The aliens from the house had returned to the ship and a sled bearing another victim taken into the UFO.

It seemed to Casey that he was seeing a repeat of the agenda the aliens had followed during the first attack. It was almost like they were attempting to elicit a specific reaction.

Well, there was a new reaction, a change of the plans that amused Casey because he was doing his best to hinder the alien’s efforts and inflict heavy casualties among the invaders.

The hunting spree would eventually have to end. The aliens would have to take the sniper fire seriously or they would end like their friend in a ball of flame.

He snapped off a shot that collapsed a small alien on the ramp leading to the ship’s hatch. Other aliens crowded around the body, then picked it up and continued up the ramp. It was almost too easy to kill the bastards.

Would they decide to use the pulse again? That was the question he needed answered. The pulse was the only weapon he could not counter. The blind was a perfect place to hide and snipe, but it was useless against the pulse.

He edged back until he was even with the man from the house and spoke in a whisper; he knew would only carry a few inches.

“Do you know what that blast of air was?”

John continued to watch the woods while considering the question. Some kind of pressure wave had followed him from the house. He had not seen it; he had only felt the danger as he ran.

“I think that’s what I felt when I ran from the porch,” he replied in a similar voice and felt Lia try to reach a position where she could watch the woods and listen to the conversation.

“The same one you outran was the one that hurt me,” Casey confirmed.

“Who are you?” John suspecting the man wanted to talk and plan.

“I am Casey. I am out here to make sure nothing interfered with tonight’s activities.”

“What activities?” John looked at the man, struck by how deeply he felt this man was from the military.

“The fake abduction,” Casey replied, then looked at the man as he realized the impact of the question. “What’s your name?”

“John Hastings.” How could the man protect the house yet not know the names of the people he was protecting?

“What do you do for a living?” Some men had used their real names. Casey remembered a John Hastings was in the house, so the question had been a one. He had to try another tack.

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“I’m a cop.”

The reply stunned Casey. The people in the house who were not from the team were actors. He had watched Hastings as the man replied to the question, and Casey was certain the man believed he was a cop.

Somehow Hastings had lost his memory. Casey remembered of the brief confusion after the wave had washed over the blind. He looked over the back of Hastings and saw the woman staring at him.

She had been in the house longer than Hastings had and, if his thinking was correct, she felt two of the waves.

“What is your name and what do you do for a living?” he asked her.

“Lia MacDonal. And I do not know what I do for a living because the aliens use some type of thing that makes us lose our memories.”

He cursed and returned to his watch of the ship.

“Well? What are we?”

“Actors,” Casey replied grimly. “Everyone in the house is an actor brought here to make a fake alien abduction film.”

“Does this look fake?” John sputtered aloud.

Casey held the man’s throat before the sentence finished. “Do you want to kill us?” he hissed, then let go of John.

“My wife is inside...” John croaked and looked at the house.

“The only people related are the old man and his wife, the parents.” Casey surveyed the surroundings carefully. “And he’s dead,” he added to himself.

“I told you I’m not married,” Lia whispered loftily.

The crackle of gunfire stopped the conversation. Several shots echoed from a distance, making all of them look at the ship, then past the aliens.

“A nine-millimeter,” Casey mumbled as he considered the flat bark of the shots.

“One of your men?” John asked.

“No,” Casey’s reply was sad as he remembered his men and the bodies he had found under the spaceship. “They are dead. We must decide what we are going to do. If we stay here, we stand the chance of getting hit by that forget wave, and I do not think we can afford to allow that to happen. The damn thing hit me a glancing blow, and it feels like I have broken ribs.”

“We go to the house.” The answer was obvious to John. They would go to the house and make a stand while they waited for help to arrive from whoever was fighting to the south. “We can survive better as a group. And do not forget there are people in the house we have to rescue.”

“They took me from the house,” Lia said softly, robbing the strength of the argument from John.

Casey held up his hand to signal for silence. A floating sled was weaving into view as it traveled through the woods. None of the aliens who had gone to the gully were with the sled as it came into view, shuttling junk from the first ship.

That was interesting. Casey wondered why the aliens were cleaning up the wreckage; he could not envision them as neat freaks after seeing the interior of one of their ships. Again, a military answer came to mind and seemed correct. They had to be policing the area of all evidence that aliens had been at the house.

The sled passed out of the woods and headed for the ship.

“We have to make the aliens react to us,” Casey said and looked at the other people in the blind. They looked to him for the answers, for the wisdom to survive the night, their faces hopeful. “We cannot stay here and we cannot stay in the house, but we need to get the people out of the house and make the aliens look for us. If we stay out of the reach of their weapons, they must fight on our level and so far, they have not done all that well fighting on foot.”

A deeper bark came from the south, a shotgun unleashed on something.

Casey hoped it was another dead alien. “Follow me,” he said to the others and worked his way out of the blind, then stood guard while they climbed out and joined him. They would have to go to the rear of the house where the aliens could not see them begin the escape of the captives.

Casey led them to the east and the brush that edged the ravine to the south of the house.

The crackle of gunfire to the west made him smile. More people had joined the fight.