Free Attack on Area 51 by Mack Maloney

trove we were hoping for, Hawk,” he said. “I’m sure with all this data, we’ll find out what happened to you—and a whole lot more.”
    Hunter almost choked up. He hadn’t expected the moment to be so emotional, but it was. His psyche felt like it was on fire now—things he just had to know were finally within his grasp.
    He turned to thank Pott, when suddenly …
    Gunfire.
    Then people shouting.
    Then more gunfire.
    All of it coming from a hangar nearby.
    Hunter groaned as he, Ben, and JT rushed out the door.
    “I knew it couldn’t be this easy …” JT said.

Chapter 14
    T HE GUN BATTLE WAS over by the time they arrived.
    A squad of FCSF troopers was standing around five bodies lying in front of a medium-size hangar. The bodies were clothed in black, with weapons that looked like sci-fi movie props. Futuristic helmets hid their faces.
    JT gasped. “Jesus—are they ETs?”
    Hunter sought out the FCSF squad leader whose unit had been involved in the brief firefight.
    “We were securing the next hangar over,” he explained. “We came upon these guys trying to drag someone out of this building. They fired at us. So …”
    Hunter studied the hangar in question.
    “Someone’s inside there?” he asked.
    The squad leader nodded. “Ready for this?”
    He opened the door to reveal the hangar was filled with people. Men, women, teens, the elderly—dirty, ragged, and hollow-eyed. In the green tint of night vision, they looked like ghosts, hundreds of them. They were hugging the FCSF troopers as if they’d just been liberated from a concentration camp.
    “What is this?” Ben exclaimed. “A homeless shelter?”
    The squad leader shrugged. “It’s the only locked building we came to. Windows, all the doors, sealed tight from the outside.”
    A middle-aged man wearing an old army jacket was brought forward. The squad leader said to him, “Tell these guys what you told me.”
    The man’s eyes were wide with fear.
    “We’re all street people,” he began shakily. “There’re lots of us these days. We were abducted down in Santa Monica a week ago. We were probed, and then locked up here.”
    Hunter was incredulous. “By who? Who did this to you?”
    “These creatures,” the man replied, pointing at the bodies. “They’re eating us!”
    Hunter tried to calm him, but the man was becoming extremely agitated.
    “They come out of the ground every few hours,” he went on, catching his breath. “And they take some of us—and whoever they take down the Hole, don’t come back. I’m telling you they’re eating us down there!”
    “But who are they ?” Hunter asked him again, to which a number of the street people shouted back: “Zombie Aliens!”
    “Look at this,” the man said, rolling up his ragged sleeve to reveal a tattoo. It read: TEST SUBJECT—WARM TO MAXIMUM POWER.
    “I don’t know where this came from,” he said. “But that sounds like something from a recipe to me. And we all got them!”
    Hunter looked at Ben and JT. They were just as bewildered as he was.
    Hunter returned to the five bodies. He knelt down beside one, not quite sure what to expect. He slowly lifted the helmet’s visor.
    What he saw beneath was a heavily scarred face and a pair of dead eyes.
    But most important, the body was human—and Asian.
    “AMC …” he whispered.
    The building the AMC soldiers had emerged from was as bland as everything else on the base. Located just across from “Hobo Hangar,” it was the size of a two-car garage.
    Hunter, Ben, and JT were outside its door, checking their ammo loads. Wearing AMC uniforms, helmets and all, they were going down the Hole to see if what the street people told them was true.
    St. Louis was nervous though.
    “This really isn’t part of the plan,” he was saying to Hunter. “I called back home. The C-119s are flying out, and we’ll get these poor people out of here. But remember we don’t want to start a war with these AMC guys. Not yet anyway.”
    Hunter