She waits for a second, maybe holding out for a compliment, but I’m too scared to speak. She is cute, though. Cuter than anyone has any right to be, in this town, in this light.
Her face goes all crumply. “I hate him. He’s a twat and he’s evil. Anyone that shags around like that, they deserve everything they get.”
She looks off to one side and breathes all heavy. When she looks back at me she’s more sad and sorry than angry. “Oh, hell, Becky, I’m sorry. I don’t mean anyone anyone. You know I don’t think your dad was like that. Not exactly, anyway.”
I try and tell my brain not to start thinking it all through, not to start spotting the similarities, but it goes and does it anyway. If this is like a play and Ralphie’s acting the part of Dad, then those Manc prossies are my Auntie Alice, then that makes Gail my mum and that’s all sorts of wrong.
“So you should leave him,” I say. I’m practical like that. No time for moping.
Gail’s finished her cider already. She reaches over and helps herself to my pint of Worthington’s.
“I can’t. He threatened me.” She looks up and sees whatever face I’m doing and then her eyelids flicker open and shut. “Not like that. I’ve got nothing. And the pub’s so far in the red it’d make you puke if you knew how much. Ralphie’s told me again and again, if I leave him, I get half of everything except the Beast itself. Debt, that means. I’ll never crawl out of it on my own.”
I almost tell her I’ve got money, that she could shack up with me, but I stop myself. The allowance that comes through from Dad’s account each month isn’t the kind of money she’s talking about. It’s hardly enough to buy me booze and ready meals and the odd bit of vintage vinyl. Dad was ace but even dead, he’s pretty stingy.
Anyway, there’s no use thinking about fairytale endings. Gail don’t like me. Not like that.
She does a pretend shudder. It makes strands of hair come free from her daisy clips. I always thought she’d be prettier with her hair down.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to think about him tonight,” she says. “Let’s talk about something else.”
I chew my cheek. There’s only one other thing to talk about, isn’t there?
It’s Gail who’s the one who says it. “So. What are we going to do about the Blighter?”
I sigh. “Sooner or later someone’ll notice that Lee—”
Gail holds up a hand to shut me up. “I didn’t say ‘What are we going to do about Lee.’ I’m talking about that Blighter hidden up there in the bothy.”
I narrow my eyes to show I’m onto her game. Looks like I was wrong about her being all upset about the Ellingers. “But you saw what happened.”
“Whoever did that to Lee and Owen, they’re protecting it because it’s worth protecting.”
“You can’t go back there.”
“We can. We have to.”
Where did this we come from? Gail knows I’d go anywhere with her, the cow.
“Listen,” Gail says, like I’m not already paying her attention. “You know how it is. The more people find out about it, the more people that go up there looking for a Blighter, the worse it’ll be. Soon enough it’ll be as useless as all the ones over in the States and we’ll be kicking ourselves for the rest of our lives. But we got there first, didn’t we?”
“Yeah.”
All this is tied up with what’s happening with Ralphie, for sure. Better tread carefully.
“I went to the cops,” I say.
Gail’s face goes all loose. “You told them?”
“It was only Hutchy. Paul Hutchinson, remember him? Clutchy Hutchy?”
“But you told him about the Blighter? The bothy, where it was?”
It’s almost a compliment, her thinking I could actually describe where the bothy was. I never could read a map. “Nah. Sort of. He didn’t believe me.”
Gail’s face has gone so dark I actually look round to see if someone’s messing with the lights.
“I saw some police too,” she says. “At Lee’s house.”
“What were you doing all the way over there at Sandylands?”
Gail doesn’t answer, but I already know. She must have been doing a stakeout like in the films, waiting and watching to see exactly what she did end up seeing. Watching to see if the cops were on the trail.
“It wasn’t Paul Hutchinson, though,” she says. “It was two other ones, older. They forced the door, then they were inside for ages. When they came out, one of them was holding a mobile phone. Lee’s, I’m guessing.”
“So there you go, then. They’ll be up there lickety-split, they’ll find Lee and old Owen and that other guy. Sort it all out.”
“And the Blighter?”
I shrug. “Maybe they won’t notice it.”
She just stares at me without speaking, for ages. I wasn’t serious. I said what I said because I wish that’s what would happen. I’ve only known about that Blighter for a day and already it’s way more trouble than it’s worth.
Gail shakes her head. “You said you didn’t tell Hutchy where the bothy was. And Lee’s phone won’t give them any clues. Only Owen knew where they needed to go.”
“And he’s dead.”
“Yeah.” But Gail don’t look sad about it. Her face is getting brighter and brighter by the second.
I put my hand on her arm. She don’t bat an eyelid. “Listen. We can’t go up there again, Gail. I’m not even talking about the cops. Don’t forget, somebody up there in the hills shot three guys who was just minding their own business.”
“If you won’t come, I’ll go on my own.”
She’s shaking, though. I bet she would go on her own, but I also bet she’d fuck it up. Get herself shot, too. And I’m not having that on my mind along with everything else.
Gail takes both my hands in hers. They feel warm, with none of the sweat of a bloke.
“We both deserve this,” she says, looking into my eyes like she’s trying to put me under. “You need it as much as I do, Becky. You need it more.”
I make a face. Gail’s talking about Mum and Dad again, without coming out and saying it. Everyone reckons they know how sad and messed up I should be.
She’s got a point though.
Last summer, when the Blighters first arrived, nobody knew what was what. Those giggly YouTube videos were just the start. It was the only time in my life I ever watched the news on purpose. Just like everyone else, I wanted to know what them Blighters really were, and I wanted to know why they’d all showed up all of a sudden, just like that. Whether they’d dropped out of the sky or not. And, except those first few that the US Army or NATO bombed, I wanted to know why people was racing around trying to get near to them instead of running the hell away. Why people who did get close were so bloody pleased about it, instead of terrified by the size and slime and teeth of them.
Trouble is, by the time all the scientists and TV newsreaders had it figured out—by the time the chat-show conversations switched from Where in the universe have them fuckers come from? to What, oh, what are they doing to us? to Top ten tips to buy yourself a house in a cushy Blighter neighbourhood—most Blighters were pretty much ruined. Once it was all worn out, living round the corner from a Blighter was pretty much exactly like living round the corner from a bus-sized slug, and as gross as that sounds. ’Course, people still visited, still hung around, hoping for just a little piece of the action, and at least worn-out Blighters didn’t growl and show them triangle teeth so much. But really they was only good for museums. All the ones in the USA are like that now, and don’t Americans feel sore about it? Like I say, I don’t watch the news, but even I know that the top brass over there in America are proper pissed off. They’re having all sorts of what Mum would have called ‘angry words,’ with all them other countries that still have Blighters in good nick and the sense to keep too many folks from coming near.
How many are there around the world, still in working order? Twenty? Thirty? But there’s always been rumours ab
out other ones, hidden away by people cleverer than the rest, or maybe just not properly found yet, like our one. Another twenty, some say. Another fifty, who knows.
Gail’s back to looking around for guys. Some thick-necked idiot at the bar is giving her the eye. I lean backwards in my seat and check a few out, too, but to be honest I prefer just looking at Gail.
Then I see someone’s giving me a little wave from the back of the room. A woman. Thinks I’m looking at her, maybe. She’s got red hair like a novelty picture frame around a face that’s older than she’d like you to think.
Ah, fuck.
Kendal’s too small for its own good. I turn my back so Auntie Alice gets the message. But I can feel her still staring at me and it makes both my cheeks all hot and itchy.
So now, even though I’m trying not to, I’m thinking about Dad again.
And I’m thinking will I help Gail and I’m thinking about wasps and I’m thinking about Ralphie and about history repeating itself.
It better fucking not.
5
THIS TIME, I’M ready for anything.
Even though the sunlight’s nearly faded, Tarn Crag and the bothy don’t seem nearly so grim. I’m wearing Dad’s big old sheepskin coat, the one he died in. It’s thick and warm and makes me feel like a gangster’s moll.
It’s hard to see down there into the valley even though there’s no mist. The tarn’s turned sort of gold from the sunlight and looking at it stings my eyes. The sun’s only just starting to go down, bang on time. It was my idea to come before dark, to see what’s what. The lay of the land, Dad would have called it.
“Look,” I say, nudging Gail in the ribs with my elbow.
I point down into the little valley. There’s a line of white stones running along the bottom. After a bit, the hillside blocks the line, but then the stones show up again over to the right-hand side of the bothy.
“That’s the radius,” Gail says. “They’ve marked it out.”
I guess she just means ‘circle.’ But she’s right, and it more or less proves that there really is a Blighter inside the bothy. They’re always talking about that on TV, the circle around each Blighter. They mean an invisible circle, though, so marking it out with stones is a smart idea.
There’s something else, too. A bit away from the big black-painted double doors of the bothy, the ground’s all messed up. There’s soil in a sort of molehill pile, but massive, and loads of clods of grass all thrown up. That must be where the Blighter landed in the first place. But the way it looks, you’d think it landed mouth-first and straightaway it thought “I’d best get chewing.”
I got no time for all that. What matters is what’s happening right here, right now. I point again, to the other side of the bothy, away from the doors, where the line of stones goes closest to the side of the valley where we’re hiding. “That’s the spot. Okay? But don’t go in a straight line. And keep your head down.”
Is it just me, or am I suddenly wearing the trousers here? Ever since I said yes to coming back up here, Gail’s let me do all the thinking. I kind of like telling her what to do—that and the sheepskin coat and I might as well be my dad—but it’s weird. Gail’s normally tough as a boot and I don’t like seeing her go so wishy-washy.
Gail nods. She’s shaking. She tries to move away from me but I pull her back with the rope dangling out of her rucksack. I hold her by the arm.
“And don’t you dare take a step over that line until you know it’s safe,” I say. Now I sound more nagging, like Mum, which isn’t great. Look what happened to her.
But of course it’s not safe. Whoever shot Lee and Owen is probably out here with us, over on the hillside opposite, which is higher and steeper than this side. Anyone hiding over there must be able to see the whole valley. I’m banking on the fact that they’d probably expect any intruders to walk straight up from the road, instead of tramping through the woods like me and Gail did. But either way, anywhere past our cairn hiding place is out in the open.
“So what do we do now?” Gail says.
This new, meek Gail is starting to get to me. Ralphie’s got no right to turn her into this. Nobody has, to nobody. That Blighter better sort her the fuck out.
“We wait.”
I wriggle down in the tufts of grass. Dad’s big coat’s like a sleeping bag. Gail squeezes up against me and I put my arm around her.
It’s weird to think it, but I feel right at home here. I can almost forget about the fat Blighter down there in the bothy and the man—or men—who have their guns pointing over here. I could stay here all night, with the cold wind whipping around above our heads and us huddled here in a little dimple in the grass made by our own bodies.
It’s dark before we know it. Gail’s getting edgy, fidgeting against me. I have to let her go.
“You remember the plan?” I say.
She nods. “I know where I’m going.”
The way she says that, it sounds like no good thing at all.
It’s only right now that I realise the whole time we’ve been making our plans, Gail’s never once mentioned about me having a go with the Blighter myself. Either she forgot, or she never really expected me to want to get near it after all. But actually I’m glad I didn’t have to say no or explain myself. Everyone in the world wants Blighter love except me, but I’ve no clue why. Must be something deep down.
“Hey, Gail,” I say, making my voice even more like Dad’s, that way he could sound kind and in charge at the same time. “Good luck, okay?”
She kisses me on the cheek. It’s too cold to blush.
Gail pulls her chin inside her scarf and takes a few steps away. My side still feels warm where she was.
“Gail,” I whisper. I point at my ears and then at her.
She makes a face, then pulls the white iPhone earbuds out from her pocket and sticks them in her ears. A quick thumbs-up and then she’s off. The rope dangling from her rucksack trails behind her like a mouse’s tail.
I wait for a while and watch Gail scoot around the top edge of the valley. She’s doing well, keeping behind the ridge and out of sight of anyone on the other hillside.
Then she’s gone. My turn.
I set off in the other direction, keeping my head low. I have to keep one arm twisted behind me to stop all the stuff in my rucksack from clanking around like I’m some kind of one-man band.
It’s tough hiding from someone when you’ve no idea where they are. But seeing as the guys with guns must be up high, I keep as low as I can. I head off in the opposite direction to the bothy. It’s pretty cloudy and the moonlight only makes everything grey, like the sea, or the old films they show at Christmas.
The direct route to the road must be over here somewhere, but I don’t want to wander far enough to actually end up on the path. I pick a spot and dump the rucksack, then I pull out the first two objects. Back at my flat, Gail laughed when I called them ‘sound grenades,’ but I think they’re ace. The two I’ve got in my hands are half-size Pringles tubes. Each one’s got something inside. An old yo-yo and a metal tin of peppermints, if I remember right.
I chuck the first one down the hill, away from the bothy. I’ve got a wicked overarm, me.
The sound grenade does its thing perfectly. Thump clank clank brrrrrrr wumph.
A Blue Peter badge for Becky Stone, please and thank you very much.
A few seconds later I hear another sound from over on my right. Could be someone scrambling down the hillside, probably trying to get into position for a shot. I can’t see anyone, but I make a guess where they might be.
I throw the second sound grenade off in another direction. It lands somewhere that must be behind the verge where the shooter’s hiding. Fumph clank clank kaaaaaa.
That’ll do for now. I huddle down in the grass and hug my knees. It’s pretty funny thinking of people racing around after empty cans of Pringles, but it’d be funnier if they weren’t going to kill me if they found me.
I still haven’t seen anyone
, but time’s ticking. Gail must’ve got to the bothy by now, hiding on the far side, out of sight. I hope she’s in one piece. Just one more reason I might regret this whole thing.
I pull out two more sound grenades. The first is just leaving my right hand when the other one drops from my left hand. It makes a krack clunk whumph noise at more or less the same time the other one lands, far away.
Oh shit. That’s torn it.
The sound of gunfire is like a hand smacking on a table.
I grab the rucksack and leg it. There’s still one sound grenade in there, along with Dad’s old football rattle, and they’re banging around like nobody’s business.
Looks like I’m the decoy now.
I remember to keep away from the valley ridge. Running’s a bitch because the ground’s all bumpy and my feet keep sinking down into the thick grass. Then the going gets easier and I realise I’ve ended up on the path leading back to the road.
I start skidding to a stop even before I see the guy. He’s facing away from me but when he hears the clank-clank of my rucksack he turns around and we just stand there looking at each other. He looks like a farmer type, all wax jacket and graph-paper shirt collar and flat cap and red nose from homebrew. His mouth opens and he just makes this face that’d be funny if he weren’t lifting up his shotgun and pointing it right at me.
I turn and scramble back up the way I came. When the shot rings out I make this sound that’s half shout and half hiccup, and it’s such a weird noise that at first it makes me think I must have been hit. I reach back, like I’d only be able to tell if I was shot by checking from the outside. The rucksack’s all ripped up.
That’ll do for me. Off I go.
I might be unfit, but that old bastard’s worse. Still, I don’t have too many options, so now I’m climbing again, back towards the ridge but on the other side from the cairn where we started.
I pull out the phone from my coat pocket. Speed dial.
“Gail!” I whisper, even though it’s still ringing. “Pick up!”
Invaders From Beyond Page 15
