Jesse's Starship Read online

  Jesse’s Starship

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One • Chapter Two • Chapter Three • Chapter Four • Chapter Five • Chapter Six • Chapter Seven • Chapter Eight • Chapter Nine • Chapter Ten • Chapter Eleven • Chapter Twelve • Chapter Thirteen • Chapter Fourteen • Chapter Fifteen • Chapter Sixteen • Chapter Seventeen • Chapter Eighteen • Chapter Nineteen • Chapter Twenty • Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Books by Saxon Andrew

  About Saxon Andrew

  Introduction

  Jess knocked on the truck’s roof and indicated that he had arrived at his destination. The truck came to a stop and pulled over on the shoulder of the road. Jess climbed out the F-150’s bed and walked around to the driver’s door, “Thanks for the ride.” The trip back out to the desert from Phoenix had been uneventful and he was fortunate the farmer had picked him up almost immediately after he put out his thumb.

  The middle aged man stared at Jess and slowly shook his head, “What are you doing stopping here? There’s nothing out there but coyotes and snakes.”

  Jess smiled, “There are a lot of beautiful stones and a few loose treasures lying around. This is where I make my living.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “About three years.”

  The farmer’s eyes grew wider, “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “This isn’t the best place to live a good life.”

  Jess shook his head, “Sometimes, life isn’t all that good, sir.”

  “What were you doing in town?”

  Jess sighed, “I go to a specialty store about once a week to sell what I find out here; the money provides me with enough to pay for my food.” Jess looked at his dusty clothes and shook his head, “I also need to take a bath occasionally. It gets to the point where I can’t stand myself.”

  The farmer put out his hand, “My name is Mike Sanders; I have a farm about ten miles down the road. If you ever need work….”

  “Thanks, but I need to stay out here.”

  The farmer looked out at the desolate desert, “For God’s sake, why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  Jess stared at the stranger and saw he was genuinely interested. He sighed. “Nine years ago my family and I came camping out here. Our next door neighbor’s daughter came with us; her name was Mandy.” Jess pointed to the east, “We found a good camping spot about two miles into the desert from here.”

  “What happened?”

  “How do you know something happened?”

  “You’re here nine years later. There must be a reason for that.”

  Jess slowly nodded. After a moment he sighed, “I left them to answer nature’s call. When I came back; they were gone.”

  “What?”

  Jess looked Mike in the eyes, “They disappeared without a trace. My mother, my father, my younger brother and Mandy simply vanished. I wasn’t that far away and there were no screams, no sounds, nothing; they were just gone.”

  “Surely there was some kind of tracks or something?”

  “I was ten and it was night. I didn’t know anything about tracks or how to read the desert. I was great at Nintendo, but that was about all. Our SUV was still there and I just knew they had to be close by. I initially thought they were playing a joke on me and hiding; but after searching and screaming for an hour, I discovered it was no joke. I was hysterical and if they had been there they would have never taken the joke that far. I got in the car and managed to drive it to this road…” Jess looked around and pointed again, “between those two large boulders and waited for someone to drive by. An eighteen wheel truck saw me waving in the road and stopped. I told him what happened and he could see I was pretty much incoherent. He used his CB radio to contact the county Sheriff’s office and waited until they arrived. A month later, I was placed in a state children’s home and my family was listed as an unsolved case. I ran away when I was sixteen and…here I am.”

  Mike stared at Jess and tilted his head, “There are some things you just have to let go, son.”

  Jess looked him in the eyes, “This isn’t one of them.”

  Mike slowly nodded and smiled, “Well… I admire your tenacity. It’s a shame you gave up your education and a normal life.”

  Jess swung his back pack off his shoulder and opened it. Mike saw three books inside. Jess pulled one out and showed it to Mike, “I’m currently reading Stephen Hawking’s new book along with the last Nobel Prize winner’s book on dark matter and its effect on gravity.” Mike stared at Jess and saw him look up at the sky, “It’s too hot to move around out here in the desert during the afternoon. I pass my time by reading. I haven’t given up much on learning; although I could use some help with the calculus textbooks on occasion.”

  Mike nodded and made a decision, “I go into town every Thursday morning to meet with my shipper; I pass by here around nine. If you want, you can ride in with me and I’ll give you a ride back in the afternoon or evening.”

  Jess smiled, “Thank you. That really would be a great help.”

  “Don’t mention it; I know how much a family means. See you in a week.”

  Jess watched the truck pull off and waved. He watched the red taillights disappear and he turned toward the boulders. He looked out at the desert and felt the temperature start dropping as the sun touched the horizon. He began hiking to the site where his family disappeared. He hadn’t mentioned that the third book was one he always kept with him. “Unexplained Disappearances,” was the only book he had ever purchased. He discovered he was not the only one with missing loved ones. He used the regional library to not only check out textbook but to look online and research unsolved case logs from all over the Southwest. He learned there were six instances very similar to his. He knew from the statistics textbooks he had studied that there were probably many more. It was an accident that he had stepped away when whatever happened took place. The odds had to be much higher that the numbers of disappearances were more numerous than those recorded. Someone escaping the event had to be rare.

  He smiled as he remembered what had made him decide to come back to this place of sorrow. He read a Field and Stream Magazine when he was twelve and a top ranked angler said that fishermen always returned to their best fishing holes. They jealously guarded their locations and always used them again and again. Jess looked up at the sky. Someone…or something, had caught his family. This is where they would come again. There were enough tourists that visited the park to make it an attractive spot for an alien angler. It was also located in such an isolated and desolate location that discovery would be next to impossible.

  He hiked for ten minutes and saw four large boulders among the towering cacti. He went to the largest one on the right, bent down, and pulled a box from under the sand. He carefully wiped it off, opened it, and pulled out a plastic bag. He removed a holster and an H&K P-40 out of the bag and pulled the slide back. A forty caliber hollow point round snicked into the chamber and he put it in the holster. He ran his belt through the holster’s loops and adjusted it to where it felt comfortable. After three years of practice, rattlesnakes were slower than his draw. Snakes weren’t the only reason he had taken it. It belonged to his father and was in the SUV when he went missing. He resealed the plastic bag, put it back inside the box, and buried it under the boulder. He learned early on that it wasn’t a good idea to take a gun into Phoenix. This was the safest and closest place to the road to leave it. He just had to be careful not to walk up on a rattler before he picked it up. He turned abruptly as a desert breeze blew sand at him. He wiped the sand from around his face and neck and continued his hike.
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  Night was coming and the evening desert wind began blowing. The temperature was dropping fast and the temperature differential between the mountains and the flat desert below them started wind blowing down toward the desert. Sand began moving and his pants received a coating of the fine silicon particles. He stopped and looked around for rattlesnakes and then turned to continue his two mile hike. He moved around the tall saguaro cacti scattered like spikes dropped into the soil from high altitude. He always carefully removed those that grew on the worn path he followed to the road and knew if he ever left for any length of time, that path would close quickly. He saw a rattlesnake under a rock to his right as it started warning him to come no closer. The P-40 came out almost too fast to see and a shot rang out.

  Jess collected the six foot long reptile and decided it would be the evening’s meal. He’d save the dry goods he purchased earlier in town for another day. He looked around and collected the shell casing ejected from the H&K and put it in his back pocket. The gun shop would give a small discount on the next box of rounds he purchased if he brought the used brass in. He could have ignored the reptile but it might have made the rock its new home and he didn’t need snake eggs buried that close to his trail. The sun moved below the horizon and he saw the small cut in the rocks ahead. He turned sideways and slid between two boulders and walked to the back of the small open space to his cave.

  The opening in the rocks was a perfect place to cut a cave out. The overhang protected it from sand storms and the walls around it prevented the occasional storm from overwhelming him. He found the spot by accident; the cave was already there when he entered it for the first time. Someone must have dug it out a long time ago.

  He cooked the snake and ate the raw carrots the farmer had insisted he take with him. He cleaned his plate with sand and put it into a plastic bag. He left the cave and climbed up the rock wall outside the cave entrance and looked off in the distance; he smiled as he saw the bright glow of Phoenix reflecting off a few rare clouds. His deep set green eyes missed very little. He was six feet two inches tall and appeared to have an average build. However, he was lean and his strength was phenomenal. Very few species that lived in the desert had much fat on them; the hot sun would burn it off quickly. His hair was somewhere between light brown and blonde; he had a light beard and a mustache that made him look older than his nineteen years. If you looked in his eyes, he appeared older still. One just didn’t acquire that expression as a youth.

  He avoided most of the tourists that came to hike and explore Usery Mountain Regional Park. The park was located on the eastern edge of Phoenix at the beginning of the Superstition Mountain Range and offered a view back into Arizona’s history. There was a pool of water that was believed to have existed since the first early Americans appeared. It provided him with a constant supply of water, which was critical to survival in the desert. He would go to the pool at night to collect what he needed, and leave.

  He would often have to wait for tourists to vacate the premises but he had time in abundance and he often hid close by; he found them amusing. The Cholla Cactus looked like it had a fine coat of fur on it from a distance; however, the spines were sharp and painful. It wasn’t a good idea to walk around at night and stray from the trail. The Cholla was ever present and the tourist’s screams could be heard from a distance…a long distance. Pulling those needles out wasn’t much fun either. It was those tourists that were the bait for whoever had taken his family.

  He climbed down the wall and entered the cave close to the site of the disappearance and settled in. He lit a candle and listened to the sounds of the desert as he spread a fine nylon net over the small cave’s entrance. It was stretched tight from a series of hooks he had embedded in the rock around the opening and he placed four large rocks to anchor it to the ground and sighed.

  The Farmer was a nice man. The ride into town would make it much easier to plan his week. He heard the occasional car horn where a child would blow it to scare their parents. He had done the same thing when his family drove up to the camp site those many years ago. He laughed when his father jumped two feet off the ground. That’s what made him think they were hiding to get even. He felt immense sorrow try to take him but fought it off. He put a sleeping bag under his head and eventually fell asleep. He nearly woke up when the rattlesnake crawled up to his net and attempted to enter; but the stones at the base of the net prevented it. It sensed the heat source in the cave with the small pits on its nose but quickly determined it could move no closer. It heard a small noise and recognized the sound as coming from a mouse. It turned, left the netting, and moved out of the small opening between the rocks. Jess returned to a deep sleep.

  Chapter One

  Elese sat in her desk and thought about objects traveling at light speed. The Physics Professor was certain that no physical object could move faster than the speed of light. It was possible to come close…and the closer you approached it, some remarkable things would start happening. She was amazed that if a star ship could accelerate to within one mile per hour of light speed, time would change radically. Ten thousand years would pass outside the ship while only a minute would pass for the occupants inside. She struggled to get her brain wrapped around the concept and just couldn’t see it.

  She stared through the window and saw a rather attractive male student pass by outside. He reminded her of the young man that had come and visited her a year earlier. She was moving into the freshman dorm her first day at the University of Arizona and heard a knock on her open door. He was standing in her doorway and he looked rather grungy. Not a bum…but close. She was surprised he didn’t stink as dirty as he looked.

  Are you Elle Moreland?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you have a moment?”

  “What do you want; and who are you?”

  “I’m Jess Smith and I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “What questions?”

  “When I was ten years old, my family disappeared in the desert.” Elle sat down slowly on her bed and stared at the young man. “I was about thirty yards away at the moment it happened and didn’t hear or see anything. One moment they were there and the next they were gone. I’ve read a police report that you experienced something similar.”

  “GET OUT OF HERE!”

  Elle saw the instant sorrow the young man’s face, “I apologize for intruding. I just need to find some answers.” He turned and walked out of her doorway. Elle felt her tears but, after a moment, she jumped up and ran into the hallway. She looked both ways and saw the man exit the building at the far end of the hall. She sprinted down the hall and slammed the door open as she rushed outside, “Wait! Please wait!” Jess turned and saw the young woman running toward him. “I’m sorry; I’ve just had so many people question me about this and not believe what I tell them. I have so many nightmares about what happened.”

  The young man looked into Elle’s eyes, “It’s the not knowing that drives me toward insanity.”

  Elle nodded, “I know the feeling well.”

  Jess saw a bench a few feet away and pointed to it. Elle followed him over and they sat down. Jess stared at the freshmen moving into the dorm and sighed, “I apologize for my appearance. I put on my best clothes but, as you can see; my best leave much to be desired.”

  “You look like a bum, no offense.”

  “None taken; you’re right. I’ve spent the last two years living in the desert where my family was taken.”

  “What do you mean taken?”

  Jess turned and looked Elle in the eyes, “I was ten years old; do you think they would have willingly left me behind?”

  Elle sighed and shook her head. “Why are you living in the desert?”

  “If they came once; they might come again.”

  “Who do you mean, ‘they’?”

  The young man stared at her and said, “Elle, are you familiar with Occam’s razor?” Elle nodded. “When you eliminate everything that can be removed, what
remains is probably true. You know what that is. Will you tell me what happened?”

  “Why?”

  “It might help me see if something I removed needs to be put back in. I just don’t know if I have all the information.”

  “Is Jess a nickname?”

  The young man smiled, “One of my childhood friends told several bullies to back off. He said I lived on the Jagged Edge of Sanity and they’d regret starting something. From that point on he called me Jes and soon everyone else did as well. I added an SE later.”

  “Did they?”

  “Did they what?”

  “Start something?” Jess gave a small nod. “And?”

  “I took some very serious frustrations out on them. It took four teachers to pull me off.”

  “How good are you at keeping promises?”

  “I promised myself I would never give up on finding my family.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened if you’ll promise me one thing.”

  “What is that?”

  “If you ever uncover anything substantial on what happened, you will contact me immediately. Not a week later, nor a day, immediately.”

  “I live in the desert. I don’t exactly have the means of making a call.”

  “Then you will make the means to do it; you have to promise me.”

  Jess stared at her and sighed, “I promise to contact you as quickly as humanly possible if I find out anything.”

  Elle got a faraway look and started talking. “We were camping in the desert outside Albuquerque. We rented a motor home and my mom and I said good night to my father and younger brother. They chose to stay outside by the fire; John loved hearing ghost stories my father created for him; he was only seven years old.” Elle fought her tears and kept her voice steady. Jess thought Elle was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. Her hair was blonde and her eyes were the clearest blue. She didn’t have any makeup on; she didn’t need it. She was about six inches shorter than he and very nicely put together. He saw they shared one trait; they both had troubled eyes.