The Spaceship Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

We’ve never been introduced. You didn’t tell her anything, did you?”
    Ed’s security clearance was actually higher than the general’s, so he wasn’t sure what to make of the question. Surely the man understood that not revealing classified information to a sixteen year old on his first morning in town was an expectation for someone with his permissions.
    “Of course I didn’t.”
    “No offense intended, son. She has a knack, that one.”
    “Does she.”
    “You spent any time in a war zone, Mr. Somerville?”
    The general had a gosh-howdy sort of cadence, but it hid a shrewdness.
    “Some might say I’m doing that right now, general.”
    He laughed. “Sure, and you might be one of those people. I’ve read your papers. I mean a live ammo war zone. Well I’ll tell you. Every occupied village, town, and neighborhood has an Annie Collins. If you want to succeed at whatever it is you’re planning, you want to find that person.”
    “To… to shoot them?”
    “No, no, they’re too important. Besides, if you shoot ‘em someone’ll take their place. No, to get them on your side. My point, we know all about Annie Collins. We leave her be, and maybe someday we’ll need her help for something. So what did she know?”
    Ed remained convinced either he or everyone around him was going mad.
    “She knew I was going to see the ship.”
    The army man nodded slowly.
    “I guess that’s okay.”
    “I didn’t tell her that.”
    “Never said you did, son.”
    The SUV was taking them down Main, a doublewide road with the kind of retail variety that only came from organic growth over time. It had the sort of homey, old-next-to-new-next-to-old series of façades that most open-air shopping malls had been trying to replicate for years without success.
    Maybe the most interesting thing about how the spaceship impacted the local economy and industry of Sorrow Falls was that it had had almost none. One of the most consequential events in history happened right up the road, and that event brought in a lot of money, yet more than half of the real estate of Sorrow Falls Main Street looked the same, and by all accounts was the same. Lots of owner-occupied shops (residences above the storefront were very popular in these parts) with the only difference being most of these owners now had a big vacation house to head off to when they wanted.
    The sudden influx of cash to the local economy did have consequences, though, most obviously in the half of Main that flipped: it now had a Denny’s and a McDonalds and a Marriott and a lot of other things that made no sense in most mill town communities. Likewise, a fair number of the original witnesses didn’t even live in town any more, thanks to the money they made telling their stories and the dearth of large estates in the immediate vicinity. If Ed wanted to interview the sheriff from that night, he’d have to travel to Nantucket, for example.
    But Sorrow Falls still felt and looked an awful lot like the Sorrow Falls of old, according to just about everyone. It was Ed’s first time in town, but he’d been studying the place from afar for three years.
    In this, he was almost completely alone. The others focused on the ship, and he did too, but he considered the town a part of the whole. Even now, seeing in person how normal it all was, he was sure there was something wrong somehow with this town.
    It would have made for an interesting story angle, if he were actually a reporter.
    I have to get better at pretending to be one, he thought.
    If there was one thing he learned from his exchange with Annie, it was that Sorrow Falls town had a lot of media savvy people, and those people knew how real reporters acted, which was more than Ed could say. He was definitely going to have to work on his cover if he was going to get any answers.
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    A lot more had changed outside the town line than inside. The first time Ed really appreciated this was when he drove into town, because crossing the