Invaders From Beyond

by Colin Sinclair

  INVADERS FROM BEYOND

  JULIAN BENSON • TIM MAJOR • COLIN SINCLAIR

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  abaddon@rebellion.co.uk

  Omnibus edition first published 2017 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Publishing Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor: David Moore

  Cover Art: Adam Tredowski

  Design: Sam Gretton, Oz Osborne & Maz Smith

  Marketing and PR: Remy Njambi

  Editor-in Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Heads of Books and Comics Publishing: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Midnight in the Garden Centre of Good and Evil copyright © 2015 Rebellion Publishing Ltd.

  Blighters copyright © 2016 Rebellion Publishing Ltd.

  Rags, Bones and Tea Leaves copyright © 2017 Rebellion Publishing Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  Abaddon Books and the Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Publishing Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-093-3

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction, by David Thomas Moore

  Midnight at the Garden Centre of Good and Evil, by Colin Sinclair

  Blighters, by Tim Major

  Rags, Bones and Tea Leaves, by Julian Benson

  Also by Abaddon Books

  INTRODUCTION

  “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one,” he said...

  IT’S ONE OF the classic tropes of the science fiction genre; from HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds in 1898 to last year’s summer blockbuster Independence Day: Resurgence, alien invasion has never been far from the popular imagination. It’s in our cultural DNA.

  And like all the most enduring tropes, alien invasion is a cypher, meaning whatever the writer wants it to mean. The War of the Worlds and many of its contemporaries were simple military stories, while their post-WWII successors, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, reflected the growing paranoia of the Cold War. (The 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still, by contrast, has essentially benign aliens warning us to stop fighting.) The aliens of John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes were almost a sideshow to his main theme of collective hysteria and the power of the media, while the cult 1988 film They Live is chiefly a dark satire of conspicuous consumption. Aliens, ultimately, are powerful mostly for what they can tell readers about ourselves.

  Pitching to Abaddon Books’ 2012 open submissions month, Colin Sinclair, whose novella opens this collection, proposed a fairly straightforward idea: stories that mine this richest of veins, challenging and subverting it the way Tomes of the Dead did the zombie genre. It was an epiphany—why didn’t we think of that ourselves? Colin was duly signed up, and his generation-X-esque, slackers-vs-aliens comedy Midnight in the Garden Centre of Good and Evil was born.

  What you hold now is an exploration of classic alien invasion tropes—body snatchers, big slimy monsters and little grey men—twisted by some of the most engaging rising talents of British weird fic. They ask awkward questions about this modern mythology; they tap into the darker side of the human psyche, from burnout to depression to guilt; and they’re frequently quite funny with it.

  Thank you for reading!

  And remember to watch the skies...

  David Thomas Moore

  Editor

  MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN CENTRE OF GOOD AND EVIL

  COLIN SINCLAIR

  Seeds in ceaseless fall and drift in starlight down an

  Endless down and then take root.

  Take time.

  Take control...

  BOOK ONE

  THE ARRIVAL

  1

  “YOU’LL NEED THESE,” Etty is saying, shoving thick, clumsy gloves over my hands. The touch of her warm skin on mine is—

  Wait.

  The harsh rasp and thrum of ripping plastic.

  Chas is on his knees down at my feet, wrapping long strips of silver-grey adhesive tape around my ankles. It’s the heavy duty stuff from the shelves near the back of the store. Chas finishes one leg—trapping the trousers tight against my boots—and moves on to the other.

  “Why is he doing that?”

  Etty smiles. Curls a strand of bright blue hair behind her ear. Then my view is obscured as she pops a reinforced cycling helmet over my head. It has a smeary curve of Perspex glued to it, which covers my face down to the chin. Makes seeing a bit of a chore. I have to squint downwards.

  “You don’t want them crawling up your legs,” Chas says.

  The blur of darks and lights that is Etty’s face says, “You okay in there?”

  I rub a gloved hand across the visor, clear it a little.

  Chas finishes the tape job. Stands up and hands me a short-handled plastic shovel—it’s a kids toy, be-a-gardener-like-mummy-or-daddy—says: “Job’s a good ’un.”

  “Is this necessary?”

  “You’ll thank us,” someone tells me. Not sure who. The other members of the Friday night team are seated in a semi-circle round a patio table to my left; fake grass, paddling pool, little shed with brochures and stuff arrayed under the blaze of fluorescent ceiling lights. I can just make out the bright colours of the tiny umbrellas in their drinks.

  “You know what you’re doing,” Chas is saying. “You remember the safety briefing.”

  “No—”

  “Scoop and drop,” Etty tells me. She grabs my left hand—the glove ruins the experience—curls my fingers round the handle of a tiny bucket. Holding my head just so, I can see an improvised lid on top of the bucket, a fold of cardboard or stiff plastic.

  “You’ll want to hold that closed.” Etty taps the lid. “You don’t want them getting out again if you catch any. Here all night that way.”

  I shift the bucket and spade around with clumsy sausage fingers.

  “Oh,” adds Etty. “One per bucket or they’ll try and eat each other. Bear that in mind.”

  Chas thumps me on the back. “Safe as houses.”

  I cast around for support from somewhere, anywhere.

  “Do I have to—”

  “Rules is rules.”

  Chas and Etty are backing away, clambering over a makeshift barricade of fertiliser bags and towers of plant pots.

  I’m left alone in an empty arena.

  “First night at Friday Club,” Etty says. “You have to fight.”

  Alone except for a low stack of wooden crates, piled four high, the top draped with ruffled green fabric. The lettering on the wooden slats is Spanish. I think. Portuguese? Whatever they speak in Brazil. I tilt my head back and consider the gaudy petals of flowers peeking out from the topmost crate. Orchids. Ultra-rare orchids from the remote highlands of distant Amazonian rainforests.

  “This can’t be legal,” I say.

  “Bit late for that, squire, ain’t it?”

  That’s Jost talking. He’s got an unmistakable too-many-cigarettes-and-started-far-too-young rasp to his voice. Also a no-nonsense spit-and-polish manner. He did something in the Army. He doesn’t talk about it.

  “You just concentrate on the job in hand.
”

  I keep looking—best I can—towards the crates.

  My palms are slick with sweat, and I can feel a chill dancing down my back, like something crawling along my spine...

  Think of something else. Something bright and—

  “It’s the smaller ones you got to worry about, isn’t it?” Chas again. Ever helpful.

  He leans across the barricade and drags the green cloth cover off the topmost crate.

  “The larger creatures have got size to back off predators. It’s the little scamps that have to kill things that threaten them, yeah? Big ones aren’t so much trouble. I saw that on Discovery.”

  A massive black blob of something slides over the top of the open crate and marches down the vertical and onto the floor.

  “Unless it’s one of those,” says Chas.

  It’s got fur, and lots of legs, and too many eyes, and—

  “Fangs like bananas, that one, serious poisonous.”

  “Venomous.” That’s Laura Kelvin; precision is always important. “Poisonous would mean—”

  “Piss off, Kelvin,” says Chas. “Point is, right, it’s in the fucking murder business, yeah?”

  This thing is the size of my shaking hand and it’s starting to move my way.

  “Kill it,” says Chas.

  The spider rears up on its several back legs to show me it plays for keeps.

  “Before it kills you.”

  THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED to happen.

  I had plans.

  2

  “...AND THEN WHEN they’d finally hauled the car from the water, and I’d had time to sober up, well, the whole wedding thing was off. Done, dusted, finished with. Daddy-doesn’t-approve-of-this, she told me. Also, you’re a giant a-hole, right? Stupendous. Anyone can make a mistake, I said. Well, she said, you’ve made a Big One. Vee big.”

  I’d been rambling for a while. I’m not sure how it started. Or how to stop.

  “I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this.”

  Mr Brackett, stick thin, leaned across the desk, shiny suit gleaming a little less than his thinning blond hair, and scratched his pale, pointed chin. “Me neither, son.”

  He lifted some papers off the desk. “Somewhere, middle of all that, you seem to have forgotten that this is your actual job interview. Not some therapy session paid in full by dearest mum and dad.”

  Some hope of that. As part of my penance for the Incident, father had given me a stern talk about Taking Responsibility. No allowances, no credits cards, no back-up. “Time to find your feet,” he’d told me. “Long past time.”

  “It’ll do you good,” Mum had said—closing the garden gates behind me, clang—and followed that up with a cheery farewell and oh-yes-we’ve-changed-the-alarm-codes.

  Destitute, rent-due, post-graduate course cancelled on account of subtle pressure by the father-of-the-bride-not-to-be.

  “You’re drifting,” Brackett interrupted.

  I snapped back to here and now in a cramped, musty office at the back end of a middle-of-nowhere garden centre on the farthest edge of town. A time capsule, this place, several steps into the past: a calendar featuring a pretty half-dressed redhead, circa nineteen-seventy-something; dead or dying potted plants; an overflowing ashtray from a well-loved local pub that burned down years ago; a beige telephone with a rotary dial; a fan trapped in a wire cage, shuffling warm dead air around the room.

  Grey filing cabinets, big wooden desk, several stern-looking chairs and an expansive leather couch with a garish crocheted throw draped across it.

  You could film episodes of The Sweeney here, with no trouble from nitpickers pointing out the wrong sort of light fittings or questioning your choice of yellowing venetian blinds.

  “You need to focus,” Brackett said.

  Yes.

  I guess what I’d been trying to say—not coming right out with it—was that I was dependable and desperate and needed the job.

  You have to say that sort of thing, don’t you? Not, “I tend to drift along and see what comes,” or, “My parents have been running my life for so many years I’m not sure what I even want these days.” Right?

  At all costs you must avoid, “I tend to overanalyse, day-dream, am often rendered inert by indecision.”

  Especially if it’s true.

  I’m frozen in place and offering up my top quality self-starter smile; I’m radiating go-getting self-confidence.

  Maybe.

  Brackett grunted, shifted in his chair.

  “I don’t care about your degree.” He glanced at the papers in his hand—application form filled out in neat script, copies of results, the usual—then shook his head. “Agricultural Science? Who needs it, eh? Load of old donkey. Pile of meaningless numbers and talk. I work the sharp end.”

  “That’s very clear,” I lied.

  Brackett’s Nursery & Gardens: a rainswept clump of rundown sheds, greenhouses and polytunnels, clustered around a long, low warehouse building with a curved, corrugated roof.

  Down one side of the main building, some gravel avenues snaked around dishevelled planters and collections of outdoor ornaments. The other side is staff car-parking and a fenced-off area containing either a small prison or a children’s play park. Towards the back of the plot, an overgrown hedgerow shrouded a couple of squat concrete boxes that might have been war era; ragged tin roofing, steel doors, reinforced windows.

  None of it looked cutting edge, although the patch of lawn out front is well groomed, dotted with bushes and bordered by wooden frames and climbing vines.

  I’d got lost on the way here.

  There were no customers when I arrived. The only living thing in sight had been some workmen installing lights at another boxy-looking warehouse structure across the road. An out-of-town development that never quite caught on.

  “What it is,” Brackett told me. “I worked hard for what I’ve got. Started at the bottom, struggle and toil, see? Built my little empire and, well, I didn’t do it alone, did I?”

  I shook my head helplessly. That seemed to satisfy him.

  “Exactly.” Brackett stood up then, dropping the application details. A cascade of crumbs and ash drifted off his suit as he eased around the desk. “Support networks. The help of the community. Everyone pulling together.”

  He shook my hand. Or pulled me up from the seat.

  Either way, he’s ushering me towards the door.

  “Time to give something back, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I suggested.

  “You’ve had it soft, lad,” Brackett continued. “Big house with the folks; good school; getting the grades but never quite breaking a sweat. Am I right? I know I’m right.”

  There’s no answer to that, is there?

  “Let’s give you your own chance to shine, eh? Away from your macadamia bullshit. Get your hands dirty. See how the world works.”

  He dragged open the door.

  Outside in the hall, a tall blonde in a damp raincoat stood with effortless poise on very high heels, shaking a bright red umbrella.

  “Job’s yours,” Brackett said, pushing me half out of the door. “Ah, Miss Lacey, good of you to make it, if you’ll step this way we can begin your interview.”

  Miss Lacey squeezed past into the office, not much room to spare, and began to remove her coat.

  “Start on Monday,” Brackett told me. “I’ll let the team know you’ll be there. It’s a good group. Very steady. You’ll fit right in, I’m sure.”

  I may have glanced past Brackett and caught a glimpse of Miss Lacey in a very short black dress. Perhaps just a long jacket.

  “I’m considering her for another position,” Brackett said, and slammed the door.

  3

  KELVIN SHOUTS AT me. “Zoologists require perfect specimens.”

  I hazard a glance sideways, away from the looming spider.

  “Don’t damage the merchandise, is what she’s saying,” Etty explains. “Nobody wants a six-legged spider, do they?”


  I look back. Has it gotten closer now?

  “Saw a tortoise with a set of plastic wheels the other week,” Chas says.

  “Relevance?”

  “I don’t know, do I? Just saying. Amazing what you can do these days. Incredible what people will manage for their pets.”

  “No’ really the same though,” Etty says. “They’d already learned to love that little dear. No one’s turning up with a mangled spider for sale saying aye, yeah, some o’ its legs are a bit missing, right enough.”

  “I’m just—”

  “Man trying to concentrate, here,” I say. “Life and death struggle and that.”

  “Don’t look like much of a titanic conflict from here,” says Chas. “You standing there with your two arms the one length.”

  I’m waiting for my perfect moment, aren’t I?

  Not just expecting solutions to emerge or problems to disappear. This isn’t my life in microcosm; I’m not waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

  “You’re like that Macbeth, aren’t you?” Chas says.

  “How’s that? I don’t—”

  “Father murdered, mother shacking up with the uncle, and here you are.”

  “That was Hamlet,” I tell him. “Macbeth was the one with blood on his hands.”

  “Point is,” Chas says, “that’s you. Standing around moping when you should be acting.”

  “My father’s still alive. Last I checked,” I say.

  “Yeah?” Chas replies. “So what’s your fucking excuse?”

  I’m—that is—“Biding my time.”

  “That’ll be it,” Chas answers dubiously.

  The spider doesn’t look too convinced either.