Dulce Truths

Ellis trails off as the men before him narrow their eyes, then begin shaking their heads before hanging them. Ellis turns around to see what they’re looking at, and his face takes on the same shocked and then saddened expression. There behind them, being wheeled in through the main hangar door by the base’s guards, are the dead from the attack on Dulce… at least those that still had bodies to retrieve. The men watch silently for a moment, then as if thinking on the same wavelength, stand up and salute. Flag-draped coffins roll past, and in some cases, just a small cart with a flag on it and nothing else. Those, the men know, are all that indicates that Paul and Lewie had lived and were killed by the alien flashguns. After the bodies go by the men sit back down. The room is silent, until Moses speaks.

“Don’t seem like much of a success.”

“It was a success,” Mark says.

“You’re damn right it was a success,” Ellis says, giving Moses a hard look until he nods as well, admitting the fact. Ellis frowns then, puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the hangar floor. “That’s not to say it wasn’t a costly success.” He looks up to see many of the men nodding, or looking down. Either way, he knows they know what he’s about to get at. “We lost Jerry and Paul and Lewie and Johnny… damn near the whole CAT-3 team that went in there. Besides that we lost all the others.” Ellis shakes his head. “Costly indeed.”

“But the base has been destroyed now, right?” David asks.

Stu steps forward to take that one. “We saw it with our own eyes as we got the hell out of there — Dulce Base blowing sky high… that upper level at least.”

“And the lower levels?” Mark asks.

“Gone too,” Stu says. “With a CED device, there is nothing left. Any aliens still there are gone, as are the humans that might have been captive.”

“Could the Grays come back?” Ellis asks.

“They could,” Stu says, “but there’d be nothing there for them. They’d have to rebuild everything, and the corporate structure isn’t going to sign-off on that, not after what happened at the base in ‘75.”

“So now what?” Moses says after a brief lull in which Stu steps back to lean against the wall.

“Yeah, is this it for our team then?” Aaron says.

“Or what’s left of it,” Bobbie adds.

“If you mean, ‘are we disbanding you?’” Ellis says, “then the answer is ‘no’.”

“Might as well be disbanded,” Aaron says. He sat toward the back of the room, his hands folded before him on the table, veins popping out of those muscled forearms. “Like you said, we’ve lost ten souls down there… and we’re not even sure all of ‘em are dead.” He held up a hand before Mark could get a word in. “I know, I know… Stu’s bomb-thingy blew everything up top and down bottom to kingdom come.” He glanced around, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “Yeah, right. We’d like to think that’s what happened — and I for one would like to believe it, too — but the truth of the matter is that we just don’t know.” He glanced down at his watch. “It’s been 4 hours since we got the hell out of there, the base ‘blowing up’ behind us” — he made that last comment with some quotation mark gestures in the air — “and in that time we don’t know what’s been happening.”

“He’s right,” Carl speaks up, drawing everyone’s eyes to him, for the words that were being spoken were hard-hitting, and the conversation had the men’s undivided attention, “we don’t know what’s going on. For all we know, those lower levels could have just been damaged, not destroyed. For all we know, those tube trains are still running, the Grays are retaking the place, or at the very least, getting everything out of there that’s of any value to them… including whatever was in those lower-level holding tanks, and any men we may have inadvertently left behind.”

“Shit!” John scoffs. “And here I thought we were celebrating one helluva success. The more we babble on about it though, the more it sounds like we should never have tried in the first place.”

“No one’s saying that,” Ellis says quickly.

“Then what are we saying?” Chargin’ Charlie says, his eyes darting around to the men in the room, none of whom are eager to answer that one.

“All I’m saying,” Aaron says after a few moments, “is that we need to be careful, especially about our expectations. The situation could be wildly different than we imagine, and now’s not the time to lower our guard.”

Donlon laughs. “You almost make it sound like there are Grays among us here and now!”

Aaron only cocks his head to that in a half-sort of shrug. Ellis narrows his eyes at the gesture, but in doing so the sleeplessness that he’s managed to keep at bay comes surging back. He nearly swoons and has to blink a few times to get his bearings.

“Okay there, boss?” Emil speaks up, giving Ellis a sideways look. Ellis looks at him, and notices others looking at him strangely as well.

“Yeah… yeah,” he says, “just tired is all.”