by Ian Woodhead
Something had intruded upon his territory. That took priority over the enjoyment of his little play doll, it was that simple. Besides, it had been simply ages since the captain took down a live target.
He reached the side door, stopped, and frowned. His notions of sex with Jenny, what to do with his wife’s doctor, and punishment for the estate layabouts ran to the back of his mind when Copperfield found kind some kind of jelly-like substance coating the bottom of the door and the top step. He placed the tip of his dark blue slipper into the stuff then lifted his foot. “What the hell is this?”
If Maggie was home, and she’d been ten years younger, Copperfield would have blamed her for playing with green slime again. As a kid, she loved all that gross stuff. Her mum bought her what they called alien eggs: a clear plastic egg-shaped canister, full of that vile slime and with some stupid, plastic alien baby in the middle. It was pointless tat, but Maggie loved them.
Copperfield slowly lowered himself and tentatively pushed his forefinger into the mess. It sure did feel like the same stuff. He got back onto his feet, wiped his finger against his jogging pants then pushed the door open. Copperfield couldn’t explain it, so he filed it for later study. The cat problem came first. He’d decided it was a cat which had climbed the fence, simply because he hated the little shitters. Once he had grabbed the crossbow, Copperfield would perform a quick check in here, just in case the cat had got inside.
He entered the kitchen first. Nothing looked out of place since Copperfield had last been in here, nor was anything missing. That pleased him; it wasn’t going to stop him from having a few words with those men. Copperfield reached the door which led into his study. He pulled out a set of keys, selected the one that opened the study door, and left the kitchen.
Something at the back of his head, a glimmer of an idea, managed to clamber past all the other notions currently fighting for attention. It raised a little flag and waved. Copperfield stopped dead. He spun around and peered back inside the kitchen. The fruit bowl, the bloody thing, was empty.
That had to be it. Sometime during today, while he’d been otherwise busy down in the summerhouse, that wife of his must have regained enough sense and come in here to raid that bowl.
The stuff on the step wasn’t anything more elaborate than chewed-up banana. Her window was directly above the side door. Why she’d spit that stuff out of her window was anybody’s guess, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing she’d performed recently.
He unlocked the study, opened the door, and stepped into his second private domain. Nobody but him came into his study. The crossbow, as well as his other weapons, was hung on the far wall opposite his desk. Possession of most of his collection would put him inside for a considerable amount of time, if the authorities ever got wind of just how much ordnance he took with him when he left the forces.
Copperfield should have had these weapons locked away and out of sight, but what was the point of having these beautiful examples of fine engineering if you couldn’t look at them? He walked over to the wall and ran his fingers along the barrel of his Sterling MK4 submachine gun. Such an incredible machine. This, as well as the others bolted to the wall, were taken from stores, picked up from the battlefield, or removed from vehicles during his twenty-year stay in the forces. He wasn’t the only one who had taken a few trophies. Copperfield knew of at least two other COs who’d taken more equipment than him but unlike him, they had gone on to sell their ill-gotten gains to other people with rather dodgy backgrounds.
There used to be a Lanchester MK1 submachine gun above the Sterling, but he took that down a few months ago, with the intention of attempting to restore it to full working order. Despite it being a copy of a German MP28 and a Navy weapon to boot, it was still one of his most prized possessions.
He could spend hours in here. If he didn’t have pressing matters attend, he probably would too. With reluctance, Copperfield left his collection before lifting the crossbow from the wall. He pushed several bolts into his pocket then walked over to his desk. If his video surveillance had been set up correctly, he wouldn’t need to leave the study until his cameras had located the intruder. Unfortunately, the only camera properly connected was in his wife’s bedroom. Good news for Copperfield; at least he’d known that the fault lay in him and his poor wiring skills and bad news for the doctor who he’d seen three times now diddling his wife whilst she’d been in orbit. He was on the captain’s list. Once his territory really was secure, Copperfield fully intended to show the doctor exactly what happened to people who abused his trust.
He left the study, ensuring the door was locked before proceeding to the next room.
“Dammit, I should have reviewed the tape,” he muttered. Copperfield hurried along the corridor, ran up the stairs, and checked into Maggie’s old room. The place looked just as it should. He closed that door then bypassed all the other rooms before heading towards the second-floor staircase.
That tape wouldn’t be reviewed. In fact, once all this was over, Copperfield intended to wipe the bloody thing. He simply didn’t want to be proved wrong regarding the chewed-up bananas. Right now, his theory fitted the evidence perfectly and as far as he was concerned, that suited him down to the ground.
The bedroom door was wide open. “What the hell?” He pulled the line back and fitted a bolt. The closer he got to that open door, the more uneasy he became. Something was very wrong with this picture. The wife never left the door open, ever.
Copperfield rested his finger against the trigger guard and moved to the edge, away from the creaking floorboards which, if stood upon, might announce his presence. He passed the framed family portrait showing the three of them back when Maggie had left school and passed the group photo of his platoon, taken a few days before they were shipped out to Iraq. The only soldier not present in the shot was Callum McGuire, and that’s because he was behind the lens.
He noticed his face in the light green door’s reflection. Above the scowl and the iron-grey moustache, he saw fear in his eyes, something he never expected to see. What the hell was wrong with him? After the shit he’d faced over the years, the discovery of an open door shouldn’t even enter his top ten. That soon altered when Copperfield realised that the only reason why he saw his reflection was due to the same gelatinous substance he saw outside also coated the door.
Copperfield covered the remaining distance in less than a second and got ready to shoot the first thing that moved. All that did move, apart from the nodding bird ornament on her side of the dressing table, were the bed covers. It looked like two dogs fighting under there.
“Anna!” he screamed. “What’s going on?”
“Leave me be,” replied a muffled voice from under the covers. “Go back to your whore, Thomas. Stay out of my bedroom.”
It wasn’t until he actually stepped across the threshold that the captain saw how wrong this whole situation was. There were things poking out from the side of her quilt. What the fuck was this? They looked like plant shoots or cooked spaghetti. Hell, they even bore a passing resemblance to rat tails.
“Oh God, Anna. Please. Tell me what’s going on?”
The top of the quilt folded back to reveal her head. She sat up and the cover slipped down further. He stared, mouth agape, at the woman’s grey, shiny body.
“Get out of here!” she yelled. The woman leaned forward. “Go on, go crawl up Jenny’s arse, you vile, misogynist bastard.” When Thomas didn’t move, she reached across the bed and grabbed a phone lying next to the nodding bird. “This is your last warning. In a few more seconds, Jenny’s father is going to know exactly where she’s been going every night for the past few years!”
Thomas backed away. He no longer cared about what weirdness was happening in here. The woman wasn’t in any trouble, apart from being bat-shit insane. He took one last look at that bed before shutting the door. It looked totally normal. No bits of spaghetti hanging over the side and no animals fighting under the cover.
Could he have
imagined everything? He slammed the door. It was more likely that the bitch had decided to play mind games with him. The captain stormed along the hallway and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. So she knew about Jenny, did she? In that case, he’d see about trying to get her committed so Jenny could move up into the main house.
Copperfield moved through the empty house, his mind boiling over at the sheer ignominy of her behaviour. She even tried to blackmail him! That had to be the icing on the cake. Like he gave a shit about what Jenny’s dad would do. Copperfield would tear the runt’s head off his shoulders if he even thought about looking at him in a funny way. He reached the outer door.
“You’re soon going to find that two can play at that game,” he murmured. Copperfield still had the tapes showing the doctor having sex with his sleeping wife. That disgrace to the profession was going to help him to put the rancid bitch away or risk that numerous copies of those tapes ending up in the wrong hands.
Right now, all that nonsense could wait until the morning. So could the cat problem as well. It would probably go back to where it lived at some time during the night, most likely when it has crapped in Copperfield’s cauliflower patch. It didn’t matter, as tomorrow was another day, the first of many new days when his life was about to become so much less complicated. Once he had spoken to that dirty doctor, Copperfield would take a ride into that horrible Harmony Estate and find the incompetent fools who installed his fence. They were going to double-check and triple-check the security before any money exchanged hands. Once he was satisfied, he then intended to contact a reputable dealer to electrify the top. That ought to sort out that feline and any other which took it upon themselves to use his property as a toilet.
Copperfield pushed open the summerhouse door, leaned the crossbow against the wall, and padded over to the bedroom door. Before he opened it, he removed his clothes. The juices had simmered long enough. It was now time to show her exactly what he was capable of. He pushed open the door, walked over to the bed, pulled back the covers, and climbed in beside her.
It took him precisely two seconds to realise the sense of wrongness had not finished with him when Copperfield touched Jenny’s back and found himself stroking thick fur. He managed to release a single scream before several thin tendrils burst out of that back and wrapped themselves around the man’s throat.
CHAPTER FOUR
The weird stranger poked Callum in the side, seconds after his eyelids dropped into sleeping mode. He jerked back and bumped the back of his head on the wall which separated the two patches.
“I’m awake, I’m awake.”
Harry sighed. His new friend did a lot of sighing. The man then lightly booted Callum’s ankle before nodding over at the other end of the alley. He wanted Callum to follow him, that was obvious, but right now, all he wanted to do was to climb over this wall, hurry over to his favourite spot in the park, and get some sleep. As far as he was concerned, today was finished. He had it up to here with the weirdness and so didn’t need anymore, thank you very much. Callum crossed his arms and shook his head decisively. What the hell. Two could play at the non-communication game.
It was as plain as an unused tissue that this joker, dressed in mud and armed with a deadly Nerf gun, was obviously part of this weirdness that had invaded Callum’s life. Despite him bombarding the guy with a bazillion questions, he’d answered precisely none of them. In fact, he had the bare-faced cheek to spit out a few of his own.
The weird stranger crouched beside Callum, placed the weapon on Callum’s lap then stood up. “From where I come from, that is the second most valuable commodity a soldier could possess. With that weapon, the hunters became the hunted. Learning to break their conditioning was the turning point. Our species extinction no longer looked inevitable.”
Callum so wanted to play touchy with the Nerf gun but found he couldn’t pull his gaze away from the stranger’s scary eyes. This man next to him had been to hell. The stranger blinked, breaking the spell. He looked down at the strange weapon. That man hadn’t just been to hell, he had a frigging season ticket. “Tell me, where exactly are you from?” he whispered.
He jerked at the man’s quiet reply. Surely, he must have misheard. “Say again?”
“I was born in Brandale, in the year 1978.”
“Right, okay.” Callum plucked up enough courage to place his fingers under the weapon and lift it a couple of inches above his knees. The surface felt a little unpleasant, a bit like wet clay, or dead flesh. He shuddered and dropped it back on his lap. Callum decided that he didn’t want to touch it anymore. “Okay, so you’re a local lad and recently you’ve been where? No, let me guess. You were kidnapped by aliens and were made to fight in some war on a far-off planet?” Callum licked his lips. “Sorry, I guess my sarcasm meter just melted. Please. Tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“From what little I’ve seen, friend, your world has become a paradise. It’s rich and peaceful and so colourful.” He plucked a leaf from an overhanging branch. “There’s beauty everywhere.” The stranger switched his gaze to Callum. “Here, you have thrived, aided by fantastic inventions pulled out of the heads of your own boffins.” He picked up the gun. “And yet, I still believe the Goliaths and their familiars will still be able to turn this paradise into a vast killing zone with little effort.”
“Gee, thanks for the detail there, Mr. Mud Soldier. Apart from pissing on my pretend happiness, you’ve told me absolutely bugger all.”
“It would be best to show you,” he replied, “as I feel cynicism runs thick in your veins.” He bent over and dragged Callum onto his feet. “Stay behind me and keep quiet. The three who confronted you are close and, I believe, are observing.”
As soon as the weird stranger mouthed out that the three kids were close by, a dozen ambiguous emotions rushed through his already battered system. Callum took the knife out of his pocket. It wasn’t quite as impressive as the stranger’s gun, but it did give him some reassurance. Not that it helped the original owner. Still, if he hadn’t used this on that head in a bag, he might not have been here to witness all this wonderful roller-coaster ride of fun and joy.
The weird stranger stopped moving. He leaned to the side and tilted his head backwards, then grabbed Callum and pointed up into the tree. He craned his head back, not totally sure of what he was supposed to be looking at. Callum didn’t ask the question as Mud Soldier told him to stay quiet, his scary eyes drilling twin holes into the back of his skull.
He was about to give scary-eyes the universal shrug when he did notice something odd. Callum let out a tiny moan when a pair of eyes blinked at him, followed by something up there hissing. A drop of slime fell from the leaves and splatted onto the floor between them. A thin plume of acrid smoke rose from where the slime hit.
“That is not good,” said the stranger. He pushed Callum back, dropped to his knee, aimed the weapon up, and fired off a single shot.
An animal-like scream almost shattered Callum’s eardrums. He jumped even further back when whatever had been blinking at him plummeted out of the tree and hit the floor with a wet thud. Bits of the creature’s body flew out, landing in the surrounding foliage.
“Move it! Come on, man, we need to get out of here!”
Callum saw fear in those stranger’s eyes and for the second time tonight, he wished the bottle he kept in his inside pocket was full of the hard stuff. The stranger ran over to him and pushed him backwards.
“This is your world, find us a safe place!”
Callum leaned to the side and looked over the stranger’s shoulder and immediately wished he hadn’t. The slimy mess on the floor wore Adidas trainers and the remains of a bright green T-shirt. He was looking at the kid who’d stirred the pot, the one who so needed to see his taller mate cut up Callum. As frightening as that was, it paled in comparison to the sight of all those lumps of meat which had flown off the main body upon impact. They were all crawling, rolling, and undulating towards the pair of them.
&
nbsp; He didn’t need telling twice. Callum spun around and raced back to the wall. He scrambled over the top and dropped down into his safe zone. Yet, thanks to what he’d just witnessed, those words had lost all their meaning. How could he be safe anymore, not after what he’d just seen? He cast a fearful gaze above him. Oh Christ, there were still two more of those things out there.
Callum hopped from foot to foot, waiting for the man to get over that wall. As soon as he was over, Callum raced across the grass, desperately needing to get out from under the trees. He headed for the playground. It wasn’t usually an area of the park he frequented due to hysterical mothers during the daylight hours and gangs of youths sprawling across the equipment at night. This was an emergency, so all rules fell by the wayside.
Once he reached the slide, Callum stopped and leaned his head against one of the steel supports while vaguely wondering who had just blow-torched his lungs. Christ on a bike, how unfit was he nowadays? Callum waited until the other footsteps had crunched on gravel before standing straight. “So, that’s your example of showing me? Thank you. I feel so fucking enriched now.” He turned around. “I sure hope that’s the end of it as I don’t think I can take any more of this, not without a drink.”
He instinctively tapped his inside coat pocket, just to see if his bottle really was still empty. Did his new best mate carry any folding stuff? He might have to ask that question before long. Before some mouse-sized slug ate its way through his foot! Oh Jeez. Callum felt his legs fold out from under him. No more. No, please, no more weirdness.
The gravel did look rather soft; perhaps this would be a nice place to go to sleep? The scary-eyed man should wake him up when the sun came up with breakfast. He looked up at him and attempted to ask for a bacon sandwich without a side order of puddle water when he caught the sight of another one of those things running towards them with the speed of a greyhound. Callum shrieked out, the shrieking intensified when he saw the other one heading straight for him, coming from the side and weaving its way through the playground equipment.