The Chronicles of John Grant

By Roger Dale Fry

The Chronicles of John Grant follows the life and journey of John Grant, a naval fighter pilot caught up in the global struggle to eradicate the evil forces of a parasitic reptilian race that rules the world from the shadows. In this, the first installment, our hero must forge himself into the ultimate warrior to prepare himself to become the &l

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Oct 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643678894

Roger Dale Fry

Roger Dale Fry is a 2008 graduate of the University of Colorado Denver where he earned a B. S. in communication and psychology. He went on to earn a master's in communication at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas in 2010 and holds certificates in counseling, conflict resolution and mediation. As a recovered alcoholic with long-term continuous sobriety, Roger is active in the recovery community and is a regular speaker and instructor.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Captain John Grant, USN, drove through the gate that led out of the parking lot and onto the ramp of the main freeway that led south away from the Pentagon. The meeting with his immediate boss and naval intelligence chief Admiral Charles Chip McAllister had lasted much longer that he had anticipated. He felt the fatigue starting to settle in as he reviewed the long day of sifting through certain sensitive files and writing a detailed analysis of what he was uncovering in those files.

Something wasn’t adding up and the admiral had tasked him with the assignment of ferreting out the discrepancies. He felt that he was on to something and the line of questioning by the admiral helped him to start forming a plan around where to go next.

John Grant smiled as he put his work behind him for the day, looking forward to spending the balmy fall evening lounging around the backyard with the family for a change. His wife Sarah and seven-year-old Mollie were ecstatic with his new assignment at the Pentagon intelligence office and were settling in to a normal routine in their new home. He had to admit that, as much as he loved flying Hornets off the deck of the carriers, coming home to the family every evening after work was something he thoroughly enjoyed.

Moving into the fast lane he pushed the accelerator to the floor, feeling the power of the big V-8 push him back into the seat. It wasn’t a multi-million dollar piece of military hardware, but the old ’57 Chevy still gave him a thrill when he put the pedal to the metal, as his dad use to say. Shifting smoothly through the gears, he quickly attained cruising speed and merged into the flow of traffic.

Sarah had wanted him to look at driving something new, like a BMW or the latest LS6 Corvette the other fighter jocks drove, but he thought the old Bel-Air suited his image just fine. Besides, it was one of the few things he had left of his father’s to remember him by. He thought about his father, Robert Grant USMC, the rugged marine drill sergeant who raised him in the dual role of loving, caring parent and tough taskmaster. From the time of his earliest memories, John was supported and encouraged by his father to succeed at everything he did, from the grueling martial arts training to the rigorous academic schedule his mother insisted upon.

Every task completed was rewarded by an even more challenging undertaking. John grimaced, and then smiled at what his father had expected from him. He had never let his father down, rising to the challenge again and again to overcome whatever was thrown at him.

John then thought about the day he turned sixteen. His father had taken him into the garage where the old Chevy resided in its revered stall. John was astonished and dumbfounded when his father handed him the keys to his pride and joy with misty eyes.

John, she’s yours now, he said, but she’s startin’ to show her age. As of right now, you and I are goin’ ta spruce her up a bit before you take her onto the street.

What an understatement that was. With a brand new, fresh driver’s license burning a hole in his pocket, John was ready to take her out right then and there, but that was not to be. John’s heart sank as he started to realize what the statement spruce her up a bit really meant. True to his nature, The Sarge, as he thought of his father when he knew another challenge was forthcoming, had just placed another task in front of him and, as expected, it always turned into work for John. It seemed that a total restoration of the old shoebox Chevy was in John’s immediate future.

Robert wanted his son to have a thorough working knowledge of how the car functioned, so they began by tearing it down to its component parts. John ruminated with fond memories of those tireless hours he spent with his dad, learning every aspect of how the automobile worked by first disassembling it and then painstakingly examining, rebuilding, updating and re-assembling every component, endlessly studying the repair manuals and specifications.

Every spare moment was filled with reading hot rod magazines and dreaming about cruisin’ the boulevard with the sharpest ‘rod’ in town and watching all the guys drool with envy as the girls longed to be riding beside him. Such were the dreams of a sixteen year old adolescent boy. It seems that Sarge felt this task important for John to accomplish, spending copious amounts of both time and money on the project. The rewards of accomplishing this particular task were obvious, and John was not about to drop the ball on this project, not in a million years!

John’s musing about his father and the old Chevy was suddenly cut short as he approached his own driveway. What he saw astonished and quickly angered him. A plain white van was sitting in his driveway with its rear doors open wide. His jaw dropped as he witnessed two men dragging his wife and daughter into the van!

As the doors slammed shut on the van, it pulled into the street right in front of him going the way he had just come. The driver stared him down as he drove away, looking at him square in the face. There was something odd about that face, but John didn’t have time to think about that. They were taking Sarah and Mollie!

Slamming on the brakes, he quickly turned the car around and gave pursuit. The van had already turned the corner two blocks away and was heading for the freeway. John pushed the old Chevy for all it was worth, taking the corner on two wheels and forcing the engine into the redline on the tachometer as he jammed the gears. John was astonished to see that the van was actually pulling away from him! John could just barely read the license plate, so he quickly grabbed the cell phone from its belt holster and tapped in the number nine-one-one.

What is the nature of your emergency? asked the dispatcher.

This is Captain John Grant, US Navy. My wife and daughter have just been abducted from my home. I am in pursuit of the kidnappers on Hwy One heading east towards Interstate 495, he replied.

Can you see the license plate? asked the dispatcher.

Yes, he replied. It’s a Virginia plate, ABP 461.

Just a moment, came the response. Suddenly, the phone connection was terminated. Just like that. Dead.

That was odd, he thought as he redialed. Nothing. Over and over, he tapped in 9-1-1, only to get a busy signal or no service message. That made no sense. He had used his phone on numerous occasions while driving on this road and never had a connection problem.

The van was still pulling away from him. If they got to the interstate he would lose them completely. Throwing all caution to the wind, he fell into fighter pilot mode and focused on trying his best to catch up. He turned on his lights as the last of the twilight was turning into night. John was feeling the desperation of a man losing the fight for his life when he was momentarily distracted by a bright flash of light coming through the driver’s window, and…

WHERE?

John came to behind the wheel of his beloved Chevy, sitting alongside the road on a deserted stretch of highway. What he saw before him made no sense. The morning sun was just coming up over the hills to the east, revealing the landscape of a painted desert. He then became aware of a burning sensation on his left arm and the left side of his face.

Suddenly, the awareness of what had just transpired flooded his consciousness. His wife and daughter were gone! He opened the car door and fell on his knees into the sandy shoulder of the road, overcome with grief. He allowed himself a few moments of unashamed weeping as the realization of the loss of his family slammed him squarely in the gut.

As he regained his senses he looked around in complete incredulity. What had happened, and why? Mustering every ounce of will power and training as the cold and calculating naval officer and fighter pilot that he was, he forced himself to come back to the present and take stock. He had to think! What just happened, and where the Hell was he? It didn’t seem possible that the last thing he remembered it was just turning dark, about 7:30 in the evening. Now the sun was clearly coming up as the early morning dew that covered the few bushes in sight began to evaporate. He looked at his watch for confirmation, but discovered that it had quit working at 7:28, presumably when whatever it was that happened had taken place. He reached out and felt the hood of the car – it was stone cold.

John sat there for awhile, trying to put all the pieces together, but nothing made sense. Who would want to kidnap his family, and why? Who were the people who so brazenly took his family in broad daylight? Then he remembered the face of the man he saw driving the van as it passed him in front of his house. Was it a man? He assumed that it had to be, but something just wasn’t right. He looked like a man, but there were details that just didn’t add up.

John took his time bringing the image of that face to the forefront of his memory. Blocking everything else out of his vision by closing his eyes, he studied that face in as much detail as he could remember. As he studied that face, he felt the cold tendrils of fear creeping up his spine. The skin seemed to hang on the face, not unlike a rubber mask that was too big for the wearer and it had a pallid grey hue. Then there were the eyes. The eyes! They did not seem human at all. They were very odd. They just didn’t seem to fit. Then he came to the stark realization of what was wrong with them. They did not have normal pupils, but vertical slits, like a cat, or a lizard.

John Grant’s blood turned cold at this revelation. The pieces of this particular puzzle just didn’t add up, but somehow he had to make sense of it. He had to do something, but instinctively he knew that going off half cocked and leading with his chin was a good way to get his head chopped off in a hurry. He had to collect himself and think before he did anything. It was clear to him that he had stumbled into something waaay outside his depth.

He felt himself going into shock, reeling from the experience. Recognizing his condition, John slowly sat down into the lotus position taught to him by his most revered sense’ and, reinforced by his pilot’s training, forced himself into quiet meditation. He allowed the experiences of the past few (minutes? hours?) to flow through him as he detached emotionally and just observed what had happened. It couldn’t have happened the way he remembered it, but there it was. Something extraordinary had occurred. It seemed that nearly twelve hours had passed by his reckoning, and how did he get here, wherever here was?

Something was tickling the back of his memory, so he let it seep into his consciousness. Of course! Sarah had always shown an interest in unexplainable phenomena, and now he remembered her talking about an unusual case involving a couple in – where was it, upstate New York? No, it was in rural New Hampshire. Barney and Betty Hill were driving home one night when suddenly they found themselves many miles down the road from where they were and it was hours later. Okay. So, if the story was to be believed, then his current predicament was not a unique one. Fair enough. His situation was illogical, but not unprecedented.

He thought about his cell phone, thrown onto the seat as he attempted to overtake the kidnappers. He leaned into the car to retrieve it and was astonished to see that it had somehow melted into a misshapen lump, hardly recognizable. He marveled at the ingenuity of a power or device that could melt a cell phone on a car seat without the seat showing any signs of damage at all! Just as well. Someone went to a lot of trouble to get me here, he thought, and it was probably to his benefit if no one knew where he was. Using a cell phone was a dead giveaway as to a person’s location these days if someone really wanted to know where you were. Besides, from the look of this place, there probably wasn’t a cell tower within a hundred miles of here.

His thought then went to the Pentagon – his new assignment. By now he must be A.W.O.L., or absent without leave. Would Admiral McAllister believe his story? Then he was struck by another thought. Could the Admiral be trusted? Could anyone be trusted? Until he could figure out what was going on, it would probably be wise to be very careful about whom to trust.

John looked in his wallet and counted forty six dollars in bills. The car, so recently out of moth balls, offered up nothing more than the overnight bag he always kept in the trunk for emergencies. As he removed his navy uniform and donned the fresh T-shirt, jeans and sneakers from the bag, a plan started to formulate. He had to get back to D.C. as soon as possible. He still didn’t know how much time had elapsed, but every minute he sat there gave the kidnappers more time to cover their tracks. He fought down the feeling of desperation as he got back into the car, started it up, and drove into the rising sun.

As John drove east, he began to weigh his options. He could drive back to the east coast in the old Chevy. This didn’t seem like a good choice for several reasons. The faster he could get back, the less time the kidnappers had to get away. Also, if anyone was looking for him, the Chevy would be easy to spot. He felt in his gut, that instinctive awareness that kept him alive in the cockpit many times in the past, that he was now a marked man and any human contact could be potentially fatal for him.

He needed an airplane, preferably a fast one, and a pilot. Although he could fly virtually anything in the air, flight plans had to be filed, and he was determined not to leave any trace of a paper trail. First things first; he had to figure out just exactly where he was. You can’t get to where you’re going if you don’t know where you are!

John drove for most of a half hour before coming upon a little gas station and garage all in one that looked positively ancient. Pulling up to the pumps, he looked down at the gas gauge and decided that the money in his wallet was best spent by getting him where he needed to go next, wherever that was. Filling the car and replacing the nozzle on the pump, John headed inside to pay for the gas and hopefully gather some valuable information, like just where in the Hell he was!

The inside of the little station was arguable just as decrepit and stuck in time as the outside, including the young man standing behind the counter. The skinny youngster looked like something straight out of a 60’s rock concert with long hair and a scraggly beard, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and gold-colored wire frame glasses.

Wow, Man, he said. It looks like you crashed pretty hard out there in the desert. I’ve never seen anyone sunburned on just one side before.

The burn on John’s face and arm immediately felt much worse.

"Can you tell me where I am and what day this is? He asked.

It’s much worse that I thought, replied the young man. Peyote’ll do that to ya!

John declined to comment on that remark. The young hippie reached under the counter, saying I have just the thing for you, made up by an old Indian medicine woman. The perfect remedy for the kind of sunburn you’ve got. He handed John a small jar of pasty material and said, Just rub this on the burn and the pain will get better, more tolerable.

What’s in it? asked John as he rubbed the mixture on the burns.

As far as I can tell, said the young man," it’s made up of honey, crushed