Chapter 5

It was interesting that the line of trees on our right ran almost perfectly straight. It was as if the machines were just pointed in an arbitrary direction and turned on to their own devices. Certainly, no human controlling the machines would have been so patient as to run the machines that straight, no matter what might have been in the way. Oh, well, it made no difference to how we felt about the desecration of the forest. We were still pissed off beyond measure at the aliens for what they had done to a beautiful growth of trees.

After traveling about 18 miles, we came to the apparent starting place for this scalping of the Earth. A large area had been denuded, but not in the careful fashion as was done during the harvesting operation. It looked to us like this area had been cleared from the air by a UFO fighter using its fighting ray. Most of the ground was charred to a black color, and there was nothing symmetrical about the shape of the cleared area. It appeared that the working machines had been brought in by air and set down to begin their work. At the time, this did not seem to be an important factor, except that it did remind us that we still had the UFOs to be concerned about.

We were now left with nothing pointing to another work site, so we arbitrarily started off through the forest to the south. Why the south? The answer to that was "Why not?" We rode through the trees for about six miles before we came to another clearing similar to the one we had just left. By now, it was lunch time, so we paused to eat. Bill and Joe had nothing with them, so Sam and I shared what Tilly had fixed for us. We had plenty, so that was no hardship.

After lunch, we followed the edge of the clearing until we came to another stripped area just like the one we had first found. We started following this clear-cut area west until we found the harvesting machines. They were busy cutting away at the forest, and they had turned around so that they were now heading back toward the clearing.

It was now getting late, and we wanted to attract some aliens as quickly as possible, so we immediately shot at the machines with the ray guns. We had the beams set for the wide rays, and we reduced all five machines to smoke in short order. Now, we needed to rest to wait for the aliens to show up. They may have been expecting us because four flying boxes showed up within half an hour. I assigned a flying box to each of us, and we shot at them while they were still in the air. The reason was that we hoped to make the fliers crash to the ground so that we would have more loot to claim. Had we waited until they landed, we might have had a conventional fight on our hands, and that might well have cut into the quantity of loot that we could recover.

Our plan was to shoot at the front of the flying boxes and to kill the pilot. The troopers sitting in the main body of the box were the ones we were really interested in, and they were well behind the pilot. We knew that Sam and I could hit the part of the flying boxes that we wanted to, but we were not so sure of Bill and Joe. Nevertheless, we wanted to show the two men that we trusted them, and there was no better way to do so than to give them an equal share in our attack.

We all fired on my command so that the pilots would have no warning, and all of us must have hit the pilots soon enough to keep them from following any safety protocol. Bill and Joe were somewhat ragged in their shooting, but they accomplished their part of the job, and all four flying boxes fell about fifty feet. I was sure that would be enough of a fall to kill the troopers inside. There were no fires when the flying boxes crashed, so a significant part of the plan seemed to be working out.

As soon as the dust had settled, we all rushed to the nearest flying box to see what we had wrought. I used the narrow beam to cut off the rear section of the craft and let it fall to the ground. Now we could see inside the vessel, and we saw a great mess of flesh and chunks of metal lying at the low point of the craft.

Joe was the lightest of the four of us, so we boosted him into the opening to look around the carnage. To his surprise, several of the aliens were still alive, but they were all gushing blood from gaping wounds. These creatures were much tougher than I had given them credit for being, considering the fall that they had survived. However, if they were the hemophiliacs that I suspected them to be, none were going to live much longer even without us to push them into death.

I told Joe to kill all that were still alive by shooting them in the head with the ray gun. Within a couple of minutes, all eight of the aliens were dead. The rest of us, with Joe's help, scrambled into the craft and began to look for useful loot. There were nine of the ray guns racked in a small device that had what looked like a pilot light signifying that it was turned on. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was the device used to charge the ray guns. That could be a very significant find if we could figure out how it worked.

Sam and Joe began working at that job while Bill and I stripped the harnesses from the dead aliens. No matter which pouch we looked into, there was no sign of a ray gun. The guns in the rack must have been those intended to be used against us. Why they had not already been issued to the troops was a mystery to me, but I just gave thanks that here was another stupid practice of the aliens.

Sam and Joe announced that the charging device did not seem to be connected to anything in the flying box, and they were able to lift it away from the wall without causing the pilot light to blink. That meant that the charging device had to be self-contained, but we still had no idea of how many times it could charge a ray gun before it gave out. Well, we would beat the game by taking all four of the devices. We would use them until they no longer worked. Maybe, one day, we would find out the secret, but we would get what use we could from them until then.

It turned out that the only things useful to us were the 36 ray guns we recovered and the four charging devices. Those items were loaded into one of the trailers and we backed off from the flying boxes. Joe had the honor this time, and he destroyed all four of the flying boxes.

We were quite some distance from home at this point, so we decided to quit for the day. We offered to take Bill and Joe home, but they said that would not be necessary. It turned out that they did not have a permanent home and simply camped wherever they happened to be when it came time each day. Further questioning revealed that the two men were gay and had been married to each other for about six years.

Under the circumstances, we invited them to join us, at least until the end of winter. They gratefully accepted, and we went by their current camp to pick up their stuff to take it with us to our home. Bill and Joe had spent some very uncomfortable nights during the really cold weather in early December, so they were very happy to find shelter with us.

The two men were going to make a welcome addition to our hunting capability, and we were looking forward to what they could do to help us bring in food. Sarah and Tilly welcomed the two men into our house, but did point out later to me that the house was now full, so I needed to be careful before I invited more people to join us. However, she did agree with me that we really needed more people in our group just to settle the dynamics of the situation. She also pointed out that we needed more breeding pairs if we were to form a lasting community.

Bill and Joe had hunting rifles that used different size bullets. That needed to be rectified, and we needed to find them their own ATVs. Therefore, while the weather was relatively benign, we gave up on the aliens until we could solve those two problems. We decided to use Rt. 2A as our main route and to visit communities a far west as Leominster and Fitchburg. Beyond that, we were stretching the capabilities of ourselves and our ATVs. Fortunately, by the time we got to Leominster, we had found everything we needed, including four more of the air rifles.