Our sirens wailed their piercing cry and the lights flickered rapidly between red and blue. I watched the road from the back of the ambulance. My knees bounced and my fists gripped the edge of the padded bench. Adrenaline flowed through my veins. What a rush! That’s why I’ve always loved this job.

Wade, my driver, cursed as he swerved to avoid hitting a dog. Then he turned the corner so fast, that it felt like he’d done it on two wheels.

There! The broken-down ambulance sat off to the right about a quarter of a mile ahead with lights flickering. I undid my seatbelt, unlatched the gurney, and prepared to open the back doors. As Wade parked us beside A-37, I slammed the doors open and jumped out before he came to a complete stop. I yanked the gurney out and race to the back of A-37 while Enzo and Albert carefully lowered their patient’s gurney to the ground.

“Conner Everest, age fifteen,” Enzo said in a loud, no-nonsense tone. “A bully kicked him down two flights of stairs at school. Compound fracture of his lower left leg and an unstable fracture of the right humorous. Grade three concussion and a possible brain bleed. His mother’s been notified and will meet you at Mercy General.”

I nodded as I shoved the empty gurney toward Albert and took the patient’s gurney from Enzo.

He rattled off Conner’s vitals as he helped me get the gurney into our ambulance. Then he shut the doors with a thump of his fist.

I yelled, “We’re secure. Go!” We lurched forward before I’d finished speaking.

“Dispatch,” Wade said over the radio, “A-51 enroute with the priority red patient, to Mercy General. “ETA, eight minutes.”

I placed an oxygen mask on my patient and hooked Conner up to the monitor before I put on my seatbelt. I then grabbed my cell phone and called the hospital, “This is Helen Latham on A-51. ETA eight minutes. Priority Red. Male, age fifteen. Compound fracture of lower left leg. Unstable break of right humorous. Grade three concussion with a possible brain bleed. Currently unconscious. BP 88 over 50, heart rate 42, temperature 35℃.”

Half a block later, the monitor beeped a warning that Conner’s blood pressure had dropped to 70 over 45. “Wade, step on it! His BP is dropping!”

The engine revved like a race car gunning the last stretch. The acceleration rocked me against my safety harness and the vibrations through the floor rattled the oxygen tank in its bracket. A few heartbeats later, the entire ambulance jumped. “Sorry!” Wade called back. “Didn’t see that pothole.”

Conner groaned, but didn’t wake. His leg seeped blood and his vitals took another hit.

I cursed as I tightened the tourniquet. I adjusted his IV and oxygen, then grabbed another blanket. I did what I could for my patient, but this rig isn’t set up for advanced care. I looked at my watch. Shit! My patient’s running out of time and we’re still four minutes from the hospital.

SCREECH! THUD! CRUNCH!

I slammed against my safety restraints in all directions. Bile rose in my throat as the ambulance rocked and tossed me like a salad.

SKREEEEEEK!

Metal on metal, like fingernails on a chalk board, sent shivers down my spine. An eternity later, the ambulance stopped moving and all was silent. A royal blue semi-truck door, with a scraped logo for Swift Transportation, blocked the window to the cab. I let loose a few curses and punched the bench beside me.

Sssss…

“Shit! An air leak!” I yelled and checked my patient, his vitals were dangerously low, but holding steady. I then checked Conner’s oxygen tank. There’s the hiss. I shut off the valve and grabbed a spare tank. I fumbled the valve on the second tank as nausea threatened to overwhelm me. My stomach burned and cramped.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

I swallowed my heart back into place. With a hand on my throat, I opened the back doors.

Two civilian men stood there. The short, chubby man asked, “Hey, is everybody okay in here?”

“For the moment,” I said. “What’s the situation?”

“A semi-truck driver ran a red light. He’s dazed and might have a concussion, but otherwise he’s fine.”

“Sorry,” the tall redhead said, “about your driver though. He didn’t make it.”

I nodded and swallowed more bile. I gripped my belly trying to stop the pain. My voice sounded shaky as I asked, “Did you call 9-1-1?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the redhead. “I’m still on with them. Um… you don’t look so good, you okay?”

“No, I feel like a martini, shaken but not stirred.” I grabbed his phone and said to the operator, “This is Helen Latham, EMT, on A-51. My driver’s dead. I’ve got internal bleeding caused from the accident. My patient is priority r-red. His stats… are dropping…” I swayed and grabbed the edge of the gurney for support. The phone clattered on the floor as darkness stole my peripheral vision. Everything blurred and seemed to spin. I leaned back in my seat. I said, “S-sorry, guys… my stomach… I…” I closed my eyes and passed out.

* * *

Buzzing? No, it’s the hiss of oxygen. And beeping? The ambulance? My patient! I opened my eyes and quickly squinted them shut again. A beeping monitor, oxygen, bright lights, the scent of a strong disinfectant. The hospital. I had to be in the hospital. Slowly I opened my eyes. Everything was still blurry, but I was definitely in a hospital room.

I tried to sit up. “Aaah!” The nerves in my abdomen exploded from my middle and burned all the way to my outer extremities. I dropped my head back onto the pillow panting.

A dark-skinned nurse rushed into the room. “Eh now, Ms. Latham,” she said with a Jamaican accent. “Yuh just got out of surgery. Yuh need ta tek it easy.”

“Conner Everest? Is he okay?”

The nurse didn’t say anything as she checked my IV.

“Please! My patient, did he make it?”

The nurse said, “I nuh know. The boy is still in surgery. The danger nuh dun yet, mi tink. Now go catch yuh rest.”

I closed my eyes as the nurse left my room. They wouldn’t do surgery on a dead kid, so he’s still alive. He may not be in the clear yet, but alive means there’s still hope.

After four-wheeling for hours in the middle of nowhere, the Jeep seemed to turn on its own, taking Mitch Bradford deeper into the desert. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel and came to a stop. With no cell signal, the GPS couldn’t find his current location, and he didn’t have a paper map. How would he ever find the highway again? The fuel tank was almost as empty as his lunch box and water bottle were. The southern New Mexico desert might just be the death of him.

Wait! Did he see a child dart behind that prickly pear bush, or was he hallucinating? He stared at it while he stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. There! A ten-year-old girl darted over to that large mesquite tree. He rolled down his window, and hollered, “Miss, can you please help me?”

Her head appeared from behind the tree as her blonde hair danced around her face in the hot July breeze. In a flash, she turned and scurried toward the far side of the hill.

Mitch got out of his Jeep and chased after the girl.

He came to a stop as he rounded the hill. The girl had disappeared into a town nestled against the wall of the hill’s sheer face. He was saved! He could get gas, food, and water. Maybe he could even get a good night’s sleep. However, the streets were dirt… no asphalt, no concrete, and no cars. Hmm… A horse, tied to a hitching post, nickered outside the nearest shop. Had he just stepped back in time to the old west?

A young woman of about twenty years of age exited a shop with a heavy bag dangling from her left forearm. The same girl he’d followed, stood beside the woman.

“Look,” the girl said as she pointed, “There’s a really old man over there.”

“Samantha Garrett! It’s rude to call people old.”

The two walked over to him as several people exited the shop and stared at him. Strangers must not be common here. Hold up… Every single person, except for Samantha, looked to be twenty years old and there must be at least fifteen people out here.

Five more exited another shop, and ten or so came out of the diner. All of them twenty years old.

“Hello, welcome to Spry Town. My name’s Angela,” the young lady said. “I’m sorry for my daughter’s rudeness, sir. How can we help you?”

“Um…” Mitch looked from Angela to Samantha and back. Daughter? Impossible. Either Angela was ten when she had Samantha, or she was lying?

The townsfolk formed a circle around him.

He swallowed hard. “Um… My name’s Mitch Bradford. I’m a geologist. I’ve been looking for the meteor that hit around here two nights ago. But I got lost. My Jeep’s low on gas, and I’m out of food and water. I was hoping to get directions and to buy some gas and supplies.”

“As you can see,” Angela said with a wave down the short street, “we don’t use cars. Therefore, we don’t have a gas station. However, the diner makes a great hamburger. Come on.”

Mitch followed Angela to the diner and the rest of the people followed behind them. What’s going on? Maybe these people were going to lynch him, or maybe strangers were just so rare that he was a novelty to them.

Another thirty or so young people sat in the diner. This was no longer strange but outright weird. He sat at the bar and ordered. After several minutes, the cook set a healthy-sized cheeseburger in front of him with a mountain of fries and a bottle of Coke.

Once he’d finished his meal, with sixty or so twenty-year-olds watching him, he rubbed his sore back. So, what now?

A tall man stepped through the crowd. “I’m Mayor Thomas McKenna. It’s nice to have made your acquaintance, but it’s time for you to be on your way.” He handed Mitch a piece of paper. “Here’s a map to help you find I-10.”

Mitch took the map, which seemed simple enough to follow. “Thanks. May I ask—”  

The mayor stiffened with a stern expression. “It’s time for you to go.”

Mitch stood. “In that case, thank you for your hospitality. I’ll just go.” Once outside, Mitch bolted for his Jeep. He followed the mayor’s map back to I-10 and made it to a gas station on fumes.

He refilled his tank, as a twenty-year-old man filled his tank on the next island over. Twenty. Those townsfolk were all twenty. How’s that possible? Had he gone to Crazy Town?

He paid for his gas and some supplies. Still parked at the fuel pump, he downed a bottle of water. Ugh! Mitch started the engine. “Old Betsy, I’ve just gotta know what’s going on.” He followed the mayor’s map in reverse, until he was about a mile away from that town. He hid his Jeep among the desert vegetation and waited. When the sun began to set, he snuck over to Spry Town.

From the top of a mesquite tree, he watched Main Street. Except for the age of the townsfolk, everything appeared normal right up until five minutes before ten o’clock. One hundred four adults, no children, lined up in front of the bank without speaking to each other. At precisely ten, the bank door opened and ten people went inside. Five minutes later, those ten came out all wet, and the next ten went in. What would anyone, let alone the whole town, want in a bank at ten o’clock? And why do they come out wet?

After the last person left, Mitch climbed down from the tree and slipped over to the bank. He entered the bank and asked, “What’s going on here?”

The mayor jumped and turned from the vault’s lock. “Now, young man, I thought you’d left.”

“I did,” Mitch said. “I came back. And I’m more than twice your age, so why’d you call me young?”

“Because I’m one hundred eighty-eight years old,” the mayor said. “You may look older, but you’re the younger man.”

“Huh? I’m confused.”

The mayor chuckled. “I’ll bet you are. I’ll tell you our secret, if you agree to never leave Spry Town.”

Mitch scrunched his face, and rubbed his temples. Something deep in his soul needed to know their secret. But could he stay here? A dozen heartbeats later, he asked, “You’d put me in jail if I tried to leave?”

“No. We don’t have a jail nor a sheriff. However, once you know our secret, you won’t be able to leave. If you do, you’ll die.”

“Ah… You’d kill me to keep your secret?”

“Again, no. We’re not violent, but none of us can leave. If we did, we’d die.”

“Not sure I understand.” Mitch rubbed the back of his neck, then nodded. “Fine, I’ll stay. So, what’s your secret?”

The mayor nodded with a smile. “Call me Tom.” He unlocked the vault. “This way.”

Mitch followed him through the small vault to a wooden door in the back. Then down a long dark staircase cut out of rock. He’d counted a hundred fifty-two steps when he got to the bottom.

Tom lit a lantern, the light of which revealed a cave with a small lake, maybe fifty feet across. He indicated another set of steps, four this time, that led into the water. “You must swim to the other side and back. Then I’ll tell you everything.”

Mitch shrugged and undressed down to his boxers. As he swam, warm water caressed his face and his invigorated body tingled all over.

Tom handed him a pocket mirror when he came out of the lake.

Mitch jumped with a small scream then slowly ran a hand over his clean-shaven, twenty-year-old face. “How? How’d this happen?”

“That’s the secret. Our underground lake has the same properties as the fountain of youth. Every night we swim to stay young. If we miss a night, we grow old quickly. If we leave town by more than ten miles, we grow old at an even faster rate until we’ve turned to dust.” He patted Mitch’s shoulder. “Welcome to Spry Town, my friend.”

Earth’s sixth terraformed planet, Chalcedony, is now home to a million people. We have three moons, Jasper, Onyx, and Agate, but only one city, Lazuli. Now, with that many people living in one place, there tends to be a lot of crime. That’s where I, Sheriff Caleb Blackburn, come in.

Yesterday afternoon, I’d responded to a call at Lilac River about five kilometers from Lazuli. A newlywed couple camped beside the purple water, near Torr Peak, and they’d found a pile of bones behind a cluster of rocks.

This morning, as I entered the station, Deputy Stan McGowen studied his computer display, and without looking up, he said, “Sir, the forensics report’s in. That pile contained bones from five people, two adults and three children, all apparently from one family. Most likely they’re our missing campers from three weeks ago.”

“Thanks.” I slapped my desk with my cap. “Ya know, it’s the twenty-fifth century, you’d think scientists would’ve eliminated psychopaths by now.”

“That’d be nice, but it’d put us out of a job, boss.”

“There’d still be plenty of petty crimes to deal with.”

The office door opened and Deputy Genna Stanton, the watch tower guard, yelled, “Sheriff, there’re alien ships landing outside of town. Come quick!”

With a shake of my head, I got to my feet and followed Genna with stan on my heels.

Genna ran up the stairs to the top of the watch tower.

I could just make out three strange triangular ships landing out by the river where we’d found the bones. “Stan, are those newlyweds still out there?”

“Yeah, I believe so.”

“Great!” I rubbed my temples, another migraine brought on by stress. “Stan, sound the alert and get the emergency response crews rolling. I’ll take a rover and go on ahead. Genna, have the mayor announce code red and get everyone in the underground shelters until we know more.”

As Stan and Genna left on their missions, I grabbed the closest rover and high-tailed it out of town. At a top speed of fifty kilometers an hour and over rough terrain, it took me twelve minutes to approach the site. I stopped behind a rock outcropping and observed the situation.

Each of the three ships appeared to be average size, but these looked more like pyramids on their sides. Neither the camp nor the ships showed any signs of movement.

I drove over to the camp site. Everything at the site had been tossed, shredded or scattered. My gut clenched tight. Something bad had happened here, but what?

I tapped my ear comm as I pulled the rover up to a stop in front of the nearest ship. “Stan, what’s your ETA?”

“About four minutes out. What’s going on there?”

“The newlywed’s camp was destroyed. I’m about to knock on one of these ships and see if anyone’s home.”

I climbed out of the rover and walked up to the hull and knocked as loud as I could. Then with my hand on my pistol, I stepped back and waited.

Two minutes later, a hatch opened on the starboard side of the ship. My heart pounded against my rib cage as I swallowed hard and gripped my pistol tighter.

A ramp lowered and the campers, covered in bandages, hobbled down assisted by two humans in the Commonwealth’s police officer uniform.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff,” said the taller officer. “My name is Sergeant Brinkley. This is Officer Martinez. Whatcha think of our new patrol ships?”

I just stared.

Sergeant Brinkley continued, “We scared ya, didn’t we?”

I nodded.

“Well, we landed in time to save these two from a ferocious animal they called a camel bear. It bit Mrs. Selinsky’s forearm off and Mr. Selinsky has numerous wounds. Martinez here killed the camel bear, but these two need medical care.

Stan and all the emergency responders pulled up at that moment. I motioned for the medical team. Then to Stan I said, “It appears our psychopath wasn’t human, but a camel bear.”

Becca Gillway strolled into the private cove and took her sandals off. The hot sand burned her feet until she stepped into the water. She wiggled her toes in the firm wet sand until her toes were completely buried. A bright blue wave lapped against her ankles and washed the sand away.

Seagulls squawked as they flew overhead. She sighed, even the birds argued. Her had parents fought with each other for most of her fourteen years of her life, so why should she expect them to stop just because they were on vacation.

Last month her dad had announced at the dinner table, “Guess what? I entered a drawing at work and won a time-share to a cabin in Florida about a hundred feet from a private cove. Two weeks of sea air will do us some good.”

Well, here they were three days into their vacation. And nothing had changed except that now they were on the other side of the country from Arizona. Her parents still fought over everything the other said. Even earphones couldn’t mask their tumultuous voices.

She sighed and sat in the sand with her back against the boulder that marked the entrance to their private beach. Her dark-brown hair danced on the breeze. She squirmed in the sand until she found that comfortable sweet spot. Then she pulled her knees up toward her chest and closed her eyes. “I wish I was the captain of a spaceship as it glides through the sea of stars, with its engines humming a low steady rhythm.”

A gust of wind blew sand into her face, which she quickly covered with both hands. When the gust died away, she opened her eyes and blinked several times.

Heart thumping against her rib cage, she jumped to her feet and looked around. What happened?

She stood in front of a command chair on the bridge of a ship with an enormous view of space through the forward porthole. The three stations in front of her were in a horseshoe layout and each crew member wore a khaki uniform.

“Captain,” the crew member to her right said, “Admiral Borden is on the comm for you.”

As she took her seat and activated the comm, a hologram of a balding man with tufts of grey hair over his ears hovered above the arm of her chair. “Captain Gillway, I’ve got a new mission for you. Zion Colony seems to have disappeared leaving only damaged buildings behind. I need you and your crew to investigate.”

“You got it, sir.” With a nod to the admiral, she terminated the comm. “Mr. Anderson, please set a course for Zion Colony.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Wait. How did she know his name? What’s going on? She’d made a wish on the beach, then that gust of wind came up… now she captained a spaceship. She leaned back in her chair. Either that had been a magical cove, or her imagination finally got the better of her. Did it matter? She captained a spaceship and the admiral needed her to solve a mystery. She smiled as she updated the captain’s log.

“Wake up, Becca!” Her mother’s voice yelled, “What’re you doing sleeping on the beach? It’s time for dinner and you’re redder than a crab.”

She frowned. It had all been a dream. And to make it worse, she had to go to dinner with parents that would argue over how to care for her sunburn.