by Elle Simpson
The Paella That Saved the World
Elle Simpson
For Mum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
About the Author
1
The thing about the Akanarin invasion of Earth? I didn’t actually notice it happening. Not at first.
And I know what you’re thinking: Hannah, it was the start of an actual, literal alien invasion. How is it even possible not to notice that? But in my defence, I was attempting to finish my physics homework at the time, and there’s only so much one brain can handle.
Like, I could remember force = mass x acceleration or I could notice the alien ship plummeting to Earth in a ball of fire – but I couldn’t do both, you know? So I didn’t. I just grimaced down at my textbook instead and muttered, “What is the actual point of you, physics?”
(Incidentally, my mum would like me to point out that because she’s an actual, in-real-life astrophysicist, the point of physics is to pay the actual, in-real-life bills, but that seems like a totally boring point, so ignore it if you want to.)
Anyway, my textbook didn’t answer me. Never does. Just sighs in a really disappointed, floppy-paged kind of way whenever I flip to the back to copy the answers.
Which is totally what I was doing when I didn’t notice the ship crashing – streaking across the sky, burning up, on fire like a very fiery thing – because life is too short to do your physics homework when you can just cheat at your physics homework instead.
(Totally, right?)
But the timings the eggheads worked out later from satellite imagery and blurry photos and really complicated maths-type sums suggest that it was around about the time I was cheating at my physics homework that the sonic boom occurred.
I also didn’t notice the sonic boom.
I mean, you’d think a sonic boom would be a thing I’d notice, but it wasn’t a thing I noticed – partly because of the aforementioned ‘only so much space in one brain’ issue, but mostly because the podcast I was listening to at the time had plumped for death metal as its incidental music.
Which was…not all that weird? I guess? It’s just that the podcast was a gardening podcast that my nan had recommended. And my nan lives in a flat with no garden. She might, however, be a secret death metal fan. I’ll get back to you on that.
(This is me getting back to you: “Is that the boom-boom, thump-thump music, Hannah? Is that what you’re asking about, love? Well, it does make me tap my toes!”)
But before you assume I have the observational skills of a soggy tea biscuit – and like, totally get you on that – I’m going to tell you about the one thing I actually did notice.
When the alien ship crash-landed in the middle of Mr Jenkins’ heirloom potato field, I noticed that.
I mean, I really noticed that.
Mostly, has to be said, because the shockwave shattered my bedroom window and knocked me unconscious for somewhere, the eggheads estimate, between thirty seconds and two minutes.
Yup, definitely noticed that.
2
When I did wake up, somewhere between thirty seconds and two minutes later, I was lying on my bedroom floor, my brain felt like the ball from a gorilla ping-pong match, and the voice in my ear was telling me how best to fertilise soil in preparation for planting soft fruit.
(Well-rotted manure, apparently.)
I yanked out my earbuds. “Whu…?” I asked the weird, buzzy silence.
But the silence, just like my textbook, had no answer.
(So okay, not ‘just’ like my textbook, which does actually have answers, but, you know, metaphorically.)
I hauled myself up and staggered over to the window. I had to blink a few times before my eyes rediscovered their passion for focusing. But when they did?
“Oh my god.”
My bedroom window was empty – mostly because all of the windowpane was in the bedroom with me – but that didn’t matter, not even at all. Because either way I could see the Big Dish. It was in one piece, still standing, the observatory buildings below still intact, and miles away across the fields, The Snail’s Arms looked its usual white-washed, lumpy self.
“Oh god. Oh, thank god.”
I remember the weird thumpy thing my heart did then. Like, skipped one beat and then slammed out the next. I legit thought I was having a heart attack. But when I told the Welsh vampire doctor lady about it later, she said it was just the effects of adrenaline I was feeling – and relief.
Relief because Mum was fine. And Toni was fine.
But let me tell you – I was not fine. I was not fine in the slightest. I was, in fact, the least fine I had ever been in my fifteen years of existence.
It took, I don’t know, maybe ten more dodgy blinks before what I was seeing began to make sense. And even when it did, it didn’t seem real. Because across the lane, where Mr Jenkins’ heirloom potato field used to be, Mr Jenkins’ heirloom potato field wasn’t. Not anymore.
There was a crater instead.
But not just a crater – a crater. This huge churned-up scoop of earth and roots, like some massive sinkhole from a horror news report. And at the bottom of the crater? A big mangled lump of shiny silver metal.
“Oh god.”
I don’t even know what my brain was thinking. The wreckage so obviously wasn’t a fighter plane or a glider or whatever other excuse the old ding-donged grey matter was churning out.
“Oh god.”
I mean, it was aliens. It was so obviously aliens.
“Oh god.”
But I wasn’t thinking aliens. I was thinking, I can see something moving down there. I was thinking, I can see someone moving down there. I was thinking, someone’s still alive down there!
“Oh my god!”
I took the stairs three at the time, banged into the suddenly wonky front door jamb, whacked my arm off the garden gate, then whacked my knees on Mr Jenkins’ boundary fence when I tried to vault over it. But thirty seconds later I was there, skittering down the crumbly crater side, clambering up the wreckage to the open cockpit hatch.
“Hold on! I’m coming!”
It probably should have occurred to me how weird it was that the smooth, shiny metal under my hands felt completely cool, or that handgrips appeared as I climbed to help me on my way.
(Probably should have. Didn’t. Shock, I think, and the fact that my bell was still pretty ding-donged at the time.)
The back of a head came into view as I climbed level with the cockpit – the pilot! It was the pilot who’d survived the crash.
“Oh god! Are you okay?” I clambered over the lip and into the side of the cockpit. Stood on some weird, futuristic-looking console. Didn’t register it even at all. “Can you move? Can I help?”
The pilot’s head rolled towards me. The front of his helmet was a black glass visor – and the visor disappeared.
It didn’t retract. It didn’t shatter or slide. It just disappeared. And so did the entire helmet. There one instant and gone in not even the next.
My brain couldn’t handle it. Froze for five whole seconds. And then unfroze quicker than a fancy American freezer defrost setting.
Because the face looking back at me had all the things a face should have. A mouth, a nose, two eyes.
But the eyes…
Too big, too wide, tilted upwards at the outer edge – and they were silver. Molten silver from rim to rim.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “Oh my god. You’re not…”
Human. The pilot wasn’t human. I mean, obviously the pilot wasn’t human.
“Oh my god.”
Because the pilot was a one hundred percent actual, literal, in-real-life alien.
“Oh. My. God.”
3
All I could do was stare. Like, all I could do.
Just stare at the silver freckles that ran along the alien’s weird, too-sharp, something-straight-out-of-Photoshop cheekbones, that splotched his forehead right up to his hairline.
Stare at his eyes. Completely silver. No pupils. No irises.
We were face to face, me and Cheekbones, but it was impossible to tell if he was looking at me or if he even knew I was there at all.
“Oh god,” I whispered. “I have literally no idea what to do.”
Cheekbones groaned, like a freaky reply. It was a horrible sound, all rattly and full of pain. His hand moved, this sudden scrabbling that made me flinch back until I saw what he was trying to do.
Clawing at his harness again. Trying to break free.
So I took a breath and I stowed the panic. Alien or not, Cheekbones was trapped and he was so obviously hurt. I had to help.
“Oh my god,” I muttered, but I pushed Cheekbones’ hands out of the way and pressed my own to the harness instead, right at the centre of his chest where the slats of the straps came together like a rotary buckle.
A light flashed on the console, just silly bright. I blinked, and the harness was gone.
“Okay, that’s freaky. That’s really, really freaky. Oh my god, that’s so freaky.”
(I mean, it wasn’t more freaky than the actual, in-real-life alien sitting in front of me, but I was dealing with an increasing scale of freak at the time, and all the stuff disappearing into thin air was certainly up there. So, you know, forgive my lack of an exact freak-out measurement, please and thank you.)
Cheekbones groaned again and dropped his hand, but the scrabbling didn’t stop. I could hear the scratch of his gloves against the stiff fabric of his flight suit.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, leaning over for a better view. “Cheekbones, what’s wrong? What are you… Oh god.”
His leg. That was the problem. The flight suit was torn high up on his thigh. I could see a patch of silver-freckled skin through the tear, and this horrible, deep gash running straight across it, silver liquid rushing from the cut.
It was blood – had to be – and so much of it.
“Oh god.”
I had to swallow past the sick feeling in my throat before I could reach down and yank Cheekbones’ hand away.
“You’ve got to stop,” I told him. “You’ll make it worse. We need to get you out of here so I can, like, put pressure on it. Stop the bleeding and stuff.”
Because if I didn’t stop the bleeding, I wasn’t sure how much blood there was left to bleed.
“C’mon,” I said. “Grab on to me. I’ll help you up.”
I slipped my arms under Cheekbones’ arms, wrapped them tight around his back, a freaky intergalactic hug, heaved—
“Oof!”
—and Cheekbones moved not a single centimetre.
Wasn’t going to work. That was so, so obvious. It’s not like Cheekbones was built or anything – he wasn’t much taller than me – but he was solid. Heavy with muscle in that way cheesy romance novels call corded, which sounds totally disgusting, yeah, but turns out is actually a pretty accurate description. I couldn’t move him. Not on my own. He was just too heavy.
“Cheekbones,” I said desperately, pulling back so I could meet his out-of-it silver gaze. “You have to help me. I can’t move you by my—”
“Hannah Stanton! That you, girl? You all right down there?”
I startled and twisted around. There was a tall figure up at the lip of the crater – wellies, flat cap – already moving, easing himself over the edge.
“Mr Jenkins! Help!” Legit, I had never in my entire life been so relieved to see Mr Jenkins.
(In fact, I’d never actually until that moment ever been relieved to see Mr Jenkins. Seeing Mr Jenkins usually involved him accusing me of nicking his potatoes or his peapods or that one time with the butternut squash that was absolutely, totally not my fault.)
“Quickly! I can’t move him on my own and he’s bleeding really badly!”
“Who is?” Mr Jenkins shouted.
“The pilot!”
“Jesus Christ! He’s still alive?”
“Just!”
I turned back to Cheekbones. He was looking at me now. Watching me. It was weird, but I could tell I had his attention, even if it did seem completely ding-donged.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “We’re going to get you out of here. You’re going to be just fine.”
(Which was a legit, total lie, because I was already pretty sure even then that Cheekbones was going to die. And I mean, he did die, like two minutes later. So, um, you know. Ten out of ten for my lying skills?)
“Hannah!” It was Mr Jenkins, hauling himself up beside me. “What do you need me to do?”
“If you get that side, I’ll get this one, and then we can just try hauling him—”
“Christ!” Mr Jenkins yelped. He flailed backwards and stumbled to the ground, landing hard on his bum. “What is that? That thing…it’s not…it isn’t—”
“Well, freaking duh!” I shouted down at him. “I know, okay! But he’s hurt, and I have to stop the bleeding, and I can’t do that unless I get him out of here. Please, Mr Jenkins!”
“I can’t,” Mr Jenkins said, scuttling backwards like a bladdered crab. “We can’t – we can’t touch it.” His eyes were all wide and panicky. “I’m not – I’m not touching it, dear god.”
“Then you’re as much use as a fricking bendy spanner, aren’t you!”
I gave up on Mr Jenkins and turned back to Cheekbones. He was still watching me, but with his big silver eyes half closed. And his hands were lying in his lap now, not moving at all. I could hear his breathing though, like a whistle, but all faint and wet and yet somehow still crackly. It didn’t sound in any way good.
I hauled off the ratty school hoodie I was wearing, balled it up, tried to reach down to press it to Cheekbones’ leg, but the angle was all wrong, the console got in the way, and I just couldn’t reach.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry.” I had that stinging in my eyes you get before you cry, the one that burns in your throat too. “I can’t move you. Not on my own. I don’t know what else to do. I just…I don’t know what to do.”
Cheekbones took a hiccupy breath. One hand twitched open.
Was he…? Did he want me to…?
I put my hand in his.
Gently – so, so gently – Cheekbones folded his fingers around mine. It was like a mouse breathing on me, the pressure so faint. But he was hold
ing my hand, like somehow that mattered.
Like somehow that helped.
Mee-maw! Mee-maw! Woop! Woop!
Sirens in the distance but not far away. I could hear them coming from up where the Buckford road passed the village. A few minutes away maybe.
But judging by the look of Cheekbones, that was so obviously a few minutes too many.
I swiped at my eyes. The sting wasn’t a sting anymore. It was full-on snotty crying. I didn’t want to just hold Cheekbones’ hand while he bled to death. I wanted to help him. I wanted to—
“…please.”
I legit forgot how to breathe. That was a thing that happened, right then, in that moment. For five full seconds I forgot. Then I gasped and said, “Did you just…? Oh god, no. Of course you didn’t. Don’t be stupid, Hannah.”
It wasn’t a word. Couldn’t be a word. It was a weird breath. A groan. A weird, breathy groan that sounded like a word. He hadn’t—
“Please,” Cheekbones whispered. “You have to…to…”
I sucked in another breath and then choked on it coming back up. My words came out in a rush. “Oh god. You can understand me? Cheekbones, you’re understanding me right now? What is it? What do you need me to do?”
“Stop them…” Cheekbones said. “Must…stop…” He trailed off, and his eyelids flickered half shut again.
“What are you even saying?” I muttered. God, he was so loopy from the blood loss.
“Have to find him…he will…help…stop her…stop them.”
