Alien Caller (4 page)

“Please!” It
was about the fifth time that he heard her wail that he understood
she was speaking. He understood her words. She was asking for him
to turn off the lights, they were hurting her as well as blinding
her and in shock he almost did exactly that. But caution ruled and
he held back. If she didn’t like the light she could leave.
Besides, she still frightened him, the obvious animalistic nature
of her form as disturbing as anything he’d ever seen.

“Back away, I
won’t hurt you.” He opened the sliding door a few millimetres and
yelled it at her, suddenly understanding that it was true. She
frightened him but he still didn’t want to hurt her. There was
something vulnerable about her. Something more than the obvious
distress she suffered from the light. Perhaps it was the fact that
she was a woman and as such she appealed to the chauvinist in him.
Or perhaps he’d just gone soft in his retirement.

She did as he
asked, backing up slowly, step by awkward step until she was thirty
meters away, and then she stopped, unwilling or unable to go any
further. Yet from where she was she had a clear path to the woods
another thirty meters on either side of her, and if she turned
around all the lights would then be behind her. He shouted at her
again, hoping desperately she would just go and never bother him
again.

Slowly she
began to do as he asked, and he watched her turning, painfully
slowly, and he wondered why she took so long. Then he saw the blood
and understood. She was injured. The back of one of her legs had
taken a wound and the blood was trickling down. But it was the
colour that was truly wrong. Trickling down her leg it was more
orange more than red. Very orange.

For the first
time as he stared at her, the implications began to push their way
forward. Possibilities he had never wanted to admit were forcing
themselves to the front of his mind, making themselves heard, until
finally a single word dominated.

Alien.

She couldn’t
possibly be, but orange blood was something he’d never heard of in
any animals. Even fish and reptiles had red blood. There was no
other explanation, but it was still impossible. His thoughts ran
around in chaotic circles, always returning to the same
impossibility. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t animal. She wasn’t an
experiment. And she wasn’t local. Not by a country mile.

She was from
somewhere else. Somewhere where the people had orange blood, and
fur. Somewhere where they had strange tools and stranger clothes.
Somewhere, not of Earth.

The bizarre
thing was that even though it shocked him to his core and shook his
entire belief in the world, on some level it didn’t. This was the
very thing he hadn’t wanted to accept. But it was also something
he’d suspected. He’d almost guessed it but then denied it even to
himself because it was impossible. For a while he wondered if he
might be cracking up. He almost hoped so. It would be much easier
to accept than the idea that there was a real live alien in his
front yard.

He would have
stood there gaping and stared at her all night long too except for
her next act. She fell down, face forwards, and he understood she
was hurt badly. Perhaps very badly. She couldn’t walk; she might
even be dying.

“Ohh shit!”
Even as he spoke he was opening the bullet-proof, bomb-proof glass
sliding door and heading for her, forgetting to think again. Before
his common sense returned he was within a body length of her,
seeing close up what he had refused to believe before. She was
truly an alien. It was in the way her prehensile tail lashed her
injured leg like a tourniquet, trying to stop the bleeding. It was
in the tools hanging from her belt, which whatever they might be
had never been made on Earth. It was in her toe claws that shone
like transparent glass. It was in the strange pattern of her
fur.

She had not
come out of a lab, or at least not an Earthly one.

“Hold still,
I’m armed.” Quicker than he ever had as an agent he had his knee in
the small of her back, her arms tight behind her and cuffed them.
Then he remembered the toe claws and cuffed her feet even faster.
Her only response was a sudden exhalation when his knee
accidentally forced the air out of her lungs. Her belt came off
with the snap of a buckle and he suddenly had an unarmed and
defenceless prisoner.

For a second he
breathed a sigh of relief. But then came a new shock as he suddenly
remembered that he had no idea what to do with her. He had captured
an alien. What next?

First aid.
Years of army training once again took over as he remembered she
was injured, and so he carefully inspected the wound. It was a
nasty rent, half way up her inner thigh, and when he touched it he
realized she still had something embedded in it.

With a sinking
feeling he realized it had to be removed and soon. She was losing
too much blood. She needed a hospital, but he knew he couldn’t
bring her to one. Even if they could treat her she would be picked
up in hours by the government. Meanwhile the doctors and nurse who
attended her would all be picked up as well. They would not be
treated well.

From there he
had absolutely no idea what would happen to her. No, actually he
did have a fairly good idea and it would not be nice. The agency
people weren’t nice people. They eliminated threats and she was
most definitely a threat. So was anyone who knew about her and that
included him. Meanwhile those lab coated respectable scientists
would get their hands on her, and they were monsters in truth. What
they would do to her in the name of science was unthinkable.

There was only
one option. He had to remove the object himself and patch her
wound. It wasn’t as if there was a choice. She had come to him for
help and he couldn’t hand her over to the authorities. It was all
up to him.

“Just relax I’m
going to help you.” But there was no answer.

He tried to
help her to her feet but somewhere between her falling over and his
cuffing her, she seemed to have passed out and he had to lift her.
Her limp body would not help him. He could feel her pulse, rather
more rapid than it should have been in a normal woman. He could
hear her breathing too, and it also seemed too fast. But was that
normal for her or was it because infection had set in? She didn’t
respond to his words or his touch. Instead he found himself
cautiously slinging the gun behind him and hoisting her as best he
could like a sack of spuds.

She was heavy.
Heavier than he would have expected for her size but that was no
doubt due to her musculature. Her fur made it difficult to get a
good grasp on her, but once she was in his arms he suddenly
appreciated what it really was. It wasn’t fur. It was much more
like human hair. Very fine, very thick human hair, soft and silky,
and warm to the touch. It was long down her head and the ridge
running down the middle of her back, long around her wrists and
ankles, and very short like velvet around her shoulders. In short
it covered her like a thick fur wrap.

He staggered
the two dozen steps back to his house, surprised by the load, and
limping badly, as his bad leg failed under the unexpected weight.
But despite it all, he strangely still enjoyed the feel of the
woman in his arms, even if she was both unconscious and alien. He
had been alone too long.

Though it was a
tricky feat of coordination as he had to open the sliding door
wider with his injured leg while still holding her carefully in his
arms, he finally got her inside. He took her into the lounge and
laid her down on the couch. He then joined her for a few seconds as
he caught his breath, finding himself unexpectedly winded. Despite
his regular attempts to keep fit, he guessed he was more out of
shape than he had thought. Maybe his leg had limited his fitness
more than he’d realised. Maybe he was just overstressed and
shocked. It wasn’t important just then though and he quickly forgot
about it. He could berate himself for his failings later.

Instead he
studied his prisoner as he recovered his breath, finding his first
impressions had been off. She was humanly proportioned after all.
She had just been walking on the balls of her feet with her knees
bent, which made her appear otherwise. But it looked an
uncomfortable position and he realized it was probably because of
her injury. She couldn’t straighten her leg.

Standing
straight he would have guessed her height at five foot six, and she
was solidly built with it, albeit in a very womanly way. Any man
would have had to be blind to not notice her hour glass figure.
Child bearing hips, thin waist and ample cleavage, even under her
strange plastic vest and skirt she cut a womanly figure.

The fur / hair
itself was a mix. It varied in length considerably, being full
length on her head and down the middle of her back while it formed
a short mane around her shoulders, bracelets and anklets. But
elsewhere it was shorter again, perhaps only a quarter of an inch
long down the outside of her arms and legs where it formed thin
lines. Elsewhere she seemed to have normal enough looking skin
though tanned. In colour she was mostly a light brown with blond
streaks, though it varied.

Her face itself
seemed human enough, though her nose was tiny, and her eyes large
and slightly skewed. But some of the features in it were
impossible. The whites of her eyes were actually yellow, but not in
a way that reminded him of cats. Yellow like the sun, with gold
flecks. Her teeth were white, impossibly white, and with fangs that
looked like needles.

Her irises when
he checked them looking for signs of head injury, were violet.
Slitted like a cat’s eyes, but not like any cat’s eyes he’d ever
seen. Violet irises in yellow eyes. Not like any eyes known on
Earth but at least they were of equal size and the pupils were
even. She didn’t have a concussion.

Perhaps the
strangest thing was that even though she had never evolved on
Earth, and even though she was obviously neither human nor any
other creature he’d ever seen, she seemed remarkably normal.
Strange certainly, but not so much alien as simply strange. Exotic
perhaps. But she had no tentacles, no green skin or slime covered
eye stalks as he had always imagined aliens would. For an alien she
seemed remarkably human.

She wore a
strange mix of clothing. A short skirt, that looked distinctly
homespun, filled with warm earthy tones randomly mixed up. The
skirt had a sleeve in the back tailored especially for her tail.
Though he'd never seen such a thing before, it made sense he
supposed. Her top was some sort of plastic, or at least he knew it
wasn’t fabric, and was basically a collection of straps somehow
glued together to form a vest. That he guessed had never been seen
before in a shop front window. It clung to her form and he could
see her flesh bulging out of the thin strips between the straps. To
complete the ensemble there were sandals, open toed to show off her
glass claws. Glass. That concept shook him every time he saw them.
How could any living creature have glass as part of them?

Next there was
the belt he’d removed. It was a tool belt made of dull material,
maybe some sort of leather, though not from any cow. It was three
inches wide and had a variety of holsters filled with strange
looking equipment hanging off it. In a while he would examine it
closely. In fact it was going to be nearly the only thing on his
mind. But first he had to help his patient.

A few more
breaths and he rolled her over onto her stomach, the better to see
her injury. Unfortunately the more he looked the less he liked it.
It was hot to the touch, a sure sign of infection if that meant the
same for her as it did for humans. Worse, the more he probed it the
more he became certain that the metal inside it was barbed. It
would not simply pull backwards. He had to cut it out.

He didn’t need
to look at any manual as basic medic training from nearly twenty
years earlier in the army told him the procedure. He knew he had to
shave the area, sterilize it, and then cut open the wound with a
sterile scalpel, pull the metal barb out with tweezers, and sew the
wound back together. Provided she wasn’t too alien the procedure
would be simple enough. It was the other part that bothered him;
the after-care, the lack of antibiotics. He couldn’t give her any
drugs. Surface sterilants should be fine, he hoped, but he could
give her neither antibiotics nor painkillers. What would be
recommended for a human being could be lethal for her.

Reluctant but
knowing there was no choice, he began gathered the equipment, and
positioned her for the operation. Carefully he lay her on her side
with the good leg on top and behind. Yet even as he arranged her,
he discovered an unexpected problem; her tail kept swishing around
and connected directly with the affected area and every so often
his face. That had never been in any of the training guides he’d
read. In the end he had to tie it back to her hands still cuffed
behind her back. It throbbed angrily like an angry cat’s, but it
didn’t escape.

Taking a deep
breath he began shaving her inner thigh. The thin body hair came
off easily enough with just a little shaving cream, and he
carefully placed it in a plastic rubbish bag that he’d grabbed from
the kitchen. It wasn’t just to keep his couch clean either. He
didn’t know what he’d do with it, but he had the strange feeling it
could be useful. Besides it would be evidence. Then again, he
couldn’t help but notice how like human hair it felt. Could the
scientists tell the difference? They could if he told them about
it. But he couldn't tell them about it. Yet there was no option. It
was his duty, but he didn’t want to do it. Not when he knew what
they'd do to her. And maybe to him as well.