Crop Circles, Cows, and Crazy Aliens

by steve higgs

  ‘It wasn't like that.' Richard protested. ‘I wanted to tell you, mate. You were just so set on being a farmer here and struggling along. We could have made a fortune and set up again somewhere else without all the debt and worry. It would have been so brilliant.'

  ‘I even remember you telling me something about it. About natural gas on the land.' Kieron admitted, his face still a mask of anger.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I told you about it straight away.’

  ‘And I said I would rather die than have the beautiful countryside ripped up just to get at some gas. Fracking would have destroyed the land.' With the shotgun now pointing toward Richard because that was where Kieron was facing, Glen tried to take a step backward. ‘Don't you move.' Kieron instructed quietly. The stillness and calm in his voice scarier than the weapon at this point.

  ‘I was going to share the money with you, Kieron.’ Richard was pleading. ‘Both of us together with the girls and the babies would have flourished, free of debt and money worries at new farms.’

  I needed to interject. ‘Except you wouldn't have. Would they, Glen?’ All eyes swung to me. ‘Your wives were never yours, Richard. Both belong to another man. They seduced you on his instruction. He was going to have all the land once you were bankrupt. Maybe he even planned to fake your suicides. I can only imagine how deep this goes, but tell me, Richard, do you have a large freezer on your property anywhere?'

  He didn’t answer, but Michelle’s expression told me I had scored another hit.

  ‘It is where Glen and Michelle stashed Tamara’s body when he killed her. Why did you kill her, Glen?’

  What was keeping Patience? Where was she?

  I was taking my time, but I didn’t know how long I could string this out. ‘Was it that she found out about Michelle? Or Lara? Or both of them? Or was it something else? Did she find out that you had been using her contacts to get hold of the pills you were doping the cows with? Or was she in on it and changed her mind?'

  ‘It was an accident.’ Glen blurted, speaking for the first time in minutes.

  ‘An accident.’ I repeated. ‘You called Michelle though and shoved Tamara’s body in the freezer at Richard’s farm. Who came up with the genius idea to plant her body outside when you heard about the alien?’

  No one answered for a moment, then Lara broke the silence and finally the confession started. ‘It was her idea.’ She said, pointing to Michelle while cradling the baby with her other arm. ‘She always wanted Tamara dead.’

  ‘Lara, what are you saying?’ Shrieked Michelle, but it sounded fake.

  ‘Tamara caught Glen kissing me and went nuts. She was in on the whole thing but had no idea either of us was sleeping with her husband. That bitch was so blind. Just like you Michelle, you wanted Glen for yourself. We could have shared him, but you always pretended you didn’t know.’

  ‘I didn’t know!’ She shouted.

  ‘Ladies, there is enough of me to go around. We can still be a happy family.’ Glen’s comment drew stares from Richard and Kieron.

  The shotgun came back around to point at Glen’s head. ‘You better start talking or I’m going to blow your head off.’ Kieron promised.

  Nervously, Glen raised his hands in surrender, but he started talking. ‘There is a huge pocket of natural gas beneath your feet. Tens of millions of pounds, maybe even more than that. We own the land, Kieron. All we have to do is agree to extract it and we are all richer than you can count.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about the gas. Why is my wife holding your baby?’

  ‘I needed you to be distracted and to feel safe. I needed to know what you were doing. Lara and Michelle agreed to seduce and marry you both so the three of us could gain control of the land. Lara was never meant to get pregnant.’

  ‘The three of us.’ I echoed. All eyes turned to me. ‘Your plan never included Tamara, did it? Were you always going to kill her?’

  ‘I had a dead body in my freezer.’ Richard was borderline catatonic. He was burbling to himself and cradling his face.

  ‘Hold on. Hold on.’ Demanded Kieron. ‘What about the milk? You knew that my milk was back to normal this morning. How?’

  ‘Because Lara hadn’t been here to put fresh dope into their feed. Glen and Richard and Tamara and Michelle and Lara were all in this wonderful little plot together. Glen was the geologist that could test and confirm the potential size and worth of the find. Richard was the well-meaning idiot, who, by the way, did a top job of trying to help me solve the case by dressing up in a hoody and a mask and feeding me clues.’ Richard’s jaw hung slack. He clearly believed I would not work out it was him. ‘Richard got cold feet and wanted to expose the truth, so he fed me clues but tried to conceal his identity. He pointed me toward a picture of the girls at Uni, hoping I would spot Glen and make the connection. He didn’t know the girls were sisters and certainly didn’t know that his wife was never on his side.’ I made eye contact with Richard. ‘It that your baby she carries?’ His horrified face turned to stare at his wife’s belly.

  ‘Lara and Michelle are the poisonous sisters that would marry and sleep with a man just to ensure they could manipulate his actions. That’s why Lara has been pushing you to sell. Glen has money from the sale of his father’s farm. My friendly researcher had difficulty proving that bit as finances are always well hidden. He got there though. Glen would have bought the land and then done whatever he wanted. He couldn’t just do it on his own land because it would tip his hand to you. He wanted it all. That’s how the greedy mind works. It always wants more.’

  ‘The girls were doping the cows. None of the farm hands would question the farmer’s wife going into the milking shed to see the cows each morning, now would they?’

  Kieron saw the truth of it. Then his brow knitted again. ‘What about the alien Lara saw?’

  ‘Oh, that was real.’

  ‘What?’ He squeaked.

  ‘Well, it was really there. But it was this man,‘ I grabbed Jack by his shoulder, ‘inside a suit. He was taking advantage of the recent crop circles, which by the way were an art project made by Lee and Christian, the two college geeks you met, and the report of glowing milk and the lights reported in the sky.’ Beside me Jack was smiling broadly as he shook his head. ‘It was all a ruse to advance his show.’

  ‘Oh, Amanda. You could not be more wrong if you tried.’

  ‘It worked too, didn’t it, Jack? You are suddenly quite famous.’

  The blissful sound of sirens in the distance reached my ears. I was just about to tell them about the lights in the sky when the tension that had been keeping everyone in place finally broke.

  Hearing the police on their way, Glen, knowing he was guilty of murder, ran for it. Kieron reacted by swinging the shotgun to fire at Glen’s back.

  I shouted for him to stop, but I couldn’t get to him before the gun went off.

  Michelle meanwhile had crossed the yard to confront her sister. Lara was defending her baby as Michelle ranted and screamed at her. Richard didn’t move.

  But Kieron’s shot mostly missed Glen. There was a shout of pain, but Glen ducked around the side of the farm and was gone.

  ‘Nobody move.’ I commanded.

  Nobody listened though. I turned to wave to the police cars as they were sweeping into the farm. Leading the way was Patience with the terrified face of Brad Hardacre in the passenger seat.

  Officers spilled from the cars and vans to separate the sisters and to cuff Richard and Kieron. Kieron was still holding the shotgun and looking beaten.

  The sound of a quad bike preceded Glen emerging from behind a barn astride it. He shot off across the field over terrain the police vehicles were not suited to.

  They were not defeated for long though, two Land Rovers were requisitioned in seconds, Patience once again trying to get behind the wheel only to find no one was brave enough to get in with her.

  Aftermath and Aliens. Sunday, November 13th 1400hrs

  Quiet had fallen at the fa
rm. Glen had been chased and caught. Everyone was under arrest and evidence was being gathered. Soon they would take Glen, Richard, and the girls away. Kieron was being questioned but was not in cuffs as he was considered to be the victim.

  His farm was safe, he could return to making a living, but I doubted he would ever feel the same about it again. He was sitting on top of a fortune in natural energy yet had principles that denied him the option of getting to it. Without it though, and without the other farms to support his milk producing efforts, would he even be able to stay in business?

  These were not my concerns. My concern was that I had a bill for the last few days and I had to hand it to a man that I knew to be not only broke but broken-spirited and broken-hearted as well.

  It could wait.

  I was getting hungry. Lunch simply hadn’t happened. I wandered outside to see if the police had some food going.

  I spotted Jack. He was lounging against a fence looking like he hadn't a care in the world. What on earth was he doing here anyway? Today's revelations had done nothing to further his cause. He had reported in the Supernatural Times that the milk was aliens attempting to subvert humankind. Today's revelations disproved his theories. I still hadn't confronted him about that.

  Well, I was going to do it now. Let’s see what effect that had on his smug grin.

  ‘There’s an alien spacecraft over Larson Farm!’

  All eyes turned to the voice. A farm worker was holding his mobile phone and shouting. In the quiet, we could just about make out the voice on his speaker.

  ‘Barry sent me a picture of it. It just scared the herd over by east field. Now it’s heading through the woods toward Hogget’s Hill.’

  No one moved.

  ‘He says there’s an alien as well. Soldiers are hunting it.’

  All around me, people exploded into action. Farm hands were jumping onto anything with wheels and a motor. The police that were not directly involved with sweeping up the events at Brompton farm piled into their cars.

  Next to me, as I fiddled with my bag to find my keys, Jack said, ‘Well, well. I appear to be standing here next to you. I hope you will let me help you with wardrobe when we present together. Something revealing ought to fit the bill. Nothing slutty, just enough skin to tease though.’

  I shoved him roughly out of my way as I ran to my car. The farmhands were going cross country, the roads would be faster, but where the police would need to navigate, I already knew where I was going.

  I had a bad feeling about the alien. If soldiers were indeed chasing it, they must be from BARF. I had a hunch BARF were not a government-sanctioned unit at all, but instead a privately funded bunch of morons. Would they be armed? I shuddered to think.

  I mashed my foot down as I came out of the farm and onto what passed for a main road in the countryside. Hogget’s farm was three miles away through twisting country lanes. I had to be the first to get there though.

  If I had the map right in my head, the alien was heading north through the woods that bordered the upper edge of Larson Farm. The woods ended at a road where the creature would have to emerge to continue onwards.

  With my car whipping along the tight roads as fast as I dared to push it and a constant prayer for tractors to stay in the field on my lips, I spied ahead of me the deep crimson and black of a BARF vehicle. As I drew nearer, I could make out the distinctive shape of a Land Rover Defender.

  I had a police car behind me in which I could see Patience and Brad Hardacre with grim faces as they tried to keep up with me. Brad was at the wheel and giving it all he had, but the mini was simply better engineered for this kind of driving. I caught the BARF truck and went directly around it, risking my life to get through a tiny gap before we hit the next corner.

  Patience and Brad got stuck behind it. That was what I needed though. I had to be the one to intercept the alien and I had to be alone.

  More corners at dangerous speeds and suddenly I was there. I hit the brake pedal and skidded to a stop, my tyres skipping across the road and leaving rubber behind.

  I spotted the alien instantly. It had already crossed the road and was running across the scrubby field to the north. The only feature ahead of it was Hogget's Hill. In the open, it was massively exposed.

  A shout brought my attention around to look the way the alien had just come. Through the woods to the south, I could see guys in uniform. The same deep crimson and black, which did little to camouflage them in the woods as they were darker than everything else. I wondered if they were armed until a shot rang out.

  Panicked, I pulled out my mobile phone, scrolled through my contact list and pressed dial.

  The alien faltered mid-run. I was right.

  I honked my horned and waved out the window. The alien was one hundred yards away to the north. The soldiers in the woods were less than that to the south and they had not only seen the alien, not hard in its daft silver suit but had seen me as well.

  Another shot rang out and this time I saw a puff of grass pop into the air ten feet to the left of the alien.

  With no option, I turned my wheel and drove the mini off the road while praying the recent rain hadn’t made the ground boggy.

  Behind me, the BARF truck came around the corner, with Brad right behind it, giving some horn in protest.

  The poor Mini wasn’t designed to go cross-country. I wasn’t sure what the best tactic was, but I knew I didn’t want to stop, and I didn’t want to weave around much.

  I was going slow though, just trying to keep my wheels moving. The alien was coming toward me, the distance closing fast. I powered down the window and yelled for it to jump with all the volume I could muster.

  I had turned so I was parallel with it, so it could run along beside me and dive in headfirst. With a distinctly human lack of grace, that was what it did. We were still moving, the upside-down alien flailing around and knocking my arms as I tried to protect myself from its feet. I pointed the car back toward the road and tried to stay ahead of the BARF truck as it barrelled along the far smoother tarmac.

  I got the mini back to the edge of the grass and regained the road. Not a moment too soon as the BARF truck was bearing down on me. I stomped on the gas pedal to get away, then saw another vehicle with BARF markings coming toward me from the other direction and yet more vehicles behind that. They were being pursued by more police cars though, the sound of sirens now everywhere.

  Frustrated soldiers were emerging from the woods to my left and would be on the road and in my way in seconds if I didn’t floor it. They were pointing their weapons at me but none of them fired because the alien was still upside down with its head stuck in the footwell and its feet flailing.

  I could see just one chance. Ahead of me, there was a turning, it looked like a track, rather than a road. Something you might take a horse down, but I needed to get the alien away from the crazy BARF nutters that might shoot without questioning what was inside the suit and away from the police, as they would undoubtedly ask too many questions.

  The mini leaped forward, its sporty little engine leaving the slow-moving BARF Land Rover and the soldiers in its wake but creating a game of chicken with those coming toward me. I needed to go faster if I was going to make it.

  Adrenaline was making my pulse race. I felt slightly sick and a bit light headed as I gritted my teeth against the terror headed my way. I was the smallest car in this equation. Get it wrong and I might not survive the crash.

  Then a shot rang out to redouble my desire to escape.

  With the convoy of BARF military vehicles filling my windscreen, I had to brake to make the turn and only got through because the driver bearing down on me, who got so close I could see his eye colour, realised that if he didn’t brake, he was going to hit the vehicle chasing me.

  I had left my own deceleration just a moment too late, so as I two-wheeled it around the corner, my back end drifted out, slipped off the gravel track and threatened to flip me. Then, just when I thought my teeth were go
ing to shatter I was clenching them so hard, the front-wheel-drive tyres gripped the surface of the track to propel the car onward and I was gone.

  In my rearview, I could see the BARF vehicles all screech to a juddering stop as they fought to follow me and caused a block at the entrance to the track. I reached another turning as the track went into some woods and saw, with my final glance, that the police were swarming over the BARF nutters. They had been running around the woods shooting weapons that were most likely not licensed firearms. There was going to be a stack of arrests.

  I powered the window back up.

  In the calm quiet of the cab, the alien had righted itself. I could hear its heavy, out of breath gasps of air through its suit.

  I allowed my shoulders to relax. We were safe. ‘Seatbelt please, Uncle.’

  Lockup. Sunday, November 13th 2125hrs

  I waited in the dark for over an hour. Just as I was beginning to get a numb bottom and starting to worry that I might have guessed wrong, I heard the sound of a car pull up outside.

  Jane had once again been able to find the information I wanted only moments after I had asked it. She always said the internet could tell you anything so long as you knew how to ask. In this case, I had asked her to find property rented under a certain name. It had taken her no time at all to prove that my guess was correct.

  I stayed still, waiting for the door to open.

  I had gained entry using a set of lock picks, the first time I had ever used such a tool. Tempest had a set at the office, but they were harder to use than they seem in the movies which had forced me to utilise a YouTube tutorial after fifteen minutes of fruitless fiddling.

  I wasn’t sure if he would be alone or not. There was a distinct danger he might have his accomplice with him, but I was willing to run that risk.

  I had taken the precaution of already filming all the evidence in the lockup and sending it to Tempest via email.

  A shaft of light from outside illuminated the space inside as the door opened. I had been sitting in darkness for long enough that my eyes had adjusted. The bright glare from the floodlights outside caused me to blink.