Chapter 1

Being a fifty-year-old log truck driver wasn't a problem, in fact it suited me. Being alone most of the time fit right in with the way I liked my life. I saw a few people at the set, where the wood was piled, and I talked with other drivers on the CB for information about the length of the line for unloading at mills or for tips about where the cops were hiding to nab my ass.

A big bonus of my particular job with Big Jim - my boss - was the truck he bought, sort of, to get me. At the time it had been a brand spanking new Western Star, with a sixty-inch sleeper. Sleepers are scarce on log trucks, since we almost never go anywhere that will keep us away from home at night. The way I ended up with it was a story in itself.

No matter about the rules or regulations or what normally went on, I wanted a sleeper on my log truck and after my last boss went broke, I decided that I wasn't going to take a job in a truck that didn't have one.

With enough money under my mattress to scrape by for quite a while, I sat on my ass at home and talked to the truck owners that came by wanting to hire me. Hauling saw logs and pulpwood had degenerated into a boom or bust cycle lately. Currently we were in a boom, and a driver who would actually work most of the day, without assing around, could pretty much name his tune.

Big Jim came to see me early and often. We'd known each other for years and were friendly. I knew he could be annoying to work for but what the hell; I could be annoying myself. After telling him what kind of truck I wanted the first time he asked, we mostly just shot the shit when he came by trying to change my mind.

Working for Big Jim would have been okay but I had my mind set on a truck with a sleeper. He wanted me to work for him but he didn't want to spend the extra money for the sleeper. It was simple; we were trying to wait each other out.

Several other truck owners came to see me too, but most of them wouldn't even consider meeting my requirements. They had trucks already that needed drivers and they weren't interested enough to buy a new truck for a driver.

They knew that the driver made the money and the truck couldn't do the job by itself, but they'd become accustomed to dictating terms to drivers during the last bust part of our cycle. Most of them couldn't see that things had changed, for a while at least.

Fuck 'em; I didn't care if they hired some young dumbass to tear their raggedy assed trucks up even more than they were already. They'd probably waste half of the current boom trying to find drivers for their worn out trucks, then they'd waste more time trying to get the trucks patched up again. By the time they figured out that there was money to be made now, and decided to buy new trucks, the boom would be winding down and they'd end up with new trucks, new drivers, and no logs to haul.

Big Jim didn't want to buy me a truck either. He thought I'd go ahead and work for him when I got broke. Hell, there was a chance he was right. At least he understood that he was wasting good times by stalling.

T K Johnson brought Big Jim and I to an accommodation without intending to. T K owned a log truck with a sleeper and he had a good driver for it, but...

Catman liked to make money and he liked to drive the truck. He was experienced and actually worked harder than me. He was a little slow on the uptake though, and he fucked around and let a log roll off the top of his truck and onto him one day.

Catman had been throwing his chains over the load so he was right beside the truck. The loader operator had put one small log right over on the edge and it wasn't completely behind the stake, it just looked like it was.

The log rolled off the top and hit Catman on the legs on its way to the ground. It broke both his femurs - compound fractures - and Catman nearly bled to death before someone thought to put tourniquets on his upper thighs. They don't call those big ones femoral arteries for nothing.

Lot's of people thought Big Jim was just a big dumbass that happened onto making money by buying log trucks and hiring drivers at the right time. He wasn't all that dumb though, and when he heard about Catman's accident on the CB, he put two and two together and came by my house before the ambulance had even picked Catman up.

No doubt I was looking at Western Star trucks at the dealership before Catman was out of the emergency room and on his way to surgery. The only truck with a sleeper they had on hand that was also fit for hauling logs was a dream come true for me.

I'd have settled for even a small sleeper but this truck had a sixty-inch walk-in. It also had a four-fifty horsepower Detroit diesel and a fifteen-speed transmission. I thought Big Jim was going to howl like a dog for a second there.

We finally made a deal, but, as usual, Big Jim didn't really get the short end of the stick. My credit rating was decent, but I didn't have enough money for a down payment. Big Jim didn't want to get hitched to more payments but he had some cash. He loaned me the down payment and let me buy the truck.

Knowing better than to do a stupid thing like that I shrugged my shoulders and did it anyway. The boom times would be over soon and I'd lose the truck, sure as hell. I just didn't care and I signed my name on the dotted line.

It wasn't even that I knew I'd probably end up losing the truck that bothered me. When you own your own truck you can't quit when you get pissed off. Now I was joined to Big Jim by the pocketbook and it didn't feel as good as I'd thought it would.

Big Jim was risking his money for the down payment and he did care. He tied me up every way he could to make sure I'd pay him back before the slowdown came. In other words, he worked my ass off every chance he got.

I was getting the truck I wanted to drive but Big Jim was getting a captive driver, and the fat bastard even made me promise to haul over the road if it got too wet to get into the woods. At least I made sure he'd be the one responsible for finding the loads for me to haul.

Anyway, that's the background for the sad story I have to tell. It goes a little way to explain what I was doing in Pine Bluff Arkansas when I had no business being there for my own good.

Big Jim had loaned me to Jeff Nichols, who had a contract with International Paper to cut some timber on the site of a big utility plant. The place had been built for a couple of nukes, it even had the giant cooling towers, but it was making power the old fashioned way now, burning coal. I don't know if the nukes were ever even finished or even made the first kilowatt.

There were thousands of acres of timberland on the power plant's site though and we were cutting off some of the saw logs and pulpwood. We'd head out up there about ten PM Sunday night to start hauling Monday morning. Jeff mostly used me to haul pulpwood to the IP mill south of Pine Bluff.

Currently, on my last load of the day, I'd sell it to the Pine Bluff mill, and by some weird quirk of idiocy, they'd weigh me in, turn me right around and weigh me out, sending the load to their mill in Domino Texas.

Somehow, the Domino Mill's former manager had let himself run low of hardwood pulpwood. The guy that got the job he was ushered out of had come up with the bright idea to haul pulpwood from their woodyard in Pine Bluff down to the mill in Domino. It cost them a lot more money to do it this way, but I guess it was cheaper than letting the mill go down.

It paid me a lot of money but worked me hard. I had time to make the trips and even get about four hours of sleep in the morning before starting again. Any other sleep I got came while I was waiting in line and I usually got it leaning over the steering wheel. No, this is not legal in any form or fashion. Then again, the hundred and ten thousand pound gross weight I was herding wasn't legal either.

But here I was this fine Monday morning, at the set ahead of the others because I'd come up Sunday morning to poke around at a big estate sale just south of Little Rock. It was still about an hour and a half before any of the others would show up and I was sitting in the truck, looking at the clear moonless night sky and thinking of how nice it would be if I were king of the world.

A flash of movement caught my eye and I turned toward it. Something was shimmering between the loader and one of the skidders. Something pretty damned big was shimmering, because the loader and the skidder were about two hundred and fifty yards apart and the shimmering was taking up most of that space.

Like any other good ole boy from North East Texas, I believed in UFOs with all, or most of, my heart. That didn't mean I was ready to deal with one up here north of Pine Bluff Arkansas, 'cause I wasn't.

When the shimmering stopped there was a giant capsule like shape where there hadn't been a damned thing a few seconds ago. Like I said, it was probably two hundred and fifty yards long and must have been eighty yards high. Each end was rounded off, like a giant Tylenol.

It wasn't red on one end and white on the other though, it was a dull gray. Right about then I wished I was someplace else, in fact, I wished I was anyplace else.

A hole appeared in the side of the thing, down low near the ground. I intended to put my truck in reverse and carry my ass, but I couldn't move for some reason. It's a good thing I couldn't move at all I guess, because when that ramp slid out to the ground and that voice in my head said Come I would probably have messed up my jeans.

Not a chance in hell, I thought, I'm not about to get out of this truck. Then my arm reached over on its own and opened the truck's door. I climbed out and down to the ground and walked toward the ramp, without wanting to or even helping much; my body just went as if it was under someone else's control. Hell, I guess it was.

Inside wasn't so impressive at first; then again the whole thing had just appeared out of nowhere. Any normal UFO would have swooped in for a landing or something like that. This just wasn't fair in my opinion, but I was getting the feeling that my opinion didn't count for much right about now.

In fact, I was thinking back on some of the UFO tales I'd heard and if I'd had control of my body my asshole would have been puckering to beat the band right now. But I didn't think I could even stand up by myself when the three-foot tall, little green man came walking through the back wall of this entry room.

"Greetings earthman, what is your name?" it asked me.

"Billy Joe Stephens," I told him, glad that I could at least work my own mouth again.

"I am Bandor, Billy, you may move around now."

"I'm just guessing here, but that doesn't include moving back outside, does it?"

"I'm afraid not. I can let you out to gather your other things from the truck if you'd like, but the field will return so that you can't escape," Bandor said.

"Why do I need to get my things?" I asked.

"You are leaving with us and you won't be coming back. You might find some of those things useful, but don't be long about it. We estimate that others will arrive within the hour, and we will be gone before they get here."

"But where are you taking me?"

"We can talk later, if you want anything from the truck you'd better get it now; last chance."

The reality of my impossible plight swam up through the panic that wanted to take hold. I was being abducted by Space Aliens and it was real, I wasn't even drunk. I had to get hold of myself.

Bandor was going to let me fetch my things and he'd said I might need them where I was going. Since he wouldn't tell me where that was, how would I know what I might need. At least I knew the cure for that.

"Do you have a larger entrance than the one I came through?" I asked.

"Of course we do, we can make this entrance larger, but what has that got to do with anything?" Bandor asked.

"It'll be a lot easier on me if I could just drive my truck in," I said, and it made perfect sense to me.

"I'm sorry, but we can only let you take things that belong to you. We have let people bring their vehicles before, but it must be your vehicle," Bandor said.

It was the first time in my life that I had ever wanted to kiss Big Jim Williams right on the mouth, or anywhere else for that matter. Luckily for me I wasn't going to ever see him again, unless Bandor was lying, and if that was the case I'd take my chances.

"That is my vehicle, I have the papers in the glove box. Want me to go get 'em?" I asked.

"Impossible, we've researched this thoroughly and log truck drivers almost never own their trucks unless they are very old and in bad repair. That truck is nearly new," Bandor said, sounding for all the world like some smart-assed bureaucrat.

"Apparently your research department has let you down. Who's going to get the blame for that when you get wherever you're going?" I asked.

Looked like I'd been right on the money with my guess. Even though Bandor was an Alien, he was a bureaucrat first and foremost. I could see it now in the way what he had for eyes flicked and moved around.

With the age-old wisdom of the lifelong bureaucrat, Bandor was trying desperately to decide who would be getting the blame for this fuckup. I could practically feel him shifting into cover my ass and my ass only mode when he realized he might be the fall guy.

"This is very irregular. We've taken vehicles before, but nothing this large," Bandor said, repeating himself already.

"Irregular. My log truck is irregular? What do you call being kidnapped in the middle of the night, by otherworldly Aliens, in Pine Bluff Arkansas? If that's not irregular then nothing is," I said, warming to my topic a little.

"I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to take the vehicle on my own authority," Bandor said.

"Fine, I'll go back out and get in my truck. You can buzz off to whereever you need to go to get the proper authority. I'll see you, same place, same time in the morning," I said, lying like hell.

"That isn't possible either, we are scheduled to pick you up today," Bandor said, trying to make it sound as if it should matter to me.

"Fine," I said, and sat down.

"Aren't you going to get your possessions?" Bandor asked.

I didn't reply, in fact I didn't even look at him. I knew they had all the cards and I'd already seen that they could make me do anything they wanted by pulling my strings puppet style.

They could just go ahead and do whatever they wanted. At least I had sense enough to know that they wouldn't grab someone just so they could keep moving them around.

They wanted something out of me and I was pretty sure it wasn't for me to sit on my ass and keep quiet. Well fuck 'em, I wasn't interested in what they wanted. More than one could play this little orders from above game.

Bandor stared at me for a few minutes and then he cocked his head, or what looked like a head. I got the feeling that he was listening or that he was in contact with someone else somehow. Hell, they'd talked to me in my head at first and I guessed that was what he was doing now with someone else.