Codename Alpha

Chapter 18

When I eventually did fall asleep, I ended up dreaming about the disaster. I relived the moment in the immediate aftermath where my roommate, Nadia, died in my arms, and there was nothing I could do to help. Our quarters suddenly shifted into Nguyen-Thi's hospital, where I was being hugged by mom. I didn't want to move or even open my eyes, knowing what had happened hours ago. The beeping from her vitals monitor and the rhythmic sound of the ventilator were suddenly replaced by a loud scream, and I was flung off the hospital bed.

I jolted awake to Jack swearing and honking the horn, as well as suddenly braking. "Come on!" he shouted.

"Woah!" Max yelled, in addition.

I was laying half off the bench. After collecting myself, I climbed back up.

"Sorry about that," he apologized. "I got cut off. Are you alright, Marine?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Should probably thank you, actually."

"Why's that?"

"Just having a nightmare. Or... daymare, I guess." It was certainly not morning anymore. The sun had risen fully, and we were being treated to a surprisingly clear blue sky. "Uh... it might be best to try and avoid using the horn. We preferably want as least attention as possible."

"Right, it was just an instinctual reaction."

"So, what'd I miss? I take it we're not gonna be sleeping through the midday?" I said, as I sat up. The landscape seemed fairly similar to how it had been earlier, with hills covered in trees, villages, and the like.

"I don't want to stray too far from the quarry, so I've been going on and off the ramps for the past for hours, driving in circles, mainly. We're actually still on the same highway. Plus, we tried stopping, and it is just too hot out there to sleep, much less in the truck. On the radio, though, we've listened to a couple songs about, uh..."

"I remember something about a 'die hande gespuckt,'" I couldn't help but laugh a bit at his butchering of the language. I couldn't pronounce it any better than him, to be fair. "Purely because the song itself was a bit strange. Otherwise, though, you didn't miss much. Well, at the same time, you did. It's surprisingly interesting to just watch these towns go by."

"Speaking of, I was planning on taking an actual detour at some point so we can just drive around one of their cities and record their activities. Sounds creepy, I know, but some footage won't hurt to have. In fact, that one over there would be pretty good," he said, pointing towards a town to the left which wasn't too far away. "I think the exit is coming right up."

Sure enough, he signalled that he was turning left and turned got off the highway. I unbuckled myself and moved to the center of the bench to get a better view of it all.

"Who's got the camcorder?" I asked.

"I do," Max said. "Got lots of footage of the radio doing what it does best, too. Including a couple songs, I'd like to show them off to the crew once we're back."

"Understandable, they're certainly something."

"I'll try and get us to the town center, over to the left. Just for the sake of getting a better view of that tower," he said, pointing towards what indeed was a tower further into the town.

Nothing right off the highway's exit seemed too crazy. It seemed like your average assortment of stores and office buildings, which seemed fairly new. Max began recording once we had gone through a roundabout. As we progressed into the more residential areas, things became a bit more interesting. More than anything else, I was paying attention to the aliens just walking about minding their own business. Although there wasn't much evident species variety, there was still a surprising amount of diversity in terms of how they just generally looked.

Their fur was particularly interesting to me. There were some presumably natural colors, like black, gray, brown, and even some blonde, but I did spot one in particular with odd light blue fur. Of course, fur dye back home and to an extent war paint were both still popular, it just wasn't often you ever saw someone who had completely changed the color of their fur. That aside, there were also many different styles I noticed as well. Some just lacked fur entirely, and others had some around their odd flat snout.