by Tammy Walsh
Alien Breeder’s Seed
Tammy Walsh
Contents
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1. Isabella
2. Ras
3. Isabella
4. Ras
5. Isabella
6. Liam
7. Isabella
8. Ras
9. Isabella
10. Ras
11. Liam
12. Isabella
13. Ras
14. Isabella
15. Ras
16. Isabella
17. Ras
18. Isabella
19. Ras
20. Isabella
21. Ras
22. Isabella
23. Ras
24. Isabella
25. Ras
26. Isabella
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Owned by the Alien Sneak Peek
1. Alice
Also by Tammy Walsh
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Isabella
It was the craziest storm I had ever seen.
Clouds smothered the horizon with a powdery grey-white canvas.
Every few moments, a sharp flash of light, sometimes green, other times neon blue, broke through and cast long patches across the wet tarmac of the motorway.
Then a deep rumbling followed hot on the lightning’s heels, making the steering wheel beneath my hands vibrate.
The storm was right on top of us.
There wasn’t anything particularly different about that, I thought. Lately, my entire life had been consumed with storms.
The window wipers slashed across the front windscreen, throwing the hard rain off by the bucketload.
I slowed down as I took a wide turn.
Driving at night always made me nervous.
The rain only added to my nervousness.
I hadn’t driven a car for more than five years, and it didn’t help I had to wrestle with my father’s big old pick-up either.
Coming to my hometown in the country was meant to help ease me back into a more regular lifestyle.
But returning after barely visiting for so long had made fitting in more difficult than I expected.
Most of my old friends had moved away from home, just as I had done, living in cities dotted across the nation in search of work to escape toiling in the fields.
Then old friends began to emerge from the woodwork like background characters in a bad comic book.
Not that they had ever really been friends.
They’d been acquaintances, classmates, people you saw now and then but never really spoke to.
I was surprised they remembered me as I so often found it difficult to remember them.
Even more shocking was discovering how excited they were to meet me.
They insisted on talking about old times—even though we never really shared any.
And they stuck to me like glue.
It didn’t take me long to realize it was my mom who had convinced her friends to encourage them to come.
“It’s good for you to meet new people,” she said.
“They’re not new people. They’re people I never spoke to at school. So why should I speak to them now?”
“People change over time.”
“Only if they do different things. Ashbourne hasn’t changed since I left, so what could change them?”
A thunderous boom tore across the sky and made me jump in my seat, accidentally swerving into the middle of the road.
An identical pick-up heading in the opposite direction flashed their lights and honked their horn as they zipped past.
“Sorry,” I said, glancing over at Trudy.
She clutched her fake Louis Vuitton handbag close to her chest and kept her keen eyes firmly on the windscreen as the window wipers stabbed like a murderer’s arm.
“The Spur is just up ahead,” she said. “Maybe we can stop there until this storm finishes?”
And have to put up with her for another couple of hours? I thought. I’d spent the day shopping with her already and I had no intention of turning it into an all-nighter.
“We’ll get home faster if we keep going,” I said.
Trudy nodded but her round eyes didn’t leave the windscreen.
She might as well have screamed at the top of her lungs:
“That’s if we manage to get home!”
The storm had come on quickly and without preamble, like a stalker waiting in the bushes to leap out at the least opportune moment.
I’d always been a city girl, even if I had been born in the wide-open spaces of Ashbourne.
The basket of America.
The basket case of America more like.
After my friend had been abducted by a random stranger—a random stranger I had encouraged her to approach no less—the city morphed from a place of potential and light into one of darkness and danger.
It’d always been that way, but I’d always managed to distract myself with parties and drinks and, above all, men.
After my friend disappeared to God knows where, I found I could no longer block out the darker, seedier aspects of city living.
Suddenly, the city was no longer exciting, but dangerous.
And I felt the overwhelming need to return to my roots, where I belonged.
Ashbourne.
I quit my job, packed up my things, and alerted my parents to my intentions.
They were happy to see more of me, but after three months, I was beginning to grow weary of this place the same way I had five years ago.
Trudy pointed out the windscreen toward a block of warm and inviting yellow light.
Despite the cascading rain, I could make out the single block of red neon light and spinning yellow spur on one corner that signified The Spur bar.
My foot began to ease off the gas.
Maybe stopping, ordering a drink, and waiting out the storm wouldn’t be so bad.
But when I spotted the patrol car parked in the lot, my hesitating foot buried itself on the gas pedal.
The day had been a washout as it was.
I didn’t need to make it even worse.
“The lot’s full,” I lied. “It’s not far to your house anyway.”
Trudy settled back into the passenger seat and clutched her bag even tighter to her chest.
Trudy wasn’t a bad sort.
She just wasn’t my sort.
At high school, she’d always been the studious one, joining the chess club and spelling bee, mastering both.
Of all the girls in my year, I expected her to be the highflyer.
Instead, she never got up the gumption to shake this dusty old town from her heels and remained here.
I spotted her exit and took the long turn that led onto her street.
I pulled up outside her house, both of us relieved she would soon be getting out of the pick-up.
She reached for the door handle, paused, and turned back to me.
“Um, are you sure you’ll be all right getting home tonight?”
She didn’t want me to come inside, which was why she hadn’t offered me a cup of coffee.
Under different circumstances, I might have taken her up on her non-offer just to wind her up but felt I would be the one who came off worse if I accepted.
She yanked on it and, as promised, the door wouldn’t open.
She yanked harder but it still wouldn’t open.
“You have to pull on the handle and shoulder the door at the same time,” I said.
Trudy gave me a look that promised her presence wouldn’t be much of a problem in the future.
She did as I suggested and the door flew open.
She barely managed to catch herself before falling out.
She slammed the door behind her and trudged up the path to her front door.
I waited until she was inside before pulling out.
My parents’ farm was another ten miles down the freeway.
Ten miles of freedom.
It was the best part of the whole day.
I made the slow circle back to the freeway and waited for two cars that passed before pulling out.
The cars’ tail lights were lost within minutes.
Thick American Elms reared up on either side of the freeway, pointing like spears at the overcast skies.
I needed to think about what I was going to do next with my life.
For three months I’d been contemplating the same question and I still had no answer.
It felt like I was waiting for something.
But what?
I had no idea, but it was a prickling sensation at the back of my mind, daring me to do otherwise.
Eventually, I would have to confront what happened to my abducted friend and the role I played in it.
She never would have approached the stranger if it wasn’t for me.
Whatever happened to her was my fault.
I felt the familiar hot wad form in the back of my throat, ticklish and stinging.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and kept my grip firmly on the steering wheel.
The darkness closed in around me, fitting tightly like a shroud.
I’d grieved for my missing friend many times over the past year but never found much relief.
I got the feeling she was still out there somewhere, still alive.
I couldn’t explain how I knew that, I just did.
It was the kind of feeling that would never go away, not until someone presented me with her body on a cold slab.
I shook my head of the idea and focused on the road.
I arched around the broad swell of Phoenix Lake.
From here, the random neon green and blue flashes of lightning reflected off the lake’s dimpled surface.
That’s when I heard it:
A thunderous neon blue explosion and a screeching cry at complete odds with the booming thunder from earlier.
A glint of moonlight winked off the metal frame of the plummeting object.
“Oh my God!”
The metal craft zipped through the air, its tail green with fire as it careened toward the road—my road!
Right where I was driving.
I grabbed the wheel with both hands and swung it around.
The metal screamed as if in pain as it grew louder—and bigger!—in my windscreen.
My previous swerve brought me directly into its line.
I swerved again.
The entire pick-up shuddered as the object slammed into the lake’s surface, sending up a high wall of water that splashed over my pick-up.
It obliterated any view I might have had and I slammed on my brakes.
The wheels lost their grip and spun around in a wide arc.
I slammed my feet on the brakes again, screamed, and shut my eyes.
The pick-up jerked violently as it came to a stop.
For the longest time, I just sat there, staring out the windscreen, my hands clenching the wheel so firmly my knuckles turned white.
My breaths came in short shallow panicked bursts and I must have struck the indicator at some point as it flashed, casting sporadic pools of orange light across the muddy surface of the lake’s edge.
And there, poking out from the water’s surface, a tall shard of metal that appeared to be the tail of an airplane.
It slowly sank beneath the surface.
I should get out and jump in the water, I told myself. I should get out, swim down there, and rescue the pilot.
But I wasn’t a good swimmer and knew without a shadow of a doubt that if I tried to rescue anybody from the depths, I would only add an extra tally to Death’s quota for the evening.
The shard inched further into the lake, displaced by bubbles of gas.
And within moments, the shard disappeared beneath the surface.
Rain patted my pick-up’s roof and the window wipers continued to slash at the windscreen.
I reached down and turned them off in an attempt to wipe the memory from my mind as easily.
Stupid!
I turned the wipers back on.
I reached into my pocket and came out with my cellphone.
A single bar of signal, but it was enough.
I thought carefully about what I was going to say.
An airplane crashed into Phoenix Lake and the pilot is still inside.
Even saying it now, it was hard to believe.
I dialed the number.
Suddenly, a new disturbance erupted on the water’s surface.
Not bubbles of oxygen, but a solid lump.
A figure.
He tossed back his head and spurted a mouthful of oxygen.
Then he reached toward the shore, wading weakly toward it.
My call was answered:
“911. What’s your emergency?”
I dropped the phone and leaped out of the pick-up.
I ran to the edge of the lake.
The figure was male, I thought, and flailed, struggling to reach the shore.
I kicked off my shoes and waded into it.
I reached out and snatched his arm.
He was heavy and almost took me under with him.
Luckily, my feet were still on solid ground.
It slipped beneath my feet but together we inched up the shallow incline.
Later, I would wonder how I managed to pull him up there, him being so much bigger than me, but I did it.
My strength didn’t last as he slipped from my grip and hit the shore.
He gasped deep lungfuls of oxygen.
“The Shadow!” he rasped. “The Shadow! Beware of the Shadow!”
He turned quiet after that, slipping unconscious.
I checked he was breathing and laid him in the recovery position.
I ran back for my phone and called for an ambulance.
The Shadow? I thought.
It was nighttime.
Shadows were everywhere.
But those weren’t the shadows he was referring to.
Neither of us would fully understand his warning for quite some time to come.
Ras
The screeching of metal roared in my ears and I could hardly think.
I wasn’t sure I was even capable of thinking.
Searing white light blinded me and I couldn’t even recall where I was or what I was doing there.
And in the single blink of an eye, the bright lights and rushing roars disappeared in an instant.
The bleached white of my vision gradually faded, picking out the sharp angular corners of cheap desks and plastic round-backed chairs.
I was five years old and I was at school.
I stood at the front of the class and everyone was staring at me.
I clutched my favorite thing in the whole world—a cuddly toy called Jirax.
I was meant to give a presentation about why I liked him so much.
“Tell us about how you met Jirax,” the teacher said helpfully.
I felt the eyes on me, judging me.
No one clutched their toy close the way I did.
I shuffled foot to foot and wet my lips with my tongue.
I looked them each in the eye, and when I opened my mouth to speak, I f
elt the words right there, fully formed and ready to be birthed.
But the words wouldn’t come out.
They were trapped on my tongue and wouldn’t allow themselves to be born.
I tried again.
My lips moved but no sound came out.
That’s strange, I thought.
Even in my dream state, I knew something was up.
I tried again but once more, the words refused to become audible.
Then I noticed something even stranger.
My classmates stared, unblinking.
A couple at the back froze in place while they probed at their favorite toys’ inner working parts.
“I think something’s wrong,” I wanted to say, but once again, the words never escaped my lips.
I turned to the teacher.
She aimed her pleasant smile down at me, her lips curled and eyes crinkled with kindness.
I waved a hand in front of her face but she still didn’t shift her eyes from mine.
I clicked my fingers and still got no response.
I reached out for the teacher and gently tapped her on the leg.
She felt as hard as wood beneath my soft fingertips.
Terrified, I clutched Jirax closer and shuffled back to my seat.
Were they playing a game on me? I wondered.
I hoped not.
I didn’t like being the center of attention.
I peered around at my classmates.
They still hadn’t moved a muscle.
“What’s wrong with everybody, Jirax? Why can’t anyone move?”
When I looked down, I found Jirax was gone.
I jerked back and teetered on my chair.
Had I dropped him?
I leaned down and checked under my desk.
I peered around for his fluffy white fur but saw no sign of him anywhere.
