Douglas Bunger's Blaze Of Glory

Chapter 8



 
 
 
    Deep beneath the towering behemoth of stone, glass, and steal that formed the Los Angeles Herald Building, was an area where only the strangest of creatures dwelled. It was an area that was so foreboding, so mysterious, so removed from the real world, that it was not even accessible by elevator. Of the buildings seven lifts, only the freight elevator went to the two basements known only as B1 and B2. But somewhere below B2, through a steel door and down a long ramp was the paper's archives.
    Most of the Heralds records from the last four years had been computerized and could be called up on a terminal within a matter of seconds. Those that weren't on the computer, were on the eighth floor in the Microfilm Department, and could be view or printed on request. Yet, in a deep, dark, dungeon of a room, filled by row upon row of black, steel filing cabinets, was a group of people who clipped and filed the same stories by subject.
    As a way to speed research, one of the Herald's founders suggested important articles be clipped and filed by subject. This was meant to avoid the inherent problem with typical archive methods where newspapers were stored by date, and subjects were found in an index. He felt that it would save time checking the background of a piece if a reporter did not have to search an index volume, for every year, then find the particular edition and page. Under the present system, a reporter can request the folder covering Oil Spills, Atlantic, and have all pertinent information; sometimes dating back as far as 1919. The Herald's new computer system was designed to accomplish the same task, but only covered the last ten years.
    One of the people responsible for this task was a man in his early thirties named Harry Jennings. Jennings was the quintessential nerd. If you were to imagine the ultimate dork, the most ridiculous looking geek on Earth, you'd almost have a picture of Jennings. But looks aren't everything, and that's why he'd gained such an infamous reputation throughout the newspaper.
    Jennings was the kind of person who you could ask to recite the Encyclopedia Britanica, and he'd ask you what page you wanted him to start on. To make matters worst, if you gave him a page number, he'd start reciting-- and be right. For this reason, if a reporter needed a detail on anything that had been printed in the Herald, and often things off the wire services, he could call Jennings and ask where he'd find it. The man had become so renowned for his speed and accuracy, that when the paper set-up a special computer program that could find related subjects from the thousands of stories on file, people wouldn't use it because Harry Jennings could answer their questions faster.
    But, alas, Jennings' job was a lonely one. It was to easy for a reporter to call rather than take the freight elevator and walk the ramp to the archives, that hardly anyone visited the department. Furthermore, the successful reporters respected Jennings for his ability, but didn't want to be seen with the man. Considering the questions Brad had to ask, he thought it safer to take the long trip underground. After all, if one of his colleagues overheard him asking about flying saucers, they'd ride him until retirement.
    When he arrived in archives, he found Jennings and several of the lesser known clerks clipping and filing news stories. Jennings was so involved in his work, that for a moment he didn't notice Brad standing in front of him. When he did notice, he was so shocked to see that a human had descended into his abyss that he looked at Brad as if he was an alien.
    "Hello, Harry. I'm Brad."
    Jennings was not impressed.
    "I spoke to you on the phone once. I'm one of the reporters."
    Jennings still wasn't impressed, but answered anyway. "What are you looking for?" he asked nonchalantly.
    "I was wondering if you knew anything about the Air Force's Stealth fighter."
    "No more than any other civilian."
    "Do you remember where the Air Force is keeping them?"
    "There's a report on a press conference in the computer, dated about the second week of September. You didn't walk all the way down here to ask me that, did you?"
    "No, there is something else. Do you think it was Nellis AFB?"
    "Yeah," answered Harry as he pushed his horn-rimmed glasses back on his nose. "At least that's what the government said. Of course they could be anywhere. One of them crashed here in California about six months before the press conference, so they were flying them in civilian airspace. Since they don't show-up on radar, they could shuffle them from airfield to airfield, and not even the FAA would know."
    "I see," responded Brad as he turned his back to the nearest clerk before asking his next question. "I was also wondering if you would know anything about... you know... strange happenings?"
    "Strange happenings? What do you mean?"
    Brad could feel that he was beginning to blush with embarrassment. How could he admit that he was looking for information about flying saucers? He didn't care what Jennings thought of him personally, but if anyone else ever found out that he'd been asking about them, he'd immediately be tagged as a weirdo. "Well, maybe a story about something out of the ordinary."
    "Like ghosts?"
    "Yes, but not ghosts."
    "Poltergeist?"
    "No," answered Brad.
    "Demonic possession, Bigfoot, human spontaneous combustion, the Loch Ness monster, man-eating plants, talking furniture, people from the future, people from the past, people turning other people into rats, people eating other people, unsupported levitation, gremlins, gnomes, beasts from hell, canine-human transmutation..."
    "Canine-human transmutation? What's that?" interrupted Brad.
    "Werewolves."
    "You don't mean to say you've got a story about Werewolves, do you?" Brad asked in a skeptical tone.
    "Sure. A wino uptown said he saw a man turn into a wolf and kill a teenager."
    "Did the police find the body?"
    "Yep. In about ten pieces covering two blocks."
    "What did they do?" inquired Brad, almost afraid of what the answer might be.
    "Arrested the wino. Was that what you were wondering about?"
    "Actually, no."
    "Okay. How about the dead people raising from the grave, dead people calling on the phone, zombies, vampires..."
    "Hold on," interrupted Brad. He wasn't about to ask if he had a story about vampires. "I was looking for stories about," he paused to check the room and his voice fell to a whisper, "flying saucers."
    "UFO's. Well you should have said so. What in particular?"
    "I guess give me everything you got."
    Jennings burst out laughing and the other clerks looked at him and Brad. "He wants everything we got on UFO's!" announced Jennings. The clerks joined his laughter.
    "It not for me. Its some crazy guy I was interviewing. He said he saw an alien from outer space."
    Jennings cleared his voice and pushed his glasses back on his nose. "Oh, don't get your feelings hurt. We've got three drawers full of UFO stories and are thinking of starting another."
    "That many?"
    "Yeah, and that's just the stuff that's not on the computer. A week doesn't go by that we don't run at least one UFO story. What did he say the alien looked like?"
    Brad reluctantly withdrew his steno pad from his blazer pocket and opened it to the page with Gatewood's drawing. "He said he saw it when he was in the Air Force."
    Jennings examined the sketch. "Yep, that's what they look like."
    Brad recoiled in amazement. "How do you know?"
    "What's wrong with you: Didn't you see Close Encounters of the Third Kind?"
    "No, I don't like science fiction."
    "Not even Cocoon?" questioned Jennings in disbelief.
    "Yeah, I saw that... I went out with a girl who wanted to see it. Do you think this guy just copied what he saw in the movie?" asked Brad in a concerned tone. He realized an affirmative answer would only substantiate Gatewood's insanity.
    "Where do you think Hollywood came up with the idea? They got it from the newspapers! You can't begin to imagine how many of these pictures I've seen in the last ten years. The reports are usually the same: big head, long eyes, no ears or hair, around four feet tall. You know the Air Force has a couple dead aliens at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio?"
    "Who said that?"
    "Dozens of people. Doctors who have performed autopsies, secretaries who have typed the reports, scientists who have studied their spaceship, even guards who had been assigned to keep unauthorized people out."
    "Okay, but where did the Air Force get the aliens?"
    "Whenever a UFO crashes, they go to the scene and recover the pieces of the saucer and the alien bodies."
    "And you say this stuff is in Ohio?" asked Brad, as he wondered why Gatewood had said he'd seen them in Nevada.
    "The bodies are in Ohio; the saucers are at Edwards, maybe Alamogordo. I've even read articles that said the aliens had a base at Groom Lake, Nevada."
    Bingo, thought Brad. "Where's Groom Lake?"
    "Don't know, but I know who would. There's a guy at the main branch of the public library, who is really into UFO's. His name is Don Ralston, he's asked me to make copies of any good stories I get. I take him maybe three or four a month, and he does favors for me every now and then."
    Brad made a quick note of the name in his notebook. "I'd like you to do me a favor. Get together a few articles about UFO's, and let me look at them."
    "How long can you give me?"
    "I'm going out of town in the morning, can you have them this afternoon so I can look at them while I'm gone?"
    "It's short notice, but since you don't seem to know much about UFO's, I'll do a rush job. Meet me at the freight elevator at five thirty."
    Brad thanked Jennings for his help and turned to walk out. Before he could get the door open, Jennings yelled after him. "Hey! Are you going to Nellis tomorrow."
    "Yeah."
    "If you see any aliens, tell them I said hi!" The office burst into laughter once again, but Brad just smiled and closed the door. He didn't mind being the brunt of Jennings' joke, as long as he came through with the clippings. He figured that as long as he was going to Nellis, whether hunting aliens or not, he needed all the ammunition he could get.


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