CHAPTER THREE
Gareth taps at the ‘Contacts’ icon on his mobile phone and scrolls through to ‘NATE PENROSE’, highlights the name, then stares at the letters. The man’s voice echoes in his memory; ‘Send someone in for us! Come and get me and my boy!’ he’d shouted through the crackle of the disintegrating line. ‘We’ll be at the Stacks!’ The hair on Gareth’s neck bristles as he hears the voice as though Nate is standing beside him. The vision of The Stacks, the four ugly and brutalist apartment blocks from his youth, is clear in his mind, a memory from childhood now melded to the video-feed of their destruction and the horrific violence being carried out around their bases.
“Sorry!” The words are an unconscious whisper and he quickly looks around to check he hasn’t been overheard. The personnel that fill the small, windowless room are all busy at their monitors. A group of soldiers is clustered in one corner devising the next strategy to combat the outbreaks that have mired the south, and Colonel Littleton is deep in conversation with the team of science geeks they’ve drafted in to try and understand the biology and habits of the monsters that arrived with the meteors. Discovering that their appearance had been preceded by a series of repeated radio signals, closer to earth than had previously been recorded, had brought Gareth out in a cold sweat. Aliens didn’t exist. He was absolutely certain of that, yet the meteors had brought with them a parasite that was bringing the population of earth to its knees, and could, the experts believed, bring about its total destruction if it wasn’t controlled immediately.
Protocol 5 had been drafted in response. It was a barbaric reaction to stop the contagion that, so far, seemed to be working. Where it had been dropped there was no more violence – how could there be? Everyone was dead – and the drone footage was conclusive proof that it worked; the gas that carried the parasite had evaporated at those sites. He pushes a hand through his hair, his fingers running through a new, very thick streak of white-grey that had appeared the morning after the clearance was given to drop the Novichok on his hometown. His fingers tremble as Nate’s voice echoes, ‘Send someone in for us!’. Gareth hadn’t sent anyone, and he hasn’t slept for more than thirty minutes at a stretch since that phone call; the voices ringing in his memory are too loud. He reaches for the mug of cold coffee next to his monitor and takes a swig. Made strong to keep him awake, it descends into his stomach with a queasy swirl.
DOCTOR HELEN BLAYLOCK turns from the television screen with a shudder as Gareth Smaller clicks it off. The sight of the man with the red cable-knit tank top lying prone across a pile of bodies, his innards spewed across his lower torso, a ragged hole ripped through the knitted fabric, left her in no doubt that the creature secured in the tank in D-Block had laid its egg or perhaps even eggs, within his abdomen. Lit by an intense light from the drone, the footage is clear, and shows that many of the bodies had suffered the same fate; their heads stripped of flesh, eyeballs, and brains, their bellies ripped open from the inside. A cold shiver shoots down Helen’s back though the room is stuffy. Angle and clothing often obscured their view, but in others, the ones whose clothes had been rucked up and ripped as they’d been dragged to their deaths and the creature’s lair, the ragged exit wounds were clear. A sour smell pervades the enclosed bunker; the stench of fear. Despite the bravado of these soldiers, there was the chaffing sense of dread among them. She makes another note on her pad, and shudders.
“Fascinating, aren’t they, Doctor Blaylock.”
Startled, Helen drops her notepad. Dr. Connaught bends to pick it up, scans her notes without embarrassment, then hands it back. “You obviously share my fascination. Although I’m not sure I agree with your ... conclusions.”
She resists the impulse to snatch back her notepad and accepts it with a gracious smile though she keeps Connaught’s gaze as she speaks. “They’re interesting, I have to admit, but I share Colonel Littleton’s desire to see them destroyed. From everything I’ve seen, they show the classic traits of a potentially unstoppable and invasive - alien in the true sense of the word - species. We have no natural defence against them and could witness the decline of multiple indigenous species, including our own, if they’re allowed to proliferate.”
Littleton stands at her shoulder. She catches Connaught’s barely hidden glare, then forced smile, at the soldier before he replies. “They’re a species we need to study in order to understand.”
“Study in order to destroy, Connaught.”
Connaught’s jaw clenches. “Absolutely, Colonel. Why don’t you pass by the laboratory later and we can discuss the work I have planned for the coming days.
Littleton’s eyes shift. He checks his watch. “I’ll be there at 1300 hours. In the meantime, just make sure you keep the damned thing locked up.”
“Of course.”
The tension between the men is palpable and, as Littleton turns, Connaught huffs, takes hold of Helen’s elbow and guides her from the room. “He has no conception of just how enormous this discovery is to science, Doctor Blaylock,” Connaught says as soon as they’re out of earshot. “An extra-terrestrial species! Right here in my laboratory ...” He continues along the corridor. She matches his stride, listening to his excited ramblings, aware that the very last thing the scientist wants is to have the creature destroyed. The work he is describing with excitement will span months, if not years.
As they enter the laboratory the smell of faeces grows strong. At the centre of the table, sitting on a large high-legged table, is a transparent box nearly two metres wide. Inside, the creature sits in one corner. As they enter, its long and bony front leg reaches out. The thing shifts. Its skin glistens and undulates as it moves. A fold of black and warty skin extends, seems to feel the air, then retracts. She can’t make out where its eyes are. Fog seeps from its proboscis, whorls, then retreats. Connaught strides to the box and watches as the thing moves, stretching out another bony leg towards him.
“She knows I’m here.”
“She?”
“I’m presuming it is a she, given that she laid eggs in the rats and the other ... victims.”
Connaught is right, the creature is fascinating, revolting and repugnant also, but fascinating nevertheless. It absorbs Helen’s attention completely as it scuttles around the large box. As it moves to stand in the middle of the box, it extends a bony, horned leg.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
A large smile spreads across Connaught’s face. “She’s hungry! Watch this!” Connaught’s voice holds the excitement of a child desperate to share a discovery. He reaches for one of the rats held in the cage at the side of the laboratory, feeds it into the secondary chamber, and then stands back to observe with another eager, ‘Watch this!’. The creature’s front leg, complete with spiked foot, stabs at the rat as it scurries through the fog that now swirls in irritated whorls, hanging just above the base of the box. The spike stabs straight through the rat’s belly. It squirms, its legs scratting in the fog as the creature’s proboscis extends. The creature bokes. Yellow liquid bubbles on the rat’s head, and Helen watches, repulsed but glued to the sight, as it disappears beneath the groping proboscis.
“That is disgusting!” she says with undisguised fascination.
The rat continues to squirm as the creature sucks. Helen continues to watch. Eventually the legs stop running and the rat lies limp. When the proboscis retracts the head is clean of flesh but for the odd patch of wet fur. Its eyes are gone, and, as Helen moves around the box to get a better view, the cranial cavity is empty.
“As you can see, the intracranial space has been emptied.”
“It’s eaten the rat’s brains.”
“Made it into a soup.”
Connaught’s voice if gleeful, and Helen’s stomach swirls. “Does it eat any other part of the rat?”
“No. The brain is an excellent source of nutrition. My initial thoughts are that perhaps the concentration of Docosahexaenoic acid is particularly important to the creature. As you know, it is an important omega-3 fatty
acid and the primary structural component of the human brain.”
She didn’t know that. “But this is a rat?”
“Yes, it is. The acid is also found in rat’s brains, though obviously not in such large concentrations. In the wild, the creature gorges on human brains. It must require an enormous amount; the sheer number of human brains it devoured during a relatively short time in the basement is astounding. Really, we’re talking hundreds within the time it took from its landing to capture. You saw for yourself the number of bodies in that one area. I’m edging towards the conclusion that to stay alive it needs enormous amounts of DHA.”
She frowns.
“DHA. Docosahexaenoic acid.”
“Yes, of course.” She replies to his questioning gaze. She doesn’t want him to know quite how out of her depth she is. Her expertise is animal behaviour, not the chemical makeup of the human brain.
“It’s truly fascinating. And of course, you know what it means?”
She nods, hoping he explains. He eyes her with a smirk; he knows she doesn’t know what it means.
“As you know, DHA is a carboxylic acid with a 22-carbon chain. Omnivores, and carnivores, get DHA from their diet, as we do. That this extra-terrestrial needs DHA is proof that its composition is not dissimilar to our own. It is of a carbon source, as are we. The ramifications for our understanding of the universe are huge. We have found alien life, or rather, it has found us and we’re both made from the same source – carbon. A cousin, if you like.”
“Cousin!” A cold wave had washed from Helen’s scalp to her toes as he’d explained. His conclusions, so completely wrapped up in the science of discovery, were missing, to her mind, the true ramifications of the animal’s behaviour. She grips the edge of her note book. “Doctor Connaught, doesn’t it strike you as truly horrifying that repeating radio signals were discovered from the same sector in space that this extra-terrestrial has come from?”
“Yes, yes! Truly fascinating,” he replies with his gaze firmly on the creature in the tank.
“Fascination aside, Doctor Connaught ... do you think that it ... could have ... tracked us down in order to feed on our brains?”
Connaught throws her a quick glance before returning to the box then reaches for a hooked stick and pokes it through the opening in the secondary Perspex chamber. The creature makes no attempt to stop him as he drags the rat through to the secondary chamber. With protective gloves, he removes the rat by its tail and drops it into a waiting cool box.
“What are you going to do with those?” Helen asks surveying the other dead rodents laying at the bottom, their heads similarly stripped off flesh and emptied of brains.
“They’ll go to the incinerator once I’ve inspected them.”
The creature presses itself up into the corner of the box, its bony frame obvious beneath the folds of glistening black skin.
“I’ll stay and watch, Doctor Connaught, and make my observations.”
“Certainly, although you may find it a little tiresome. The creature generally remains still until the next time it’s hungry.”
“Which will be?”
“On the hour.”
“How do you know when it’s hungry?”
“Oh, she’s trained me.” He laughs.
Perturbed by his answer, and his odd laugh, she probes, “You’ve trained her, Doctor Connaught? In the few hours she ... it has been with us?”
“Oh, yes! Or rather, no.” He removes his glasses and gives them a perfunctory polish with a silky cloth drawn from his pocket. His eyes gleam as he stares at her with his piggy-ish eyes, oddly small without the lenses sitting across them. His forehead glistens too and the faint smell of stale sweat wafts across the room from his armpits as he raises his arm to replace his glasses. “No,” he repeats. “It’s definitely me that has been trained. Although, obviously, I have been paying rapt attention to her. Given time, we could learn to communicate.” He steps back to the box. “Can you imagine the research grants we could be awarded? The papers we could present, Doctor Blaylock?”
The reason for her being summoned to the base now becomes clear. “You’ve read my paper on the gestural communications of lobsters in the wild then Doctor Connaught?”
He turns, the glasses once again enlarging his eyes. “Yes! An excellent paper, and that creatures with such a small encephalization quotient can display such complex systems of communication is astounding. Just think what she can achieve. Her EQ, presuming it is similar to our own and the neural tissue is located at the front of the head, is far larger.”
“She doesn’t appear to have a head. Does she even have eyes?”
“Oh, yes.”
Helen peers at the tank. There is no evidence that she can discern of eyes or a head.
Connaught continues. “As you mentioned in your paper, Doctor Blaylock, it is how brains are wired for communication that counts, and if she has the FOXP2 gene then we may be able to crack her code. If we can understand her behaviour, then we can learn how to communicate with her. Are you familiar with Jane Silk’s work with apes?”
“Of course.”
“Excellent! Obviously, primates are very social beings and so their cognitive abilities are especially well suited to tracking social information. So, for example, they are able to discriminate between co-operators and defectors, can assess the qualities of prospective rivals, mates and allies, and so on. It stands to reason then, that if we want to communicate with apes, we should try to communicate on these topics—it’s what they understand.”
Despite her horror, Helen listens with interest before replying. “But our understanding of these primates comes from studying their behaviour, in groups, over long periods of time, Doctor Connaught, as does my own work on lobsters. A single creature in a plastic box won’t yield a great deal of insight.”
“Absolutely.”
Dread returns as she realises the ramifications of his intent; he wants to study the creatures - plural - and not just the one in the box, over time.
He continues. “Obviously, my area of expertise is not communications. I’m a scientist, not a psychologist. However ...”
Helen catches the gleam in his eyes as he pauses and a thrill rides her. He wants her to teach him how to communicate with the creature. For a second, she’s drawn into his excitement; he’s right, the scientific community would be astounded. There would be papers to write, monographs even, and possibly huge media interest in their work. A smile creeps across her lips as she imagines the standing ovation she’d receive at the next European Conference of Behavioural Biology; the room would be full this time, not just the five tired academics that had sat through her last paper.
“I have also spoken to Doctor Kelly. He’s rather desperate for access and has even come up with a title for a paper.”
She raises a brow, irked at the mention of the man’s name. She feigns only professional interest. “Which is?”
Connaught is quiet for a moment as he tracks through his memory. “He’s very interested in migratory practices. Now, what was it? Ah, yes. ‘Animal navigation: From quantum physics to intergalactic migration.’ Helen’s stomach curdles. The title is brilliant, and absolutely typical of the arrogant man. Helen’s thoughts turn to her own efforts, desperately churning for a topic equally as ‘sexy’ as her colleagues would say—damned idiots!
Connaught’s voice breaks into her thoughts. “I rather fancy she’s a Beryl.”
“Pardon?” She asks, confused. “Beryl?”
“Yes. Her name. She’s definitely a Beryl.”
Helen stares into the box at the hideous black, brain-sucking, flesh-destroying monster, the thought of communicating with the thing suddenly repulsive. Beryl is not the name she would have chosen. Something far more evil is needed. “Perhaps Myra?”
Connaught swings around. “Now that’s unfair, Doctor Blaylock,” he says with a large and amused smile. “Unlike the Hindley woman, Beryl is no monster. She’s a purely instinctive predator—doing wha
t comes naturally. The morality of her hunting and killing instinct isn’t a factor.”
“It certainly looks evil, Doctor Connaught.”
“Tsk! Doctor Blaylock. Tsk! Tsk! Where is your scientific objectivity?” He turns back to the box, sighs, then disappears to the other side of the room and clicks at his keyboard. The screen of his monitor brightens. Helen continues to watch the docile creature as he taps away, and remembers the image of the rats with their exploded bellies on the drone’s detailed footage. Communicating with this monster is the last thing she wants to do.
“Perhaps we should send her previous meals for incineration sooner rather than later, Doctor? Afterall, we can’t be sure she hasn’t laid eggs inside the rats.”
Connaught stiffens momentarily, then gives a dismissive wave of his hand as he continues to focus on his screen. “Bartlett will be here in the afternoon to collect the box.”
“Perhaps I can take them now?”
As he turns, a deep crease sits between his brows. “No!” He glances at the coolbox and then to Helen. His brow relaxes. “No,” he smiles. “I have to take details before they leave. As I said, Bartlett will be here to remove them in time.”
He checks his watch. “Time for elevenses, Doctor Blaylock. You look like a woman who enjoys her cake! Coffee and a Garibaldi, or do you prefer tea and a Jaffa cake?”
He clicks his screen to off, then ushers her towards the door. “I’ll take my measurements when we return, then you can take the box to Bartlett yourself, if that will make you feel any easier?”
She doubts that it will, although seeing the rats burn to cinders will be a relief, and may help dissipate the intense feeling of inadequacy that has descended upon her. As she leaves the laboratory with Dr. Connaught’s clammy hand pushing against her fleshy back, his fingers in the folds, she feels suddenly very fat.
THE BELLY OF THE SMALLEST dead rat undulates as the laboratory door swings shut behind them.
Mortal Skies Omnibus Page 22
