by E. G. Wiser
The caravan of dark blue vehicles that had been following them slowed to a stop a hundred or so feet behind them. For a moment, that was it. No car doors opened, no sirens flashed, no loud speaker announcements punctuated the air. Then, from the dark truck in front of them emerged three figures wearing bulky black outfits that resembled nothing so much as spacesuits. The spherical helmets that contained the figures’ respective heads were of a particular non-reflective, opaque black.
Beth and Brad climbed out of the truck, walked up the road to meet the approaching figures. Brad had his hand resting on the butt of his gun. Beth didn’t bother. She had a feeling that this was not a situation anyone would be shooting their way out of.
One of the strangely dressed figures came forward, holding something in his hand for them to read. As they got closer, Beth read the ID out loud. “Global Initiative for Terrestrial Integrity.”
Brad sighed and said, “What is that? GIFT? It sounds like such a nice organization…”
A man’s voice filtered through an electric speaker on the suit answered, “GITI, actually. And we are a very nice organization… If you consider protecting the entire planet from outside forces ‘nice’.”
“I guess that seems pretty nice,” Brad said. “So… Thanks?”
“So what are you guys? Part of the UN?” Beth asked.
“Not exactly,” the faceless man said. “But let’s say that that’s close enough. The point is, we represent a conglomeration of world authorities and thus outrank any jurisdiction you might think you have in this matter.”
“Yeah,” Beth said. “I kind of figured that by the giant truck blocking the road. Do you guys have any idea what you’re dealing with here?”
“We’ve been kept apprised.”
“Then I hope you have some special NASA chastity belts in those get-ups,” Brad said.
The man from GITI made a noise that could have been a chuckle or just static on his speaker.
“We’re well prepared, I assure you,” he said, gesturing to the other figures behind him, who now approached the truck—ostensibly to examine its alien cargo. One climbed into the truck’s cabin, started the engine and pulled it forward toward the GITI truck, which was large enough to contain the entirety of their truck in its storage. Doors at the back of the GITI truck opened with an automatic hiss. A ramp descended. The smaller semi drove up the ramp and the doors closed again behind it.
“I imagine you have your own hole inside a mountain you can store this thing safely in then,” Beth said.
And the man in the black spacesuit said, “We have prepared a facility for the purpose. But we thank you for your efforts in getting the object this far, Agent August. You are a hero.”
“Gosh, thanks,” she said, not quite rolling her eyes.
“You’re welcome from me too,” Brad said and the speaker on the man’s spacesuit either laughed or clicked again.
Not long after that the truck was gone to parts unknown, and one by one the caravan of blue vehicles behind them followed, leaving Beth and Brad at the side of the road until the last SUV pulled over and a tinted window slid down. Inside was a driver wearing a blue suit. He had something that looked like a gas mask over his face, but he pulled it off to reveal a visage of no particular interest or enthusiasm.
“I’m your ride back,” the man said. “Take it or leave it.”
They took it.
Chapter Twelve
After filing all the necessary paperwork and being debriefed by the governor, Beth slept for the better part of the next three days. She had never felt so thoroughly exhausted in her life and was grateful that the dreams she had then did not feature living black oceans or multi-tentacled translucent creatures.
Mostly, they featured Brad. Also, a lot of driving.
At first the dreams had been mostly variations of the sex they had had on the warehouse floor or in the truck—or in some other place they had never actually had sex in. But then other scenes, both remembered and imagined, began to replay in her head—and not always when she was asleep.
She remembered drinking awful wine with him out of paper cups in her hotel room. Beth remembered watching his face as he drove in the night. The memory of his dark eyes alone were enough to make a shiver run through her. And the sound of his laugh, the kindness in his voice when he was warning alien-possessed fuckers that he was moving the car they were fucking against and he didn’t want them to fall into the street.
Beth found herself smiling often. Then, as she remembered that this day, too, would be another day without seeing him again, the smile would fade.
She was glad when she was cleared to get back to work and could bury herself in the job again—distract herself with whatever bit of the heavens would come crashing down to earth next.
But the governor noticed the change in Beth and mentioned it one day when they had been left behind in a conference room after a presentation about a possible UFO sighting that sounded a great deal like yet another weather balloon.
“You okay, Beth?” the governor asked, but not in her governor voice. This was Beth’s old college friend Alice talking now. “You seem a bit distracted lately.”
“Maybe I’m just concerned about all these rogue weather balloons. What do they want? What are they up to?”
“Seriously, Beth. Something has been different about you ever since that sphere.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And that security guard.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And he wasn’t a security guard. He was an agent. You read the report…”
“I read the report. Did that guy get under your skin somehow, Beth?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“You understand I am not speaking in double entendre right now, Beth. I mean, emotionally. Are you in love with this guy or something?”
Beth looked Alice straight in the eye before speaking.
“Something like that,” she said. “Is that dumb? Maybe it’s just a residual effect from the object.”
“Or maybe you’re just in love with the guy. Dumber things have happened, you know, even to people like you. Have you told him?”
“No. Haven’t seen him since we got back. You don’t happen to have the directory for the federal Department of Xeno-Cryptology, do you?”
“Not on me.”
“Okay.”
“Or anywhere.”
“I figured.”
And that was that. There was nothing to be done about it. Beth left the conference room and the next day went to another reported crash site. It was a weather balloon.
“I swear to Christ, I’m going to start arresting meteorologists in a second,” she told the governor over the phone.
The governor said, “Never mind that, Beth. A car is going to be picking you up outside your apartment tomorrow morning at seven. You are on temporary loan to another agency. I think you could use a change of pace right now.”
“Are you doing this as my boss or as my friend?”
“A little of both,” the governor said.
“All right,” Beth said. She considered arguing, but it would have been more from habit than feeling. Anyway, it would be nice to have some different scenery for a change. Maybe even some normal human interaction and something slightly more interesting than a deflated weather balloon to look at.
“Pack an overnight bag,” was the last thing the governor told her.
* * * *
The car was outside her apartment building the next day at the appointed time. She opened the passenger door and her heart leaped inside her ribcage.
Brad was behind the wheel. His grin was impossibly large and school boyish.
“Where are we off too, Agent Henry?” she asked, in what she hoped was a calm, collected and thoroughly professional voice.
He started the car, pulled into traffic.
“Call me Brad, please. I would have called you sooner, you know, but my superiors ordered me not to.”
“Good soldier, Brad.”
“Oh come on. It’s not like you looked me up. And I’m on Facebook.”
“Fair enough,” Beth said “So what does the Department of Xeno-Cryptology want with me? Did you guys find another strange item that you need my legendary skills on? It’d be a nice change if you guys just asked me for my help this time.”
“Actually I’ve been working with GITI lately. They had something they thought we might both be interested in.”
“I’m not sure I wore the right underwear for another encounter with that object, if that’s what this is.”
“They have assured me they have harnessed its powers for goodness or something.”
“I’d be interested in seeing that.”
They drove on for a bit in silence before Brad spoke again.
“I’ve missed you, Beth,” he said. “I really have. I’ve thought a lot about…everything we went through.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Not just the sex stuff, I mean.”
“Okay.” Beth didn’t want to pull back emotionally, but she felt it happening all the same. She was nervous, unsure. The world ending in an unstoppable alien-induced fuck-a-thon did not frighten her the way her feelings and the feelings of the man sitting next to her right then did.
Where is he going with this? Where do I want him to go?
Her own heart was beating faster inside her chest from just the proximity of him and, because of that, she felt compelled to seal herself off even more. It felt like a weakness. Her impulse was to keep it hidden.
Brad drove on without saying anything, though she could sense the words building inside him.
“The thing is,” he said, but then didn’t say anything else for another minute.
Half a mile later, he started again. “The thing is, I can’t stop thinking about you. And I know what you’re going to say. That it was all due to that alien thingy we found, and it’s not real or it’s residual or I am imagining things based on events that would never have happened under normal circumstance. But that’s not exactly true. What I’m feeling…now…isn’t because of some goddamn space rock.”
“What you’re feeling now,” she said quietly.
“Yes… Yes. What I’m feeling now…”
“Which is…”
“God damn it all to hell, Beth, I’m in love with you. That’s what I’m saying!”
Beth laughed and felt as if a lid had been blown off her and all the unnamed tension she had been feeling flew out of her like the spring snake in a novelty gag fake can of peanut brittle. Like that, but not as funny. “Well, I’m glad you said it first!”
Brad glanced over at her, a confused but hopeful look on his face.
“I love you, too,” she said and his smile shone back at her like a spotlight.
He rolled down the window then began to whistle. Not in key.
Chapter Thirteen
The building was shiny, new and absent all signage—a black glass monolith about a mile outside of the city proper, surrounded by nothing but a vacant lot on one side and an abandoned factory on the other.
It seemed to lack a normal front door, but a portion of it opened up large enough for a car to fit in. Brad drove his car into it. Inside the pathway led to a parking garage as white and pristine as a hospital. Brad parked the car between two gleaming pillars.
“You seem to know your way around pretty well, Brad.”
“I’ve been doing a little consulting work for them,” he said, leading her from the car to a nearby elevator that took them to an unlabeled level of the building that felt like it had to be several stories below ground level.
From there, he led her down a bright, white hallway, into a dark room that was arranged like a small theater, with padded chairs all facing a blank wall.
He directed her to a seat in the third row and sat next to her.
“Our first date,” she said.
He grinned and called over his shoulder to an unseen party: “Okay, Cecil. Show us today’s feed from Project Keyhole.”
The lights dimmed. The whirring sound came from nearby.
“So we’re not alone.”
“Cecil is a computer program. Stands for Computer Engaged… Uh… And some other words. I’m not good at acronyms. It’s seriously hampered my career, if you want to know the truth…”
The blank wall flickered to life in front of them—a mosaic of unclear images that gradually came into sharper focus. It was a dozen or more different scenes—scenes of translucent flesh or glowing tentacles and appendages, of bright colors slick with a universal wetness, of a black ocean writhing with living waves. It was a myriad of entangled creatures, and without even knowing the biology of them, it was plain to Beth what they were doing.
Brad whispered in the dark of the theater. “They used the object to sort of reverse engineer this thing so it shows all this, but really, they’re not even sure what we’re looking at. This could be scenes from another planet or dimension, alien memories or even some technologically generated hallucination. They… We all think there is something…um, familiar about what’s going on up there, but—”
“I’m pretty sure it’s fucking, Brad.”
“Yeah. That was kind of my theory, too, but I didn’t want to say.”
“I think you guys have managed to make an intergalactic peepshow.”
“Oh. Okay.” He slumped a little in his chair. “I don’t see how useful that’s going to be.”
“I don’t know. I’m sure there are plenty of xeno-crypto-science type-A people that would love to take a look at that feed. Maybe you could even sell tickets.”
“Somehow I don’t think that was the answer GITI was looking for.”
“They’ll get over it. Now pretend to yawn and put your arm around me.”
He did.
She leaned against him and nodded at the screen. “And if you play your cards even a little bit close to right, there may be some of that for us at the end of the day. In a bed even, this time.”
“In a bed,” he said wistfully. “That’d be great.”
“If we do it right.”
“We haven’t done it wrong yet.”
They were quiet for another moment while what looked like an orgy of neon amoeba was taking place on the screen. She leaned against him. It felt good. Better than anything she could remember. And she could remember a lot.
“I really do love you, Brad,” she said. “I mean, I know you said it first. I don’t want you thinking I just said it back to you to be polite.”
“Is anyone that polite?”
“I’m not,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said. “And I said it first.”
Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:
Samantha Lytton: The Dimple of Doom
Lucy Woodhull
Excerpt
Chapter One
Accountants should not be so sexy.
It all started at the office Christmas party, as many terrible hangovers do.
My palms began to sweat at the sight of The Accountant walking in my direction. His shining eyes said, I wanna spread your sheet, his masterful gait said, Damn, I’m masterful, and his tantalising smirk said, I’ve read the Kama Sutra—all the way through.
I swallowed the lump of lust in my throat and twiddled with the tablecloth of the catered buffet table. My usual party plan involved making winsome eyes at the food, but tonight I salivated over more than just the pigs in a blanket.
“Potato ball?” he asked. Sam Turner, aka The Accountant, held the fried offering palm up on a festive red and green paper plate.
I had the hots for a dude named Sam. My name is Samantha. Samantha ‘n’ Sam. It was the stuff of obnoxious wedding invitations.
What colour were his hazel eyes today? Glancing up, I slid into hormone heaven. He stood, eyes mossy green pools of sensual seductiveness, and offered me the Garden of Eden apple. Except it was a potato ball.
Cock
ing my head, I posed in an alluring manner that I hoped brought Marilyn Monroe to mind. I should say something. Something not stupid.
“I love balls.” Oh, damn. “And potatoes!” Did I just tell him I loved to eat balls? “I mean I love to eat food! In ball form. You know. Because it’s easy. To eat. Except when it rolls. Then it can be hard to catch.”
Stop.
Talking.
“Okay.” Sam’s lips turned upward in mockery on his almost handsome, totally charming face, topped in curling, floppy, please-run-your-hands-through-me brown hair.
Yes, I absolutely had told him I loved to eat balls. I decided I should smile through this faux pas. Everyone knew a bright grin made unpleasant things go away. Ask Judy Garland.
“I like food in stick or chip form myself,” he said, munching a piece of celery in stick form.
I couldn’t come up with anything to say about sticks that wasn’t dirty. “Chips are good.” Really, I impressed even myself with the brilliance of my witty banter. At any moment my clothes would be ripped off my quivering body by Sam, my same-named accounting crush.
I hated the office Christmas party.
Sam blinked and appraised me in what I chose to interpret as a captivated manner. A girl could dream. Instead he said, “So, Scott told me you entertained the employees at last year’s party.”
“Yes. I fell down the steps.” My cheeks burned like the carpet at the end of two flights of stairs. I wasn’t clumsy too often, but when I made the effort, I really won at it. “You can still see the splotch on the floor from the blood. I lost a tooth, but gained a reputation.”