“Well are you going to let those aliens beat us there or are you going to stop pussy-footing it?”

Hank happily accepted the challenge and shifted into the highest gear possible. Some of the uneven terrain was pretty jarring but the wide base of the treads helped a lot with that. They repeated the strangely satisfying pattern of bursting through trees at top speed and oscillating the frontal blades whenever the pile they were pushing got so heavy that it would bog them down. If Hank wasn’t leaving the planet he could probably start a booming business creating firebreaks for the forestry service at previously unheard of speeds. The pattern became cathartic for Jimmy and Hank. Watching Dractus and Cerulean pull stunts that would put the X-Games to shame in between shredding seemingly immovable objects. It felt good to be out here, as a team.

Soon enough the fun ended or lessened really since their spirits were all high, when they cleared the last bit of dense woods and came out on a hill with a good view of the town below them. At first glance it was much like the satellite images, but upon closer inspection the town was alive. It was too far to tell what was going on but people were everywhere, carrying things, moving from place to place. Something looked off about their movement, it just seemed a little too jerky. Hank had a bad feeling about this. Cerulean popped her helmet off and pulled out a telescope from some kind of hidden compartment on her motorcycle, or awesome-cycle, or whatever she called it. She scanned around for a bit before saying:

“Shit, something is wrong with the town’s folk.”

She handed her telescope to Dractus. Jimmy hopped out of the Killdozer and Hank left the door open so he could hear the conversation better. Dractus threw the telescope over to Jimmy right after he shouted “Catch.” Jimmy caught it out of the air as well before looking for a bit and throwing it to Hank. Hank stood on his running board and looked over the edge of his door with the telescope. The townspeople were all moving with a purpose, their faces neutral. Their skin has weird black stains on it. Some of them were feeding wood to the many fires around town. Others were all carrying bits of something in one general direction. Hank kept scanning until he saw something truly disturbing. A few of the townsfolk were meticulously dissecting a human body with different sized kitchen knives. Hank watched as they carried a few of the pieces over to one of the fires to be cooked.

“We have to get down there. Figure out what’s causing this.”

Cerulean nodded and put her helmet back on before roaring off down the hill towards the town.

“You can close the door up Hank. I’m going to ride on the running board. I don’t want to be stuck inside in case we have to help someone in a hurry,” said Jimmy.

Hank complied and Jimmy hopped up on the running board. Jimmy drew the mass-driver pistol and put it into his left hand so he could hold on with his right. Dractus and Cerulean were already far ahead of them and moving at a slow roll through the main drag of the town, the stained people seemed to be ignoring them. Hank sped up to catch up to them and was soon only a few hundred feet behind them.

The town was quaint and rustic in a well-kept sort of way. All of the buildings looked like they were from the 1800’s. it was hard to tell if they were designed to look that way or if they really were that old. A nice covered boardwalk stretched in front of the storefronts offering people a nice place to stay out of the sun as they browsed. Overall Winthrop looked like a classic little slice of America, or it would if it wasn’t half burnt down with stupefied humans butchering and cooking each other. Drac and Cerulean rolled to a stop so Hank stopped too. Hank’s cell phone started to ring in his pocket and cerulean put her hand to her ear with her thumb and pinky extended, the hand symbol of answer your damn phone. Hank noticed Jimmy set his alien gun down on his hood and pulled out his own cellphone as well.

Hank answered the call from “Unknown Number,” it was Cerulean. “Yes, this is a group call. Don’t look so surprised that I can access your primitive tech. Me and Drac are going to grab one of these fools to take some samples, cover us. Also I know you, Jimmy, have some law enforcement experience, and I know Hank has military experience. So this should go without saying but watch where you are aiming. Friendly fire is a very real threat with those mass drivers. Use your human guns if it makes you feel more comfortable, just don’t shoot me or Dractus. I’ll leave this line open while we collect samples so you two can listen in if you want. Last thing, Hank, try your Intuition. Cerulean out.”

Hank put the phone on speaker and set it on his dash. He did as Cerulean suggested and looked at the nearest jerky town’s person and pushed his intuition. It was a shirtless man in his 30’s covered in blood encrusted jeans and limping. He was carrying something wrapped in a dirty blanket. He was moving in the same general direction of the rest of the people carrying, well something. The ones that weren’t carrying stuff were moving the opposite direction as him. Hank suspected based on the smell and general size that the man was probably carrying some cooked human in that blanket, but he didn’t want to focus on that too much. He couldn’t get a solid reading off of the shirtless man so he used the same trick that he had used at the bank, imagining his power as a weight that had to be lifted. He pushed harder and still didn’t get a reading.

His door was still closed, but he remembered Jimmy had answered his phone as well.

“Jimmy you still on the line?”

“Yeah Hank.”

“I can’t get a read on these people. They aren’t good or bad. Think they’re zombies?”

“I don’t know. I’ll go check.”

Jimmy hopped off the bulldozer and walked over to the same dude Hank had tried to get a reading on. He pushed two of his fingers against the guy’s neck and walked beside him. Then he grabbed the guy’s shoulders and tried to stop his forward momentum. The guy flipped and started screaming like Jimmy was burning him. Hank couldn’t hear the conversation from inside the dozer, but he did recognize Jimmy’s placating gesture of raising both of his hands into the air showing that he meant no threat. The guy kept walking as soon as Jimmy let him go. Jimmy jogged back over to the dozer and knocked on the door so Hank cracked it open.

“Well they are alive, but its like they are in some kind of a trance or something. His skin also has strange black stains all over it. It’s clear he is on some kind of mission. We should see where he is headed.”

“We will as soon as Dractus and Cerulean get their sample. Enjoy the show,” said Hank as he pointed to Dractus.

Dractus had just grabbed a random woman in a stained floral dress and bear-hugged her from behind. The woman started having the same fit that the man Jimmy had grabbed had. It seemed the longer Dractus held her the worse her fit got. She started kicking and trying to bite. Cerulean jammed her with some kind of needle that had a tether leading back to her tablet. Dractus continued to hold onto her while Cerulean typed away at the tablet.

“Hey guys you there?” asked Cerulean over the speaker phone.

“Yeah we can hear you,” replied Hank.

“Preliminary findings are showing me that these folk are tainted with bits and pieces of Bertha’s DNA. I’ve never seen anything like it before. If I had to make an educated guess, and please understand that I’m not a doctor I’m just reading information off of a screen here. Bertha has tainted these people somehow and they are following her orders.”

“Is there a cure?” asked Jimmy.

“Not in that context. I can’t rewrite DNA on the fly. Again, my best guess is that we need to kill Bertha to snap these folks out of whatever trance they are in. I know you guys think I’m the tech-nerd in this group, but I’m not. I’m a space tow-truck driver with a nice ass, who likes to kill bad guys as a side hobby.”

“Concur on the nice ass part,” said Hank.

All chatter over the speaker phone ceased as every person mindlessly going about their tasks in a 500-foot radius stopped what they were doing and stared at Dractus still holding the struggling woman.

“Let her go Dractus!” Jimmy shouted at the phone. Cerulean relayed the order and Dractus dropped her. She immediately scurried off to do whatever she had been doing before, and all of the town’s people also resumed their previous tasks.

“Well this is definitely some kind of hive mind,” said Cerulean.

“Let’s follow the ones carrying shit,” said Hank.

“That was my next move as well,” replied Cerulean.

“We are about to walk into some crazy shit aren’t we?” asked Jimmy.

“Probably,” said Cerulean before hopping back onto her bike and trailing the procession of people carrying stuff.

“Guess that means we are rolling,” said Hank who then popped the dozer into gear. Jimmy was already on the running board so all he had to do was hang on. They trailed the procession of stained-people until they found out where they were headed. A large stone building a few stories tall with four circular stone columns in the front of it. The building reminded Hank and Jimmy of the town hall from the movie Back To the Future.

“Is that the town hall?” asked Jimmy.

“I don’t see what else it could be.” replied Hank.

Cerulean and Dractus backed their bikes up to the building, probably a good idea if they had to leave in a hurry. Hank contemplated doing the same but decided to leave it facing forward. They could run if they wanted to, he would smash the whole fucking building down if there was an issue.

“I wish there was some way to set the Killdozer to shock anything that climbs on it or in it in my absence. I would hate for one of those creepy ass stained people to get in here,” said Hank. A strange mechanical voice came out of the speakers on the television in the bulldozer.

“The vehicle will shock all uninvited passengers in your absence.”

“What the hell. Who are you?” asked Hank.

“I’m the Killdozer U.I. Mark 2. The Killdozer now accepts limited voice commands and requests.”

“Why didn’t you announce yourself earlier?”

“The system needed time to initialize and you didn’t make any requests.”

“Fair enough. Don’t shock Jimmy or the Arbiters.”

“Jimmy, and the other two with you have been set as friendlies.”

“Uh okay, I’m going to leave now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hank looked over at Jimmy who just shrugged his shoulders as if it say: yeah weird shit happens to us. They met up with Dractus and Cerulean and circled up. Cerulean seemed to take charge like always.

“Alright, the most likely scenario is that Bertha is in there and these folks are bringing her food to lay eggs and further develop her spawning ground. So expect to get swarmed by hatchlings. If it is too thick in there with enemies we back out and retreat back to my ship. Any suggestions or complaints?”

“I’m going to guess the reason we aren’t just letting Hank knock the building down is because of the innocent bystanders?” asked Jimmy.

“Yep, like I said earlier I’m hoping that once Bertha is dead that these folks will snap out of it. Having said that, I’m not dying today, neither is Drac or either of you.” If that place is too dangerous we will be destroying that building. Either Hank will run it over or I’ll drop a bunker buster on it that will level this whole area. Killing a few innocents to save thousands or more is a dark reality that we face sometimes as Arbiters. If anyone here isn’t okay with that you can and should leave now.”

No one left.