Invasive Species Part Two

by Daniel J. Kirk

  INVASIVE SPECIES PART O2 (#3-5)

  BY DANIEL J. KIRK

  © Copyright 2014 Bride of Chaos/ All Rights Reserved to the Author.

  First electronic edition 2014

  Edited by A.R. Jesse

  Cover by Turtle&Noise

  THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION.

  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes) prior written permission must be obtained from the author and publisher.

  READ Part One of INVASIVE SPECIES

  For more information on this series please visit www.brideofchaos.com

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  INVASIVE SPECIES

  PART 02

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  3. THE FULL SPREAD

  Beth Bailey felt trapped. She could hear her fiancé just outside the closet door. But she couldn’t scream for him. She couldn’t pound on the closet doors. What was it the alien had told her? She is in the mind of a doppelganger— a forced observer. It needs her to tell it how to act human, how to keep her fiancé’s trust.

  That’s what the little bald alien guy had said.

  But if that was the case, why was her imposter holding a knife and hiding in the closet?

  Beth felt the echo of a hard pinch. She thanked Derek Vogt, a tall and handsome man in his late twenties. He had the same problem. He was trapped on an alien space ship while their doppelgängers threatened the lives of their loved ones.

  “You have to remember that they are just trying to scare you,” Bub, the little bald alien guy said. “They can’t risk blowing their cover. The plan is all that matters. They are threatened by their calculations and the opportunity you two have at thwarting their invasion.”

  Beth nodded, swallowed her tears and tried to pretend the woman threatening to murder her fiancé was just a dream. All of this had to be a dream. It was the only thing that made sense to her. She’d just killed a tentacle dog-man monster thingy. That couldn’t possibly be reality.

  “Stay here and stay focused,” Bub demanded.

  Beth nodded again.

  In front of them was a large transparent map that hovered without any support. The alien had pulled it out of thin air and been twisting it in three dimensions to find something important to its plan.

  “Here,” it said.

  “What’s there?” Derek asked.

  “That is the security center. It will shut down all the yellow force fields that are detecting our movements. If we can take that out then we can proceed to the signal linking the sleeper agents.”

  “Will there be more of those beasts?”

  “You should count on it.”

  Derek said, “If each fight makes us stronger, shouldn’t we go looking for them? The floating spheres produce beasts based on how many burst. I had no problem with a level two, but well, if it weren’t for Beth, a level six would’ve killed me. Maybe we can find a couple and bust no more than three at a time.”

  Bub produced what it intended as a laugh. “The spheres, will self-destruct and travel in much larger groups now that they know you two defeated a level six. They do not intend to make this easy.”

  And easy it was not. In what felt more like the blink of an eye than a three-mile hike through alien corridors, Derek and Beth found themselves pinned to the ground by an eight-armed goliath. It had bad breath. And it had six razor sharp mouths to distribute its halitosis through.

  “It’s not working!” Bub screamed. He was trying to focus his mind again. The little alien had some ability of telekinesis, but it looked more like he was just constipated. The beast that was planning to devour Derek and Beth took no notice.

  “Ninja kick the dang thing!” Derek yelled. Bub found his own method and ran away screaming. The beast glanced at the shrieking, stupid looking alien. Then it jumped off of Derek and Beth and pursued Bub.

  There was a delay in Derek and Beth jumping to their feet. The sudden lack of pressure on their bodies felt like floating and for a moment they were able to enjoy it.

  “It’ll kill him,” Beth said, standing up.

  Derek shrugged.

  “Come on!”

  They pursued the beast through the large corridor of blue and orange light. It spun with diamond reflections like a kaleidoscope, sometimes creating the illusion that they were running upside down, but the gravity never changed. Between the beasts roaring and Bub’s screeches, hundreds of orbs were alerted and appeared. Derek knew better than to go any further. But Beth plowed on, kicking and swatting the orbs as they fired their irritating blasts.

  Derek watched them burst. He tried to keep track of them. Ten… twenty, twenty-seven... Beth wouldn’t stop. She should know better. She should know that the more orbs that burst, the stronger the beast that forms will be. Derek was barely qualified for a level six on his own, and here she was stirring up a level thirty…now thirty-six.

  Nature wasn’t the only thing telling Derek to turn and run. His mind filled with all the stupid things he would never experience again. Things like spider solitaire and commercials. He realized just how much he didn’t care about those things. And he fought forward, adding to the count of popped orbs.

  Soon the pathway was covered in the residue of the burst bubbles, all of it twisting like liquid snakes, finding each other and binding with increasing speed.

  Beth caught up with the original beast. She climbed its back and dropped a hard elbow into its thick skull. Thick being the reason why it did nothing. But also the reason she had more time to find the beast’s weakness and take it down while its primary concern was the ever-shrill Bub.

  “Get it away from me!”

  “Quit whining you wuss!” Beth dropped another hard elbow. This time in the spot that worked. The beast’s arms shot out, its big belly smashed to the ground. It clamored about with no progress to regain its footing. Derek arrived and without much more thought he plunged into the same attack, rotating with Beth as each blow broke the beast more and more.

  The beast burst and turned to goo, Beth and Derek landed in it together, some of the stickiness reached as far as Bub’s alien toes. They had defeated the beast.

  “Alright, we’re all safe. Great!” Derek proclaimed before he slipped and fell back into the goop. “Now, let’s get the heck out of here!”

  “Settle down, you’re only making it worse,” Beth noted, before the energy from the defeated beast powered both her and Derek. It was a welcome energy, it replenished all they had lost chasing the beast.

  “What level was that?” Beth asked.

  “ Level twelve, I believe,” Bub said, picking at the small goop sticking between its toes.

  “Guys, we need to get out of here,” Derek urged. He’d given up trying to stand up and had pulled himself like a slug out of the beast’s remains.

  “I need to figure out where we are now. I’m completely turned around,” Bub said.

  “Yeah, relax a second.”

  “Relax! That was a level twelve! You popped at least fifty bubbles chasing the stupid thing!”

  “That’s a valid point. We’ll go this way, quickly.” Bub led the way without a second’s hesitation. Derek slipped and tripped back up to his feet as he brought up the rear. As the goop wore off on his feet, he began to feel the tremors in the ground beneath his feet.

  Something was coming.

  Something large.

  Several corridors later, Derek passed Beth as she collapsed.

  “Come on,” he urged her.

  He didn’t he
ar footsteps resume. He turned and looked over his shoulder. She sat on her knees and cried.

  “Come on!” Derek slowed for a second. “You can do it, we’ll make it!” His words of encouragement didn’t lift the beautiful woman’s head. “Ah hell. Bub! Wait up a second.”

  The distant echo of Bub’s voice rattled on, “No wait, no wait. Must hurry.” But Derek stopped anyways and jogged back to Beth.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head and said something indiscernible.

  “What? Are you okay?”

  Beth jerked her reddened eyes to meet Derek’s. “They killed him! They made me kill him!”

  Derek didn’t have a cool or witty response. He had something that might be inappropriate, but he hadn’t made it this far in life sticking his foot in his mouth every hour. He paused and waited for her fire to subside to sadness.

  “Maybe they just want you to think he’s dead. I mean the way Bub talks they chose us as part of some plan. And if you’re in jail for murder that doesn’t exactly allow them to use you to further their invasion. Right?”

  “I don’t think they care. We’re all cattle to them right? Just slaughter us all now. Why this stupid game of charades?”

  Derek tried a few more thoughtful sentences. “Because they must know you and I have a chance to stop them. If they establish that they will kill, then they can threaten our other loved ones. They’ve been inside our minds. They must know who we really care about. But if we fail they’re dead anyways.”

  “He is dead, Derek. They killed him for real.”

  “I’m sorry, but don’t jump to conclusions they know what we can see. They know what we feel. It’s all manipulation.”

  “I saw his intestines. They pulled them out and wrapped them around his neck.”

  “Gross…” Derek’s foot dropped from his mouth to his stomach. He would’ve tried to hug her, but his feet had not stopped vibrating. Whatever level beast they had generated wasn’t very fast, but it was mobile and very big, and it hadn’t stopped following them.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  Beth wiped her tears and stood up.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Beth turned her back to Derek and faced the impending monster.

  “I’ll buy you and that bald alien some time. Go stop these alien bastards.”

  Derek didn’t quite understand her pain. Not yet anyway. But he knew the same fate would await his loved ones if he weren’t successful. There was no time to waste.

  “Give it hell,” Derek said and took off down the corridor.

  Beth groaned, clenched and unclenched her fists. Her mind focused on the strength of the vibrations. Soon, she was able to calculate the rate of speed of the beast. She had three minutes.

  Derek tired. He was never a long distance runner, or sprinter for that matter. He only kept running so as not to hear Beth when the beast reached her. He assumed he went the right direction. But Bub hadn’t been kind enough to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

  “Over here!” Bub called from an alcove. “Where is Beth Bailey?”

  Derek stopped for a moment, ready to explain…

  Derek tried to pinch himself. He knew it wasn’t worth playing his imposter’s game and witnessing whatever threats the aliens wished to issue. But something was different this time. The connection was stronger.

  Derek was faced with a bright light and a pair of angry looking men in dark suits. He heard Melinda.

  “He’s been acting strange. Nervous.”

  “You think he’s a spy?” one of the men asked.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Melinda said.

  “Well are you a spy?”

  The imposter didn’t answer. It plunged into Derek’s thoughts. It was probing for something other than the proper human response.

  Melinda strutted past Derek’s vision. She lit up a cigarette. She didn’t smoke! She had never smoked. She looked like pro, no cough; even her hand gestures had adapted the cigarette as an appendage.

  “He’s a spy,” she said. “The question is for whom?”

  “I’m really confused, Melinda. What is going on?” the imposter whimpered. Derek had never liked his voice much before, but being subjected to that whiny tone was almost enough for him to take a vow of silence. “Melinda, who are these people? You don’t smoke.”

  Derek felt the thought plucked from his mind. He wished he could break the connection and leave the imposter on its own. But his own confusion must’ve kept him as a witness to this strange revelation.

  Melinda had always seemed plain. Sometimes a little nutty when she insisted on charities or Bible study. This wasn’t her at all. Could it be another imposter?

  “What did you want with the source codes?” Melinda asked. “Did you have a buyer?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about!”

  “Hook him up,” she ordered. Derek couldn’t see what the men were doing. The imposter’s head must’ve been strapped to the chair, as it did not turn.

  Derek stumbled forward and knocked Bub against the wall.

  “I’m not into interspecies…” Bub squeezed through Derek’s legs and then made an effort to brush off its body where Derek had touched it.

  Derek shook his head. It ached in ways he had never known. “I guess their connection is broken if they experience pain as well?”

  “Sounds plausible, let’s get going.”

  “You said they chose me because of an important role I could play. You don’t know what that role is do you?”

  Bub shook his head.

  “You are likely an assassin.”

  “What if I was needed to steal source codes?”

  Bub laughed, “I doubt you are important enough for that part of their plan.”

  “My girlfriend—

  “The ugly one.”

  “Hey! Not cool, baldy. What do you know about what’s attractive for humans? Anyway listen to me. I saw her. She was trying to figure out why I, the imposter, was trying to steal the source codes.”

  Bub’s eyes lit up. “We must hurry!”

  “I know that, but…”

  The little bald alien had already taken off running again. “If they are claiming the source code then the invasion is imminent!”

  4. BELLY OF THE BEAST

  “We need Beth Bailey!” Bub proclaimed. Derek was in full agreement. Beth Bailey was at the top of his wish list as he tried to stay hidden beneath a pulsing orb. An anvil’s throw away were cascading platoons of beasts, encircling the security center. Beth could’ve taken on at least three of the couple dozen, and maybe Bub could’ve screamed and lured a few more away, that still would’ve left Derek with more than he could handle.

  “They must’ve known this is where we would go.”

  “If we can’t shut off their alarms we’ll have to find another way to break the communications link with the sleeper agents. The good news is that if your ugly mate has stopped your imposter from gaining access to the source codes then the invasion will not start this very minute. She’s buying us time. Are you pinching yourself?”

  Derek nodded. “I didn’t want the imposter interrupting us.”

  “No, let him. He’ll need you more than ever. You have had the disease before haven’t you?”

  “Uh, which one? That thing in college was poison ivy.”

  “Where an incessant wretched tune’s refrain repeats over and over in your head.”

  “Oh, that? All the time… are you thinking?

  “Yes, if you can get a song stuck in your head it is one of the most debilitating thoughts a human mind can have. It will cripple the imposter!”

  The idea made perfect sense to Derek, but he wasn’t sure what song he wanted to plague himself with. It was as if in that moment the options were too many, like a grain of salt on a beach.

  Derek hadn’t picked out the song. The imposter was desperate and seized the moment Derek had stopped pinching himself. The imposter dug
deep into Derek’s mind, recounting his life on earth, moments from his childhood. Everything Melinda and the two men in suits needed to hear to believe Derek wasn’t raised in Russia or China and sent to the United States to infiltrate the government and steal ‘source codes.’

  “What more do I have to prove to you?” The imposter pleaded. It was part of the act. “I love you.”

  Melinda nodded then slammed her fist on the table between them. She held it there, grinding her knuckles. “Look, I own a mirror and scale. I’ve overheard your conversations with your guy friends. I’ve even caught your wandering eyes, Derek. I’m not the most attractive girl. I accepted that long ago. I’ve shaved my hairy toes since I was twelve-years old. And I’m not a good cook.”

  “I don’t mind eating take out or fast food.” the imposter’s admission shamed Derek. He wanted the imposter to tell them instead that he liked cooking his own meals, which was true.

  “But you don’t love me. The diamond on my engagement ring is the first diamond that greasy Italian guy sold you when you walked in looking for something to win me over.”

  “He was more knowledgeable than I.” Derek was glad the imposter was defending him. It was true. What guy knows what diamond to buy until he has to buy a diamond? He still felt a tingle of remorse thinking of the atrocities committed in Africa over such rocks. But that’s what Melinda had always wanted. She had always said… “You used to say you wanted that ring, a nice big diamond, nothing else, no other small karats surrounding it. I wanted you to have what you wanted.”

  “Of course you did. You couldn’t offer me the family heirloom because you knew our engagement was a fraud!”

  Derek wished more than anything that he could take over the imposter and truly defend himself, but he was left a witness to the worse possible attorney on the planet, someone who could read Derek’s mind without understanding his intentions.