Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

“They practically strip-mined the poor creature,” I said. “But why take some organs and just cut up others? Why open the beast up just to move things around?”

“Presumably they were curious,” said Walker. “Perhaps . . . they’d never seen a cow before.”

“What?” said Honey. “They came all the way here with their snazzy new stardrive but couldn’t tap into our computers to get the information they needed?”

“Maybe they just like to get their hands dirty,” said Walker. “Assuming they have hands, of course.”

“Seems more to me as if they were looking for something,” I said. “And if they didn’t find it in the cow, maybe that’s why they moved on to the poor bastard lying on that slab over there.”

We all moved over to look at the middle-aged man lying naked and cut open on the next mortuary slab: Jim Thomerson, farmer and well-known local businessman, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid for his mistake with blood and horror. We leaned in for a closer look at the terrible things that had been done to him. His injuries were similar to the cow’s but so much more disturbing for having been done to a man. Organs missing, limbs dissected, his insides rearranged . . . His empty eye sockets stared accusingly up at us.

“Judging by the defensive wounds on his hands and arms, he was alive when they started,” said Honey. “Though hopefully not for long.”

“Why now?” said Walker. “Why start doing cattle mutilations to people now ? What’s changed?”

“Obvious answer,” I said. “These are new aliens. A species newly come to Earth, who don’t know the rules. I’m going to have to teach them a hard lesson: that you don’t come waltzing in here unless you’ve cleared it with the Droods first and learned the bloody rules. Someone’s going to pay for this.”

“But even so,” said Walker, “why take some organs but just—”

“I don’t know!” I said. Walker and Honey looked at me, and I lowered my voice. “I don’t know. They’re aliens. They don’t think like us. My family has been dealing with aliens for centuries, and we still don’t have a translation device that works worth a damn. Sometimes we don’t even have basic concepts in common.”

“What do you do, if you can’t communicate with a species?” said Walker. “If you can’t get it to follow your rules?”

“We kill them,” I said. “And we keep on killing them till they stop coming. What do you do in the Nightside?”

“Pretty much the same,” said Walker.

“I’ve had some experience with aliens,” said Honey just a bit defensively. “Not really my department, but all hands to the pump when the river’s rising.”

“What?” said Walker.

“It was an emergency!” said Honey. “And I was the only experienced agent on the spot. I was in the Arctic, searching through Area 52 for something important that had been shipped there by error (and you’d be surprised how often that happens), when something got loose from the holding cells. I swear, I’ve never heard alarms like it. I had to dress up in a total environment suit and go out on the ice to hunt it. Fortunately, it didn’t get far. Stupid thing made the mistake of trying to go one on one with a polar bear. Took us ages to find all the bits. And we had to stomach-pump the bear.”

“Aliens aren’t always the brightest buttons in the box,” I agreed. “Just because they’re smart enough to build better toys than us doesn’t mean they’ve got any more common sense. Or self-control. Going back a few years, something from Out There crash-landed right in the middle of a London park, and then disappeared down into the sewers. I was called in and was all ready to go down and pull the bloody thing out when the word came down from above to leave it be. Apparently our outer space beastie was eating the sewage. Along with all the vermin down there in the tunnels with it. So naturally our first thought was Result! And we left it alone, to get on with it.

“About six months later I was called back. The alien had eaten all the sewage, all the local underground wildlife, and half a dozen people sent in to investigate the situation. And it was still hungry. It started sending extensions of its nasty protoplasmic self up through the manholes to attack whatever was in the street, and up through the pipes and plumbing into people’s homes. People started disappearing, and given the state of their sinks and toilets I think I know how, though I rather wish I didn’t. Had a hell of a job keeping that one out of the news. In the end, half a dozen of us entered the sewers at different points and went after the alien with molecular flame throwers. Burned our way through the whole underground tunnel system, end to end, until there was nothing left to burn. We still run chemical and DNA checks at regular intervals, just in case.

“Took me weeks to get rid of the smell.”

Honey and I then looked at Walker, who shrugged easily. “The Nightside is no stranger to close encounters. Aliens have come slipping in through our various Timeslips from the past, the future, and any number of alternate dimensions. We had some Martians turn up last year on huge metal tripods, complete with heat rays, metal claws, and poisonous black smoke. Nasty, squidgy things that fed on human blood, fresh from conquering some other Earth and keen for new lands to expand into. The fools. We blew their metal legs out from under them, dragged them out of their control pods, and ate them.”

“You ate the Martians?” said Honey, wrinkling her perfect nose.

“Delicious,” said Walker. “Oh, we killed them first, of course. But for a while then, fresh Martian delicacies were all the rage in all the very best restaurants in the Nightside. Some of us have been hoping rather wistfully that the Timeslip to that particular Earth will open up again before stocks run out.”

“I don’t know why I talk to you,” said Honey. “You always say the most disturbing things.”

Walker smiled. “It’s the Nightside.”

“Hold everything,” I said. “I think I’ve just made another connection. The aliens moved from dissecting cattle to working on people . . . at exactly the same time as the town’s communications went down. I have an awful feeling these new aliens are planning something very nasty . . . Human mutilations on a grand scale. To a whole town full of people . . .”

“That’s a hell of a jump, Eddie, from one dead cow and one dead farmer,” said Honey.

“But what if I’m right?” I said. “Work as a Drood field agent long enough, you get a feel for this sort of thing.”

“You’re right, Eddie,” said Walker. “Only alien technology could black out a whole town’s communications so easily, never mind Honey’s and yours. But what can we do? We can’t alert everyone in town with the communications down, and even if we could spread the word . . . what good would it do them?”

“They could get the hell out of here!” said Honey. “And so could we. Put enough space between us and the town and our comm systems should come back on line again, and we could get some reinforcements in here.”

“Leave?” I said. “Run away and abandon the people of Roswell to their fate? To be cut open while they’re still alive, like that poor bastard on the slab? By the time we got back here, everyone in this town could be dead!”

“And what if you’re wrong?” said Honey, sticking her face right into mine. “Imagine the mass panic once word got out! How many would get trampled underfoot or killed in car crashes? You could end up with hundreds dead and injured, all over a . . . a conjecture!”

“I’m not wrong!” I said. “And I won’t abandon these people! That’s not what Droods do!”