We warned them foreigners not to go messing around up on Muledeer Ridge, but they wouldn’t listen. Now look what’s happened.
I remember I was down at Casey’s store when they come in. You never seen such a sight as them two. They were young enough — maybe thirty or so — but I ain’t never seen grown men look more like a pair of women, all pasty soft skin and pot bellies, not a lick of muscle on ’em. Their backpacks was those new synthetic jobs, all shiny and hunter-safety orange and smelling like new vinyl. Their boots had never seen a speck of dirt since they was made. They had enough camping gear in the back of their jeep to sleep a whole commune of hippies.
The first one come up to the counter, squinting at me through a pair of bottle-bottom glasses. “Do you have any batteries for my torch?” he said, talking all stiff and formal, like them Nazis in them World War II movies.
“Batteries for what?” Casey said.
He held up a flashlight.
“You foreigners, ain’t you?” I asked.
He turned to me, a little wrinkle in his forehead, like he was afraid I was going to make something of it. When he saw I didn’t mean no harm, he said, “Yes. I am a Czech. My friend is a Pole.”
“Fancy that,” Casey said, taking the fella over to the rack of batteries. “What in tarnation you doing all the way up here?”
“The sightings,” the man said. His buddy just stood there next to us. I don’t think he understood American.
“My colleague and I have come to investigate.”
Casey and I looked at each other. “You fixing to go up on Muledeer Ridge?” Casey asked them.
“Yes. That was the place,” the Czech answered, holding up a map. “We will spend a month there.”
Casey was shaking his head real slow. “You don’t want nothing to do with that place. Folks has messed with them U.F.O. things before. Never come to no good.”
“We are scientists. We must go,” the Czech said, and he sounded mighty sure of himself. Casey and me didn’t say nothing until they done paid for their batteries and climbed back in their jeep. That Pole drove like he never seen a motor vehicle before last week.
“Damn fools,” Casey muttered.
o0o
It was about four days later that we knew something was up. Some tourist backpacker come through town and told us he seen the jeep that the Czech and the Pole had used, sitting in the woods with nobody around it. That weren’t so strange, except that a lot of the equipment was still in it, and it looked like a bear had been through the food. When Sheriff Baker heard the story, he called me and Casey and a couple of the other boys together, and we hightailed it up to the ridge.
We found the jeep right away, no problem. It was just like the tourist said. What the bear hadn’t got to, the flies and the ants was finishing off.
“Well, they didn’t go far,” the sheriff said. “Here’s their tent,” holding up a flap of green nylon.
We found the camp only a hundred yards off. The foreigners had laid out a fire and tossed down their sleeping bags, but neither had been touched.
“Will you look at that?" Casey said.
Right in the middle of the camp was a track like nothing I’d ever laid eyes on before. It was wide and flat, with three pointy toes, bigger than an elephant’s. Pretty soon we found more. They led right to the crest of Muledeer Ridge, right to the spot where some of the townfolk had been seeing them funny lights now and again.
We got out rifles and followed them prints on up the hill. We found them at the top.
They were the biggest, ugliest things God’s Earth ever did see. Sort of like giant frogs — all naked and green — with mouths that must’ve been three feet wide, except they walked upright like human beings, and wore some funny looking belts full of buttons and gizmos. We figured one was a female and the other a male, cause the one of them had something dangling between its legs and the other one didn’t.
I don’t know who started shooting first, but it weren’t long till we all did. That female never knew what hit her. The male must’ve took five hits right in the chest and a couple more in the butt as he scooted up the ramp into his U.F.O. I guess we didn’t kill him, because he fired that sucker up and buzzed off over the horizon like a hummingbird with a tail wind.
It took nerve to make us walk up to the female’s body. God, but it stank. It was leaking green goo out of the bullet wounds. Still, when we saw the bulge in its belly, we knew what we had to do.
I took out my hunting knife. It only took one big slice, and the female’s innards plopped out all over the pine needles. Sure enough, inside was the Pole, sort of half digested and not quite all together. I stepped back so I wouldn’t get no slime on my boots.
“Well, I guess that about decides it,” the sheriff said. “It’s plain as the nose on your face. The Czech is in the male.”