The Hot Chick & Other Weird Tales Read online

  This is not the way a first encounter is meant to take place, with alien warships jumping out of hyperspace to attack and destroy mankind’s colonies and trading posts across the stars. We and the rest of the team now spend our spare time huddling around the terminals in the ops room listening to the news bulletins coming in over sub-space from CNN and Sky as, one by one, stations and vessels are picked off. But, and here’s the funny part, those crews who do manage to make a successful run back to the home system all report their alien pursuers call off the chase at the Oort Clouds. The message is clear: mankind can do whatever it likes, as long as it stays within the boundaries of its own solar system. And so Earth’s first galactic enterprise starts to crumble away.

  This is how it ends . . .

  Back on Kastellorizon, the alien ships take out our drilling and processing rigs, as well as a couple of hapless freighters that had the misfortune to be parked in orbit, with their first sweep through the system. About a dozen of us, including me and Lakshmi, escape on flyers and head out across the endless sands.

  We split up to improve our chances of avoiding detection and so it is that Lakshmi and I find ourselves sheltering on a small ledge in the lea of that same canyon where six weeks previously we’d first found that bloody egg. This time there is no relaxing around a campfire or the smell of grilling sandworm. We are letting our bodies grow as cool as we dare to minimise our heat signatures.

  We hear the sonic booms of the attack ships re-entering the planet’s atmosphere. We see their vapour trails heading north, then there are vibrations, followed by the sound of explosions.

  ‘Marriott’s team?’ I suggest. When we’d split up, the last we’d seen of him, along with his wife Sharna and the rest of his people, was their flyer heading north. There is no sound of any returning fire, just silence. Lakshmi’s face is grey with concern. I know how close she is with Sharna. Nervously she fidgets with the laser sights on the machine gun we’ve brought with us, although both of us know it’s unlikely to save us in a fire-fight.

  Minutes later there is another rumble in the distance. Has Lao Chang bought it now? Whatever the aliens are using to detect us is working as they are picking us off one by one. I hear Lakshmi draw a deep breath and click off the safety on the gun.

  They say you never hear the bullet that has your name on, but they are wrong. We hear it all too clearly, the sound of rocket engines heading our way. I take Lakshmi in my arms and kiss her for what I hope will not be the last time. I’m beyond caring what it does to our heat signature.

  There is the whistle of incoming ordnance and the stomach-churning clatter of a missile embedding itself in the canyon wall just a few yards away from us. It is so close we can feel the heat from its motors. I look at Lakshmi. Lakshmi looks at me and we both see a green diode light up on the missile’s flank. It flashes once, then again.

  ‘Want to risk this being another dud?’ I ask. Lakshmi shakes her head. The green diode flashes for a third time. ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘we’ve about 30 seconds. If we jump now we can reach the cave where we stashed the flyer. That should shelter us from the blast, then maybe they’ll think we’re dead and go away.’

  ‘Then what?’ she asks, as an amber light flashes for the first time.

  ‘As long as you don’t mind a diet of sandworm, we can survive. Maybe we’ll even find the Orizontals?’

  The amber diode flashes again. Lakshmi grabs my hand and we jump.

  The End of Flight Number 505

  They say a drowning man sees his entire life flash before his eyes at the moment of his death. I guess I’ll soon be finding out if this is true. Although in the case of my short life, this is not going to take very long and to be honest, it has only been during the past three weeks that things ever really started to get interesting . . .

  IT WENT LIKE THIS. My mother leans across the table towards me, smiling and says, ‘You know you joked that the Men in Black might start following us after we visited Area 51? Well, you were right to be worried; there’s two of them sat at the bar and they’re watching us now.’

  I turn around to look and she’s right. There they are, looking straight at me. Black suits, white shirts, skinny ties and dark shades despite the fact they are sitting in a badly-lit room. It crosses my mind they’ve probably been hired by the bar owner to add some atmosphere.

  Oh? My name? It’s irrelevant. You won’t have heard of me before and you certainly won’t be hearing about me in the future. But you will have heard the phrase ‘the holiday of a lifetime.’ Well, this was to be the holiday of my lifetime. Which is kind of an odd thing to say, seeing as I’m only 16 years old, but in my case fate has already determined I will not live to see my 17th birthday.

  I’m sorry, I apologise. That does sound unnecessarily melodramatic, but how else do you expect me to feel? I’m a terminal cancer patient who has been living on and off Death Row since, well, it seems like forever and I’ll be dead and in my grave before I can vote, drive or legally buy a drink. Of course, I went through all the drugs and the radiation treatment and for a brief time it looked as if the Big C was in remission. But this was not to be. The tumour hadn’t been killed. The medium-term prognosis was the cancer would spread to my other organs and it has.

  It was then that I enjoyed one of those singular pieces of dumb luck that randomly inflict themselves on people from time-to-time.

  Like many kids of my generation, when I’d been born, one of my grandparents had splurged out on a few tickets for the old Premium Bonds draw and put them in my name. Had I not been spending the previous couple of years in and out of clinics and cancer wards, I’d have probably cashed them in by now and blown the money on something really useful, like new ring tones for my mobile phone. Instead, they sat there, largely forgotten about, in my mother’s bureau drawer until one day one of the numbers came up.

  It wasn’t a huge, life-changing win, but it was enough. Enough for my parents to both have time off from work, to take me on a holiday to see all those places I’d wanted to visit and still have enough left to pay for the best medical care in a hospice when we came home.

  Sorry, I’m being maudlin again. It really has been a great holiday. We’ve been touring the south-western corner of the United States and indulging my interest in UFOs. You’ve got it - I was the nerdy kid at school, obsessed with science fiction, conspiracy theories, alien abductions and who really did have difficulty getting to grips with the fact The X-Files series was entertainment and not a documentary.

  OK, I was never quite that bad and can laugh about it now, but you get the general picture. Anyway, we did Area 51 by lurking on a hill top with a pair of binoculars hoping to see a top-secret aircraft, or maybe even a captured flying saucer before we were seen off by the MIBs in one of their black stealth helicopters. But we didn’t see anything and we thought they hadn’t seen us.

  So now here we are down in Roswell, just in time for the town’s annual UFO Festival. I’m sitting in a diner eating hamburgers, drinking Cokes, laughing and talking with my folks (shouting actually, the diner’s sound system is on loud and they are blasting out some ancient Rolling Stones tracks), surrounded by the biggest collection of aliens and freaks you could ever hope to meet. Well, not real aliens but tonight the diner’s hosting a galactic costume party. The chemo may have taken every hair on my body, but for once I’m not the odd one out here. It’s like the Mos Eisley cantina scene in the original Star Wars movie.

  As a day in the life of my death goes, things really don’t get much better than this. But I spoke too soon . . .

  I keep taking a sneaky peek at the two Men in Black at the bar at the back of the diner and I begin to wonder: what if they are not government secret agents after all? What if they are aliens, with an ironic choice of clothing? You can tell I spend too much time by myself, with only my own imagination for company. But if that were the case, what must these aliens be thinking as they watch the diner’s bizarrely clad and increasingly excited, and intoxicated, custo
mers dancing around them?

  I can see them drinking their drinks and apparently nodding in conversation only their lips never move. Perhaps they are telepaths or even androids taking their instructions from a giant, artificial brain located in a flying saucer somewhere nearby? Perhaps they are preparing the groundwork for one of those alien abductions you always read about? At least for once disguise is not going to be an issue. Nor is there any need for them to attempt to blend in with the local population. Apart from the people serving behind the bar, just about everyone else is in heavy make-up and fancy dress pretending to be an alien.

  Oh man, the two MIBs - or who or whatever they are - are scanning the room with what look like Star-Trek-style handheld tricorders. Not that anyone notices as everyone else in the room appears to be permanently checking their phones for messages.

  I don’t believe it, they’re openly pointing their tricorders at me. I see a flicker of light, a weird mauve light, at the business end of their scanners and then feel a sharp tingle run through my body. ‘Hey,’ I yelp, ‘did anyone else feel that?’

  My father shakes his head. ‘Feel what?’ asks my mother.

  Hmmm, I think to myself, maybe these guys just have something against bald kids. If they get a dose of the far, far above-average trace of residual radiation in my body, that’ll wipe the smile off their faces. I take another bite of my burger to show them I’m not scared and don’t care. But when I look up again, their seats are empty and they’ve gone. Shit, I’m imagining things, maybe my meds need checking.

  ‘Hey! Who’s there? Is that you Dad? Dad?’

  Fuck, it’s the Men in Black from the diner and one of them is pointing a funny-looking gun at me. There’s a piercing flash of mauve light. A numbing wave of pain. And then nothing.

  Later . . . I wake in a strange room. It’s so vast it has to be either a warehouse or an aircraft hangar. There are spotlights blazing down on me. No, let me correct that, there are operating theatre lights blazing down on me and I am strapped down, naked, on a cold, stainless-steel table. The kind of cold, stainless-steel tables you only ever see in TV crime-show autopsy scenes. There are two people in the room peering at me - the MIBs from the diner, only now they’ve removed their shades to reveal their eyes.

  Luminescent mauve, multi-faceted eyes. Like something belonging to an insect, but with lids that open and close from side-to-side, rather than from top-to-bottom. One of them holds a metallic, multi-pronged probe in his hand, that makes me feel sick just to look at it.

  I stare into those eyes. I feel something crawling inside my brain. It is a series of images unfolding within my mind. Are these aliens communicating with me by telepathy or something? Or maybe all the drugs in my body have given me a heightened sense of perception?

  You know that floaty, out-of-the-body feeling you get just before you fall asleep? I am getting it now in my mind. I’m flying. I’m flying over a strange planet in some far-off star system. It’s the aliens’ home world. Actually, ‘home’ is a charitable word to use for this place as the planet’s surface is little more than an arid waste of radioactive slag, wracked by hurricane force storms. As for the inhabitants, those who aren’t already dead or dying of radiation sickness have taken to the skies to scour the galaxy for biotech cures and suitable planets to colonise.

  The tips of the probe in the alien’s hand begin to spin. I feel a stabbing in my side. ‘Please, no!’

  I think, surely nobody really gets abducted by aliens? I pass out again, but in one final moment of consciousness, as my head lolls to the side, I briefly glimpse something else in the room. It is a huge silver disk-shaped vehicle. A flying saucer?

  Hours later I awake in another strange room, but this time it is different. This time it smells of cleanliness and disinfectant. I am lying in a comfortable bed and there is daylight blazing in through the windows. There are two people in the room peering down at me - my mother and father. And they are smiling. In fact it’s been a long time since I’ve seen my mother look this happy.

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ she says, her eyes welling with tears.

  ‘The doctors can’t explain it. They say every trace of the cancer has gone from your body. When we found you unconscious in your room, we thought you’d had a relapse but . . . you’re cured.’

  I’m cured? But what about the aliens? Nobody mentions anything about this. Surely the doctors here would have noticed if I’d been subjected to some kind of invasive medical procedures? As soon as I get the opportunity, and a bit of privacy, I check myself over in the bathroom mirror, but there is not a mark or even a bruise to be seen on my body.

  Maybe it had all been a dream. In which case it was definitely the worst nightmare I have ever had and I had some bad ones when I was on the chemotherapy. I make a mental note to never again eat cheese burgers and fries with extra chillies late in the evening.

  There again, perhaps this was all part of a giant cover-up? Whatever! I really don’t care. The sun is shining. I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in years. My parents are happy. I still have nearly a week of the vacation left including time to catch some of the latest rides at Disney World in Orlando (OK, I admit it, I do want to go on Space Mountain and visit the Jedi Training Academy) before we head home. And, what’s this? Is this stubble I can feel growing on my chin?

  We board Flight 505 to make the journey home, three days before my 17th birthday. I should have realised you can never cheat fate; it was my destiny to die young.

  They shoot the plane down over the Atlantic. Those aliens have a sense of humour; they launch the attack while we are crossing the Bermuda Triangle. And yes, this is no dream or fantasy, this is for real, this is a hostile attack. I glimpse the tell-tale mauve flash of their weapons fire moments before the first blast rocks the plane.

  I can only guess they discovered my travel arrangements when they took me from my room in Roswell that night and are now eliminating any witnesses who may have guessed at their plans. Stupid plans if they thought the samples they’d extracted from me could be turned into a cure for radiation sickness. Pity someone hasn’t explained cause and effect to them.

  As the plane begins to break up, there is still a smile on my face at the thought of those poor dumb aliens injecting their remaining healthy population with my poisonous cancer cells.

  I must have lost consciousness. For a moment I imagine I’m on a train, trundling across Norfolk in the rain. But I’m not, I’m trapped in my seat in a disintegrating plane that is plunging into the North Atlantic, seven miles below.

  My name? It’s irrelevant. You won’t have heard of me before and you certainly won’t be hearing about me in the future. Let’s just say I’m the kid who destroyed an alien civilisation and saved the human race. As I blackout again, my subconscious mind chooses these final moments to indulge in a little irony by replaying one of the old Stone’s songs playing on the sound system at the Roswell diner. It was the one about the pilot putting a passenger jet down in the sea. Oh, my god. The song was called ‘The End of Flight Number 505’.

  Mission accomplished, back in the shadow of the far side of the Moon, an alien ship engages faster-than-light drive as its crew prepare for the return flight to their home world. Across the galaxy this scenario is being repeated in countless craft returning from countless worlds. It has been happening for generations and will continue for decades into the future, until the planet’s remaining resources are finally exhausted and the last diode on the last still functioning computer flickers into darkness.

  Yet nothing will ever come of all this effort because the alien race is already extinct. All that remains on this ghost world is a research programme, ticking along on automatic control and manned by an army of androids. Androids built in the image of their long-dead creators, with luminescent mauve, multi-faceted eyes. Androids with absolutely no perception of the futility and irrelevance of their mission.

  Stupid plans. That poor kid on Flight 505 didn’t know the half of it.

 
Already Gone

  ‘I TOLD YOU YOUR Uncle Charlie would get us all back to the city safe and sound.’

  And fast, I could have added. We’d had to leave Dereham in a hurry. The BMW was hot in every sense of the word. And you know how bad some of these bloody Norfolk roads can be. For fuck’s sake, it’s the twenty-first century, yet some of them are still hardly much better than cart tracks! I mean, what are we paying our taxes for? OK, strike that last remark, I’ve never knowingly paid a penny of tax in my life.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Mikey, ‘but I never know whether it’s Uncle Charlie driving the car or the charlie that’s driving Uncle Charlie. You certainly cut it a bit close when you overtook that Merc coming off the dual-carriageway. You sure we didn’t hit it?’

  ‘Ah shut the fuck up. Of course we didn’t. We’re back in our flat, aren’t we?’ I reply.

  I say ‘our flat’ but actually we’re looking after it for the owner who works out in Dubai. Or Delhi. Or Durban. Anyway, somewhere foreign. At least that’s what we tell the neighbours when they complain about the noise, particularly when there’s a Canaries game on. Did I mention the apartment block conveniently overlooks Carrow Road football ground? Besides, we’re doing it out of the kindness of our hearts and not charging the guy a penny. In fact, it’ll come as a total surprise to him when he finds out we’ve been staying here.

  I get some tinnies of Newky Brown from the fridge, pass one to Mikey and toss the other to Jezza, the third member of our little group tonight. ‘Hey, Jez, you’re quiet and as white as a sheet. What’s up, you seen a ghost or something?’ I hear Mikey snigger in the background. ‘Get this beer down you,’ I say. ‘It’ll put some colour back in your cheeks.’

  ‘I’m not feeling too good,’ says Jez, as he fiddles with the ring-pull on his beer can, ‘I’m feeling cold, really, really cold.’