Be it ever humble: Home, Sweet Fortress

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

What went before: During an engagement picnic at the famous Vasquez Rocks filming location, Melba Trousdale's boyfriend, Aaron Slingfact, was abducted by a giant tentacle before he could propose. Melba enlisted her ex-brother-in-law, Gort, the bounty hunter. But Melba and Gort had to flee from the Rock Inn in Lake Hughes, pursued by outlaw bikers, the Vegans. They have enlisted the help of a noted UFOlogist and shaman, and a Valley Press reporter.

Chapter Seven: A cup of Mojo on the Rocks

Former Army Spc. Melba Trousdale had been to Iraq and back. She paid for college by joining the Reserves, and ended up on the hot sand in Kuwait in 2003, setting up Camp Victory, the last "jump-off" camp laid out on the desert before the coalition of the willing blasted through Saddam's berm and made it to Baghdad in 21 days.

Bored out of her skull at Victory, Melba volunteered to operate a squad automatic weapon, or SAW, atop a Humvee.

If Melba had not been to Iraq, all this business of glowing lights, a boyfriend snatched by a tentacle and soy-eating, bourbon-drinking outlaw bikers shooting up places with laser beams might have rattled her.

If it weren't that Aaron had vanished before he could put a ring on her finger, she would be having the time of her life.

As it was, she couldn't help but feel a kind of déjà vu, a sense that riding in an armored scout car across open desert, that it was just old home week for Melba Trousdale.

She had "been there, done that, and come home with the T-shirt."

They fled Charlie Brown's headquarters for date shakes (and more than 100 other flavors) and Littlerock, a town that was trying to hold on to the past with the juggernaut of the future bearing down on it.

Staying a few steps ahead of a laser weapon wielded by a renegade biker, Melba jumped into Diego O'Riley's 1943 vintage M3 Scout Car and swung the gun into play.

Gort the bounty hunter and Valley Press reporter Jack Slingfact fired up their Harleys. Once again, the little band was on the run from the Vegans, a vicious bike club with apparent mutant powers bent on random acts of destruction.

She hung on to the .30 caliber and kept the barrel high and wide of Jack Slingfact riding his Harley in her old convoy spot.

"You handle that .30 caliber like a pro, pretty lady," Diego O'Riley said, following Gort into the canyon.

"Not my first rodeo," Melba replied. "I crewed a gun truck on MSR Tampa, main supply route to Baghdad."

Diego O'Riley whistled. "My road was Highway One from Saigon. We didn't have no pretty ladies on the guns."

"Times change, Diego," she said. She scanned behind Jack Slingfact, looking for any trace of the Vegans. "I'm so glad you had those smoke grenade launchers, or we'd be Vegan meat right now."

Diego had called a crash meeting at Charlie Brown Farms with his reporter buddy, Jack Slingfact, from the Valley Press.

Diego knew Jack would come right along. If it was a chance to cover a planning commission meeting, or to meet a UFOlogist at the area's best shake joint, it would be the UFOlogist every time.

But the meeting was cut short by the Vegan motorcycle gang, the bikers following their leader, Zul Ishmael Phineas, into the curio roadside attraction famous for its shakes, fruits and assorted nuts.

None of the little band, not Melba, not Gort the skip tracer, not Diego the UFOlogist nor Jack the reporter had ever seen a laser slice through a date shake and then a wall behind Charlie Brown's kitchen. Biker goons slicing walls with lasers was hot news, if you lived to file that strange slice of copy.

So Melba and the three arms bearers dived out the back, with Jack and Gort saving their bikes, and Melba jumping in the armored car with Diego.

So the little convoy rumbled through the canyon, and Melba kept the .30 caliber trained on the bluff of the canyon walls.

"No Taliban up there, pretty lady," Diego called out.

"You never know."

They descended into a valley with a stand of dusty oaks. On a small rise, there was a block house with a high wall and a thick gate that bisected the wall from another block house. A French tricolor flag fluttered from one block house, and a red and gold Marine Corps flag, with its eagle, globe and anchor, whipped in the slight breeze above the other block house.

"A border fort!" Melba exclaimed.

"The Pentagon boys with the film crews call it a 'combat town,' but I just call it home."

"You live in a fort?"

"Keeps riff-raff out. You can smell the meth on the breeze around sunset. Some bad hombres about."

"Why the Frenchie colors, Diego?" Gort asked. "Reminds me of my Legion post."

"The boys tricked it up like a French outpost outside of Kabul," Diego said. "They left the flag, but they won't be back to film again for a couple of months."

The gate swung in, opened by a small woman of indeterminate age, middling beauty and apparent Vietnamese ethnicity. Melba jumped off the armored car to help the woman with the heavy gate. The woman smiled.

"Lonnie is my wife," Diego said.

"Can't speak English?" Gort asked.

"No, just can't speak. Lost her speech during Tet, but she can sign."

Gort motioned "hello" in American Sign Language, and Lonnie returned the greeting.

They entered the small compound and Melba looked around, shaking her head in wonder. "How did you find this place?"

"I built it," he said. "I was a contract engineer in Vietnam. I built this for Hollywood, but there was no interest. They wanted to film down in Santa Clarita. When the wars began, I called some pals at Langley, and they've been filming ever since. The rest of the time, it's mine, and I live in peace."

"About time we found someplace peaceful," Gort said. "Feels like we've been on the run for days."

"You want to tell me about this?" Jack the reporter asked. "Start at the part after the tentacle, please."

"Time to wet our whistle, I think," the shaman and UFOlogist said.

The little band followed Lonnie into a comfortable adobe room, decorated late 20th-century Southwestern, with a statue of the goddess of happiness, Kuan Li. The walls displayed celestial charts, schematic drawings of flying disks and a height chart for various hominid extraterrestrials. Melba heard the familiar throb of a generator. Purplish lighting crackled.

"I've never seen, or heard, lights like these," Melba said.

"Tesla coils," Diego said. "A gift from the gods. A fraction of the power you need for AC-DC."

"Chariots of the gods?" Melba asked.

"Yup," Diego said. "Our friends, the visitors."

Gort shrugged. Jack rolled his eyes. Melba listened.

Lonnie smiled and poured clear liquid into four bowls. She set the bowls along with a tureen in the center.

"Soup's on," Diego said. He sat at the round table, with plank seats around it. He lifted a bowl with both hands, in a toast.

"Here's to world peace," he said.

The reporter looked at the bail agent, and at the women, and decided not to be a wuss. He lifted the bowl and took a deep swig. Steam came out his nose. "What is this?" Jack asked.

"Mojo. Lonnie used to brew it on Okinawa," Diego said. "Puts hair on your chest."

Jack's eyes rolled up in his head, and he passed out. Diego woke the reporter with a Tesla coil the size of a flashlight, running it along his eyelids until they fluttered.

"Should have warned you. That drink's how I left the Corps."

"How's that?" Gort asked.

"I had four bowls one night, saw glory and blew up an ammo dump with a cigarette. JAG said I had no future as a Marine officer. Went to 'Nam with KBR."

After everyone except Jack recounted their eccentric service records, Melba told how she'd been parted from her almost intended by a giant tentacle.

O'Riley pulled a curtain on a window that turned out to be a flat TV screen. Surveillance cameras covered the open ground outside Diego's compound and film set.

"Anything trips the wire, they'll get more smoke, and we can plan a bigger welcome," Diego said.

"I hate to bring this up, and this day has been strange enough for this old cop house reporter, but I've got a planning commission meet to cover," Jack the Valley Press guy said.

"Jack," Diego said. "Do you want to take dictation or do you want to solve the mysteries of the universe? When's the last time an ink wretch like you got fired for missing a meeting?

"Think about your cousin, Aaron, holed up somewhere."

"He was a pain in the butt," Jack said.

"He was my betrothed, almost," Melba said.

"You got me," Jack said, tugging at his earring, a small testimonial to fading nonconformity.

"We gotta go back to Vasquez Rocks," Gort said. "Scene of the crime."

"Going to help us?" Melba asked Jack.

"I never really cared for Aaron much, but if he's got a girlfriend like you, he must've done something right."

"So, you'll come to Vasquez Rocks?"

"I'll meet you. I've gotta fact-check this movie you stumbled on. Could be a clue."

"It's time for a clue," Gort said, a look of delight on his craggy face.

"Doesn't work like that," Jack said. "You've got to search out your clues, find facts, develop a theory."

"Clues are like probable cause. When I need 'em, I find 'em or I make 'em," Gort said.

"We're agreed. It's back to Vasquez Rocks," Diego O'Riley said. Lonnie smiled and signed.

"What did she say?" Gort asked.

"She said it's time for a toast," Diego said.

"No, she didn't," Melba said. "I sign, too."

"So what did our host say?"

Melba signed her thanks to Lonnie. "She said if we don't have all the luck in the world, we are toast."

To Be Continued Next Sunday

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Previous chapters can be read at www.avpress.com by clicking on the extraterrestrial icon at Vasquez Rocks. Readers who suggest locales that are used in finishing the story are eligible for a small (but earnest) prize.