Episode 6 - Duck and Cover

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EPISODE six Duck and Cover

I am I am good. I couldn't. Current drying.

We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous. Since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it. First, you'll have to know what happens when an atomic bomb explodes. You will know when it comes. We hope it never comes, but we must get ready. It looks something like this. There is a bright flash, brighter than the sun, brighter than anything you've ever seen. You know how bad sunburn can feel. The atomic bomb flash could burn you worse than a terrible sunburn if you were not ready.

We interrupt this Office of Civil Defense broadcast to tune in to President John F. Kennedy, who is, at this moment, addressing the United Nations.

Today, every inhabitant of this planet Must contemplate the day. When this planet may no longer be habitable, every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads. Capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation. Or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

Men no longer debate. Whether armaments are a symptom or a cause of tension, the mere existence of modern weapons, ten million times more popular. And only minutes away from any target on Earth. is a source of horror and discord and distrust.

Good evening again, Dayton. This is Evan Bell coming to you from our studio at WKOR. Today on UFO's Tonight, we're diving back in history to where extraterrestrials were first spotted flying their spacecraft across the night skies. But first, we have some sad and disturbing news to report. Professor Gregory Van Yushin, a retired lecturer at Ohio State University, and a former guest and friend of this broadcast, was found dead in the burned out shell of his house in North Dayton yesterday.

Sir, I was listening to that.

Turn off the road up there, on the right.

There's nothing down there, not even a farmhouse. Look, Mr. Swan, stop.

Keep the engine running and leave the headlights on. Yeah.

Now what?

You can get up now.

There's a girl in the trunk.

Out you come. We're miles away from the hospital.

I am not a girl.

She's a young woman, not a girl.

She's got a boy in there with her.

Will you please quit stating the obvious Phillips? How's your brother?

Still groggy, but his breathing is regular. Thank you for inquiring after Timmy, sir.

I demand to know what's going on.

You demand.

I have a right to know when

You have no rights whatsoever under these circumstances, Phillips. You're my subordinate. As a former military man, the concept of chain of command is not foreign to you. Go and sit behind the wheel of the car. I want to speak to this young woman alone. Cigarette? These are a rare brand in these parts. Bellamor canals

No thank you. I don't smoke.

Wise decision. Do you mind if I smoke?

Go ahead. It's a free country.

Mm-hmm.

So what happens now? I mean I appreciate your help, Mr. Swan, sir. I sincerely do. But I had to abandon my uncle's truck in the hospital parking lot and pretty much everything I had with me when I left from the farm was inside.

Accept your pistol.

May I have that back, please?

No. If you point a gun at someone else and hesitate to pull the trigger, whatever happens next is the one.

My uncle relies on that pistol for rid in the vegetable garden of moles.

Moles.

I have your gun as a trade, see? Here it is. You want it back, then hand over my uncle's varmint pistol.

That's a Walther P thirty-eight, German made.

Did you fight the Nazis during the war?

I worked in the intelligence services during the last conflict. And the one before that, and the one before that, all the way back to the beginning of time. Or so it seems.

Intelligence services. Hm, that sounds important.

Any title with the word intelligence has that effect. Philip saw combat firsthand. He was one of the American soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy in July of 1944.

Way I learnt it, the Allied invasion was the turning point of the war.

It was.

He must have been just a boy.

Most of them were.

He's a war hero then.

He survived. Now he's my driver. Security will have located it by now. First thing they would have done in the aftermath of a security breach is to match the vehicle to those inside the building. And since your brother's missing from the ward, they'll be looking for him.

And looking for me in particular, I managed to finangle my way into a job in the laundry last week. They have my ID photograph on file.

Clever. Your amateur foray into undercover target infiltration. Almost worthy of a budding mole. But you're right. Now they'll be looking for you too.

So I would very much appreciate a ride to the next town over, sir. For Timmy and me, just drop us off at the nearest filling station. Then the two of us will be on our way and won't be fixing to trouble you no more.

Trouble.

is an understatement. I basically aided and abetted a kidnapper.

I didn't kidnap Timmy. I'm his blood relative.

Are you his legal guardian?

Гіссисте.

I'll take that as a no then.

What do you want from me, Mr. Swan? I stand before you destitute and with a young child in my care. I have no money to pay you. All I have to give you is my heartfelt thanks and my everlasting promise that you'll be made. Mm.

There's always a price, Becky.

Yes, I suppose there is. How could I possibly have expected there wouldn't be? I'm a virgin, mister Swan, said It has been my most sincere intention since I was a very young girl to remain chaste and pure until my wedding night.

Do you have many suitors back home?

But I'm willing to sacrifice my virginity if you would

Oh very measure for measure of you. Save your breath and button up your blouse. I don't want what you're offering. I want the boy.

What? What are you doing? Unlock the trunk this minute!

Or what?

Or I will shoot you in the heart with your own pistol.

Will you? There are threats and then there's follow through and too often the twain never meets.

Timmy! Timmy honey! Can you hear me?

Drive Phillips.

What?

Thank you.

She's pointing a gun at your head, sir.

I can see that. Take your foot off the brake, turn the car around, and press down on the gas pedal.

True.

Turn off the engine and unlock the trunk, or I swear on my daddy's grave, I will shoot you dead.

Sir, but isn't it her brother who's in the trunk?

On the count of three, I will fire one.

Amen.

Two

Dry.

Now

Bye!

Girl

I mean that young woman, she just tried to kill you.

I removed the firing pinspring. Take your gun out and shoot her.

Sir?

Rosemary informed me you should be the one to shoot people if need be.

I will not shoot that young woman, sir. She's an American, just like you and Nick.

If you won't put a bullet in her head, then drive or get out of the car.

Never raise a hand to a woman.

I'm not asking you to beat her senseless Phillips. I'm telling you to shoot her. You saw what happened. She tried to kill me.

You said you removed the firing pin so

Spring, but she didn't know that. Out. Now

Welcome to the realms of peril and glory. Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale. The paranormal mysteries of liminal London. And the cyberpunk chaos of cyborg. Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Oxventure and No Rolls. Search realms of peril and glory to find out more.

The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the Darkness chooses someone else tonight, but in the shadow darkness.

Dark.

The darkness always wins. Old school adventuring at its most cruel.

Six down in real time.

Something else rises to finish the job. Brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges.

Plunge into the Shadow Dark.

Eastern on YouTube. slash the glass cannon with the podcast for

Everybody's talking about Join us in the dark.

Hi, I'm Whitney.

And I'm Katie.

And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire. We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to. We get right to the story. We don't do a lot of extra talkin', and when we do, it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. You laugh, but only at the people who deserve it.

Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

BTK and his awful poetry. Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

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Timmy! Ow! How could you let him do that? Just drive off and leave us here in the middle of nowhere?

What was I supposed to do, Miss?

Something you should have done something He's taken my brother

I'm sure your brother will be fine.

Come again? Is that what you think? A grown adult man has just run off with a ten year old child. His exact words to me were, I want the boy. You really think I shouldn't worry?

You can't believe that Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Mr. Swan is a father himself. He has a daughter. There is no way he would ever do that.

You're a war hero, Mr. Phillips. You are pitifully naive.

I'm no hero, miss. But I think I know Mr. Swan well enough to know he would never harm a kid. Okay, he tests people sometimes. I'll give you that. But adults, not children. To see how far he can push them. To see what they will do when cornered or at their wit's end. I I think he likes to measure a person's metal when they are at their most vulnerable, to see what secrets they'll unintentionally reveal.

Ugh, that makes him a sadist.

No miss. I don't think so. It just makes him skilled at what he does.

And what does he do?

He protects us, miss. All of us. At least I think that's what he's trying to do.

Protects us from what?

Threats?

What kind of threats?

The worst kind. And it's Bobby. Well, uh Robert, but everyone I know calls me Bobby, Miss

Becky just call me Becky.

We're not gonna catch up to the car on foot.

We have to try. Where's he going, Bobby? Please tell me.

I don't know, miss. I mean Becky?

Well you're his driver. You should know.

Mr. Swan keeps his cards close to the vest.

Well, then where are you staying?

We checked out this morning.

Well where were you headed?

I don't know yet.

Where did you come from? You must at least know that much.

Washington D C But I don't think any of that matters.

Why?

See? Look, up ahead. Pulled to the side of the road, see it? I think that's Mr. Swan's car.

Timmy!

We're back, listeners. For this next hour, I'd like to welcome Norman Thorne, the noted UFO historian from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and author of Anasazis, The Vanishing of an Extraterrestrial Tribe. Welcome, Norman.

My pleasure.

So let's get right to it. UFOs, a modern phenomenon?

Not at all. The earliest UFO sightings in recorded history are found in fourth century China.

Recorded history? So there may have been UFO sightings and alien encounters well before recorded history. Of course.

Course. Human beings existed before recorded history. There's no reason why aliens would not have existed as well.

Fourth century China, go on.

Chinese texts claim a moon boat hovered above China every twelve years.

I take it there's no photographic evidence of this moon boat.

No, only accounts written down as eyewitness statements. Then we find in the book of Ezekiel.

You mean in the Bible?

Yes, in the Old Testament. In it, there's a report of a vessel being dropped out of the sky and landing in Chaldea.

Called Dea?

Modern day Kuwait. Waves of UFO sightings have occurred periodically throughout history. For example, one such sighting occurred near Rome in two hundred eighteen BC, which is notable historically as it was the beginning of the Second Punic War. which in turn was part of a series of wars between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginians led by Hannibal

Let's not sink into the mire of irrelevant tangential details, Norman.

Oh uh certainly. Then there was another wave of UFO sightings in Germany in fifteen sixty one.

You mean the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg? Of course.

Now, we may not have photographs of that either, but we do have a woodcut engraving of the event and a rather detailed written account in a broadsheet. Which is a printed sheet corresponding somewhat to our newspapers of today.

So the event made the papers. The Nuremberg celestial phenomenon is widely believed to be an extraterrestrial aerial battle or

A meteorological example of a sun dog

By sundog, I assume you mean a naturally occurring atmospheric optical phenomenon. Well that's just plain bullpucking, Norman. Not one of our savvy listeners believes that, and no one believed it back then either. In fact, I have a transcript of an eyewitness account right here. According to Hans Glazer of Nurnberg, in the sky there were what he described as blood red semicircular arcs, globes, crosses, and rods. Sounds like variations of alien spacecraft to me.

I agree with you, Evan. I'm not a skeptic here, I'm a true believer. The US Air Force tried to say the Gorman UFO was a lighted weather balloon. Okay.

They always say that. Weather balloons are their go to explanations. What, do they think we're all stupid? There weren't any weather balloons flying over Nuremberg, Germany in 1561.

He left the keys in the ignition, Becky. Is your brother okay?

He's fine, he's asleep. The drugs he's been given will take some time to wear off completely. mister Swan did open the trunk to let in the fresh evening air.

I told you so.

Where'd he go? I don't see him anywhere.

At this time of night, it's his habit to seek high ground. Uh he and his daughter have a pact. They each look up at the stars and pretend they're standing side by side, gazing at the sky together. I think it's his way of feeling close to her.

I see him. Where? Up there. On that hill.

I see him.

I'm gonna speak with him.

Oh okay, but please Please don't try to shoot him again.

Now how can I shoot'em without a firing pin spring? Here, you hold the gun if it's such a bee in your bonnet. It's too heavy to tote around anyway if it doesn't fire. Now you stand right here, Bobby, and watch over Timmy and don't you dare move. Not in the instant. I'm trusting you.

Yes, ma'am. Miss Uh Becky, I I'll stand right here and I'll keep a close eye on him. I promise. You have my word, you know.

Then I have the word of a war hero. that better be worth something, or I might stop believin' in what I should accept on faith.

Yes, ma'am. I won't.

Buy you. Buy your skin, buy you. VALASOK PATRAHITOME KUSTONK

That's not English, Mr. Swan.

No, I like the way it sounds in Russian. It reverberates with night. It evokes a place deep in the woods in the dead of winter. With fresh fallen snow on the ground, skeletal trees. Frost in the air. Dread in your heart.

What does it mean? What are you saying?

It's a lullaby I used to sing my daughter when she was small.

Your daughter understands Russia?

She speaks many languages.

In your wife? You weren't wearing a ring, so I assumed

She's multilingual as well.

You should sing it then. Sing it to the stars. If it's meant to be a lullaby, it should be sung like one.

Vaiu, vaiu, que vaiu.

Oh my goodness. I know that. My grandmother used to sing it to me, but in English. It's called the Grey Wolf. Sleep, my darling tiny one.

Start again. Yeah.

Goodbye.

What do you want with my brother, Mr. Swan?

I want to use him as sort of a human Geiger counter.

To find radiation.

No. If you're on the case, you can't do it.

I might help you.

To find the source of a signal. And possibly to unmask aliens.

Alien. You mean UFO aliens?

That's the idea.

Oh. I see. Do you?

Yeah.

No, not really. But I had to drop out of school in the tenth grade after my daddy died, so I haven't had the kind of book learning you've so clearly had, sir, speaking foreign languages and all. But that don't make me ignorant in the ways of the world. There'll be a price to pay if you want our help.

There always is young woman. And I'll pay it. If I don't, the rest of the world will be forced to. Every man, every woman, every child. And we don't want that. Nobody does.

I'm not sure I understand you, sir, and I for sure do not trust you any farther than I could throw you, and that would be about a foot on a good day.

I wouldn't expect you to. Shall we go?

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The paranormal mysteries of liminal London. And the cyberpunk chaos of cyborg.

Amen.

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There's something wrong with Beck's End. The locals know it. The visitors feel it. And when the floodwaters rise, there's nowhere left to run from it. When Alice Meyer arrives in the isolated town, she finds herself trapped by a flash flood, and a community increasingly consumed by fear, fanatic, and free.

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The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not-so-dark, not so stormy, hard-boiled detective story. Probably. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high-flying action-packed adventure will be.

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