10 Things Aliens Hate About You (Alienn, Arkansas Book 4)

by Fiona Roarke

  Aunt Dixie chewed over that in silence. All of a sudden, her eyes lit up as if some brilliant piece of information had just entered her head. “Didn’t you tell me once that Wyatt was born up north somewhere and only came to Arkansas when he was a little kid?”

  Valene was regretting telling Dixie Lou Grey anything. “Yes. He was born in Minnesota, near Duluth, I think, but it doesn’t matter. He’s been here since he was, like, three years old. Besides, what difference does that make?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Aunt Dixie had that look that said the wheels were spinning like mad inside her head. That was not good.

  “Listen, I appreciate you wanting to help—”

  “I remember something special about a place in Minnesota. Where did I see that?” She seemed to mumble the second question to herself.

  “What does Minnesota have to do with anything?” Valene asked.

  A wide grin shaped Aunt Dixie’s mouth with what looked like a hearty dollop of resolve and she said, “I don’t know yet, but I’m on the case.”

  Oh no. What case? “What do you mean by that, Aunt Dixie?”

  Aunt Dixie stopped mumbling and turned a loving look on Valene. “It means that I think you and Wyatt should be together, but I’d hate for you to move away to Alpha-Prime. So I’ll do whatever I can to ensure that you get a happily ever after with your guy and stay in Alienn. Don’t you worry about a thing.” She patted Valene’s hand and exited the booth with a spring in her step.

  Valene smiled inwardly for the first time since being ordered away from the truck stop. Aunt Dixie was a wily hoot of an old woman, but Valene didn’t doubt she’d give it her all. Then again, Valene wasn’t foolish enough to believe she’d get to have her happily ever after in this case, no matter what crazy idea her aunt came up with.

  Wyatt was a human. And whether he was born in Arkansas or Minnesota, nothing was going to change that fact.

  “Hey, fancy meeting you here,” said a familiar voice.

  She was surprised into asking, “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, now, that’s a long story.”

  Valene gestured to the seat Aunt Dixie had vacated and said, “Well, have a seat, I’ve got time.” She took a deep sip of her third glass of sweet tea, ready to listen to a long story. Maybe it would take her mind off her troubles.

  <^> <^> <^>

  Dixie Lou Grey had never been a shrinking flower. Chasing down a way for her favorite niece to remain on Earth with Skeeter Bite Sheriff Wyatt Campbell, her true love and a human, had turned into quite a daunting task. The only way she could think of for Wyatt to be allowed into their family was if he didn’t have any family of his own. But he had a large, close, happy family and, bless her heart, Valene didn’t want to hurt them by taking Wyatt away from them forever.

  Dixie Lou would have to think of something else. She pondered and paced and thought and thought. Out of the blue, a long shot of an idea came to her in the form of the Lost Colony Legend. She hadn’t thought about it since Diesel’s wedding.

  When Juliana Masters, Diesel’s wife, had first come to Alienn, she didn’t have anyone except Miss Penny looking out for her. At the time, although Dixie Lou had never voiced it, the thought occurred to her that if Juliana hadn’t been a distant ancestor of a previously failed Alpha-Prime colony project to live on Earth, maybe they could have faked her death and let her recreate herself as an Alpha. But that extreme idea hadn’t been needed and Dixie Lou tucked it away for possible use at a later date.

  With Wyatt’s big family, faking his death was out of the question. She pondered, paced and thought some more. There had to be a way to make this romance work out.

  All this information about the past teased her long-held interest in the Alpha-Prime Lost Colony project that had brought Miss Penny to Earth long ago and eventually Juliana and both of them to Alienn. Once upon a time, Dixie had sought out and clipped every newspaper article she could find that whispered anything about aliens living on Earth. She had several scrapbooks on Roswell, New Mexico alone.

  But her favorite alien invading Earth stories were from less well-known places.

  The knowledge that Wyatt’s family had moved here many years ago from Minnesota had piqued her memory. She had once clipped an article or two from a place in Minnesota that might have aliens or maybe mind readers or something. Anyway, Alpha-Prime had sent an agent to check it out and Dixie Lou was certain she’d clipped an article or two about it.

  Dixie Lou went straight to the narrow stairwell leading up to her attic. She needed to look up some history in her scrapbooks. It had been a long time since she’d looked at them.

  She opened the door at the top step and sneezed twice as dust swirled around her. Dixie vowed to bring her dust buster with her next time. Searching the hot, humid, close space, she spied an old wooden sea trunk she’d gotten for a steal at an estate sale fifty years ago and raised the unlocked lid.

  Inside was a veritable treasure trove of history in the form of carefully preserved scrapbooks. They covered decades. When she’d been younger and after her own family had gone, she had come to Earth to start over.

  Valene had been a baby then. Dixie Lou had a whole bunch of photo scrapbooks in her little den downstairs of the seven kids from when they were little to now.

  Dixie Lou pulled the scrapbooks out one by one until she got to the very first few memory books, ones she’d created upon her arrival on Earth. She unsealed the second book labeled by dates and flipped through history as old memories of times gone by filled her mind, making her wistful for friends long gone.

  She became so steeped in history she almost forgot why she’d cracked the scrapbook open. Then she found the three articles she’d been looking for.

  The first was from the Alpha-Prime Earthly Gazette, a monthly circular from back home that listed stories about commerce between the colony on Earth and Alpha-Prime. The article was about an agent sent by the Royal Magistrate Guard Academy to a place called Superstition, Minnesota to investigate after a few stories filtered back to Alpha-Prime about people there who supposedly could read minds.

  The agent was in Minnesota for a few weeks to search out and either prove or disprove any alien, especially any Alpha, mind-reading activity. The fledgling agent was female, not unusual for Alpha-Prime, but more so for Earth in that time period. The first article was short, simply announcing her assignment and a brief description of the agent, Constance Brickwood. It included a black-and-white photo of a shorter than average, rather willowy Alpha. Constance had a serious and rather hollow look for someone as young as she was. Dixie Lou remembered thinking when she clipped the article that the agent had the expression of someone who was haunted.

  The second article was about the report she sent back to the powers in the Alpha-Prime Royal Magistrate Guard a month later. Constance was of the opinion that while there were a greater than average amount of psychic businesses and the town had been named to help generate even more interest in palmistry and the like, she could find no Alpha influence in the area. Her conclusion: Humans in pursuit of the paranormal were responsible and simply trying to make a living by entertaining other earthlings.

  A couple of weeks later, a third, very short, article reported the tragic loss of Constance in an accident that claimed her life before she left Earth.

  She had been interred in a small church cemetery in Superstition, Minnesota, as poor Constance had no remaining family left back on Alpha-Prime.

  Dixie Lou always thought that to be unusual. Even now, she wondered why the authorities on Alpha-Prime hadn’t insisted on bringing Constance back home for interment. She looked through a few more of her scrapbooks, but didn’t see any other references to Constance Brickwood, Superstition or any Alpha aliens living there.

  After sitting cross-legged for too long, Dixie Lou stood up, stretched and did several squats to get the blood back into her legs. She scooped up the scrapbook with the three Superstition stories inside. She carefully packed her other
precious scrapbooks back in the old bargain sea trunk and went downstairs.

  She’d look on the computer machine to find out any further information. The computer had all sorts of information available. It had almost everything. If you knew what you were looking for, anyway.

  Before she made it to her den, there was a knock at the door.

  She opened it to see her very best friend, Miss Penny. “What’s cookin’?” Dixie Lou asked her friend, like she always did.

  Miss Penny cackled and answered, “Not my goose, at least not today.” Just like she always did.

  Dixie Lou opened the door wide. “Come on in, Miss Penny. I’m on a mission. It’s a secret one, so keep it under your hat.”

  “Ooh. Sounds exciting. Can I help you on this secret mission? You know I can be trusted not to gossip.”

  “Course you can. I’d love some help. This might be our greatest adventure yet.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Minnesota.”

  “Sounds perfect. I’ve never been that way before. I’d love to go. How are we getting up there?”

  Dixie Lou put a finger to her cheek. “I’m not quite sure yet. But we’ll think of something.”

  “What do we do first?”

  “I need to do a bit of research in the computer machine and then we’ll make our plans.”

  “That sounds fine.”

  Dixie Lou thought back to her chat with Valene at the Cosmos Café, remembering the wistful, unhappy look on her niece’s face because she couldn’t marry the man she loved. Dixie Lou didn’t know if this plan of hers would result in anything helpful, but it was worth a try, to her mind.

  Once she and Miss Penny had prepared and eaten a little snack, they went into her small den and turned the computer on.

  Her nephews had all taken turns helping her try to navigate the internet highway, but sweet Valene had been the most patient and the most helpful. She had written various instructions down so Dixie Lou could go back and follow them for whatever she needed to do.

  She found the local online paper in Superstition, the Superstition Examiner. The town was about seventy miles north of Duluth. After reading only a few things, Dixie Lou looked at Miss Penny and said, “Superstition, Minnesota is very suspicious.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Fifty years ago, an Alpha agent was sent to ensure there were no mind-reading Alpha aliens there. But even today they have quite a booming year-round business in the trade.”

  Miss Penny shrugged. “Maybe they are human mind readers.”

  “I don’t know about that. It sounds fishy to me,” Dixie Lou said, scrolling through the latest news articles for the area.

  “Why do you say that? I’ve heard of lots of human psychics. They even have television shows sometimes.”

  Dixie Lou scrolled past a picture and then scrolled up to look at it again.

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “What’s wrong with you? Close your mouth, Dixie Lou,” Miss Penny said. She leaned in to see what Dixie Lou was staring at. It was a picture of an older woman with an older man, maybe her husband. They sat in rocking chairs on a porch, hands clasped sweetly together.

  “That’s…that’s…” Dixie Lou was flabbergasted.

  “Who? Who is it?”

  “Constance Brickwood.”

  “Never heard of her,” Miss Penny said, sitting back in her chair.

  Dixie Lou stood up and started pacing. If Constance Brickwood hadn’t died and been buried, why had she stayed in Superstition instead of going back to Alpha-Prime fifty years ago? The picture looked exactly like her, only a bit older. Alpha genes were awesome.

  She snapped her fingers. “We need wheels.”

  “Wheels?” Miss Penny also stood up.

  “Yes. You know, transportation.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Superstition, Minnesota. We’re going to visit a woman who’s supposedly been dead for fifty years.”

  <^> <^> <^>

  Diesel took a deep breath and wondered what in the space potato farm would happen next.

  He’d managed to lure Daphne Charlene into his office and give her a blast with the Defender. Then he’d handed the unconscious woman off to Gage and called an emergency meeting to discuss the problem.

  He entered the conference room full of people braced for nothing less than a call-to-arms about handling a possible earthling discovery of their big secret on top of the recent news that the infamous Indigo Smith was at large somewhere on Earth. It was a banner day for bad news.

  He hoped someone had a brilliant idea about what they should do, besides his current favorite nightmare scenario of packing up the whole operation and heading back to Alpha-Prime after leveling Alienn with a Defender bomb set for nuclear.

  Wyatt entered ahead of Cam and they chose seats in the row of extra chairs not at the table. Hopefully, no one would notice the earthling in attendance.

  Diesel gave a short introduction and explained the reason for the meeting. He then silenced the uproar, telling his brothers and the assembled elders they needed solutions not pandemonium. Once everyone settled down, one member asked, “Is there any trace of where Indigo Smith has gone? Anywhere we can start the search?”

  “None. At least not yet,” Diesel amended to keep himself from sinking into dire predictions.

  “Does Alpha-Prime know yet?” This from his youngest brother, Jack.

  “Nope. But the gulag ship is scheduled to leave tomorrow at noon. Alpha-Prime will be expecting to receive the usual message notifying them about the exact departure.”

  Jack said, “Around twenty hours to search an entire planet? That’s typical. We should probably get started, yeah?”

  “If only we knew where to start,” Wheeler said, sizing up the problem perfectly in a calm, rational tone. Wheeler often had a different perspective when it came to emergency issues. Diesel appreciated his peaceful approach to most things, especially in this instance.

  Abruptly, one of the elders pointed a bony finger at Wyatt. “What is an earthling doing here in this meeting?”

  “He’s been brought in to help us capture Indigo Smith, Mr. Gris.”

  “Why on earth would you do that? Bring an earthling into our secret fold.” The elder’s tone was condescending, as if earthlings were inferior by every measure and couldn’t possibly help with anything.

  Diesel explained, “He’s an expert shot, Mr. Gris. Vastly better than anyone working at our truck stop operation.”

  The elderly Alpha harrumphed, as if the suggestion any earthling might have helpful attributes was an iffy proposition. “Well, don’t forget, you’ll have to zap his memories later.”

  “We know, but he’s been instrumental in helping us capture nearly all of the other criminals who escaped the gulag ship.”

  Wyatt looked ill at ease at the mention of his memories being zapped, but didn’t say anything, for which Diesel was grateful.

  “Setting aside the Indigo Smith problem for the moment,” Wheeler said, “I have a thought about how we can get Daphne Charlene to tell us how she found out about our alien operation here at the Big Bang Truck Stop.”

  “Fantastic,” Diesel said. “Explain.”

  Wheeler grinned and gave a quick rundown of his idea. The plan included Wyatt, who looked delighted to help out despite the sullen looks thrown his way from some of the elders.

  Diesel didn’t know if Wheeler’s idea would work, but he did an internal happy dance at the prospect of having something to do.

  “Wyatt? What do you think?”

  “I’m in. I want to help in any way I can.”

  Diesel stood up. “Nova, go check in with Gage at his lab. Help him get the faux hospital room set up and ready to clear more of Daphne Charlene’s memories to before she learned about us.” He looked around the room.

  Nova nodded. “We also might want to call Valene in to help. She’d lend credence to our plan. I can go get her and bring her back.” There
were several murmurs of agreement from around the table.

  Diesel held up a stalling hand. “Wait. Help Gage set up first, and you can go get Valene if needed later on.”

  She nodded and left the room.

  Diesel adjourned the meeting and they went to set in motion Wheeler’s idea to discover how Daphne Charlene learned about them. He didn’t believe Wyatt had willingly given up the information.

  Wyatt loved Valene, of that Diesel had no doubt, which was good since it looked like they’d recently taken their relationship to a whole new level.

  At least this might be one crisis averted with only one remaining to solve. Even so, Diesel was grateful to be moving forward with any plan.

  His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen. Aunt Dixie. He tipped his head back, inhaled a deep breath and answered.

  “Aunt Dixie, I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “You’re always busy, Diesel, but I wanted to let you know I’m headed out on a road trip.”

  Now what? “Road trip?” he asked, trying not to sound as irritated as he felt. “To where?”

  She was silent for a few moments, likely deciding whether to tell him her detailed plans. “North,” she said evasively.

  “Why?”

  “I found evidence in my attic regarding the Lost Colony Legend. I’m headed out to follow a clue.”

  “Oh?” Diesel started to insist she not go haring off on some adventure, but reconsidered. If his aunt Dixie was out of town, she couldn’t get into trouble that he’d have to deal with.

  She’d be someone else’s problem for the duration and he’d be better able to concentrate on his current problems.

  “That’s right, I’m on the hunt to discover new information about that long-ago disastrous flight to Earth.”

  “Well, thanks for letting me know. Be safe and check in now and again.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. I might be off grid, Diesel. I might not be able to check in regularly.”

  “I see. Is Miss Penny with you?”

  “Yep.”

  Diesel sighed in relief. “Good. I’m glad you aren’t going alone. Have fun.”

  “This is a serious mission, Diesel, not some fluffy fun trip like on the luxury liner.”