Lisa just behind her, desperately tugging her back into the safety of the station.

“Go away now!” Allie repeated. She pulled her arm free of Lisa’s grasp. “Go away!”

The men didn’t move.

Allie closed her eyes.

“Allie, what are you doing?” Lisa cried. She grabbed Allie’s arm, but the child now seemed heavy as a planet, dense and immovable, her gaze focused on the truck, bearing down upon it as it began to shake with steadily increasing violence until it suddenly exploded in a huge ball of flame that seemed the form and substance of her ire.

The men dropped their rifles and stood, facing Allie, as if waiting for her command.

“Get out of here,” she said very deliberately.

The men turned and headed off into the night, past the oncoming car that slid into the driveway of the station, Charlie behind the wheel.

“What happened?” he shouted as he leaped from the car. He followed the hurried flight of the men. “Who are those…”

“They came for Allie,” Lisa told him. “But she chased them off.”

Charlie looked at the crumpled body that lay facedown on the ground. “Who’s that?”

“Allie’s great-grandfather,” Lisa said. “His name is John.”

Charlie looked at her unbelievingly. “They shot him?”

Lisa nodded.

“Good,” Charlie said sharply.

Lisa stared at him, astonished. “But he was trying to help.”

“Help,” Charlie said dismissively. “He’s the one responsible for this whole thing.” He glared at the fallen body as it turned and he saw John’s face for the first time. “What the hell do you want?” he demanded.

“Charlie!” Lisa cried.

“Leave him,” Charlie snapped. “Leave him and let’s go.”

Allie stood in place. “We can’t leave him,” she said.

“Sweetheart, he’s not our friend,” Charlie told her. “He’s one of them!”

“That doesn’t matter,” Allie said adamantly. “We can’t just leave him here. That’s not the right thing to do.”

Charlie saw that Allie would not leave without John. He drew in a deep breath. “All right,” he said, giving in to her, “all right, we’ll take him.”

“Hi, thanks for having me on your show, Mr. Jeffreys.”

The voice sounded familiar, and Charlie leaned forward and dialed up the volume on the Durango ’s radio, then glared at John, who sat silently on the passenger side. “What are you looking at?” he snapped.

John’s eyes shot away from him and held to the road.

“My name is Dale, and I’m from Seattle, Washington,” the caller said.

“Dale,” Lisa said. She glanced at Charlie unbelievingly. “It’s Dale. From Harriet’s group.”

Charlie nodded, then glanced into the backseat where Allie lay sleeping in Lisa’s arms.

“I’m calling about this little girl,” Dale said. “The one the Army is looking for in South Dakota. This little girl, she needs help. She and her parents are out there, all alone against the people that are trying to bring her in.”

“Isn’t this related to that toxic spill?” Jeffreys asked.

“There was no toxic spill,” Dale answered sharply.

“They want to bring this little girl in because she’s what these fifty years of all this, of people being taken, has been all about,” Dale insisted. “They want to talk to her because she is part alien.”

“I guess he thinks he’s helping,” Lisa said.

Allie moaned softly and Lisa looked at her worriedly.

“She’ll be all right,” John assured her. “She’s just done too much.”

“Can you help her?” Lisa asked him.

John said nothing.

“You want to help her, don’t you?” Lisa asked. She glanced at Charlie, who seemed to be seething, enraged that he had one of “them” in the front seat of the car.

Dale continued, his voice nearly drowned out by a sudden flurry of static. “I’m not the only one who saw what she could do. There were nine of us. We all saw it. We all saw the things she did.”

John continued to stare straight ahead.

Charlie glared at him angrily, whipped to a fury now by his silence. He felt a wave of rage wash over him, jerked the wheel to the right and brought the car to a skidding halt beside the deserted road. “Get out!” he snapped.

Allie suddenly awakened. “Charlie?” she asked softly.

“Get out!” Charlie shouted. He leaped from the car, walked to the passenger side and yanked open the door. “Get out,” he repeated furiously.

John nodded, then stepped slowly from the car.

“You’re going to talk,” Charlie said. He grabbed John and slammed him against the car. “Now! Right now! You’re going to tell me what the hell this is all about.”

“Charlie,” Allie pleaded. “Stop it.”

Charlie continued to glare into John’s face. “Why are you here? Why have you been doing this? What the hell do you want?”

John peered at Charlie softly. “We’re just trying to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Everything,” John answered. He slumped down and collapsed at Charlie’s feet. “Everything about you.”

Allie rushed from the car and took John in her arms. “Stop hurting him,” she cried. “Stop it, please!”

John’s eyes drifted up toward Charlie. “We came here to learn about your world,” he said. “We came here to learn.”

Lisa came around the other side of the car, and knelt beside John, drawing Charlie down with her, so that they formed a half circle around him.

“We’re not different from you,” John went on. “But there are things in you that we no longer recognize in ourselves.” He looked at Lisa and smiled softly. “Right from wrong. That was foreign to us. That what we were doing to you was… cruel.” His eyes drifted over to Allie. “We lost… compassion,” he said. “It is a dormant trait in you.” He touched her face. “We wanted to awaken it… to feel it again… like you do. To combine our mind with your… heart.” His gaze seemed to take all of them in suddenly, as if in a circle of light. “And so, our greatest experiment began.” A single finger moved down Allie’s face. “It was an unqualified success.”

General Beers drew Mary and Wakeman over to the side, away from the men he’d just finished interrogating. The abandoned gas station stood a few feet away, and for a moment they all watched it through the hazy smoke that still rose from the blasted truck.

“They were with somebody,” the general said.

“‘What do you mean, with somebody?’” Mary asked.

“Another man,” the general said. “The other men, the ones who shot him. They say he was in his thirties… and that his eyes turned black.”

Wakeman nodded. “They were waiting,” he said thoughtfully. “They were waiting for her to demonstrate. They see she’s got the power, bam. They’re here.”

Beers glanced first toward Mary, then back to Wakeman. “You’re saying this other guy is an… alien?” he asked.

Wakeman smiled. “You’re paying attention.”

The general stiffened. “You’re both in this thing with me,” he said hotly. “And right now, I have to go back to Washington and explain what happened out here.” He glared at Mary and Wakeman in turn. “Find that girl!” he ordered. “Her and whoever she’s with.”