by Glen Johnson
Another small figure appeared from one side, leading a cow on a short bit of rope. The cow look agitated and stressed, pulling hard on the truss, refusing to get any closer to the tall hulking figures, that now looked like they were shaking with anticipation.
The small being stepped aside. As he did so the red-eyed beasts attacked, surrounding the cow. The cow was blocked from view by their bulky bodies, but I could hear its last sounds of panic and pain, cutting off in a gurgled wet throaty noise. All the beasts leant over as they sucked the last drops of blood from their meal.
Then to one side I saw the smoker. Cigarette in his mouth as always, strolling along past the drinking creatures. He patted one as he passed.
“Soon my children,” he said. Which I could just hear over the sound of the humming.
“Soon the portal will open. More of your kind will come churning through. Then the Harvest can begin in earnest.” He removed the cigarette from the host bus driver’s purple lips. “Then we will suck this fucking planet dry once and for all.”
A loud clattering resounded throughout the farmyard. The Mothmen gave ear-piercing squeaks and rustled their wings in agitation, backing away from the loud sound, revealing the drained skeletal carcass of the cow.
Smoker disappeared off to one side, shouting at a group of small workers.
I looked over across the yard into the field beyond. What lay on that ship?
Time to find out.
32
The Holding Tanks
I navigated around the courtyard, as close to the outer boundary as possible. Not wanting to get any closer to the yard than necessary. Always with the car-jack raised, ready to use it like a deadly metal club.
I didn’t have any idea as to what I was going to do. But I knew I needed to stop whatever was going to happen. I had seen too much death already. They needed to be stopped. I needed my mind back. My life back.
It was fully dark now; as I wandered around towards the area I believed to be where the ship lay buried. I kept to the trees, becoming soaked from the misty rain and large droplets I was disturbing as I pushed my way though the dense bushes and slapping branches. My face must be crisscrossed with tiny cuts. It felt like it.
At one point I could hear a loud humming heading in my direction.
Crouching down behind a collection of brambles I hunched motionless, as three of the hovering lights whizzed overhead, disappearing off into the distance. I had no idea where they were heading, or exactly what they were. Possibly some type of automated droid.
I finally reached the field. I stood at one end of the long trench that started in a wooded area, then out into the field. The hole became deeper as it made its way along into the darkness. The tall crane looked like a silent sentinel.
I stood behind the trunk of a thick tree that had one side of its bark ripped off. I strained my ears. Nothing. I didn’t know if I was to far away from the yard to be able to hear anything. But the light still welled from that direction, dissecting the night into stark light and darkness.
Torrential rain started falling, as if a switch had been flicked. Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled.
In all my novels, as I reached the climax it always started to rain, with bolts of lightning and thunderclaps. It seemed surreal now that it was pouring down, lightning flashing, lighting up the field and thunder deafening me – so loud and deep that it could be felt vibrating in my chest. It made the suspense stronger. Didn’t all films have a climatic scene with pouring rain – soaked heroes. It gave everything a surreal feeling, making everything more dramatic. Gothic, dark and ominous.
All it was accomplishing here was soaking me to the skin. Added to the freezing wind, it was very uncomfortable. My hands were numb from the wet and cold, but I refused to weaken my grip on my car accessory weapon. My eyes we aching, water filling them, streaming down my face.
Another bolt flashed across the heavens, lighting up the field, glinting off the top of the large rounded silver hull.
I ran out from my cover, heading directly down the trench, mud splashing loudly around my cold feet. Suddenly my trainers squelched and slipped, I found myself tumbling head-over-heals (or ass-over-tit as my grandmother would say) landing on my back. I pushed my fingers into the mud, pulling myself to my sodden feet. My hair was plastered to my face, dirt clouding my vision. I was completely covered in mud. My hand felt around until I touched the reassuring metal of the car-jack; I hoisting it like a weapon.
Then I reached it. A dull silver wall, towering far above me. I hadn’t realized how far I had crawled down into the pit. Lightning flashed, showing the high mud wall to one side. Small waterfalls of brown muddy water cascading over the edge down into the wide deep hole. My trainers were covered in freezing muddy water, up to the ankles.
I slowly reached out and touched the pewter wall. Nothing. What was I expecting, a shock? A sliding door with a welcome mat outside that had a cute little picture of ET on it with welcoming words beneath? Or maybe a part of the hull would liquefy and become a ramp, similar to the craft in the classic 1986 Walt Disney movie, Flight of the Navigator – one of my personal favourites of all time.
But no liquefying or sliding. It felt like solid steel. There was nothing apart from the endless silver shell. But it was slightly warm to the touch. The wind and rain had no effect on its surface.
I took a few steps back to see if there was an entrance I had missed. I couldn’t see anything in the gloom. Then the lightning flashed. To one side the mud had been removed, with an area open to the elements.
I scurried up the side of the pit. Hands cold, all numb, cut and grazed. It was hard work, for every two foot I progressed, I slid back one.
I stood on a flat surface. Another part of the ship? The mud had been removed, with metal decking overlapping on the ground, leading to a wide dark opening, looking ominous as if it was about to swallow me whole.
I know how Jonah felt when the whale swallowed him. Or did it; was it simply a story they had made up to placate us dumb, needy animals? Needing gods, beliefs and a reason to be on this world. Life itself not enough to keep us happy.
No one was around. I walked the decking until I reached the dark tunnel.
No lights flashed around the entrance. No strobes to guide the way. Until I stepped beneath the overhanging lip. Around the base of the tunnel lights sprung to life; small blue glowing symbols, strange signs like I had never seen before, like small overlapping letters, but looking completely alien. Reminding me this was not of this world.
I lay on the wet decking for a moment; I had tumbled backwards in surprise when the lights flashed on. I lay silent, listening. The only sound was the pounding of the rain against the metal surface. No one had emerged to apprehend me. All was eerily silent.
I climbed to my unsteady feet, looking down the long tunnel that seemed to stretch to infinity, at a slowly downward gradient. With the water running over the lip, it looked like a wide-open set of salivating jaws.
I glanced behind. Nothing. No one making their way across the dark field.
Holding onto the bar as if my life depended on it, I heading in.
The tunnel was high and rounded at the top, well over fifteen feet high and twenty wide. A large truck could easily drive down it. There was nothing but dull pewter walls down each side, that were made from overlapping, crisscrossing silver plates, that didn’t seem to have any order to there arrangement, just randomly slapped together. With a ceiling made from arched metal ribs, which seemed to have uncountable wires and pipes running along above. No doors or other tunnels opened off the first, until I came to the first bend, which veered off to the left and to the right.
I stood in the hallway, looking down each section. They both looked identical. Right it is then.
The right tunnel stayed on an even level, no more heading down.
Then I came to the first doorway. It was an elaborate affair, similar to the entrance, but with more symbols around its edge. As I approached, the blue
light running a few inches from the floor disappeared. Darkness engulfed me. I couldn’t even see my hand held before my face. I stood motionless, scarred shitless. I imagined all kinds of terrifying creatures sneaking up on me. I knelt down and leant against the cold wall, trying to make myself smaller, less of a target. I swung the car-jack from left to right.
Then the blue light welled around the doorway, as it silently slid up. For a few seconds the light blinded me after the darkness. I peered through the opening.
Inside was a vast chamber. I couldn’t believe all this was inside the craft. It was like Dr. Who’s Tardis, larger on the inside than the out. The famous old renegade time-traveller, the member of an ancient time-travelling alien race from Gallifey. The only problem was the Tardis chameleon circuit was damaged and instead of being able to innocently blend into the local environment of whatever planet it happened to be on, it was constantly stuck in the shape of a blue 1960s British Police Callbox.
Maybe this ship occupied both dimensions at once. Maybe this is what the Dr’s ship would have looked like if it worked properly? My brain was rambling. I was scared senseless.
The chamber was vast and strange. The walls were bulbous, large pods protruding from the dull silver surface. There were more weird ciphers all around the outer walls and curling off in strange entwining patterns around the open floor, all glowing with a mellow blue light. The ceiling felt like it was miles away, an immense glass-like structure at its apex, a slow swirling green smoke seemingly trapped inside its layers.
As I head out towards the center the room seemed to vibrate. Then, soundlessly, a large misshapen chairs started to rise from the central section, with the silver plates unlatching from each other and sliding over the top of others. There were now four seats facing each other in a circle.
I studied the seating. They were made for beings two or three times my height, and were thin until they reached the top, where the headrest would be; it then flared out into a large semicircular impression, almost as large as the rest of the chair added together. And all the way up the length of the chair, strange articulated arms protruded, as if they held something delicate.
I then noticed a noise had started; much lower than my ears are use to, as if on a different frequency. As the sound became louder the walls started to shimmer. The large protruding pods were swivelling in their sockets, to reveal large vats of more green swirling, what looked like, thick liquid.
I moved closer to the walls, trying to work out what the substance was. Maybe a type of gas? Then I received a mind numbing shock. The tanks were full of souls: souls being the only word I could think of to describe what I was witnessing.
I stood no more than a meter away, eyes transfixed on the churning images inside the closest tank. Wispy images of people, adults and children pushed up against the glass. Ghostly hands slapping, fingers spread with palms flat against the surface. An elongated face pressed up tight, which then disappeared back into the churning green haze, quickly replaced by another. They seemed to register my presences, because hollow eyes swivelled in my direction. Mouths opening wide, but with no discernable sounds emerged.
I ran to the next pod. This one was filled with the same substance, but these seemed to be all animals. A wing spread against the tank. Then what looked like a dog’s blurry face. Its ears pricked up, it had registered I was there.
I spun around. Hundreds of tanks lined the walls. How many more chambers were there?
I had found the harvest.
I ran back to the doorway, standing in the darkness of the tunnel. The lights having died as they did before. They reappeared running along the floor. I found seven more chambers along the same tunnel. So much for eight being a lucky number.
The tunnel eventually ended with one last doorway. I expected more tanks full of souls, spirits – whatever you would call them – but this room was unlike the others, it held something different, something dangerous. Something otherworldly.
33
The Floaters
The lights didn’t illuminate the whole chamber, but from what I could see it was much smaller than the others.
I was cautious, expecting any minute for alarm bells to ring out, or a large green hand to clamp onto the back of my neck.
I wandered between smaller black pods that rested half embedded in the floor, with snaking tubes coming from them and disappearing into the darkness ahead. I could also hear a rhythmic humming, almost hypnotic in sound, coming from the direction the tubes disappeared.
I waited. No more lights winked on. The center of the room was shrouded in darkness.
I walked to the nearest wall, where the small glowing symbols sat at the bottom of. I made my way around the perimeter, car-jack raised ahead of me, ready to come crashing down.
The walls were covered in screens. Strange alien ones, with weird shaped monitors, and indented – what looked like – keypads. The screens were showing the same alien symbols. Lights flickered all around the walls, a kaleidoscope of colour and activity. But nothing I could recognize or understand. A completely alien environment.
I had circled the complete room. Only the center was left unchecked. I headed out into the dimness. The tubes all ran in the same direction, then divided into four sections. I was getting a bad feeling about this.
I followed the closest. It ended at the base of a large oval vat that then ran straight up and joined to the ceiling. But inside floated something far more menacing than that of the other tanks I had seen. Each held what I could only describe as an alien life form.
A murky liquid bubbled around it, similar to what you see in all the Sci-Fi films. Tubes joined to it in various locations. One inserted into possibly a foot. Three tubes into the chest. One thick tube below the base of the head. Many along the knobbly spine. It was hard to tell what the appendages were. The vat was almost too small to accommodate the creature; it had to curl up like a baby in the womb. Its head was the largest part of the body, bulbous.
I now understood the strange shape of the four seats.
There was a small chin that flared out as it went up, creating a huge swollen cranium, which had thick veins protruding all over it. Large oval thyroid eyes rested equally spaced apart, which remained closed. No nose or ears that I could discern. A thin neck that didn’t look like it would support such a large head that joined to thin weak looking shoulders.
Possibly it came from a world or dimension with a lighter gravity than ours, creating taller, thinner creatures.
It had two long-articulated arms that looked like they had four, possibly more, joints in them. Also too weak looking legs, the same size as the arms and just as thin. Other lumps protruded from different areas, below the arms and on the thighs. It had a small stump which could have been the start of a tail, but never achieved anything.
I could tell it was alive. Veins throbbed in its swollen forehead. Its chest didn’t rise and fall in breathing; rather one section on either side of its large head did, as if its lungs were around its brain. It leisurely bumped against the vat, then slowly turned around facing the over direction, before bumping once again.
Were these growing vats? Or sleeping chambers? Were they wounded in the crash? The ship didn’t look damaged in anyway, but hadn’t Smoker said it had been damaged?
Suddenly the lights flashed around the rim of the doorway. Someone was coming in.
I ducked down behind the closest vat. Resting on my haunches ready to leap forward and strike out if the need required. I held the car-jack firmly in my sweating hand.
The door swished open, admitting a single figure. It was one of the small oriental looking beings. He had something in his long fingered hand and was heading towards the vat I was crouched behind.
He got closer. I could see him approaching by looking through the vat the creature was bobbing around inside. The image of the little being was blurred but recognizable. He headed in my direction, eyes down reading from something. Then at the last possible moment he veered away, h
eading towards a bank of flickering screens on one section of the wall. He finished what he was doing, and started to make his way around the chamber. I had to shuffle around the tank, so he wouldn’t see me.
I started to shiver. I was drenched from the rain and wet muddy ground. Oh shit! I looked down. A muddy puddle. Watery footprints were all over the metal decking. Luckily the small being had been reading and was now engrossed in something else, he hadn’t noticed the muddy footprints.
He then turned and headed back towards me.
I stared through the murky liquid at the approaching figure. I was about to jump out, fly at it with the car-jack, when suddenly the floating alien opened its large eyes and focused on me crouching beside it.
34
Feeding Time
I tumbled backwards with a start, with a small yelp escaping my lips. My heart was pounding like a bass drum.