Oh Hell No! (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 3) Read Free Page A

on the figure that was approaching in the frame.
    “The images may need to be
enhanced,” someone said behind her.
    “Be quiet. I’m trying to hear.”
    The slender, grey arm of the
jumper waved through the frame waving the cloth for the white flag. She had
forgotten the white flag. The farmer shouted back toward the house about
burglars and the cows. She could not pick up on the whole phrase due either to
the ambient noise in the recording or the man’s accent. The farmer had so much
bulk and mass. He hardly seemed like a person, but rather like a bear charging
them. He carried something long and skinny across his chest.
    “Where did they land …
geographically?” Loriei asked.
    “Um … Ohio. Central Ohio 1955
outside of Griffin’s Pointe. There was a lice outbreak recorded there. We
thought it was a good place and time to collect.”
    “Shhh.” She waved a hand behind
her. “Okay. Let me hear.”
    The farmer said something. His
eyes were wide in the half light. He breathed something about aliens. She
missed most of it and was about to rewind. The flag waved in frame again. He
brought the object up catching the light from the porch behind him down its
barrel.
    “Oh, no,” she said and shook her
head. Since the image was over her eye, shaking her head did not spare her from
seeing it unfold.
    A piece of skin fell through
frame. Loriei only had a moment to register that the jumper was molting. His
lice were laying eggs and the skin was separating to make room. Loriei had just
gone through it herself back in the bunker at her old home during her brief
fugue. Even with the caps sealing off the actual flocks in their scalps to keep
them from infesting the past, skin would fall from the forehead and sometimes
the cheeks.
    “Greetings, we come in peace. We
…”
    Both barrels unloaded and Loriei
jumped as one of her ears rang from the distortion through the speaker. The
other scientists in the lab jumped as well, so it must have been loud enough
even through the earpiece for them to hear the report through the laboratory.
    She stared down at the charred wristbands
with one eye as she watched the jumper fall to the grass in the other. The
blades of grass obscured the image, but she could see the other jumper holding
his chest and bleeding through his fingers on the ground. The scene flared
white as the inferno surrounded the bodies before the gear was snapped back to
the present.
    “What is an alien?” Asked Loriei.
But no one responded.
    The sound hummed through the
blank, white image.
    Loriei pulled the headband off and
dropped it to the floor. Everyone was looking at her as she said, “We need a
new plan.”
    ***

The flash of light vanished
leaving Loriei standing in the nighttime wind under a waving pine tree. She
found herself heaving to catch her breath from the incredible pressure of the
jump. As she did, she looked up at the bows of pine needles and cones waving
above her head. She had seen pine trees in her lifetime, but not recently. The
ones she remembered were scrawny and yellow like everything else in the world
after the plagues.
    The man on her left was taller
than her, but just as skinny. He wore the headband with the camera this time.
They had on plain, gray suits and rubber masks that looked like the facial
structures of ancient humans. In the darkness, she thought the faces looked
like death masks. The masks had big dark plastic covers hiding each eye.
    Her voice was muffled through her
mask. “This isn’t going to work.”
    The man held up his wrist showing
his wristband between them. “Should we snap back now?”
    Loriei shook her head. She thought
she felt one of her lice move under the sealed cap. She wondered if the process
of the time jump negated the sedation on the lice. She waited a moment, but
there didn’t seem to be any movement. She decided it was just her imagination.
    She said, “No, we’re fine.”
    She turned her head and the man on
her right was shorter than her and also