THE RED MIST TRILOGY: The Box Set

by R T Green

  I cried out, her hands pressing me hard into her. She arched her back as my hand slipped around her tiny waist, pulled us tight together. My inner voyeur watched as the passion grew, smiling down on us, touching herself as her silent anticipation became almost too much to bear.

  Our lips met again, and Lisa’s trembling hands slipped inside my top, curling around my breasts, clenching and unclenching as she began to lose control.

  Her eyes were locked into mine, pleading. Desperately I undid the button on her shorts, my heart trying to thump itself right out of my chest. She screamed, her hands teasing my nipples, pinching hard, wonderfully painful.

  My silent watcher was silent no more. Suddenly she was right inside me, taking control, my actions not my own. Lisa was crying out, softly, enticingly, arching her back again as I brought her closer and closer to the brink. I felt her hand slide down my stomach, inside my shorts, parted my legs a little so she could reach the spot she had to find.

  We cried out together as her finger teased me, and a rip tide of sheer passion seared through my body. Her eyes pierced a thousand emotions into mine, blending into my joy and my heartbreak, fuelling the desire that was about to overwhelm me...

  ‘Share with me, Madeline...’ she gasped.

  Oh fuck.

  I ran, stumbling across the white sand into the trees, like I’d done more than once before. But then I was drunk, too inebriated to walk in a straight line.

  This time, tears streaming down my face, it was grief and guilt trying to floor me. Somewhere in the foggy background I think I heard Lisa call out. I didn’t care, I just had to get away. Get away from her.

  Somehow I found the road, my eyes almost blind from tears that wouldn’t stop falling. The world was spinning around me, I had no sense of direction, just a frantic desperation to reach home and throw the bedcovers over my mashed-up head to shut everything out.

  ‘Share with me, Madeline...’

  Zana had said those very words.

  And despite eyes too blinded with desolation to focus on anything, the face of the girl who had gone forever was as clear as day, twisted with anger and disgust because I had cheated on her.

  Chapter 70

  The breath froze in Ryland Cooper’s lungs. After staring inanely for ten seconds he found some movement, turned away and rubbed a hand across his face. He’d closed her eyelids, hadn’t he?

  Of course he had. And they’d stayed shut. He glanced back to Zana. No movement, nothing.

  Pull yourself together, man.

  She’s alien. Nothing known about her physiology. Maybe with her species it was an instinctive reaction, like some animals who twitch for a few minutes after death.

  He paced the room, pulling himself together. His heart rate slowed, back to as near normal as it got these days. He decided his reasoning was sound, felt better.

  It was time to go be the acting chief. Any minute the body parts would start piling in. He stood next to the stretcher a moment, looking into the eyes that didn’t want to stay closed.

  ‘Oh Zana... just how many more shocks are you going to bring me?’ he said softly.

  Her beautiful green eyes turned, met his gaze.

  ‘Arghh!’ He stumbled, caught his balance and then backed away, shaking his head, until he met the side wall and could go no further.

  ‘No... this can’t be...’ he cried out. ‘How in hell’s name...’

  His big eyes hadn’t left Zana, he couldn’t look away. Other than her eyes, nothing had moved. But then something did. Her lips.

  A hoarse whisper. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Coop’s hands flew to the sides of his head. ‘You’re sorry? Geez Zana, having a friggin’ heart attack here.’

  Still she was motionless. ‘Am I not dead?’

  Slowly, he moved closer. Tiny hesitant steps, his footsteps seeming to echo in his ears. ‘Yes... no... you were... are? Hell, I don’t know. You sure looks alive to me!’

  The blanket moved, her hands slowly lifting from her sides, moving the cover down so she could see her chest.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s healing.’

  ‘Healing?’

  ‘The damage from the bullet. I am healing.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I’m sorry I startled you. I have only just woken.’

  ‘Woken?’

  He stood next to her, his mouth gaping open. She turned her head to look at him. ‘You appear to be talking in one-word sentences, Mr. Cooper.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘And please close your mouth. Does the sight of a naked woman have that effect on you?’

  He closed his mouth as he turned away, and finally found more words. ‘Sorry Zana... just a bit shocked, you know. Wasn’t looking at your...’

  She smiled. ‘I have no problem with nakedness, Mr. Cooper.’

  ‘It’s Coop. But how..? You were dead, stone cold. I carried you, from the hill back to the van. You were dead...’

  ‘I should be dead, Coop. It seems I am not.’ She was feeling her torso as she spoke, and then in a slightly-gruesome way, poked a long finger into the bullet hole in her chest. She frowned. ‘Yes, I really should be dead.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘My species have a higher metabolic rate than humans. When we are badly injured, our bodies go into a cryogenic state, and many times we self-heal. But not always. I did not believe a bullet in the chest could be survived. But here I am.’

  ‘Here you are. In the flesh.’

  She smiled. ‘Would you like me to cover up?’

  ‘No, that’s not... yes... maybe.’

  She held out a hand. ‘Please, help me to stand.’ He took the hand, put an arm around her waist as she stood shakily up, and draped the blanket around her shoulders.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘DIAL HQ. An isolation room in the basement.’

  Her faced creased, like she was suddenly in pain. ‘Please Coop, I wish to see Madeline. I must see her.’

  ‘Zana, you can’t...’

  ‘Please...’

  The dread smacked into him, his heart sinking through the floor. ‘You can’t see her Zana, because she’s on the run. And I have no idea where she is.’

  Zana turned away, her hands covering her face. She let out a little cry. ‘The agent who shot me... she killed him, didn’t she.’

  It wasn’t a question. She already knew.

  ‘Yeah.’ Coop confirmed it anyway.

  She looked into his eyes, question in her expression. ‘But you let her go?’

  ‘That’s for me to know.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Coop. I am no fool.’

  He grimaced, knowing all too well a fool was the last thing she was. ‘Ok... yeah, I turned the other cheek. But there was a lot going on right then...’

  She walked over, stood right next to him. ‘And will you let me go too?’

  ‘Zana!’

  His phone beeped. ‘Um... yeah?’

  ‘Coop, its Peter. Two minutes out, got Carl’s body. Get someone to meet us at the elevator?’

  ‘Sure, I... I’ll meet you there myself.’

  ‘You ok, Coop?’

  He killed the call, wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Geez, Zana...’

  ‘Well? Are you?’

  ‘How the hell... you trying to put me in an early grave, girl?’ He threw his hands in the air, spun his gaze around the room as if it would give him some inspiration. ‘You know what you’re asking? Oh shit, I can’t deal with this now, all hell’s about to break loose.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll make the right decision, Mr. Cooper,’ Zana said softly as he headed through the door.

  He looked back. ‘Don’t make a sound. You’re dead, remember?’ He pointed to a door in the far wall. ‘There’s a washroom there. Gonna lock you in, so no one stumbles in on you and freaks out, ok?’

  ‘You’re a good man, Coop.’

  ‘I’m a dead man!’ He closed and locked the door, leant back ag
ainst it for a moment, his eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling.

  ‘Fuck,’ he whispered to himself as he shook his head yet again, and ran along the corridor to the elevator doors.

  He met Peter in the underground car park, took charge of Carl’s body himself. It was zipped in a body-bag, no one else could see exactly how he died. Coop knew the longer he could keep it that way, the longer his murderer could remain anonymous.

  As he wheeled the stretcher away, two more vans screamed towards the entrance. The first of the alien remains had arrived. He asked Peter and his team to coordinate the transfer, and paged the technical crew to let them know the onslaught had begun.

  He pushed the stretcher right into the corner of Room One, found a thick blanket and covered the body-bag, then used duck-tape to make it more difficult for a curious technician to investigate its contents. ‘Sorry, Carl... needs must,’ he whispered.

  In the walkway, he could hear the sounds of incoming trolleys. He was just heading out of the room when he saw a neatly-folded pile of clothes on the bench running across the far wall.

  Zana’s clothes.

  The two female techies who first brought her in had removed them to examine her body. Quickly he grabbed a black refuse sack and threw the clothes inside, just as the room burst into life. He slipped the bag under his arm, and tried to answer the million questions being fired at him by DIAL staff who, for the first time ever, had a real alien invasion to handle. Even if they were all dead.

  Except one.

  He glanced down at the black sack under his arm, shook his head in disbelief at his own crazy thoughts.

  What the hell was he doing?

  Chapter 71

  Ryland Cooper slipped into his office, locked the door behind him. Shaking hands fumbled in his desk, found a tiny piece of technology so new most of the planet didn’t even know it existed.

  Despite the chaos all around him, and the matching chaos in his head, he’d had a light-bulb moment of clear thinking. It was still a crazy thought, and Scott would be suspicious there was more to his plan than he was letting on, but it was all he had.

  He was going to give his boss a reason why he let Zana go.

  He pulled her red cloak from the refuse sack, made a minute opening in the base of the lining, and slipped the tiny high-powered tracker inside. Then he dabbed a spot of glue to the slit in the hem, and sealed it back up again.

  He nodded to himself. She wouldn’t see it had been tampered with. He pulled back his sleeve, played with a button on the watch that did far more than a watch really should, and tuned it to the tracker frequency.

  Then he shook his head. ‘Sorry Zana’, he whispered to himself. He couldn’t tell her what he’d done, but if his plan worked it may just benefit them both.

  He could see something was wrong as soon as he walked back into the isolation room. Zana was almost in tears, pacing up and down, still wrapped in the blanket.

  ‘You ok?’ he asked nervously, already knowing she wasn’t.

  She stopped pacing, looked at him. Her face was strained, distraught. ‘If you do let me go Coop, it is going to be much harder than I thought to blend in to my surroundings.’

  ‘Zana?’

  ‘I have been trying to change back to my human form. It seems I can no longer do so.’

  ‘The bullet?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I have been coming out with a lot more expletives than that.’

  ‘Can imagine.’ He emptied the contents of the sack onto the bed. ‘At least I can answer your question.’

  A slight smile crossed her face as she saw her clothes. ‘Thank you, Coop.’

  ‘Yeah well, I seem to be getting into the habit of letting fugitives go.’

  ‘Am I a fugitive?’

  ‘It will be much worse than that if the world knows you’s alive... the only alien being the media can get their hands on. Fuck knows how you’ll make it out there though, in your alien form.’

  She nodded, slipped the blanket from her naked body and began to dress, as Ryland averted his eyes. ‘If I can make it to my ship, I will be ok.’

  ‘Ship?’

  ‘We didn’t just magically appear on Earth a year ago, Coop.’

  ‘Guess not. But how... where the hell did you put it so no one would find it?’

  ‘Forgive me Mr. Cooper, but I will not tell you its location. Perhaps the less you know the better.’

  ‘Hmm... think I already know too much for my own good.’

  He watched as she placed the big titanium pendant around her neck. ‘You always wear that, Zana. Guess it must hold some significance for you?’

  She smiled. ‘Perhaps not significance, but importance yes. It is my communication disc, and a lot more besides.’

  He shook his head, feeling a little sheepish. They’d spent weeks trying to find out how she and her compatriots were communicating with their mother-ship. It was round her neck all the time.

  She slipped on the cloak, and then hugged the man who was putting his career on the line for her. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Coop. You are indeed a good man.’

  He held her tight for a moment, fighting back the tears. ‘You and Maddie saved the human race, Zana. I doubt the powers-that-be will see that as a reason for my actions, but as far as I’m concerned they can go fuck themselves. You just find Madeline, promise me?’

  ‘I have to find her.’ Her head lowered. ‘I will not rest until I do.’

  ‘Ok. If you get out of London, how long will it take you to reach your ship?’

  She turned away. ‘It is a distance from here. A few days, I think. I cannot be seen, looking like this.’

  ‘Maddie is a trained agent. She knows how to lose herself, especially in this apocalyptic chaos, so you ain’t gonna find her until... and if, she reaches Tobago. But it’s a small island. Think your only option is to look for her there, but Christ knows how long it’ll be until she gets there.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s where she will go?’

  ‘Yeah. Got no place else. Maddie doesn’t do friends, hasn’t seen her mum for thirty years... yeah, if she makes it, that’s where she’ll be.’

  ‘I am concerned how to get out of here without anyone seeing me and giving the game away for you.’

  ‘Gotta wait for a lull in the action. Fortunately this room is away from the labs where most people are. This corridor leads directly to the car park. I can get you there, but after that you’re on your own.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled, looked into his eyes. ‘I have one question for you though.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Why did you give me the codename Red Mist?’

  He grinned. ‘You always wear red. You was so difficult to get a hold on it would have been easier to grab a handful of mist. And it made me so goddamn angry I couldn’t get that hold on you!’

  She let out a little laugh. ‘Makes perfect sense, Coop.’

  He fumbled in his top pocket, pulled out his sunglasses. ‘Ain’t exactly girlie shades, but those eyes of yours are a dead giveaway, so put these on. Pull that hood tight around your face and there won’t be so much of you visible to the outside world.’ He fished the wallet from his inside pocket. ‘I don’t keep much cash on me...’ He handed her four twenties. ‘Don’t know if that’ll be much use to you... you can hardly walk into a shop and buy stuff, but take it anyway.’

  ‘Thank you, Coop.’

  ‘You ready?’

  She nodded, her beautiful eyes giving away the fear inside her.

  ‘Stay quiet, wait for me to come back.’ He closed and locked the door behind him, walked quickly to the car park exit. One of the teams had just finished unloading alien remains from their black van. The team leader greeted him, a grim expression on his face, let out a few choice words about the job they were doing, and a moment later the van screeched through the barrier to continue the horrific clean-up.

  No one else was there right then. This was th
e opportunity. He ran back to the isolation room, grabbed Zana and led her to the exit door. She shivered as the cold November air wrapped around her. ‘I’m scared, Coop,’ she whispered.

  ‘No you ain’t. You’s just apprehensive. That’s a different thing. Use that spirit I know you have, and go find Madeline, otherwise all this is gonna be for nothing. You hearing me?’

  ‘I’m hearing you,’ she smiled, kissed him softly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Now get your ass out of here. Am sick of the sight of you anyways!’

  She smiled beautifully, turned and ran to the barrier, slipped past it, and disappeared from view.

  Ryland Cooper walked back through the door, his eyes misting up. Images of a grief-stricken Madeline stumbling down Dawson’s Hill once again filled his mind. And now he’d said an emotional goodbye to two fugitives in less than twenty-four hours.

  He found a smile despite his unease. When Madeline ran from the hill he had no idea if he would ever see her again. Somehow, this time he knew their paths would cross once more.

  Chapter 72

  The nauseating smell of burnt flesh filled his nostrils as he toured the labs, answering the techie’s questions as best he could. In truth there was little to be done right then except organise the storage of the alien remains.

  In the not-too-distant future, that wouldn’t be so easy. Already the labs were filling up. Much of what had been recovered was little more than the size of his hand, but a couple of almost-whole bodies lay on couches, burnt and broken almost beyond recognition, but well enough intact for the examination teams to have a field day.

  He shivered as he looked around. The occupants of the spaceship had intended inflicting unspeakable horrors on the residents of London and then the rest of the world... but watching your ship disintegrating around you, knowing that even if you survived without being burnt alive the fall half a mile to the ground would kill you...

  It wasn’t a nice way to go. Most of them were simply following orders after all.