Free Scareforce by Charles Hough

had been found when the maintenance
     personnel arrived. And the mission flew without a hitch. The entire crew testified that the gauge had been malfunctioning.
     That was a little strange in itself, because only the pilot and copilot should have been able to see the gauge from their
     crew positions. No one thought to ask what the whole crew had been doing in the front of the cockpit.
    And, when questioned unofficially by other crew members, the crew remained adamant about the events of that night. They saw
     the gauge. It wasn’t working. That was the only reason they stopped. They didn’t stop for some guy on a horse. Some guy who
     looked like an Indian chief. Some guy who was all white. Some guy who vanished while they were all watching him. Nope, that’s
     not the way it happened. Just ask the aircraft commander. We only stopped because the gauge was broken.
    Before the bomber taxied at Grand Forks, and before the bombs were built, and before the base was even built, this part of
     North Dakota was a desolate place. It was not even well loved by the Indians who had to live there. In fact one tribe referred
     to it as “the place that’s not any good to walk across.“
    Why then would the spirit of an ancient warrior choose this particular spot to haunt?
    Maybe there’s another line of protection for the terrible weapons at Grand Forks. A last line.

THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE
    T HE best thing about a military life is probably the traveling. It’s strange that it is also the worst thing about military
     life. Being uprooted on a regular basis leaves scars on the soul. Finally there comes a time when you say enough. I will live
     here and move no more. That decision comes to all of us eventually. Usually it comes before it’s too late. Usually—but not
     always.
    Over the hill and around the bend, the headlights pick out the start of the town—the new town. The buildings are bathed in
     bleak moonlight. They look faded, strange, wrong somehow. All of the requirements are met. Everything that is necessary to
     make a town is there, and yet. It’s wrong, all wrong. The gas station sells the kind of gas you buy but it’s laid out wrong.
     It’s on the wrong side of the street. The grocery store you just passed looks adequate but different, forbidding maybe. You’ll
     never get used to shopping there. Not after the pleasant store you left behind in the other town.
    Here and there, in spite of the late hour, you see people. People walking, people driving. All strange, all wrong. Ax murderers
     and deviants all of them.
    The town thins and then is gone and you’re left with the road and just a sign that says, “Airbase” and points rudely ahead.
     In your mind you sigh and then start when you hear it echoed aloud.
    It’s too late for your daughter to be up, but there she is at the rear window of the car. She clutches her Boobear and watches
     the town, new town, recede in the distance. You know that what she’s really seeing is the old town, the old home, the old
     friends, now left behind. This new town is a poor imitation of home, strange and frightening.
    Finally the journey is over. Here’s the main gate to the new base. You wanted the long trip to end a couple of days ago and
     now that it has, you’re not so sure. It means the comfortable old base that you knew so well is relegated to the status of
     memory. You just killed it by driving onto the new base, your base now. Have to call the old home “Base X” from now on. Just
     a bunch of memories of a place that has no real texture any more.
    Directions. Turn here, right there, through this light, past this stop sign. Nighttime makes it even more of a maze. All purposeless
     direction and no sense. Is this right or should I have turned there? Each landmark is just a thing, not yet THE bank or THE
     store or THE gym, but just a bunch of places. It’s so lonely pulling up, tearing roots loose, going, leaving, moving.
    This is it. Look, they call it a