The Spy Who Haunted Me

by Simon R. Green

  He showed us a large reinforced steel door with a keypad lock. More security than I’d been expecting. We all waited impatiently while the deputy keyed in the six-digit number with great concentration.

  “I don’t normally get back here much,” he said. “Only the sheriff and the doc ever come in here. Doc’ll be back as soon as he can. You want me to stick around . . . ?”

  “No,” said Honey. “Go back to your post, Deputy. We’ll handle it from here. And, Deputy: no one comes back here till we’re done, and no one says anything to anyone. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the deputy. He hurried away, not looking back.

  “Potentially bright young fellow, I thought,” said Walker.

  We went into the morgue, shutting the door behind us. It was a lot bigger than I expected, with bright lights and immaculate gleaming walls.

  “This . . . is not normal, for a small town,” said Honey. “Maybe . . . ten times larger than it should be. This is more the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a major city. Makes me wonder if they might have had to contend with . . . unusual situations before.”

  “This was custom-made,” said Walker. “By someone expecting trouble.”

  “Maybe something did happen here back in the day, “ said Honey.

  “And no one told you,” said Walker. “Shame on them.”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “Look at that! They brought one of the bloody cows in here!”

  Two mortuary slabs had been pushed together on the far side of the room, and a cow was lying across them on its side. The four legs stuck stiffly out over the edge of the slab. We all gathered around the carcass. The cow had been sliced open the whole length of its underside, from throat to udder. The sides of the belly had been pulled out and pinned back to reveal that the whole interior had been . . . rummaged through. Some organs were missing, others had been cut open and had pieces removed, still others had been moved around, rearranged. Large holes had been drilled through the hide and the head to no obvious purpose. Both eyes were gone, and all the top teeth had been neatly extracted. The tongue had been sliced in half lengthwise, and then left in place. One stiff leg had been dissected to show the nerves, another to show the muscles.

  “Interesting,” said Walker, leaning in close for a better look.

  “Extremely,” said Honey, leaning right in there with him.

  “Gross,” I said, staying well back. “I want to know how they got that thing in here through that little door.”

  We all looked back at the distinctly human-scaled door, shrugged pretty much in unison, and turned our attention back to the cow.

  “The work looks professional enough,” said Walker. “Definitely used scalpels rather than knives. And since there’s no damage from local predators, it was done not long ago. Some burn marks on the internal tissues. Laser drill, perhaps? But none of this work makes any sense . . . It’s not just a dissection. I feel sure there was a definite end in mind, but I’m damned if can make out what . . .”

  “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!”

  “Have you noticed it’s getting darker in here?” said Walker.

  Honey and I broke off from glaring at each other and looked around. The overhead strip lighting was blazing as fiercely as ever, but a dark and heavy gloom was seeping in from all sides, soaking up the light. A blue tinge invested all the other colours in the morgue, giving everything a strange and unhealthy look. I felt heavy, drained, with even my thoughts moving more slowly than normal. My torc burned coldly around my neck, trying to warn me of something.

  And then both the cow’s carcass and the farmer’s body burst into flames: fierce blue-tinged flames that burned with such intensity that all three of us were driven back, holding up our arms to shield our faces from the intolerable heat. The flames snapped off as abruptly as they’d begun, and conditions in the morgue returned to normal. The slabs were completely empty with just a few ashes floating on the air above them.

  “Damn,” said Honey. “Someone really didn’t want anything left behind.”

  “Which would seem to imply that someone was, and probably still is, looking in on us,” said Walker. “Three unexpected new factors endangering their planned experiment.”

  “So this was a warning to us not to get involved,” said Honey.

  I had to grin. “They don’t know us very well, do they?”

  And then all our heads snapped around as we heard steady quiet footsteps in the corridor outside the morgue. They drew steadily closer, sounding louder and heavier all the while, until finally they stopped right outside the closed morgue door. We all stood very still, listening. The silence stretched on and on. Until finally Honey lunged for the door, with Walker and me right behind her. She hauled the door open and we spilled out into the corridor . . . but there was nobody there. The corridor stretched away before us, still and silent and completely empty.

  “You heard it, didn’t you?” said Honey. “He was right outside the door!”

  “I heard it,” I said.

  “Told you we were being followed,” said Walker.

  “Those were human footsteps,” said Honey. “Nothing alien about them. So where did he go?”

  “I don’t see any other exits,” said Walker.

  “Could someone in Roswell know what’s going to happen?” said Honey. “Some human Judas goat, perhaps, betraying his fellow humans for thirty pieces of technology?”

  “There are other organisations who might have an interest in what’s happening here,” said Walker. “Black Air, Vril Power, the Zarathustra Protocols . . . Any one of them could have chanced across evidence of what’s due to happen here and struck a deal . . .”

  “No,” I said flatly. “There’s no organisation on this planet better informed than the Droods when it comes to aliens. If anyone had known, it would have been my family, and I would have been told.”

  “Really?” said Honey. “The Matriarch tells you everything, does she?”

  “Everything that matters,” I said.

  “Yes, well,” said Honey. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Children, children,” murmured Walker. “We still have to decide what we’re going to do, while there’s still time.”

  “Less time than you think,” I said, my torc burning cold as ice. “Brace yourself, people. Something’s coming . . .”

  The corridor before us changed, altered, stretched, its far end receding into the distance. The kind of corridor you could travel all your days and never reach the end. The kind of corridor you run through endlessly in the kind of dreams you wake from in a cold sweat. A strange glow replaced the normal corridor light, intense and overpowering, a light not designed for the tolerances of the human eye. Even the air was different, tasting foul and furry in my mouth, and so thin I was half suffocating. A different kind of air, for a different kind of being. Static tingled painfully on my bare flesh, and I could hear . . . something. Something scrabbling at the outsides of the corridor walls, trying to get in.

  “I recognise this,” said Honey. Her voice was harsh and strained and strangely far away. “I know this, from abduction scenarios. An intrusion of alien elements into our world. The aliens aren’t waiting for us to track them down . . . They’re coming to us.”

  “Let them come,” I said, and armoured up. Immediately I felt much better, more human, more myself. “Stay close to me,” I said to Walker and Honey through my featureless face mask. “Proximity to my armour should help ground and protect you, insulate you from the effects of this alien-created environment.”

  Their faces cleared quickly as they moved in close, and they both stood up straight, strength and resolve rushing back into their features.

  “I’m even breathing easier now I’m close to you,” said Honey. “How does that work?”

  “Do you tell me all your secrets?” I said to hide the fact I wasn’t entirely sure myself. “Just stick close and get ready to beat the crap out of anything that isn’t us.”

  “Good plan,” murmured Walker.

  “No one takes a Drood anywhere against his will,” I said. “Or his companions. Walker, why are you standing behind me?”

  “Because I’m not stupid,” said Walker.

  “I don’t hide behind people,” Honey said haughtily.

  “Bet you I live longer,” said Walker.

  Wild energies crackled up and down the impossibly long corridor, seething and howling. They jumped from wall to wall, fast as laser beams, snapping on and off, leaving pale green trails of
ionisation hanging on the air. Malevolent forces surged forward to attack my armour. I stood my ground, Honey clinging to my golden arm, Walker right behind me. The energies raged furiously all around us, discharging on the air with blinding flares and flashes, but still stopped dead, balked, unable to touch or even approach my armour.

  As though they were afraid of it.

  Lightnings rose and fell, pressing in from this side and that, searching for some weak spot in my armour that would let them in . . . but I stood firm, and suddenly the energies fell away, retreating back down the corridor, fading like the memory of a bad dream. I could hear Honey’s and Walker’s harsh breathing in the sudden silence. I warned them quietly against moving away from me. This wasn’t over. I could feel it.

  And then the alien appeared. No door opening in space, no teleport effects; it was just there, right in front of us, no more than ten feet away. Its appearance was so sudden that Walker and Honey actually jumped a little, and if I hadn’t been wearing my armour I think I might have too.

  “That . . . is a really ugly-looking thing,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Honey. “Walker? You ever seen anything like that?”

  “Thankfully, no. Eddie?”

  “Nothing even remotely like that,” I said. “It is quite definitely not one of the fifty-three alien species currently covered by the Drood Pacts and Treaties.”

  “Fifty-three?” said Honey. “There are fifty-three different kinds of alien currently wandering around our world? When were you planning on telling the rest of us this?”

  “Fifty-three that we know of,” I said. “The Droods don’t know everything, though never tell anyone I said that. And . . . there are always a few species coming and going we don’t have any kind of agreement with or control over. It’s a big universe, and life has taken some really strange forms Out There.”