The Reluctant

A Graphic Novel Outline

Brad Wardell, July 2006

Chapter 3: You will do what we tell you to do…
Chapter 2: We're from the government...
Chapter 1: They're coming for you Ha Ha.

DL sits across a table from a man in a black suit inside what appears to be a bunker. Cement surrounds them both. Behind DL is a door that is closed.

Agent: The blood test confirms you are human. You are not one of them.

DL: I’ve been trying to tell you that for the past two days.

Agent: You will have to forgive our skepticism. In the 65 years that these beings have been here only one has been killed and that involved the United States air force dropping a multi-megaton nuclear bomb on him.

They look like us. For all we knew, you were just a renegade intruder.

DL: Well, I’m not. Can I go now?

Agent: Oh, we’re just getting started.  You may not be one of them and you may be human but you are not telling me everything.  You will stay here until you tell me everything.

DL: And why do you say that?

Agent: Because of this…

The agent presses the button on a machine in front of him on the table. The tape is full of noise and crackling but faintly, but quite audibly the words come floating out…

“Very well. This is what is going to happen. I am going to disable you now and kill your friend here. You can deliver my message – leave me and my son alone or you will regret it.”

Agent: What is your response to that?

DL: I was getting frustrated.

Agent: You knew you could kill him. Your tone is that of utter confidence. You knew you could wound him and kill the other and that is exactly what you did.

DL: If you’ve been watching the news, which I have been since I’ve had a lot of free time these past two days, you can see that it was sheer luck.

Agent: Yes yes, you appeared to fall and turn over. You are good, very good. But not perfect. The news hasn’t been showing the part before where you were able to deflect the blade of the Intruder. We’ve analyzed it even if the media hasn’t, no normal person should have been able to match blows with an Intruder.

DL: Fencing was a hobby.

Agent: Uh-huh. Sort of a ‘civil engineer’ hobby?

DL: What do you want?

Agent: I want to know who you really are.  You don’t exist. I checked. You appeared 15 years ago out of nowhere in the records.  You have no birth certificate, no childhood records, nothing.

DL: Well, after the Intruders came, I would imagine those kinds of things get lost. I haven’t been back home in years. My parents died in the battle of Austin. 

Agent: ..Right.  Or at least, you are right about one thing. We are in a war. And it is a war of survival. I will do anything if I think it helps the human race survive. I think you have knowledge to help in that. You will tell me what I need to know.

DL: Or else what?

Agent: It would be a shame if something were to happen to your son.

There is silence in the room.

DL: You would harm my son? (DL asks with deadly seriousness).

Agent: I would do anything to save the human race. I would make any sacrifice. It is a shame you do not appear to feel the same way.

The room feels still. It is almost unnaturally quiet now.  DL looks down for a moment and then looks at the agent. DL inhales deeply and holds it for a moment. He then says in a voice that is so quiet that it would not be able to be heard if it weren’t for the room being so..quiet.  In fact, it’s so quiet that the cameras in the room can’t even pick up what DL says next.

DL:  Bill, may I call you Bill?  You have a daughter Casey don’t you?  I see by your face that you do.  Right now, even as we speak, she is playing on the playground with your wife Emily. That’s a pretty name, Emily.  Your daughter..oh, no… she has just fallen off the slide and broken her leg.  Good thing she turned, there was a rock just a few centimeters away from where she fell that could have broken her neck. It would be..a shame if that had happened.  I think it’s time you let me go to my son and I go home.

Without another word, DL is taken to his son and a convoy takes DL and Ethan back to the outskirts of Plainwell PA.

Bill Gerard, special agent of the US government, rushes home to see his wife Emily who has just returned from the hospital with their daughter Casey who had an unfortunate accident at the playground and broke her leg.

Next…My dad isn’t a hero.