Dulce Truths

“What Paul here’s trying to say,” Walter cuts in from in front of them, still running but speaking in such a way that you’d never know it, “is that he feels he should be famous, well-known… a household name, if you will.” Walter smirks and looks at Bennewitz. “Isn’t that right, Paul?”

“It is right… just not in this here and now.”

Turn’s eyes narrow at that, and he’s about to throw out another question — or twenty — but suddenly the tunnel turns and they’re face to face with a group of Reptilians.

“Whoa!” Turn says, startled by the sight. The way the Reptilians jumped when they saw him, he thought they might be feeling the same way.

“Give it to ‘em!” Walter shouts as he starts firing with his AR-15 Assault Rifle.

The tunnel is suddenly filled with the sound of bullets flying. Turn watches as one of the Reptilians is hit, then another as Walter strafes them. He gets his own gun up and takes one down himself. The Reptilians are going for their own guns, but being as surprised as they are, they just can’t do it. Walter rips into them and Turn does too. Within seconds the half dozen Reptilians are down to just a couple. Then Turn see’s Bennewitz’s hand go up beside him, a flash gun in it.

ZAP!

Bennewitz fires and the second to last Reptilians is winked from existence, nothing more than a small pile of ash to show it ever walked the earth. Its final companion begins to hiss and shriek, but that lasts but a moment before a hail of bullets from Walter’s gun takes it in the head.

Paul looks down at his watch again when the firing is done. “Six minutes,” he says, “we gotta go.”

“Six…” Turn starts to say, then slaps his hand down on his thigh in frustration. “Where the hell we supposed to go in six minutes?”

“Not where, but when,” Bennewitz says to him, and then continues on past the pile of dead Reptilians.

Turn gives Walter a narrow-eyed, skeptical look, but the captain just shrugs.

“C’mon,” he says, starting after Bennewitz, “we don’t have much time.”

With a roll of his eyes and a look over his shoulder — and the realization that he really can’t do anything else — Turn follows.

2 — Off the Grid

They move the rest of the way down the tunnel they’re in, then when a branch comes, Bennewitz ushers them to the left.

“Won’t be much further,” he shouts over his shoulder, looking down at his watch as he does so. The men keep up a steady jog, a pace that’s conducive to talking. Turn still wants answers, so begins asking his questions again.

“You said time travel back there… right?”

“Thinkin’ we can’t be serious, right?” Walter says as the two run alongside one another. Bennewitz is just a few feet in front of them, but can hear their words as well. The tunnels are smooth and narrow, much like cave walls, and sound carries quite well.

“Well we are serious, no matter how much you think we might be joking,” the wild-eyed man with red, curly hair says.

Turn rolls his eyes as he continues running. “Well, like you said back there… we got six minutes, so pray tell… what the hell’s goin’ on here, huh?”

Beside him Walter chuckles. “Better tell it to him from the top, Paul.”

“Alrighty… here goes,” Bennewitz says over his shoulder so Turn can hear. “I was 23-years-old when my interest in the UFO-phenomenon began. That’s when I saw the report detailing the 500 UFOs that were spotted over the town of Dulce back in 1950. They were all in the sky at the same time, all making sharp, 90-degree turns at amazing angles.” He pauses and shakes his head, looking down at the floor as he runs and perhaps back to those days more than twenty years ago. “I began to investigate, going to Dulce myself in the early-60s, eventually getting my pilot’s license so I could see more. News spread of my… ’research.’ By the 70s I was getting photos from inside the base and just a few years ago I completed a full electronic surveillance of it. It was also around that time that I began investigating the cattle mutilations along with the Gomez ranching family. And of course I talked to the Jicarilla Apache to learn all they knew.”

Up ahead another fork in the tunnel appears, and this time the men go right.

“Won’t be much further,” Walter says as they round the corner, but Turn hardly hears him. He’s trying to process what Bennewitz has just said, and he’s finding that he can’t. Time travel? Ha — that’s children’s story stuff there! Still, Turn can’t quite shake the feeling that what the man in front of him is saying is true. What he’s seen over the past few hours in Dulce, after all, makes him realize that anything is possible.

“So you say 1950,” Turn says as a lull comes in Bennewitz’s telling, “but how long have the Grays been here, really?”

“The standard telling is that Dulce Base started up in ’47,” Bennewitz says.

“Which puts it eight years before Ike had his meeting with the Grays at Holloman,” Walter says.