THE RED MIST TRILOGY: The Box Set

by R T Green

  ‘Shit. Do any of your people know about Dawson's Hill?’

  She shook her head. ‘I kept that one to myself. All they know is I was supposed to set up a beacon to guide them in to exactly the right position if it was heavy cloud.’

  I gasped. ‘So… so is that all the suitcase contains?’

  ‘Oh no. There's something else in there. They don't know about that either.’

  The Iveco was filling the rear-view mirror. Then I couldn't just see it, I could feel it too. It didn't stop coming, rammed the back of the car.

  I floored the throttle, the power of the BMW pulling it clear of the van. I tried to think; it was gone two in the morning and the traffic was light. Somehow I had to lose the van, but with few vehicles on the road it was near impossible to use heavy traffic to help us part company.

  It was going to take something drastic.

  ‘How long, Zana?’ I cried out. Up ahead the lights of Waterloo Bridge loomed through the murk. I slowed the car a little, allowed the van to catch up.

  Zana lifted the big titanium pendant around her neck and began pressing tiny buttons hidden in the intricate pattern. The centre lit up, a blue display screen flashing out information.

  I had to smile at the irony. No wonder we couldn't find anything in Zana's apartment. Everything she needed was built into the pendant.

  ‘Less than two hours, Madeline,’ she said shakily.

  I nodded grimly. It had to be the bridge, there was no other way.

  As we began to cross the misty river we were rammed again, the alien driver realising that shoving us into the Thames was the perfect way to bring about endgame. This time I kept our speed steady, allowing the van to push us along, faster and faster. One of us was about to say hello to a watery grave, whatever the outcome. I peered desperately through the fog. There were no vehicles travelling in the same direction as us.

  But then I saw it, coming towards us. A forty-ton articulated truck.

  ‘Take a deep breath, Zana,’ I said grimly.

  This was drastic, no doubt about it. But there was no other way. Silently I begged whoever was up there to protect the driver of the lorry, knew forty-ton artic's were pretty safe these days.

  I wrenched the steering wheel to the right; the BMW veered across the narrow central reservation and headed directly towards the oncoming truck. My sudden action caught the van driver out, he didn't follow.

  The truck driver was quicker to react. The bridge that only had one lane in either direction left him nowhere else to go. He slewed across the central reservation, smacked into the side of the van. Zana screamed, I slammed on the brakes, and watched the action in the rear-view mirror.

  The truck started to jack-knife, but the driver was skilled and caught it in time. It came to a stop, looked like he was ok. The fast-moving van didn't stop. Smacked violently in the side, only the nearside wheels were on the ground as it headed at a crazy tilt for the low white-painted railings that weren't designed to stop big out-of-control vans.

  The Iveco met the railings at a forty-five degree angle. They offered no resistance, and crumpled instantly as the van tipped over the edge and hit the river twenty metres below.

  I shoved my foot to the floor, and the slightly-shorter BMW drove rapidly off the bridge and headed quickly south.

  ‘Remind me to take the bus next time,’ said Zana shakily, forcing her shattered nerves to pull themselves back together.

  ‘Aw c’mon you... Thelma and Louise ride again!’ I grinned.

  ‘You planning on driving us off the edge of the Grand Canyon?’

  We'd only been driving for two minutes when my phone rang. I groaned, realising I should have called Coop to bring him up to speed.

  ‘You trying to give me a heart attack, Maddie?’

  ‘Hell Coop, I should have called you. Where are you?’

  ‘Where the fuck do you think? You seen that movie, 'Demolition Man'? We's just put all the body-parts back together and realised none of them belong to you or Zana.’

  ‘Sorry, big man. We've had a bit more unwanted attention from unfriendly aliens since then. Guess you should know... there's a great big spaceship about to come and visit us.’

  ‘Now I am having a heart attack. You want me to inform the powers-that-be?’

  I glanced to Zana. I'd routed the conversation through the car speakers, so she was hearing every word. She shook her head. ‘Not just yet, Coop. Zana's got it covered. She’s going to stop them… somehow.’

  ‘You sure about that, Maddie? She’d better not fuck up, I'm panicking now.’

  ‘She is. She's listening in to this.’

  ‘Sorry Zana, we's all rooting for you. Where are you guys anyhow?’

  ‘Heading to Dawson's Hill.’ Zana threw me a horrified look, I smiled reassuringly back. ‘That's where this is all going to end, Coop. Maybe you should get your ass there too.’

  ‘Would if I knew where the fuck it was.’

  ‘I'm assuming my phone is tagged?’

  The voice hesitated a fraction. ‘Yeah it is.’

  ‘Then follow my signal. You might like to see the show.’

  ‘On my way.’

  I could feel Zana's frown as I ended the call. ‘It's ok, Coop's a good guy. He's been there for me since day one, even though I didn't know it to begin with. He should be there at the end too.’

  THE FINAL ACT

  I stuck a screwdriver into the clasp of the padlock keeping the rear door of the café closed, wrenched it away. We slipped into the forbidding darkness, and my stomach screwed itself into a tangled mess of emotions.

  Zana ran to the big metal drawer in the kitchen and lifted out the suitcase, walked through into the café and set it down on one of the tables. As I watched her, the memory of that night came flooding back. She'd chosen the table that didn't have any chairs standing on it, the one I’d thrown her onto in my desolate anger, the one that five minutes later had been the place where both of us experienced passion we'd never felt before.

  The one where I'd finally had to admit to myself I was in love with her.

  She knew the significance of that table. As she lifted a small cylinder out of the case, she looked into my eyes and smiled. ‘This innocent table seems to have played a big part in our story, Madeline,’ she said quietly.

  I stood behind her, wrapped my arms tightly around her waist. She turned to me, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. ‘I love you,’ she whispered.

  ‘I love you too,’ I replied, as our lips met in a long, bitter-sweet kiss.

  We both knew it would likely be our last.

  She turned back to the table, pressed a switch on the base of the cylinder, and a tiny blue light began to flash. ‘The beacon is transmitting,’ she said.

  ‘They won't be expecting it though, they know you’ve betrayed them. They’ll think you'll not fire up the beacon.’

  She looked at me with desolate eyes. ‘Maybe they'll think one of the others have set it. They might not know they are all dead.’ She let out a little cry. ‘Either way they have to follow the signal… if they don't pass over us Madeline, I can't do what I have to do.’

  Even in the darkness of the café I could see the pain and desperation in her eyes. I pulled her close, letting her feel the love and togetherness I knew she needed to take the final step.

  ‘What is it you have to do, Zana?’

  She wouldn't look at me. Her voice was breaking as she finally told me what was to happen.

  ‘In less than an hour the ship will be here. It is full of battle troops. I'm going to kill thirty-thousand of my own people, Madeline.’

  I closed my eyes, her words stabbing into my heart. And suddenly I knew why she needed my love. Why she needed me beside her.

  Why she'd said it was because of me.

  ‘Is there no other way?’ I whispered.

  ‘No. I told you they are evil. Cold, heartless warriors, they know no other way. They will take over your planet Madeline, bit by bit.’
/>   ‘But thirty-thousand troops couldn't possibly defeat the whole of humanity.’

  She shook her head, walked over to the glass doors and stood looking out at the mist. ‘Their master-plan is perfect. If I don't stop it, the ship will sit half a mile above London, and create an electronic fence ten miles in diameter. Everyone inside will be trapped, no human will get in or out. Then those inside the fence will be… adapted. So they become willing workers…’ the words trailed away, choking her into silence.

  It was all starting to make sense. ‘That's why you and the other six were here first.’

  She nodded. ‘Our mission was to study you, carry out research so they knew how you could be controlled, put the plan into operation as soon as they got here.’

  I joined her at the window, stood by her side. ‘But something in you changed.’

  ‘Being around other humans, I began to see what it was like to have a heart, to know compassion. Then what Arik did to Daisy made me seriously question the so-called values that had been instilled in me since birth. But I didn't truly understand until I found love.’

  ‘But I didn't have a heart either, not until you.’

  She turned to me and smiled. ‘Yes you did, Madeline. You just didn't know it.’

  ‘Guess I could say the same about you.’

  ‘Guess you could.’ She walked back to the case, closed the lid. ‘In a few minutes we must go to the top of the hill. The weapon I built has limited range, so we have to be as close to the ship as possible.’

  ‘I still don't understand why your people would even bother to conquer another world so far away?’

  She smiled sadly. ‘Need, Madeline. Our world is tiny, and many years ago it became too small for all of us. We had to look for another planet, so scout vessels began long journeys. You would be surprised to know just how few worlds out there are actually habitable. But then we found yours.’

  ‘But thirty-thousand people won't make a dent in your overcrowding problem.’

  ‘The ship, big as it is, is simply a search-and conquer vessel. Only if their mission succeeds will they send a message back home. Then many others will come.’

  ‘And if they don't?’

  ‘If they are never heard from again, no other ships will make the journey.’

  I blew out my cheeks. ‘There's a lot riding on this then.’

  We walked together through the mist, but as we reached the top of the hill the air cleared. Stretched out below us, the view was breathtaking.

  We were above the mist line, looking across London to a white blanket below us. It felt like we were above the clouds, except the taller buildings of the city stood clear above the fog, their lights reflecting down onto the whiteness below.

  It looked surreal.

  ‘Look at it, Madeline,’ Zana whispered. ‘How beautiful is that?’

  I took her hand, spellbound by the scene stretched out in front of us. ‘It has to be worth all the pain,’ I said quietly.

  ‘It is.’

  She knelt on the ground, unzipped the case and lifted out another cylinder. Taller and thinner than the beacon, its top was pointed with a small hole in its centre. Then she lifted out a three-footed base and clipped the cylinder to it, stood it on a patch of level ground and stepped back.

  My eyes couldn't believe what they were seeing. It looked like a child's toy rocket.

  ‘How is that going to stop a massive great spaceship?’ I gasped.

  She smiled at my disbelief. ‘Knowledge, Madeline. It is as simple as it is deadly.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘The ship is made of a unique alloy. There is nothing else like it in the universe, as much of it as we know anyway. It is an alloy with a biological component.’

  ‘You mean it's… alive?’

  ‘In a simple sense. Think about your plants and trees. Flowers that turn to follow the sun, bloom in spring and close their petals at night. Trees that lose their leaves in autumn, and create them again after the winter. How do they know, Madeline?’

  ‘Because they are living things.’

  ‘Our scientists found a way to integrate that instinctive form of life into the alloy. Hence the biological element.’

  ‘But why? What advantage is that?’

  ‘The entire ship is made of it. Because it can think in a simple way, it reacts to its environment at all times. It protects itself and everyone inside the ship. If it wears or is damaged it repairs itself.’

  ‘Wow. That's one hell of a piece of tin.’

  ‘It is the perfect material. Almost.’

  ‘Almost?’

  ‘It has one serious flaw. But it is only a flaw if you know how it is made. Which no one outside Calandura does.’

  ‘But you do… you work in biogenetics.’

  She smiled. ‘What happens if you spray a weed with a powerful weed-killer?’

  ‘Um… it shrivels up and dies.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But that takes days to happen.’

  ‘Not on Calandura. We were able to alter the metabolic structure of the alloy so it would react many times quicker than that. So if it was damaged in battle it would repair itself instantly.’

  I pointed a shaking finger at the toy rocket, my eyes wide. ‘So… so that's just a can of weed-killer?’

  Zana laughed. ‘Give me a little more credit! But yes, I suppose you're right. When I fire it into the underside of the ship, it will set off a reaction in the alloy. In a matter of minutes the entire ship will shrivel and die. Nothing will remain except the mother of all dust-storms.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘I said you were cleverer than me.’

  Behind us in the distance, a sudden rumble of thunder shook the ground, a flash of lightning momentarily lighting up the sky.

  ‘Oh joy,’ I groaned. ‘First the rain, then the mist, now thunder and lightning. What else is Mother Nature going to throw at us?’

  Then Zana's arms were around me, holding me so tightly it hurt. I looked into her petrified eyes, and knew instantly my weather forecast was wrong.

  ‘That's not Mother Nature, Madeline. They are here.’

  The nausea was back in my stomach. But this time, it relegated all the previous feelings of dread to the very bottom of the league. I’d never known fear like it. It didn't help that the moon made an inopportune appearance in that moment, a bright full disc of light that bathed the mist in an even spookier glow.

  The world around me looked… alien.

  Desperately I strained to see behind me, but the tops of the trees were too high for me to see much. ‘I can't see anything,’ I cried out, unnecessarily.

  ‘They will come in low,’ Zana said. ‘Maximum effect. But they might remain cloaked until the last moment, so no one knows they are here until it is too late.’

  The ground beneath our feet began to shake. Desperately I reached out for Zana, pulled her into me as a low growl of a rumble filled the air. There was no sound of engines, nothing.

  Just a constant rumble of thunder, filling my soul and making me want to cry out and run.

  ‘Don't let go of me, Madeline,’ I heard Zana shout, her voice an echo through the incessant noise building in my ears.

  Still it grew louder, the ground beneath us tremoring so much it felt like we were in the middle of an earthquake. My ears hurt, the awful flat growl trying to shake my brain to bits. I could feel Zana's fingers digging into my back, and then suddenly her lips were locked into mine, a stolen final kiss that stabbed through my heart. ‘This is it, Madeline…’ she screamed.

  And then I could see it. First, three huge black pointed probes, spearing menacingly into the moonlight just above our heads; then the massive disc itself, a giant shadow that crept over us at little more than walking pace, slowly blotting out the light as, metre by metre, it filled every inch of sky.

  All I could see then was the belly of the immense craft, its black menace and the mind-numbing noise ripping the breath from my lungs. ‘What the hell do you call big
, Zana?’ I cried out.

  I could only just hear her reply, but it sounded like she said, ‘It's just over a mile in diameter, Madeline.’

  Carl turned the van into Dunston's Road just as the ground began to shake. Ryland Cooper looked up from the map on his phone with the tiny red circle showing Madeline's location. Straightaway he saw the bent BMW parked next to the sidewalk, pointed to it, and then cast frightened eyes into the sky.

  ‘Think we got visitors,’ he said in a shaky voice.

  Carl threw him a grin of anticipation as he brought the van to a stop. ‘Where is she?’ he asked as he leaned over to see the readout on the phone.

  ‘Looks like up there somewhere, on the high ground.’

  As the two men climbed out of the van onto the quaking asphalt, the mind-numbing noise hit them. ‘Geez, what the fuck…’ It filled Coop's whole body, he couldn't think straight. ‘Carl, give me a hand here,’ he called out.

  Heading to the back of the van, Carl couldn't hear him through the thunderous noise. He wasn't listening anyway. He just wanted to be in the thick of the action.

  Ryland Cooper heard the van's rear door slam. Then through the windows he caught a flash of Carl running along the sidewalk, about to take the pathway up the hill.

  They kept an automatic rifle in the van, in case of real emergencies. Now it was slung across Carl's shoulder. He was gone, in his excitement completely forgetting his boss only had one good leg.

  ‘Carl, you fucking moron…’ Coop didn't bother with any more words, he knew the moron would never hear him. And then he realised something. He’d not told Carl Zana didn't look human anymore. Frantically he pulled the phone out of his pocket, began to stumble painfully along the path after him. As the ominous dark shadow of the ship enveloped him in blackness, he keyed Madeline's number to warn her Carl was bumbling their way. It rang three times, and then desolately he killed the call.

  In this goddamn awful thunder she'd never hear it ring, let alone make out any of the words he could say.

  Tears were streaming down Zana's face as I pulled her close to me again. She looked desolate, anguished. I knew nothing I could say would comfort her, there were no words.