It fell from the sky like a shooting star, out in the desert west of town.
Had it not fallen then, in that hour before dawn, I’d never have seen it. I normally wouldn’t even have been awake then, but Marcy had quit mid-shift, leaving no one else to sell Marlboros and tar-black coffee and diesel fuel and burritos to all the all-night truckers along this lonely stretch of highway.
Had it not fallen so close to the ranch, I’d never have been able to retrieve it. The Buick would have thrown its grasping transmission before I’d hauled the smouldering mass back to the barn. I normally wouldn’t even have had the trailer hooked up, but the ice chest had busted, and Howard had offered to lend us his deer cooler, though he refused to move it himself.
It was a sign, a miracle, an answer to a hundred prayers. That scraped-up heap of metal and glass, so strange and otherworldly, was going to be my ride out of here.
*****
I slept for half the day and woke surprised it was still there, peering at me with predator-sharp eyes from beneath my carelessly flung tarp. It hadn’t been a dream.
Read more science fiction from Nature Futures
Its beak-like canopy was knocked ajar and the seat within it was empty. Anyone (or anything) that had been piloting had either ejected or been thrown in the crash. All the better for me; disposing of a body wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.
I hosed her off, clearing off dust and dirt and char from atmospheric re-entry. The landing gear wobbled back and forth like broken talons. Radar-absorbing panels overlapped along her wings, but where a handful had been torn off, the peculiar metal layered underneath glimmered like metallic feathers.
Sometimes it takes a bit of brokenness to see the beauty in it all.
*****
The truck stop was busy. Suspiciously so.
Although they tried to blend in with flannels and jeans, the men wandering in with their shiny shoes and Ray-Bans didn’t belong in a nowhere like this.
“They’ve got an operation out in the west desert,” Gina whispered, a plate of flapjacks in her hand. “Bunch of trucks and military equipment. Folks say they’re looking for something that fell from the sky.”
“Another weather balloon?” sweaty Mike guffawed.
Gina rolled her eyes.
*****
Lou once bragged that his ‘security camera’ is just a red bulb, so I bought supplies with cash at his shop, wrapped it all in opaque paper bags, and waited till after dark to bring it inside. The ‘anywhere’ in my ‘I’d like to be anywhere but here’ didn’t extend to federal prison, but it wasn’t as if I could just return her now. (Oops, must’ve grabbed the wrong mysterious crashed spacecraft by mistake! is unlikely to cut it.)
The only other option? Fix her up and fly her out. Get her as far from here as soon as possible, somewhere they won’t think to look. Canada, maybe. Or somewhere warm, like Barbados. Or maybe somewhere else entirely.
