Regeneration, Pt. 3 of 8.

         The dismayed vagabonds slowly got to their knees and likewise examined the bleak landscape under the baking sun.  Their strength returned fast as they could finally rest in peace alive, but Maxine's screams were again heard in the distance behind them -- screams of jubilation now instead of terror.  They initially thought the joyous cries were in their minds, and Russel was first to stand up and see her on the other side of a 4-wire fence in the flesh several hundred feet away.  The sight of her uplifted their spirits greatly, as it also indicated their actual location.

         "Shit!  That crazy bitch has to have more lives than a black cat, but I've got her now," the rugged detective mumbled.  

         "Probably has more luck than sense," Walter added.  

         "Dumb luck too," Iris said.  "I thought she was a goner."

         Maxine was standing under a state of Kansas road sign that showed the distance to Garden City, barely.  It had much paint missing and showed considerable rust.  They moved closer to her on their side of the new-looking multi-wire fence, and she embraced and kissed one of the eroded metal sign posts and gleefully shouted, "Sweet Je-SUS!  We made it, man.  I never EVER thought I'd see the light of another day."  

         "Sure, another day to see a judge.  You and me have a more judicial matter to get resolved.  Remember?  Once I get you extradited from here, I'll -- "

         "What?"

         "You're still under arrest.  That's what.  Now, don't be running off anywhere."

         "No way, pig!" she sharply replied from a closer distance at the edge of the very broken highway.  "I've been underwater, under a weird forest, and under crazy weather just before.  So, there ain't no way I'm gonna be under arrest here.  You're outta your juris-diction.  Ta-ha!"

         The detective watched her return a sly smile and begin to strut down the broken shoulder of the vacant two-lane road in a westward direction.  He clenched his fists, stepped in front of the fence, and shouted, "Get the fuck back here.  That's an order, bitch.  Hell!"

         "Too bad, you don't have the handcuffs anymore," Iris said.  "I would have loved to see you put those bracelets on her now."

         "Speaking of Hell, since when is western Kansas a desert, Russ?" Walter commented.  "Those cattle have to be pretty hardy and have humps on their backs like camels."

         They watched Maxine walk amidst the rippling heat waves further away, and he soon replied, "Well, she is not a camel, and neither are we.  A couple hours in this heat, and we'll all be in serious trouble again.  It must be over one hundred degrees out here."  

         "The hell with her then," Iris said.  "Let's just get on with our lives.  We finally know where we are."

         "Yeah.  She'll melt in that rubber dress soon enough," Walter added.

         Iris patted the dust and sand out of her clothes, and Russel conceded.  "I suppose.  She'll be one less bug in my hair anyway.  I wonder what happened to the others in that odd place."

         He shrugged a shoulder.  "Can't say, but there's nothing we can do for them from here.  That's for sure."

         "I'm for getting back to civilization too.  Let's follow her," Iris said.

         Russel grabbed one of the wires and was surprised by a moderate shock, and Walter and Iris heard a simultaneous "zing" sound that receded fast in each direction away from the point of contact.  "Fuck, that hurt!  I didn't think this thing was electrified.  Like, who in the hell is going to do cattle rustling way out here?"  

         They looked at each other again in silence.  Their proclivity to forget the passed events and uncertain fate of their companions was unsuccessful, and they remained taciturn as thoughts as to what could happen to them lingered in their minds a bit.  Walter stepped up close to the wires and examined them carefully.  He saw the top one that Russel touched all shiny and apparently coated with a plastic or clear rubber sheath.  Iris shook her head and looked more frustrated at the impediment.

         "What's wrong?"

         "Ah, this thing shouldn't have shocked you.  It looks insulated now.  So . . . here goes," Walter said.

         "No!  Don't," Iris quickly replied.

         He grasped the wire felt only a subtle vibrating, a throbbing.  "See?  Nothing to fear."  

         Russel watched him shake the tight wire a little, and all were taken by surprise when three other "zing" sounds occurred almost at the same time and receded fast from each side of their location.  Iris even let out a spontaneous short scream.  

         "Sheesh!  What the devil was that all about?" Russel said.  

         "See for yourself."  

         He and Iris cautiously moved up close to the fence again, and all the wires were coated in a thin shiny sheath.  When they bent them up and down to cross the field boundary, there was no electrical shock delivered, just the same vibrating.  They helped Iris through them first, and they followed and went to the edge of the dilapidated highway.  Maxine was a couple thousand feet ahead of them, and they proceeded in her direction without hesitation.  The emptiness and unusual appearance of the location all around provided an atmosphere of creepiness.  Furthermore, a sudden swish noise along the fence line within two minutes of their walk startled them again.  Maxine even looked back at them and thought the sound was something they caused.  

         "I sure hope we don't get lost again," Iris said, to break another spell of silence amongst them.  

         "We're not near as lost as we were," Russel assured.

         "Those cattle sure don't like that fence since we crossed it.  The sounds seemed to scare them further away," Walter commented.

         "At least, their noise is very familiar.  Listen."

         "What?"

         "Do you hear anything else?"  

         The three of them stopped in a short line beside each other, and Iris said, "Yeah.  A soft hissing this time, behind us."  

         They saw Maxine begin to run, and when Russel turned around, he saw four shiny disc-shaped craft with gray domes on top hovering several meters above the highway to their rear.  Each also had an open cone-shaped extension in front, and he said, "What in the fuck?  Look at those."

         The saucer-shaped vessels drew closer fast as they did, and as Iris's mouth fell open, Walter voiced, "Holy shit!  Flying saucers?  Here?"

         They separated some, and Russel removed his badge from his belt and replied, "Don't be so sure.  They could be some sort of surveillance drones.  Stay there.  I'll take care of this."

         He walked about ten meters toward them and held up the badge.  When they stopped, he identified himself.  However, one of them reacted in a way very unexpected to all.  A middle one came close to him, pointed its open frontal cone out, and quickly shot forth an abundance of dark adhesive foam.  It covered him in mere seconds, and Walter shouted, "Run, Iris!  Run!"  

         She inhaled deep, wide-eyed, and did so in one direction, while he darted off the road and moved ahead on the opposite sand-clogged ditch.  In less than half a minute, she stumbled over an uneven crack and almost fell.  The hiss behind her became louder and upon turning around and looking up, she saw another of the saucers before her with its open ended cone pointing at her.  Her knees collapsed in fear onto the old pavement, and she held an arm up as if to try and shield herself and repeatedly whined, "No."

         The unfortunate woman was ignored and thoroughly covered in a dark foamy mass too.  Walter did not take the time to look back and barely heard her increasingly louder pleas abruptly stop.  Indeed, it was a different world inside the substance, like the world they were now in.  By the time a third saucer had caught up to him, Russel realized his fight to get out of the transforming material further behind was in vain.  He tried to reach for his revolver, but felt nothing and fell to one side.  He did not even feel an impact with the hard surface.  "Le--ee . . . out!  Wha da uck?" he shouted as loud as he could.  He went unheard by the others and felt very light after air was pumped back into him.  Seconds later, there was only numbness, and the last thing he clearly thought was that the source of the misunderstanding would be resolved.

         Maxine was the last of the group to be enclosed in the weird foam.  Her strongest kicks did not enable her to burst free, and there was no tearing it off.  She was an amorphous struggling mass, like the others, upon being immediately covered with the stuff, and countless pre-programmed nano-bots in it rapidly kept her transforming sexy body intimately merging with the frothy structure.  They also provided degraded life support.  Before she was all assimilated, she stretched backward and let out a greatly muffled bleat.  There was a brief feeling of being sucked into viscous mud with the useless move, and her strange new form bulged to one side and elongated but could not retract.  She was theirs: reduced, helpless, and different -- bound with the rubbery matrix.  

         Thin tubes extended from the center of the conical extensions of each saucer and went into each of their dark masses next, and after a short loud whoosh sounded, they quickly became spheres almost two meters in diameter.  The hollow tethers detached, were drawn up into the inside of the craft, and they were taken away to an unknown fate by the small cybernetic captors in the next minute.  Each of them descended onto the tops of their victims and kept them attached to the inward curved bottoms of the structure by electromagnetic forces.  Russel, Iris, Walter, and Maxine thus only drooped into smooth ovoid shapes as they were finally carried westward to a truly strange frontier for more compact selective storage, possible deviant restoration, and unique processing anew.


Continued to Pt. 4.