Alien Caller (3 page)

Who cared if they were criminals
and derelicts who had been picked up off the streets for the offer
of food and shelter, or who had been captured while on the run?
They were people too. They had rights. As did the animals that had
been given enough humanity to make them self aware. Just enough to
let them suffer
as they knew what was being done to them and knew
helplessness
.
But those were arguments for other days. For other people not bound
by official secrecy and miles of red tape. Those not likely to
spend the rest of their lives in jail if they uttered a single
syllable. His problem was what to do with one of them
today.

If this
creature was one of them then he couldn’t let it return to one of
those terrible places to be tortured anew. But he also knew it
might well be dangerous. Very dangerous. Tormented out of its mind
by scientists it was likely to also be crazed and with it very
quick and lethally armed. He couldn’t let it stay loose either. Not
when it might well hurt innocent people. He might have to take on
the job of killing it himself. If he could. He had no idea how
dangerous it might be.

Then there was
the other possibility; that it wasn’t here by chance. What were the
odds after all? That an experimental creature had just accidentally
managed to escape and then had travelled surely many hundreds of
miles from the nearest laboratory to an ex-agent’s door? Next to
none. If it was an experiment, it had most likely come to see him.
Maybe it had come to kill him. In fact that was almost a certainty.
Why else would it be here? To pay a social call? He knew
better.

No matter how
they dressed it up, those poor victims had all been created with
the single purpose of killing. Whether as soldiers, agents or
assassins, they were bred as killers. This one would be the same.
It was the only explanation that made sense. Whoever or whatever
the strange visitor was, it would surely have been sent to kill
him.

Which meant in
all likelihood that David had now become the enemy. And yet why
should they have decided to do it now? After all this time? After
all he had sworn oaths to never to say anything and he had signed
documents requiring him to keep what he had seen confidential and
provided for some serious penalties if he breached that agreement.
He could and probably would go to jail. He had also tried to be the
perfect example of an ex-agent since retiring and had passed all
the six monthly security checks they put him through. He sighed
quietly, resigned to his fate.

Security was
part and parcel of his life. He’d always known there could be
consequences for leaving the service. But he had hoped for a
peaceful retirement when he’d first arrived here in the middle of
nowhere, and done his best to ensure it. Now maybe that hope was
gone. Even after more than three years he would still be considered
a security risk. Maybe someone had decided to finally remove that
risk? Again it wasn’t impossible that they would use one of their
lab bred nightmares. It might be expensive and unwise when they
could just use a sniper or poison, but it was not impossible.

Whatever the
truth he knew he had to do something. He had to look out for the
local community, protect himself and just maybe stop the creature.
It was a big ask for a single man and to do so in a single day but
it wasn’t a choice.

First he needed
to speak to the neighbours. As he swilled the last of his coffee he
decided he needed to go and visit his closest neighbours that very
morning. He wasn’t sure what he’d tell them, something along the
lines of having seen a cougar. And he would definitely mention the
yellow eyes. After all he had to warn them. After that he’d head
into town and pick up the extra equipment he’d need to protect
himself. Later still he’d activate his defences, ready his weapons,
and prepare to confront the unknown.

But that
morning as he set out towards his nearer neighbours, he had doubts.
Not about warning them, that was only right and proper. Nor about
setting up his defences as that also was simple common sense. But
about whether the creature he had seen was actually an experiment.
He might be three years or more out of date but he thought he knew
all the American labs, and none were within five hundred miles of
this peaceful Nebraskan wilderness. Which meant either it was a
long way from home and had been delivered to his very door, or a
new lab had been built nearby without his knowing. Besides, the
creature was just too perfect for the doctors to have created it.
Which left the third option; that it was something else.

It was the last
that truly troubled him.

David clutched
at the shotgun under his arm and felt the warmth of the machine
pistols nestled under his jacket. If the creature wasn’t an
experiment he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t want to know. But
he would be ready regardless.

Chapter
Three.

As the shadows
fell and night closed in David finished with his afternoon’s work,
washed up and prepared dinner. He hoped at least that it had been a
good day’s work. His four closest neighbours had all been warned to
look for a cougar. They would get the message out through the phone
tree, a surprisingly simple and effective system that still existed
in these remote places. Of course the warnings would probably turn
into a chance to gossip, especially about their paranoid neighbour,
but still his duty was served.

He was fairly
sure his neighbours would be all right. They were well-armed and
self-reliant types. Most of those living this far from the cities
were. They had to be. The children would be brought in at night,
the shutters closed and big solid doors locked tight. No animal
would get through them, and if whatever it was did - well, all of
them were better armed than the local police. Besides, it wasn’t
coming for them.

Despite that he
was still disturbed by the events of the day. And not simply by his
visitor. The reactions of those he had warned had set off alarm
bells in his head.

They’d all
looked at him strangely when he’d brought them the warning but that
at least he had expected. It had been decades since the last
sighting of a cougar after all. But years as an investigator told
him it was more than that. They looked almost guilty, as though he
was cornering them. It had been many years since he had seen that
look in another’s eyes and he told himself he had imagined it.
Still, he simply couldn’t shake the feeling that they knew
something they weren’t telling. Not something bad or evil. They
weren’t criminals. They were decent people. But there was still
something.

He hadn’t asked
them. That wasn’t his job anymore and if they had secrets he didn’t
want to know. They were his neighbours, not suspects, and he was no
longer an agent. He had left it alone as he had ignored other
oddities many times before. They were keeping something from him.
All of his neighbours were. And they had done so for a long time.
But it was only as he was returning home that he finally understood
that whatever it was that they were hiding had something to do with
his nocturnal visitor. That too was in their eyes. It made no sense
but he knew it for a fact.

It wasn’t his
business. Just as he hadn’t pried into their secrets in the last
three or four years, he could happily continue not doing so for a
little longer. He saw no need to do so. Regardless of what they
might possibly know or what they could perhaps have told him he
knew his first duty was done. They would be safe and so would their
neighbours in turn. Taking the creature out was his job, not
theirs, and even if they did know something, it was unlikely to be
as useful as his preparations.

He would be safe, he hoped. His
seemingly modest cabin was ringed with defences, and was
tougher
than any fortress.
Far tougher. Though it looked like a simple log cabin, those split
tree trunks that comprised its walls were bonded to heavy armour
plate while the windows were a top secret armour glass composite
designed to stop rocket attacks as well as bullets. While the roof
appeared to be covered by clay tiles in fact it was made of even
more armour plate covered with a resin coating styled to look like
tiles. Of course the inside frame work of the house was just as
strong and instead of simple logs that would have been far too weak
for what was hunting him, he had used reinforced steel girders to
hold everything together. He had transformed what he viewed as a
picturesque log cabin into a twenty first century
castle.

But the passive
defences were only the beginning of his work.

Though never
intended for this creature his concealed defences should work just
as well against it. Though even he admitted they were a little over
the top. After all, this creature couldn’t be any more dangerous
than Dimock, the enemy which he had prepared them for. Nothing
could be as deadly as Dimock. But even if the creature somehow got
through the outer ring he’d also secured the thick wooden doors and
barricaded the windows and slider to the house. No living creature
could break through that into the cabin itself.

He was also
extremely well-armed. Years of paranoia and the certain knowledge
that when he eventually escaped there was at least one person who
Dimock would come after, had motivated him to obtain an arsenal
like no other. When he did escape and came hunting him, David would
be ready for him. As a result he had built up an armoury to rival
those of any arms dealers.

In addition if
it was truly an animal he’d ringed the outside with trip wires,
flood lights and sirens which should be enough to scare off any
predator. And if it was a different kind of predator then at least
it was enough to wake him from the soundest sleep, assuming he got
any. He was as safe as any man could be.

If only he knew
what he was dealing with.

****************

It wasn’t an
animal. He finally accepted that the moment he saw her. But she
wasn’t human or some weird experiment either. Caught by the
spotlights, he could see his intruder - make that her - clearly in
the white brilliance. He almost wished he couldn’t. Her very image
rocked his world.

She looked like
a cross between a cougar and a woman, but a very strange one. Her
body plan was nearly human having the usual two legs, two arms and
a head. But the proportions were all wrong. Her body was long, her
legs were short, and she seemed to be almost double jointed as her
ankles appeared to work like backwards knees. Then he realized she
was standing on the balls of her feet with her knees bent. It must
have been a distinctly uncomfortable position.

Her arms looked
quite normally proportioned but the shining claws sticking out of
the tips of her short fingers were completely wrong. Her neck was
long and graceful supporting an almost elegantly elfin face. She
had a pointy chin, a triangular lower jaw, large round yellow eyes,
and pointed, tufted ears.

Then there was
the fur or what looked like soft, golden fluff that outlined her
from head to toe. And he could see just how much of her it covered
as she chose to wear a short, home spun dress only just longer than
a miniskirt, and a weird vest of puffed plastic straps which
covered her upper body like some bizarre form of armour.

But it was the
tool belt that truly caught his eye. Or actually what was in it.
Hanging around her waist it held a variety of devices, all of which
looked distinctly strange. All were metallic, though some were
clearly made of darker metal than others. None of them though
looked like hammers or screwdrivers. She wasn't a builder. That
much he knew. They were technological. He wondered if any of them
were weapons, knowing that if their positions had been reversed
they surely would all have been. That tool belt was like nothing
he’d ever seen.

Probably the
thing that persuaded him most however, wasn’t her appearance. It
was that she looked so natural. There were none of the monstrous
deformities he’d seen in the other creatures, and her movements
even on the cameras had been smooth and fluid as she approached.
She also didn’t seem to be misshapen. She was different yes, but
not a freak.

Perhaps the
scientists had perfected their craft and developed a success. He
doubted it. They were a long way from getting it right, whatever
“right” was, and he wasn’t even sure they wanted to. Besides, if
they’d been designing a super soldier as they usually did, she
seemed to be nothing like their goal.

As he’d watched
her through the various camera feeds approaching the house, she’d
shown no sign of having noticed that she was under observation. Nor
did she seem to have any great strength as she crawled over objects
even he with his damaged leg could hurdle. She didn’t seem to have
a gun either. Not in her hands at least. And then, despite his
fears, she had approached the house directly. No hiding, no
stealthy approach. If she was a soldier of any type, she was
forgetting all her training.

She made a
small wailing sound as she stood there, and he noticed her arm
covering her eyes. The lights had blinded her as he’d intended. But
perhaps they’d done more than that. It was almost as though she was
in pain from them.