Ten Little Aliens

by Stephen Cole

It seemed the others agreed. ‘This is different,’ said Joiks, without much enthusiasm.

  ‘This stinks,’ Roba said more succinctly, and Tovel nodded.

  Creben stayed quiet, just walked about and shone his torch diligently into the five corners of the chamber, ‘Nothing,’ he announced. Then he stopped dead, staring over Ben’s shoulder.

  Ben spun round in alarm, but while his eyes scanned the wall behind the hanging glass tapestry, he could see nothing untoward.

  ‘Look,’ Creben urged the others.

  It finally hit Ben.

  ‘The tunnel,’ he breathed. ‘It’s gone!’

  Roba folded his arms, with the air of someone not about to fall for a joke. ‘How can a tunnel go anywhere?’

  Ben walked up to the wall. It looked solid, and when he kicked it, he knew for sure. ‘Search me, mate. But it ain’t where we came through.’

  ‘We must’ve come through that one,’ Roba said, pointing to the tunnel they could all see. ‘We just lost our bearings.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Thanks for that, Roba,’ said Tovel dryly.

  ‘It was here,’ Joiks murmured.

  Creben nodded. ‘It must be some kind of secret passageway, one that can’t be detected from this side of the wall. These doorways could be littered all over the place.’

  ‘Great,’ said Ben sourly. ‘So our little search won’t be over till we’ve accidentally gone through every one of them.’

  Creben shook his head. ‘I imagine we’ll have reached our destination long before then.’

  ‘Always there with a cheery thought, ain’t you.’

  ‘We’ll just have to look harder in the places we can see,’

  said Tovel decisively. ‘Starting here.’

  Even as Tovel spoke, Ben noticed with a jolt some dark fleeting movement on the pillar behind him. ‘What’s that?’

  Tovel protested mildly as Ben shoved him aside. A thin black trail had appeared on the pillar. It stretched vertically down from top to bottom, where it resolved itself into a sticky liquid pooling round his boots.

  ‘Blood out of a stone,’ he murmured nervously, while Tovel just swore in disbelief.

  ‘Where’s it coming from?’ Creben demanded, unholstering his gun. The others followed suit.

  ‘Up there,’ said Tovel.

  Ben took a few steps back and several shaky breaths.

  Whatever was at the top of the column, spilling blood, it was obscured by the huddle of statues crouched over it.

  ‘If we want to see what’s bleeding,’ Ben said grimly, ‘we’re gonna have to climb for it.’

  Joiks laughed briefly. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘You volunteering?’ Roba said expectantly as he knitted his huge fingers together into a makeshift stirrup.

  Ben looked round anxiously. ‘Well...’

  ‘We’ve got to know what’s there, after all,’ Creben said mildly.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Tovel with the faintest of smiles. ‘Reckon you can make it?’

  So, it was time to earn his place with the boys again. Fair enough. The column was broad, but there were occasional chips and ridges that could give him footholds.

  He put his right foot in Roba’s hands and the giant propelled him upwards. The trail of blood smeared against his body as he wrapped his arms round the pillar, holding on tight while he kicked about for a footing. He heard whistles and claps, shouts of encouragement, urging him on. His breath pushed out in ragged gasps through clenched teeth, his heart was racing, but slowly he was scaling the column.

  The rough stone scuffed and stung his palms as he searched for cracks and ledges he could use to help lever himself further up. His feet caught in crevices, and some were pronounced enough to take his weight. He was going to make it. Then he tried to imagine what grisly scene was waiting for him at the top, and felt less elated.

  Far below, the lads still shouted their encouragement. The sounds echoed strangely up here, were almost lost under the rustling of the vegetation, thick with fleas, and the ghostly clinking of the glass tapestry. As he climbed the final few feet, the shadowy statues at the top loomed above Ben. He saw their wings, their smooth stone backs lit with a gentle radiance.

  ‘I made it!’ he shouted.

  One of the statues twisted round to look down at him.

  Ben’s pounding heart nearly stopped dead. He wanted to shout out, but the sound died in his throat.

  The statue’s stone eyes were wide and innocent. Its thick lips were smiling at him benignly.

  A scrap of wet, dark material tell from its huge bloody hands, flapping like a bat past Ben’s face.

  In the thick shadows at the statue’s feet he thought he glimpsed a human hand, slender fingers twisted and outstretched.

  The smiling stone angel reached for his neck.

  Chapter Ten

  The Secret Adversary

  I

  Ben slid painfully down the column as fast as he could go, resisting the instinct to abandon it altogether and take his chances with the fall. He caught crazy corkscrew glimpses of the angel as he spiralled downwards, the pitted rock clawing at his arms and legs. Around him, bolts of energy shot up into the ceiling, pounded into the pillar, caught the statue full in the face. Slowly, the other enormous cherubs reacted to the onslaught. Heads cocked to one side. Arms reached slowly out towards the soldiers. Stone wings began to flap, and the air twittered with movement.

  Lazily, the smiling statues launched themselves into the air and drifted down after him, like falling leaves.

  Ben leaped down the last ten feet, fell awkwardly. Roba stopped firing long enough to scoop him up and push him towards the mouth of the tunnel.

  ‘Out!’ yelled Tovel. The soldiers scattered as the angels drifted after them, pushing through the air like swimmers through water. The air seemed alive with the soft, rhythmic sound of their wings beating.

  Ben pelted for the opening in the rock. He was almost there when a bolt of searing brightness shot from out of the darkness. It nearly took his face off. Finding himself under attack again, Ben threw himself instinctively to the ground and landed in a pile of fallen fleaweed. ‘There’s something in the tunnel!’ he yelled, his voice cracking in panic, the pale fleas dancing about him, crawling and jumping over his face.

  He crawled away, spat them out, saw the grey angels as they floated ever nearer.

  Two more yellow bolts whizzed into the room. Then Ben heard a familiar voice, and realised he’d almost been killed by the cavalry.

  ‘What are they?’ Haunt was standing in the mouth of the tunnel, brandishing her rifle, looking on appalled.

  ‘They were statues before,’ Roba said, backing away until he stood beside her. ‘Just statues’

  Haunt’s voice was barely audible. ‘Constructs. Morphiean constructs.’

  ‘There’s a girl’s body up there,’ Ben said, the words tumbling off his tongue. ‘I dunno whose, I only saw the shadow. God knows what they’d done to her.’

  The angels bobbed closer in utter silence. Their smiles were compassionate. Their fingers dripped blood.

  ‘Come on.’ Joiks led the way out of the chamber, and Tovel and Roba pushed through after him. Haunt stared at the creatures, revulsion on her face, clutching her stomach like she was going to be sick. ‘Angels,’ she said. She seemed transfixed by the drifting statues. The nearest of them was almost close enough to touch.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Ben almost screamed. He grabbed Haunt by the arm and dragged her out of the room after him, without looking back.

  II

  Shade roared with pain as Polly pressed some kind of surgical wipe to his sticky red face.

  ‘This will soothe the skin, make you feel better,’ she said shakily, but wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

  Truthfully, she’d never seen anyone look so awful. Ordinarily she wasn’t too bothered by blood. She’d seen plenty of fights before, living in London. Cuts and bruises dished out down alleyways or outside clubs. She’d eve
n been the reason for them starting once or twice. But looking down at Shade there was no comparison to a bloodied nose, or a cut cheek.

  Shade’s entire face was an open wound. The blood was bright red, watered down with a sticky clear fluid. As fast as Polly could mop it up, it kept squeezing back out. How much more could there be in him?

  Her senses felt numbed and she put it down to shock. High above, the slabs of glass in the ceiling winked and glowed with reflected light, disorientating her.

  ‘Pain... kill...’ Shade croaked.

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘No, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Killer,’ Shade said more desperately. ‘For pain.’ Polly screwed up her nose as she wiped away a miniature mountain range of hard black crumbs from one of his gashes. ‘Big hypo.’

  Polly got his meaning. She left him for a moment, mumbling apologies, and scrabbled through the medical box until she found something that fitted the description: a sort of metal syringe with odd ends attached. What was she meant to do with it?

  She needed a second opinion. ‘Doctor!’ she called. ‘I need your help!’

  The Doctor reluctantly left his hole in the console and pottered over to see. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Terrible,’ Polly said sadly.

  She handed the syringe-thing to the Doctor, who studied it for a moment curiously. Then he twisted a dial and jabbed a wide nozzle into Shade’s neck. The soldier yelled again, louder than ever, then started to convulse. Polly bit her lip and wondered if the Doctor had got it all wrong. But a few moments later the fit passed, and Shade lay back, eyes closed, his breathing swift and shallow.

  The Doctor looked down at Shade and tutted to himself.

  ‘Remarkable,’ he murmured. ‘His body seems to be rejecting the dead tissue in his face, forcing it out through his skin.’

  ‘Is he going to die?’ Polly whispered, in case Shade was listening.

  ‘I don’t think so, my child,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. But his body is reacting to some kind of stimulus...’ His eyes narrowed. ‘A force of some kind. A force that we have not yet identified, and yet may be all around us.’

  ‘Is that why Shel got sick too?’ Polly wondered.

  ‘It could well be, yes.’

  ‘But if he set all this up... how come he didn’t make himself immune to this... whatever-it-is?’ She glanced over at the Schirr bodies. Had they been immune? Had they killed each other in some terrible madness? A horrid thought occurred to Polly: ‘Will the rest of us get sick?’

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot tell,’ the Doctor confessed.

  The two of them sighed together, which brought faint smiles to their faces. They spent a few moments silently with their thoughts. Gradually, Shade’s breathing began to ease.

  ‘The worst of the pain is over for this young man,’ the Doctor announced. ‘He’ll need rest, but he should recover.’

  ‘In time for what,’ breathed Polly.

  ‘Now, if you don’t mind watching over him alone, my dear, I shall return to...’

  His voice trailed off. Something was wrong. As if in slow motion, Polly turned to see. Her heart lurched.

  The corpse in the chair had vanished.

  So had yet another body from the platform.

  ‘DeCaster,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Their leader.’

  ‘How?’ whispered Polly. ‘The stasis field is jammed on. The console and the junction box are ruined!’

  The Doctor seemed not to hear her. ‘He is at large again, it would seem.’

  Polly grabbed the Doctor’s sleeve. ‘But how? We never left!

  We only turned our backs on them for a few moments!’

  ‘The one in the chair,’ blustered the Doctor. ‘DeCaster’s most trusted disciple. Shel called him Pallemar...’

  ‘He can’t have been dead,’ Polly said in a small voice.

  ‘But he was. He was dead.’ The Doctor sounded furious, like a cheated child. ‘I examined the corpse myself. Death has its own posture and appearance...’ He shook his head, as anger gave way to bewilderment.

  Polly shivered. All the Schirr were scary, but the thought that DeCaster, who had murdered so many millions of people, could be walking about somewhere on the asteroid terrified her half to death.

  ‘Six of them left, now,’ the Doctor mused, a little more calmly. ‘Only six. But how? How did they do it?’

  Polly stared on in disbelief. The frozen expressions on the bloodied Schirr faces seemed to her less representative now of terror and agony, more like those of creatures laughing hysterically, till it hurt, till the tears came rolling down.

  III

  Haunt pulled her arm savagely from Ben’s grip as they ran together down the tunnel. One of the stone figures floated out of the gloomy chamber and into the darkness of the tunnel, trailing after them like a balloon gusted on the wind. Haunt accelerated, beat him to the junction where Tovel, Roba, Creben and Joiks were anxiously waiting with Frog, ready to go. Haunt must’ve put her on sentry duty here while she went on ahead.

  ‘It’s Shell’ Joiks shouted as they approached. ‘Frog says it’s Shell’

  ‘Get moving!’ Haunt bellowed, eyes flashing. ‘Go!’ Her moment of hesitation back in the chamber had passed. She was back in charge all right.

  They raced down endless tunnels, lit only by the juddering beams of the soldiers’ torches. Every shifting shadow seemed to conceal something more sinister, ghostly hands reaching out to tear at them as they passed.

  Ben picked up the pace, imagining the gory stone fingers of one of the statues reaching up behind him, groping for his throat.

  At last they approached the great metal doors that led to the centre of the complex. Once the threshold was crossed they came to a panting halt, too breathless to speak, making do with mute and frightened eye contact.

  Ben saw Roba had clamped one giant’s hand around his forearm. There was a tear in his sleeve. ‘You all right?’ he puffed.

  Roba nodded fiercely, but there was a look in his eyes that suggested he was less certain. ‘Cut myself getting out,’ he muttered. ‘It’s OK.’

  The crowd set off again. Ben gritted his teeth, prepared to make after them, but his legs were cramping up. He felt like one of those marathon runners, he needed someone to run up to him with a cup of weak orange and a big blanket. What he got was Frog, who turned away from the pack, and came back to help him along. She slipped an arm round his waist.

  His shoulder pressed against her chest. He felt her breath on his face, surprisingly sweet.

  Her big bulging eyes met his uncertain gaze for a fraction of a second. Then she looked away, half-carried him along the shadowy path.

  IV

  Polly’s heart leapt as Haunt sprinted back into the control room. She held her side as if she had a stitch.

  Polly frowned. It only seemed like a few minutes since she had left.

  ‘Back so soon,’ the Doctor observed, as if picking up on Polly’s thoughts. He gestured to the empty chair and to the latest empty space on the dais. ‘But I’m afraid not soon enough.’

  Haunt stared at the bodies. Her face slowly screwed up as if the absences were causing her physical pain. ‘DeCaster...

  Pallemar...’ She seemed utterly dumbfounded. ‘Both gone?

  What happened?’

  The Doctor looked troubled. ‘We turned away for a few moments only. When we looked back...’

  More footsteps heralded the arrival of the rest of the soldiers. Polly looked anxiously as first Creben, then Joiks and Tovel, and finally Roba entered through the glowing pentagonal doorway.

  ‘Where’s Ben?’ she called, her voice higher than she’d intended.

  Right on cue, he entered. Half-carried, half-dragged along by Frog. Polly watched sceptically as the ugly little woman helped him over to one of the consoles. He clutched hold of it, smiled his thanks at her.

  As the others gathered round the depleted platform of corpses in sullen disbelief, Polly ran
over to see Ben. He saw her coming, and made an effort to stand unaided. ‘All right, Pol?’

  ‘I’m so glad to see you.’ She smiled at Frog. ‘Thank you for helping him.’

  Perhaps her smile had come out a little tighter than she’d planned.

  Frog shrugged. ‘All yours now, honey,’ she muttered.

  ‘Enjoy.’ Then she walked away to join the Doctor and the others as they exchanged updates and information.

  Polly half-listened as she waited for Ben to catch his breath; caught occasional words: ‘Shade’. ‘Sick’. ‘Cyborg’.

  ‘Chase’. ‘Blood’.

  She was grateful of the chance to have a more personal catch-up with Ben. She told him about Shel going mad, and about Shade, who was sleeping peacefully now. Ben blew air out of his cheeks, not sure what to make of it all.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Polly asked in turn.

  Ben shuddered, leaned back against the console. ‘Statues.

  Dirty great flying things. Came for us, didn’t they.’

  Polly felt a tingle run down her spine. ‘Flying statues?’

  ‘I swear to you. And they had a body up on their pedestal.’

  He shook his head. ‘Denni or Lindey, I’m not sure which.’

  Polly felt her mouth go dry. ‘But, Ben, there are statues of the cherubim right outside!’

  Ben stared at her. ‘I didn’t see anything... I mean, I wasn’t looking, but I don’t reckon...’ He stood back up again, felt nervous energy twitching at his muscles. ‘Marshal Haunt!

  Polly says there were more of those things earlier, perched right outside!’

  Haunt’s head snapped round to face them. Polly prepared to defend her opinion, but the Marshal simply nodded. ‘Frog.

  Joiks. Check it out. Creben, Roba, I want a barricade up outside. See what you can safely rip out of this place.’

  ‘Not a lot .’ Creben glanced around at the banks of equipment dotted about, and the ornamental trellises railing in the ducting round the walls, out of reach. ‘The console housings, maybe.’