As a child, Grim dreamed of two things he wanted more than anything; seeing a live dinosaur, and going into space.
Maybe, unbelievable as all this was, he’d actually get to fulfill one of those lifelong fantasies.
As he floated through the wall
Inside the spaceship the light dimmed, to the point where Grim could see without squinting. It came from everywhere at once, giving him the sensation of skydiving through open air. But he felt the spongy floor against his back, proof he no longer floated and the chair he’d been taped to had touched down.
The hum also dropped several octaves, until Grim couldn’t hear it. But he still felt it, like the air around him vibrated.
And then Fabler, as if summoned, stood over Grim.
“Don’t move. I’m cutting you free.”
“Fabler.
Fabler brandished a folding knife—it appeared to be a Paragon SEAL with a drop point blade, and sawed away at Grim’s duct tape. But it was… weird.
While it looked like Fabler cut the tape on Grim’s right side, it felt like his left side. And as Fabler ripped the tape off his right arm, Grim felt the hairs get pulled out of the left one.
The implications absorbed Grim so completely, he didn’t even flinch as Fabler tore duct tape off his body.
“Don’t freak out, Grim. Remember what I told you. First, the greys will come for us. Then, blackness. In the dark, there will be a monster with a whole bunch of arms and legs. We need to fight our way to Lori. There has to be something beyond the darkness.”
Fabler continued to hack and tug at the duct tape, and what Grim saw didn’t match what he felt, which messed with his head.
“Maybe we should go along with it, Fabler. Maybe we can communicate with them. Reason with them.”
“They’re the enemy, Grim.”
“Okay, let’s say they’re the enemy. They’re obviously more advanced than we are. You’ve studied history. Who wins a war when a primitive culture tries to fight against one that is technologically superior?”
“I’ll ask Shaka Zulu the next time I see him.”
“You cherry picked one example out of thousands.”
“Fine. I’ll ask General Custer.”
“Fabler… we just floated into an extraterrestrial spaceship on some sort of energy beam. You’ve got a few guns, some knives, and a rucksack full of band-aids and energy bars. How do you expect this to turn out?”
“You want to surrender?”
“Communicating with them isn’t surrender. I’m saying it wouldn’t hurt to negotiate with the superintelligent life forms.”
Fabler reached out his hand to help him up, but Grim couldn’t grab it.
“See? Look at this. I can’t even move my hands the right way. They can bend the laws of physics.”
“It’s psyops. Messing with our heads. Everything’s in reverse. Left is right. Forward is back. Use your other hand.”
Grim, counterintuitively, reached out with the wrong hand, and somehow clasped Fabler’s. “This is… wild.”
“This isn’t wild. Are you forgetting they took Lori? You’ve hated me for three years because of that.”
“I know. I made a mistake.” Grim shrugged, backward and awkward. “I don’t want to make any more mistakes.”
“Then don’t fight with me.”
“Maybe there’s something here that we don’t understand. Some kind of misunderstanding. Maybe these… greys… maybe they’re actually okay.”
Fabler handed Grim the Paragon, and it took Grim a few tries for him to grab it. “They aren’t okay, Grim. We’re the good guys. They’re the bad guys. We’re not going to hug this out. We have to kill them before they kill us.”
“Fabler, this whole situation is… unbelievable. I’m here right now, and I still don’t believe it.”
“That’s why I never told you anything.”
“We’re actually in some sort of spaceship.”
Fabler’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think it’s a spaceship.”
“So what is it, then?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Look at my hand. I’m waving my left hand, and my right hand is the one waving. And if I step toward you… look. I’m going backwards.”
Fabler slapped Grim on the cheek and pointed a finger in his face. “Listen, dickhead, I spent a long time training for this. I’m not going to let your childhood sense of whimsy screw it all up. Now figure out how to move around, and be ready for them when they come.”
“What are you going to do?”
Fabler broke into a grin that would curdle milk.
“I’m going to kill them all and get my wife back.”
“Fabler… maybe that’s not the best idea. Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions.”
“All you do is jump to conclusions, Grim. And now you’re jumping to another one.”
“They travelled light years to get here. There has to be a reason.”
“Shut up. They’re coming.”
Grim tried to look where Fabler pointed, and turned in the wrong direction. Adjusting accordingly, he managed to see four approaching figures, walking through an endless horizon of white light. They were tall, lanky, human-shaped, but had a distinctly non-human gait. Dressed in white armor and grey masks.
“You copied their armor.”
“When in Rome.”
“So you and Presley could blend in.”
“She took off. I’m not giving you a gun until you learn how to move. Come with me.”
“Fabler, don’t shoot anything.”
Grim tried to walk after Fabler, somehow walked away from him, and wasted a few seconds trying to figure out how to properly use his legs.
“Hey! Assholes! You remember me?”
Fabler raised his KRISS rifle and sprayed the approaching visitors with a full magazine.
Noise, from behind, and Grim somehow managed to swivel his head around—probably because either way he turned he could see what was behind him—and witnessed Doruk, and Kadir, being lowered to floor-level.
More shooting, and Grim managed to take a few steps toward Fabler before his brain no longer worked in tandem with his muscles and he tripped. He fell forward, and disconcertingly ended up on his back.
To his left
ay lead like he was trying to cut down a rainforest.
The greys didn’t fall over in bleeding and screaming death. The bullets bounced off their armor with faintly metallic pings, and they seemed largely unaffected.
Fabler apparently realized the gunfire wasn’t working, because he slung the rifle over his shoulder and took a tomahawk out of his pack.
“Don’t they know English? Can’t we negotiate a truce?”
“They abduct people, Grim.”
“Maybe they have a good excuse.”
“I don’t want an excuse. I want my wife back.”
“I want that, too. But would it be crazy to give diplomacy a chance?”
“You try diplomacy. I’m trying the axe.”
“You need to talk some sense into your friend, Mr. Pilgrim. Before he gets both of you hurt.”
Grim focused on the voices.
“So, uh, is my sister with you? Her name is Lori.”
“Lori is safe.”
“Fabler? You hear that? Lori is safe.”
Fabler, who most definitely heard it, had reached the greys and began whaling on them with the tomahawk. Their armor held up with minimal damage, but it definitely wasn’t a friendly greeting that expressed I come in peace.
Grim moved toward them, by clumsily running backwards. When one of the greys knocked Fabler onto his back—a violent move, but justifiable because Fabler attacked the guy with an axe—Grim rushed over and got between them and spread out his hands.
“Let’s all take it down a notch.”
Fabler got up off the floor and adjusted his helmet. “Grim, you idiot. Do you have some sort of brain malfunction where you always do the wrong thing?”
“We will take you to your sister, Mr. Pilgrim. You will see, no harm has come to her. Take this necklace as our gift to you. When you put it on, you will be reunited with Lori.”
The nearest grey held out a thick, dark, round band, that appeared to be made of gas, its surface dotted with moving points of light.
The star shapes coalesced into some sort of hologram, which stood out in 3D.
Grim reached for the necklace. It didn’t feel like it weighed anything. It felt like…
“Don’t put that around your neck, Grim.”
Grim raised the necklace. “I’m going to show you it’s okay, Fabler.”
“Grim, you’re a stupid piece of shit.”
“That’s harsh. I thought we were rekindling our friendship.”
“You idiot. Don’t you—”
The ring of energy opened like a C, beckoning Grim to put it on, and he obliged, placing it around his throat.
“See, Fabler? I told you there was nothing to—”
The pain hit with a magnitude impossible to even comprehend. All nerves firing. All muscles locking tight.
It hurt too much to move.
It hurt too much to even scream.
Grim endured three seconds of white-hot full-body torture before unconsciousness blessedly took him.
THE WATCHER ○ 9:11+am
“Why didn’t you arm your men?”
The Watcher casts a disapproving glance at Mu. “I have never needed to. The volunteers are usually disoriented, pleading for their lives. Or they are eager to serve their alien masters on Jupiter, or angels in Heaven, or whatever superstitious nonsense they believe in.”
“Aren’t there angels here? Of the fallen kind?”
“Contain?”
“You’ve developed new weapons?”
“We have not required new weapons. We can easily subdue anything that rises to challenge us.”
“This one won’t be easily subdued.”
Melding with a guard at the threshold, staring through his eyes at Mr. Fabler, the Watcher frowns.
FABLER ○ 9:11am
Grim dropped like a sack of manure.
He still appeared to be breathing.
Fabler kicked the grey that put the collar on Grim, then gripped the unconscious idiot by his collar and wasted seconds and energy dragging him ten meters away to avoid the flanking maneuver. When the enemy attacks from more than one side, split the pin to face them all at once with undivided attention.
“Your friend is not too bright, Mr. Fabler.”
“No shit.”
Fabler could only think of one reason.
Fabler put on his game face. “I want my wife. Bring her to me, let us go, and I’ll let you live.”
“Do you have any idea the amount of energy it takes for us to visit you here? Your tiny mind can not even comprehend it. You must understand that we are here for a purpose. An important purpose.”
“I don’t give a shit what your purpose is. Give me Lori, or I will hunt you down and kill you. That’s my purpose.”
“You are a disagreeable individual, Mr. Fabler.”
Fabler surveyed the battleground. No cover, no terrain advantages, no weather, no wind. Just a wide, flat, bright plane, endless in all directions.
Four greys approached on foot, two to the right and two to the left. They didn’t have weapons.
Their armor weathered the .45 slugs. Aside from some surface scuffs and divots, none of the rounds penetrated.
Fabler reached around his pack, found the Espada knife, and flicked the folding machete open, wielding it left-handed while his right
gripped the Winkler axe. Then he tucked and rolled toward the nearest figure, kicking out a leg in a 360 sweep, executing it perfectly, all the training with mirrors paying off. The grey fell, and Fabler went straight for its helmet, digging his axe handle under the seam at the neck, prying it to the side and probing around with his fingers, finding some sort of latch and fiddling with it until a strap came free and the hockey mask fell to the side, revealing—
Grey skin, moist and glistening, mottled with bumps that looked like boils. The eyes, impossibly huge, giant black pupils set in milky blue irises. A bulbous skull, the forehead huge, sort of eggplant-shaped. The mouth too tiny for the head, the lips thin and translucent, the teeth nothing more than a few gnarled, yellow bumps. No nose, just two wet holes that puffed out air stinking of rotten eggs.
“Please do not hurt me.”
“You’re not Lori.”
“Fabler, please.”
“How did I propose to you?”
“Do not hurt me, Fabler.”
“You have two seconds to answer. Describe our marriage proposal.”
“I love you, Fabler.”
Fabler brought up the Espada and jammed it into the thing’s eye.
It burst like a blood-filled balloon, squirting Fabler in crimson.
The alien screamed. Not like Lori. Like an alley cat, fighting for its life. Fabler leaned on the knife handle, feeling some resistance as the blade became stuck on the occipital bone, then hearing a satisfying crack as it popped through, spearing the brain.
The grey went lax.
Movement, behind him, another grey moving in close, clutching one of those black shock collars, stretching for Fabler’s neck.
Fabler rolled to the side, then raised the axe and brought the spike end down on the grey’s boot, aiming for the ankle joint. It managed to penetrate the crease and punch into bone, Fabler rewarded with another hair-raising screech.
He released the axe, leaving the monster’s foot pinned to the light, then drew the Glock from his holster and pressed the barrel to a joint in the grey’s armor, between the groin and the abdomen. Fabler fired as fast as he could pull the trigger, and on the fifth or sixth shot his rounds penetrated the mesh, soaking it with blood.
What Happened To Lori - The Complete Epic (The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective Book 9) Page 38