Chapter Eleven

Hero's Call: Chapter Eleven

Acolyte Seven had spent the previous week in a pretty rigid routine. He started every day around seven in the morning and teleport to the Buckland police station, arriving about an hour before Sgt. Buck Strickland would arrive for work. Seven would sit on a bench in the lobby of the station, not moving or speaking to anyone. He had tried to get information from some of the low ranking officers on his first trip, but it was clear that Sgt. Strickland was the only one that could give him any real answers. Most the officers in the station gave him a wide berth anyway. They all knew that the An’Fari people existed, but none of them had ever seen an actual extra-terrestrial before. It made them all a little uneasy.

After a fruitless attempt at getting information from Sgt. Strickland, Seven would teleport himself over to Buckland General Hospital. He would sit patiently next to Devon Macledowny’s hospital bed and wait patiently in the hopes that the culprit would turn up, his guilt driving him to do so. Devon had been in a coma since the incident. Seven knew it was an accident. It had been too long since something of that nature had happened for most humans to recognize it for what it was. They were convinced it was a malicious attack, and with no eye witnesses, they weren’t apt to drop the notion just because an alien told them differently. The hospital yielded no results, just as the police station had failed to do.

With the remainder of his day, Seven would wait quietly inside the Culpepper’s damaged house. There was a mountain bike hidden quite well in the bushes off the side of the house. Whoever had put it there did a good enough job hiding it that even the Buckland Police had failed to see it. Seven wasn’t sure if it was Devon’s or the culprit’s, but he knew someone would turn up for it eventually. So he waited…and waited…and waited.

 

Seven had started the new day just as he had every one of the last several. He began everyday with the thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d finally find the Hero that had sent Devon Macledowny through the side of a house. He walked into the Culpepper’s kitchen and grabbed a banana that was much more on the brown side than most humans would enjoy, but which Acolyte Seven enjoyed quite a bit. He wolfed it down in three quick bites without peeling it. Earth fruit was something of a delicacy to the An’Fari. Seven couldn’t understand why humans threw out the peel of the banana. That was where the most flavor and nutrients resided.

He walked out the front door into the crisp autumn air.  He was quite enjoying his time on Earth so far, although his mission had not moved forward as he would have liked. It gotten cold, but never too cold for his easily adaptable An’Fari physiology. The sun burned brightly overhead, and a small flock of birds were chirping merrily in an oak tree next to the house. Seven mentally noted that the bike was still tucked safely away behind the bushes.

The idea that the bike’s owner would return during the day and reclaim their property had crossed Seven’s mind. He pushed the thought aside when the construction crew had showed up and spent most of the day working diligently on repairing the Culpepper’s house. It was unlikely the fledgling Hero would risk being seen in broad day light, and if he did, the workers would be able to tell Seven exactly what he looked like. As a precautionary measure, Seven had placed a small tracking device under the bike’s seat. One way or another, he’d find the identity of Devon Macledowny’s attacker.

The first of the workers had just pulled up to the Culpepper’s house which Seven identified as Juan Domingo, a severely underpaid illegal immigrant carpenter with a pencil thin mustache and a penchant for dirty jokes. He got out of his truck and began pulling supplies out of the bed.

“Good morning, Juan,” Seven said in an even tone.

“Buenos días, Siete Acólito,” Juan said in reply. They nodded a brief goodbye to one another and Seven vanished into thin air, teleporting himself to the police station.

He materialized outside the double glass doors of the station which gave an exiting officer an awful fright. They said nothing to each other as the officer stepped out of the building and allowed Seven to enter behind him. The officer did his best not to stare at the water-like blue skin of the alien that had just scared the bajesus out of him, but he found it quite difficult. Seven barely noticed the man leering at him. The dumbfounded nature of humans had been an easy thing to get used to. They marveled at nearly everything.

Buckland was a small town and, as such, had a small police force. All in all, there were nine officers, one dispatcher, and a file clerk that worked for the city of Buckland’s law enforcement agency. The station was always quiet so early in the morning; the only sounds in the room were rustling paper and a running coffee machine. Seven took a seat on the bench as was his custom and simply waited. A few of the officers shot him sideways glances from time to time, not sure whether they could trust his presence or not. Apparently spending several days in their presence was not enough to convince them that he meant them no harm.

Sgt. Buck Strickland sauntered into the station at four minutes past eight. He was clad in his official police uniform, but a cowboy hat sat crookedly on his head. A tuft of salt and pepper hair peeked out from below the hat’s brim. Sgt. Strickland was getting older, but he still had a few years to go before retirement. He was a relatively fit man who liked old western movies and fried Twinkies with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. He wore a perpetual five o’clock shadow and spoke in a harsh vaguely southern drawl. His life had been relatively easy until the Macledowny kid had been sent through a wall and the blue guy �" as Strickland had referred to him �" showed up claiming it was an accident but not providing any proof of such. Buck Strickland had been fascinated by the An’Fari peoples as a child, but now that he was dealing with one, he found them to be rather pushy and a little on the elitist side.

Seven stood when he entered and Sgt. Strickland rolled his eyes when he saw the extra-terrestrial.

“Didn’t think I’d have to deal with you this morning,” he grumbled and made a bee line for his office.

“Why is that, sergeant?” Seven asked genuine curiosity in his voice.

Strickland shrugged. “I figured after…how many days has it been?”

“Five now, sergeant,” answered Seven.

“After what will soon be five days,” the gruff officer continued, “of getting no information from me, you’d just give up.”

The two moved through the station towards Sgt. Strickland’s office. Seven followed as if he were more than welcome to wander about a police station like he owned the place. “I am on strict orders from The Council, sergeant,” he said to Strickland’s back. “You know I cannot �"”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the sergeant said, cutting him off. “I know you got a job to do, son. But I told you already, as soon as we know something, you’ll know something. Go enjoy Earth while you wait. There’s a pretty nice amusement park a few towns over. Ever been on a roller coaster?”

Seven ignored the question. Amusement was irrelevant when he had a job to do. “You still have the communicator I left with you, correct sergeant?”

Strickland stepped into his office and grabbed a small metal disk off the top of his desk. He held it up so Seven could see that it was still firmly within his possession. “I got it. If I know something, I’ll give you a ring.”

Seven nodded patiently. The communication disk he’d left with the captain did not have the capabilities to ring. Humans had a tendency to overuse slang and jargon and it made him have to use a fair bit of inferencing. He turned and left the sergeant to his work without another word. Somehow he doubted anyone in the Buckland Police force was taking the issue seriously. He moved back through the station and out the double glass doors in the front of the building. Without taking more than a single step out of the door, Seven teleported himself over to the Buckland General Hospital.

Within second he had materialized in the parking lot of Buckland General. It was an aging brick building that had seen better days. The design was utilitarian, nothing more than a big box with some windows. A small park was erected next to the hospital in memoriam of the hospital benefactors that had made sure the people of Buckland would receive adequate care as long as they needed it. There was a small group of children running around the playground wildly, screaming at the top of their lung. It had been a long, long time since Seven had felt the carefree innocence of his youth. The idea had made him reflect fondly of his parents.

Pulling himself out of his revelry, Seven entered the hospital. He moved across the poorly lit lobby to a bank of elevators down the hall from the reception area. There was a nurse and an elderly man waiting for an elevator to arrive. It took no more than a minute for the doors of one of the elevators to slide open slowly. They all boarded the elevator without looking at each other. The nurse stood as far away from Seven as possible, but the elderly man seemed not to notice his existence. The nurse got off the elevator at the third floor and silence fell over the car.

“You’re one of them An’Fari folk, aren’t ya?” the old man said, looking sideways at Seven. He nodded in reply. “Don’t see too good anymore,” the old man continued, “but I’ll be damned if I don’t recognize and alien when I see one. I remember learning about you lot in school as a boy. Those were different times.”

“Verily,” Seven agreed. Different times, indeed. With any luck, they were returning. The door slid open at the fourth floor and Seven stepped off the elevator. The old man stayed in place. He turned and lifted a hand to the man in farewell. “Goodbye, Earth elder. May your memory never fail you.”

The doors slid closed.

Devon Macledowny spent his first day at Buckland General in the ICU. He had a severe concussion and a fair amount of internal bleeding. Luckily his body held up to the impact a lot better than anyone would have expected. Once the bleeding was stopped and his vital signs stabilized, he was moved to a normal room on the fourth floor. There weren’t many visitors outside of the police and Seven. The boy’s own father had only shown his face twice and that was only to provide insurance information and sign a Do Not Resuscitate form, which he reportedly signed without a second thought.

The small hospital room was filled with the sounds of life support systems and old reruns of The Apple Dumpling Gang when Seven entered. As usual, he took a seat in the chair by the window and looked up at the TV without truly watching the show. The nurses had learned quickly to work around the unsettlingly stoic creature that was Devon’s only regular visitor. They knew he was only there because he was looking for whoever had done such a thing to their patient, but they couldn’t hold it against him since no one else seemed to care about the young man’s health.

The day wound on. Nurses came and went. The Apple Dumpling Gang changed to Murder, She Wrote which changed to Matlock. When the sun had gone down enough so that the fluorescent lights overhead were the only real light illuminating the room, Seven stood from his chair and left the room. No one had shown, and Devon hadn’t moved an inch. It was exactly like every day before it. Seven took the stairs to the lobby and walked to the parking lot, teleporting back to the Culpepper’s house immediately upon stepping into the fresh air.

There was a cold edge to the air as the sun went down below the horizon. Juan Domingo and his crew had made good progress on the house in his absence. The gaping hole was almost completely filled; within the next day or two, the Culpepper’s house would look as if they had never left. Seven entered through the unlocked front door and moved to the sitting room which gave him a perfect view of the bush where the bike still sat untouched. He left the lights in the house off. He could see just fine in the dark and any light from inside might dissuade anyone from coming for the abandoned bike. If, that was, they were coming at all.

Hours passed without event. It had been five days since Seven had allowed himself a resting cycle. His body had barely felt the fatigue, and he could have probably gone two or three more days before he absolutely had to relax enough to recharge his internal workings, but the thought of taking the night off was a welcome one. He’d stood sentry for long enough without seeing so much as a rabbit come near the bush and bike. As soon as the thought entered his mind, he began drifting, as if the gelatinous figure he called a body was demanding he take a break. He wasn’t sure how long they had been closed, but he realized his eyes were shut. There was a rustling outside the window and his eyes snapped open.

There in front of him, trying desperately to quietly retrieve his bike from the bush and failing, was a young man dressed all in black. His dirty blond hair was poking innocently out from beneath a black stalking cap and his eyes darted around furtively to see if anyone was watching him. He did not, however, look at the house once where someone was actually watching him. It took Seven a moment to match the boy’s face with the information in his head. He knew the boy quite well, although they had never met before. Finally pulling his bike free of its hiding spot, the boy trotted next to the bike to the sidewalk, and hopped one, pedaling madly away into the night.

Of all the potential suspects, Seven smiled at how fitting this one was.

And smiling was not something he did very often.