Chapter 1

It was not one of the regulars, a real club member, that came to Douglas with the theory that a lot of the people around them were not who they purported to be. They were not just innocent civilians living out their useless lives like drones in a bee colony.

His name was Sal which was short for Sorrento his real name of which he was not proud because his old man was a snitch for the Feds and was sanctioned by the Salt Lake City club who were the targets of the Federal investigation. Douglas knew the sins of the father were not the sins of the son and he trusted Sal to be loyal and always tell him the truth as least as he knew it all things considered.

Douglas headed up the San Bernardino club which had broken away from the San Diego branch due to disagreement over the distribution of booty from the shipping activities in that port city. He had over a hundred bikers under his command now and in fact he was close to being stronger than the San Diego chapter that had fallen on bad times due to State level investigations of their control over port activities.

In all honesty Douglas didn’t give a rat’s ass about the San Diego chapter any longer ever since they had screwed him and his closest friends over money of all things.

Sal was sort of a weaselly looking guy with long hair that always looked like he needed a haircut even if he had just had one. Douglas didn’t hold that against him because he was still young and needed to develop his own personality a bit more to fit in correctly.

“Boss, I just have this feeling and I can’t seem to shake it that a lot of these people over here in San Bernardino are not what you would expect. It is kind of like I can see inside them and they are sort of like a shell of the person but that is not who is doing the thinking for them.”

Douglas, who had been a college professor at one time and knew a lot of things that people would not expect from a simple biker thought about that and explored several different alternate theories in his mind all of which seemed outlandish and far-fetched to most other less imaginative thinkers.

Out of that stack, he liked the Alien Invaders one the best of all because he was deep into Science Fiction and he was a firm believer in life on other planets. Their own efforts to colonize Mars was a prime example of such possibilities but he was thinking Mars was sort of our neighborhood and perhaps these visitors were from a place much further away in the Universe.

“Listen to me closely, Sal, I believe you and I want you to keep an eye on these odd acting folks without them knowing your suspicions. I am going to form a little group of us to monitor them and see what is going on but we have to be careful if your suspicions are valid because these local innocents may be really dangerous.”

Former Professor Douglas called an old buddy of his working on a project for the military up in Area 51 and ran it by him looking for some sort of explanation of the oddity.

Douglas chuckled at that comment because he was the one that had started the rumor to keep the San Diego guys off his back over their previous tiff about money. As far as he was concerned that was all old business and not important any longer

“Well, I am alive and kicking and taking life in the slow lane lately. I have a problem I want to ask you a couple of questions about if you are able to respond.”

There was a moment of silence at the other end of the line and he heard his friend’s voice come back and say, “I can’t talk right now. Let me call you back in about ten minutes if that is all right.”

Douglas agreed knowing how cautious his friend was about monitoring his phone or even his workplace or home by his own employers.

While he was waiting for the call back, one of the biker girls came into his office and automatically went down on her knees to start his day off right. He didn’t interrupt her because it would be far to rude to stop her from her business at hand.

Fortunately, she was a quick one and got him to spurt his seeds before the phone rang out on top of his desk. It was his back-up land line and he only gave the number to a few old friends that might want to talk to him in relative private. Every day he checked the phone to make certain it was clean and not being monitored by friend or enemy.

He patted Eve on her fully packed jeans as she left the office wiping her lips of his creamy offering.

“I am calling on a throw away mobile Douglas. Never can be too careful with a lot of strange things going on around this project.”

“I understand your concern Waldo but I am just looking for some general information, nothing specific or anything like that.”

“Ok buddy shoot. What is on your mind?”

“I am operating out of the San Bernardino area now after my expulsion from San Diego and we are running up against some odd civilian types that seem almost like shells with visitors running them from the inside. Do you know about any paranormal activity in this area?”

“That’s an interesting question, Douglas, without getting into specifics, I can tell you that there is a swath from Death Valley, the old Manson playground all the way down into the inner valley to the Mexican border where locals are acting strangely. We suspect an Alien infestation but not the kind of alien that comes from South of the border but from a much longer distance straight out into space.”