Alien Tango

comic relief.
    I was determined to find something now. Either that or get everyone else out of the room and let Martini have some fun.
    “Oh, love that idea,” he called to me. Damn, it was so hard to hide anything from him, particularly lust.
    Claudia and I weren’t having any luck, but I didn’t want to give up. One of the mainframe boxes was a little higher up off the floor than the others. I tried to slide my hand under it and ran into a problem. “Uh, Jeff? A little help?”
    “What do you need?” I could tell he was standing over me, but I couldn’t look up.
    “My arm’s stuck.”
    The snickers started immediately. The only saving grace was that Tim wasn’t in the room with us.
    Martini managed to lift the thing while laughing. I pulled my arm out. It was covered with blood. Martini stopped laughing immediately. “Don’t move. Claudia!”
    “It’s not my blood.”
    Christopher grabbed the other side of the computer while Reader helped me up. Claudia washed my arm off. “Kitty’s right, Jeff. She’s not cut anywhere.”
    They put the computer back down. “Open it,” Alfred said quietly.
    “Where?” Christopher ran his hands over it. “There’s not a door.”
    I thought about it, went to the front, and hit it with my fist. It popped open. And a body fell right on me.
    I stumbled back, fortunately into Martini. The body was heavy, and it would have taken me to the floor otherwise. The only reason I wasn’t screaming was because I’d expected a body to be in there. It just hadn’t occurred to me that Martini lifting the thing would have shifted the corpse around.
    Aliens were strange. When faced with something incredible or horrible, something that would make the average human start shrieking like a howler monkey, they didn’t scream or shout or run around. To a person, they shut up and thought. Randy, Reader, and I, however, were humans. But Reader had been working as an agent for a few years, and Randy was military trained. They were doing what humans who refuse to panic do—making phone calls.
    That left me to keep the human side represented. “Jeff? Get this thing off of me!”
    “Huh? Oh, sorry, baby.” He reached around and pulled it off me, so I was no longer the middle of a Martini and dead body sandwich.
    Christopher grabbed it, and they laid it back onto the table.
    “You okay?” Alfred asked me.
    “I plan to have hysterics and throw up later, but right now isn’t good for me, so I’m going to hold off.” I checked—no blood on my Aerosmith shirt. Okay, all was well. I took another look at the body. “Is that Karl Smith? Because, somehow, I’d expected him to look different. You know, like he was a man.”

CHAPTER 28
    READER WAS ON THE PHONE with Gower. “Yes. Yes, we have a dead body, but not ‘the’ dead body. This one is an older woman who, uh, never went hungry. No, Alfred has no idea of who she is. I think she’s maintenance, most likely Cuban. No, not shot. Throat slashed. Yeah, it’s gross. We found her because Kitty was crawling around on the floor. Because it’s Kitty. Seriously. She was looking for clues. Yes. Right. Yes, clues for where Smith’s body went. No, we have no guess on that still.”
    He looked over to me. “Paul wants to know if you want Kevin and the others to meet up at quarantine.”
    “No, but make sure they all stay together wherever they’re at. And watch their backs. Make sure no one pushes any Mission Control buttons. Oh, and Paul should keep Lorraine in the center over there.”
    Reader rolled his eyes at me but repeated my instructions. “Um, you know, that’s just wrong. Yes, we’re a little freaked out. Look, people are dropping like flies around here. Don’t let anyone wander alone. Yes, of course I mean you, too. Where the hell would you wander, anyway? You’re at the spot we’re all heading to. No, I think I speak for everyone here when I say we all hate this trip. Yes. See you shortly.”‘
    Randy and Christopher had checked all the other mainframes—they were all real computers.
    “So, do we lock up and hope the body snatchers don’t come back for her?”
    “I don’t want to leave anyone alone in here,” Martini said.
    “Is it always this exciting at Kennedy? I mean, murders, bombs, total chaos?”
    “Normally, no,” Alfred answered.
    A thought tickled. “Um . . . how long have the astronauts been back?”
    “A day. I called Jeffrey as soon as we realized we had no idea of what had hit them.”
    I