By Nathan Warner
A park ranger checking out a disturbance near Camp David in the 1960s is abducted by a UFO
“Hey, Timmy?” The Motorola radio squawked. “Timmy, are you out there?” Park Ranger Tim Hayford sighed, gripping the wheel of his Ford Galaxy with his left hand as he reached for his mic. It was pitch black outside, as it should have been for just past midnight, and the fog was dense. He was returning to the visitor’s center at Catoctin Mountain Park, after checking on a report of some lost campers on Camp Misty Mountain. He held the mic up to his mouth taking his hand off the wheel to uncoil the elastic cord.
“Yeah, I’m here, Dale,” He said trying not to sputter his coffee on the mic – he hated the smell after a few days.
“You’re not going to like this,” Dale said on the other end of the line, “but I need you to go over to Thurmont Vista.”
“Are you joking?” Tim asked – the Vista was back up the mountain. There was a slight pause filled with some unusual static before the reply came.
“No joke…reports of some unusual activity on Thurmont Vista.”
“Fine…Roger, and out,” Tim sighed – this time longer. Mary-Ann was going to kill him – it’d be the third time this week he’d be coming home late. He found a turn-around, slipping a little in the mud from the thunder shower a few hours ago, and started back up the service road.
It was April 22, 1961, and the weather was a bit chilly in the Maryland countryside. The evening had finally quieted down from the circus it had been for most of the day. Earlier, helicopters had broken the serene surroundings with their unpleasant thumping, as they flew over the park, carrying President John F. Kennedy to the nearby Camp David to meet with former President Eisenhower. It was rumored they were conferring about the botched Cuban exiles invasion at the Bay of Pigs a few days earlier. Tim didn’t have a head for foreign policy, or even politics for that matter – what had preoccupied his mind was the increased traffic through and around the park by people hoping to catch a glimpse of the President.
“Pigs!” he had grumbled at all the littering along Foxville Road, which cut through the Park from the small town of Thurmont to the East. Tim had to slow down because the fog was getting thick. He could only see a few yards ahead and his headlights weren’t helping.
“Unbelievable!” he grunted, taking another swig of coffee from his thermos. A glance at his odometer confirmed he was getting close to the peak and the service road ended soon. He pulled the car over and cut the engine. He grabbed his flashlight and looked ahead through his headlights one last time before turning them off. Instantly Tim was plunged into darkness. He clicked his light on and opened his door, which groaned loudly on its hinges.
“Dumb deer,” he muttered, looking at the dent in the door from where a buck had rammed him last week and stressed the hinges. He pointed his flashlight ahead, and he felt like he was holding a pole of light, illuminated brightly in the dense mist. Mostly by memory, he found the trail up the slope and steadied himself against a gnarly old oak before starting up the dirt causeway.
“You could hear a pin drop, Hayford,” He muttered to himself. The air was still, dank, and quiet – a little too quiet, Tim reflected. Where were the owl calls? Slowly on edges of his perception, he felt, more than heard, a throbbing or humming sound as he shuffled forward. It was only about a few hundred feet more to Thurmont Vista, but with ever step, the sound seemed to grow louder. Tim considered his bearings. To his right (and east) was the town of Thurmont, about a mile below – and to his left (and west) less than a mile away, the park hosted the Presidential retreat.
As he rounded the final bend, the fog seemed to radiate slightly – an eerie green color. The throbbing sound in the air was getting almost unbearable. It was a very low sound, but definitely present. He almost didn’t need his flashlight anymore; the green glow was bright enough to see the ground. He turned his flashlight off and crept forward. Dark shapes appeared ahead, all tangled together. He tensed, but they weren’t moving. As he stepped closer, he realized they were downed trees, which appeared to have been snapped at the trunk like twigs. There were a couple dozen piled or jumbled up like someone was making a wider clearing.
“Loggers?” Tim breathed in disbelief. “They wouldn’t dare!?” He should have returned to his car and radioed for help, but his emotions got the better of him. Unwisely, he slipped through the dyke of newly downed lumber and stumbled into the clearing. The glow seemed to be coming from the center of the vista, just a few hundred feet ahead.
“Hey…anyone up here?” he called with all the courage he had and turned his flashlight on. The throbbing sound stopped instantly and the green glow blinked out. Darkness flooded around him.
“Cowards!” Tim muttered, before raising his voice. “You are violating park ordinance, and I’m going to need you to step forward towards my light!” Tim’s heart was racing, whether from fear or anger, he wasn’t sure. Suddenly, from out of the darkness ahead, half a dozen pencil-thin beams of red light shot towards him, landing on the chest of his buttoned up shirt, and he jumped back with a shout.
“Hey! I’m warning you!” he yelled. At first nothing happened. The red beams seemed to dance around, crossing over one another like pickup sticks. But slowly a sound was approaching – a whirring, mechanical noise was drawing closer. It was deeply menacing. Tim took a step back. In the glow caused by his flashlight, dark figures began to emerge through the mist. They had the general shape of men, but were covered in what looked like radiator hoses and strange metal “doodads.” The nearest figure stepped into the beam of his light, and Tim gasped. The face looking at him was as pale and decrepit as a corpse, but with an odd-looking camera lens or something over its left eye. They looked like some sort of creature out of his son’s comic books – zombies or something. Tim stumbled back over himself.
“What the…?” he started, but found he was backed up against the tree embankment. He turned and scrambled to find his way back, but suddenly, an iron grip seized his right shoulder, and pivoted him sideways, exposing his neck. Tim gurgled in fear as another hand appeared and jabbed him in the neck. The pain was intense. He felt like he was dying! But then, he felt something cold and alien coursing through his veins. The creature pulled Tim to the ground and began dragging him towards the clearing, over the dewy grass.
“Let me go!” he cried. “Please, I won’t mention the violation of the ordinance!” Even in that moment, he knew he was lying – the Park Ranger in him couldn’t let it go. He was starting to feel strangely odd. His blood felt like ice water in his veins. The creature dropped him and then the glowing light and humming returned. Tim looked up from the ground and gasped. A huge black rectangular structure, several stories tall was resting in the middle of the clearing, emanating a green light from within its angular walls. The humming was also coming from inside. There were at least a dozen or so of these “zombie” creatures milling about the area. What were they? It had not yet entered his mind that they could be “aliens.” Tim despised science fiction and frowned darkly on his son’s comic book craze. And he famously rolled his eyes at any mention of the UFO craze. “Utter bilge!” he grumbled whenever anyone attempted to introduce it into conversation.
Suddenly, the humming changed its tempo, going almost quiet, and all the creatures turned in unison and looked behind Tim towards the East. They seemed to be gazing towards the mist-shrouded view over the town of Thurmont below. Tim suddenly felt thoughts in his head. “Danger!” they seemed to say, cutting clearly through the pain in his heart. Instinctively, he whipped around and gazed in the direction they were looking. Down below them, visibility was better and he could almost see above the fog to the clouds. Out over the valley, a different glow seemed to be approaching rapidly through the clouds. Thunder seemed to rumble from it, but if it was a storm, it was moving far too quickly.
Suddenly, through the clouds, lights appeared and a massive object became visible, moving rapidly towards them. What a roar! Tim couldn’t believe his eyes – it was one of those ridiculous “flying” saucers!” There were four intensely bright lights pulsating on the outer rim of the saucer with a ring of alternating lights that wrapped around the inner diameter on the bottom. Tim shook his head in disbelief. “No, no, no!” he whimpered. This was all an awful, bad dream – probably from that spiced cake he’d snuck from an unattended picnic table earlier. Some beatnik had surely spiked it with some ungodly drugs, and he was just hallucinating – yes, that was it – he’d wake up any moment. Again, the thoughts penetrated his head, but more like voices now – almost like a radio conversation broken up by static.
“Galaxy…Federation vessel…U.S.S. Burbank…Initiate defensive paremeter.” The massive UFO was almost on top of them. Its lights lit up Thurmont Vista like daytime – and the roar was louder than naval aircraft buzzing overhead. Pain shot through Tim’s heart again. He was having a heart attack! But at the same time his hair began standing on end and he felt a strange lightness coming over him. He glanced at his arm at it seemed to be shimmering. His feet were glowing a bright white-blue!
At that moment, a terrifying bolt of red light stretched down from the UFO and touched the earth, striking the black, cubical “building” near him. A shower of fire and heat rippled out, consuming everything in a mixture of green and orange flames. Tim covered his face instinctively as the fire coursed all around him, but the heat dissipated and he suddenly felt cool again. He starting to fade out of consciousness, but he was aware of warm hands on his icy arm. He struggled to open his eyes and faintly saw two people crouched over him in strange black uniforms he didn’t recognize with blue on the torso and shoulders. He eyes closed themselves, and he passed out.
Tim woke up to his wife telling him to get some more spice cake from the grocery store – it seemed to really loosen him up! Before he could reply, the scene faded out and Tim began to really fade back into reality. He heard voices again, but this time, they weren’t in his head. He could just hear them on the edge of consciousness.
“How is he, Doctor Galvani?” A deep man’s voice asked. There was a slight rustling sound as someone approached.
“Well, Captain,” a woman replied, “he survived, which is a miracle given your antics out there, and I’ve successfully reversed the effects of the attempted assimilation. I think he’s back in optimal health – at least as close as someone living in the 20th century can be to optimal. Believe me, I was tempted to clean out his arteries and fix that defect in his heart.”
“Don’t even joke about it,” the Captain replied. “Just wipe his memory, and we’ll return him to his automobile vehicle.”
“Too late,” the doctor smiled, “I already gave him a clean bill of health.” Before the Captain could raise an objection, she turned towards him. “So, what did happen out there, Allen?” she asked. It was Captain Allen Hartman’s turn to sigh. He’d forgotten that his crew rarely knew what was happening from one moment to the next if they weren’t on the Bridge to observe the action.
“Well…let’s see, we left the Burbank’s star drive to contend with the Borg Scout vessel that had penetrated Earth’s defenses with some assimilated – and improved – Klingon cloaking technology,” he explained. “With the ship separated, we were able to widen the temporal rift that the Borg shuttle was using over the North Pole and followed them through with the Saucer section to this time period. Suffice it to say, we got here just in time.”
Tim was fully awake now, but he didn’t dare to move a muscle – he was petrified, and then there was that comment about his heart! The Doctor’s voice came again.
“You destroyed them, you mean?” Hartman cleared his throat and smiled.
“Well, yes, we vaporized their ship, to be precise, and then destroyed the remaining Borg drones in a ground assault, beaming all the surviving debris up from the site, while trying to repair the damage to the Park as much as possible. I’m telling you, Doctor, it was pure luck we landed a few phaser shots on them before they passed into the temporal rift, because if we hadn’t disabled their weapons system, they wouldn’t have stopped outside their target zone to repair. They would have obliterated Camp David before we’d even punched through the polar rift ourselves.” Doctor Galvani sighed.
“What a waste,” she said. “Why do they keep trying to come back in time to alter our history?” she asked. Hartman sighed.
“I don’t know,” He said. “They seem to think it is the most efficient means of defeating us. But I still find it hard to believe that all this was simply to stop United States President John F. Kennedy from giving his speech about the moon-missions in a few months – it seems a little too absurd even for them.”
Doctor Galvani finished pushing some buttons on the monitor and straightened as if trying to remember something. “‘There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again,’” She recited, before turning back to the Captain. “I don’t know, Allen,” she said, “I think it makes sense. That speech fired the world’s imagination and started the ‘space-race’ that launched the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – a precursor to Starfleet, itself.” Hartman nodded.
“True,” he said with a shrug. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the bridge – please let me know as soon as our guest is ready to be returned to earth, so we can get under way – I sure hope that temporal rift over the pole can be opened again!” Doctor Ruth Galvani tapped a few more buttons.
“All done,” she said. Tim felt a pulse go through his head and everything went blank. He opened his eyes and he was sitting in his Ford Galaxy. Dawn was breaking over the trees, and the mist was lifting. Rubbing a dull headache through his temple, Tim opened his car door, which ground loudly on its hinges. He stretched and took a deep breath. This was the life! He could hear a helicopter in the distance, and he remembered the circus from yesterday as the President had been visiting nearby Camp David.
Suddenly, some hikers stumbled out of the woods just across the road, looking like beatniks. Tim nodded grudgingly to them.
“Hey, ranger-man,” the guy with dreadlocks called, “did you see that UFO last night?” Tim stared him down without a reply as they walked past.
“Utter bilge!” Tim muttered. Once they were out of view, he shook his head and yawned. And then, he suddenly started. He’d just remembered something awful. “Oh, no…” he mumbled, cradling his face. Mary-Ann was going to kill him. He’d fallen asleep out here in the Park again! He jumped in his car, cranked it over and began frantically reversing back down the service road from Thurmont Vista.
