The hill wasn't really that steep, but it had been decided by the people who were paid to decide such things that it could save money if they put the base there. A steep, wending road would mean nothing could ever build up the speed required to ram the gate, and this meant they could save a lot of money by coating a large wooden gate in metallic paint and calling it a day. The whole base was built to the same exacting standard but with a high production value. It was large and imposing, surrounded by concrete and sharpened strands of occasionally bloodied wire, with a square tower at the corner of each wall that served as an individual barracks as well as a lookout tower.
The taxi pulled into the car park behind the crowd. The press jostled and vied for position, each and every person desperate to be at the front. The people that made up the swaying throng of humanity were mostly very well dressed and carried expensive pieces of recording equipment. In amongst them, however, several more shabbily dressed people held handmade signs above their heads, each emblazoned with a phrase or slogan that the creator thought of over breakfast and found very clever. One such example read, 'Let them E.T. cake!' Other more coherent signs called for the release of the aliens, the execution of the aliens, the release and execution of the aliens, or the execution and then subsequent release of the aliens because they'll have probably learned their lesson.
“Here we are. Don't know what you'll expect to see.”
“We're not exactly sure ourselves,” Sarah said.
“Thank you very much for the ride. Please give our love to Uncle Clark when you see him in the, pub, was it?” Erica unclipped her seat-belt, then violently swatted at Sarah’s to make it let her go. As soon as she took her first breath outside, she longed for the indecipherable-smelling air of the taxi. Everyone else around them had brought with them face-masks that ranged from simple cloth to ones with valves and filters. Erica reached into her pocket and produced the two handkerchiefs from earlier; the thin strips of cloth had done little for them before and, like those in the crowd with more basic masks, they still had a hard time breathing.
Sarah ducked and weaved her way through the crowd, at times having to avoid being kicked in the face by excited people sat atop the shoulders of far more tolerant people than herself. The gaps and intermittent pathways she followed through the crowd were too small for Erica to attempt, so she skirted around the outside of the crowd and satisfied herself with a position close enough to the front where she could see if she was willing to hop up and down.
After fifteen minutes of standing around and regretting having come, the crowd grew silent. A man that looked like a slug that had turned up to a fancy dress party as a human and won second prize oozed towards the stage. His dark blue suit was far too small for his frame and over the hushed crowd, it let out an audible groan in protest of his every movement. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief and handed the soaking strip of cloth to the young woman that walked beside him. The man stepped up to the podium and started to speak as sweat hit the microphone like drops of rain.
“Members of the esteemed press,” he began. His voice was silky smooth in contrast to the way he looked, acted and generally was. “Thank you for joining me today for this momentous, and dare I say, almost unbelievably monumental announcement.” He let his words hang in the air, both for effect and because he needed to talc his face and didn't want to get any in his mouth. The gaggle of career journalists held their breath and generally diverted their gaze from the spectacle, except for one photographer that decided to snap a picture. He was dragged off and summarily beaten by security, as was the photographer that took a picture of that. After the third or fourth photographer, a general agreement was reached to not take pictures without permission.
Erica slipped to the front of then crowd while the first photographer was still limping back, and took position next to her sister. Sarah politely tugged at the jacket of the woman next to her.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Could you please tell me who that is?” The woman turned to her, brushed a strand of stray hair out of her eyes and smiled a smile that some people in journalism would scornfully call dangerously close to genuine.
“Don't you know, love? That's Casper Corelious, Minister for Information and lard. If you didn't know that beforehand, I'm sorry you do now.” Minister Corelious started to speak again, and the hushed conversations that had risen up to mask the awkwardness of the beatings and any additional beatings that awkwardness had caused, died down into silence.
“Aliens, my good people; I regret to inform you that they exist and we have seen them. And even more than that, we have foiled an as of yet unidentified, but assuredly dastardly, scheme.” The crowd erupted into a deafening roar of questions and incoherent chatter. Camera flashes filled the air and the Minister's aides in vain appealed for calm as the reporters pushed and shoved and shouted over one another to be the first to get an answer. The Minister pointed to a middle-aged man in the middle of the throng and the crowd grew hushed. “Minister Corelious, sir,” he began, not quite sure how to phrase the question. “When you say aliens, do you mean illegal aliens? From what country?”
“Oh, they're illegal, my good boy, but they're not from any country. They're from space! And not just the one between your ears, outer space!” The crowd continued its passable impersonation of a circus and the air filled with desperate cries for attention.
The Minister's hand hovered backwards and forwards as he scanned the crowd until it stopped on a young man just across from the sisters. As he shuffled forward notebook in hand, the woman Sarah had just spoken to stepped in front of him and delivered a backhand that split his lip and made him drive a tooth through his own tongue. The man yowled in protest and leaned forward in an attempt to keep the not inconsiderable flow of blood from touching his suit. “Bith!” he yelled as she began to speak.
“Do you really expect the people at home to believe this horse shit of a story about space aliens without evidence? They're not stupid, and they're gonna to start asking the obvious question: what’re you really hiding, Minister Corelious?”
“Ms. Ostler, how utterly splendid to see you again,” he lied. “I'm sure your peers are equally delighted to see you here today as I am.” She swept a broad smile across the crowd and turned back towards Casper Corelious, who had in the interim signalled for a projector and screen to be brought in behind him. “A good question as always, Ms. Ostler, though I resent the implication that the government would have something to hide. If we were in the habit of hiding things, then I assure you, we would have hidden this. You’ve seen the preliminary footage we sent to your offices, I’m sure, but this is really something else.”
With a dramatic flourish of an arm, the projector whirred into life and a grainy image filled the screen, followed by several more from different angles; it was Mr. Tirren, no mistaking it. He looked haggard and wore the expression of tired confusion, though his eyes still shone with an intensity that eclipsed the lights around him. He was no longer in his favourite apron or his comfy clothes and he wore what looked like a suit made of kitchen foil.
“Oh, Mr. Tirren,” Sarah whispered.
“You see,” Minister Corelious boomed above the roar of the crowd. “Your government would never lie to you over a matter of such grave import. These monsters have come from beyond our stars, and we intend to find out why! But please, don't panic – we have everything in hand. In order to ensure your safety and the safety of others in these trying times, there will, of course, be a mandatory curfew until tomorrow morning. If there are more aliens in our midst, we will find them! Long live the High Lord, ladies and gentlemen. Curfew starts in an hour, so you’d better run along.”
The crowd dissipated into smaller groups that surged towards the car park in an attempt to be the first to slash everyone else’s tires on the way out. Minister Corelious wiped furiously at his sweat-drenched brow and pulled at his collar as he departed the stage. Ms. Ostler remained exactly where she had been standing.
“Who's Mr. Tirren?” she asked without taking her eyes off Corelious and his circus-like entourage.
“He's our friend,” Erica replied in a hushed tone. “But I'm not sure that means anything here.”
“It doesn't mean a great deal, but information goes a long way. Where are you staying? I can swing by later and talk to your parents.”
“We have nowhere to stay,” Sarah said. “Or parents,” she glibly added. Erica nudged her in the ribs hard. “Oi!” she squeaked. “She asked.” Sarah returned fire with a kick to the shin.
“I didn’t hit you that hard, you little cow! And it didn’t mean you had to tell her.”
“You’re orphans?” Ms. Ostler asked.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“Not really,” Sarah replied. “We still have our dad. He’s just, sort of, missing.”
“I see. Do you have a place to stay?”
“No, I guess not.” Erica conceded.
“Then you need to come with me.”
“And why ever would we do that?”
“Because it’s a curfew?” Ms. Ostler said. “If they see you on the streets, they’ll start shooting. How the hell do you not know this?”
“We’re from out of town.”
“Uh huh. You coming or not?”
“She's right, you know – we have nowhere to stay,” Sarah said.
“I know, but that doesn't mean I have to like any of this.” Erica turned towards Ms. Ostler and extended her arm. “We accept.”
She smiled and vigorously shook Erica's hand. “You're really not from around here, are you? And it's Danielle, you make me sound like a school teacher.”
“I'm Erica, and this is Sarah. It's nice to meet you.”
“Car's over there.” Danielle pointed at the only car left in the car park, though car was a generous term for it.
It was old and rusted and mostly held together with sticky tape and good intentions. Underneath the rust, she vaguely remembered the paintwork being blue, though she wouldn't have sworn to it under oath. “Hop in back, I'll get her started.” She retrieved a small hexagonal crank from underneath the driver's seat and inserted it into the front of the car. With every successful crank of the handle, the car threatened to start, and after the fifth revolution or so, the engine sputtered into action and the windscreen wipers came on, as they had a habit of doing, except when they were needed. Danielle cheered triumphantly and flicked a thumbs-up through the windscreen. “See, still works,” she said as she returned the crank to where it lived. The door was another couple of minute's hard work, but she finally got it closed, more or less.
“Where's the seat-belt?” Sarah asked.
“One of them is holding the U-bend up on my sink and the other ones are, don't know; they’re there somewhere. No harm done, we just won't crash.” It was much easier to get down the hill than it was up it and rather than risk any unnecessarily sharp turns on the decent, she drove straight down the middle and across the grass.
“Your friend on the screen – that some kind of makeup? Is he an actor?”
“Eyes on the road!” Erica pointed towards the oncoming car with a horrified expression.
“I saw it,” Danielle lied. She shifted back into the correct lane and waved her index finger at the red-faced driver of the passing car.
“He doesn't wear makeup, but we did paint his face once when he was sleeping,” Sarah said, oblivious to the near miss.
“Your friend is a dog? I thought they went extinct. They dressed a dog up as an alien? That makes surprising sense, not everyone knows what a dog looks like these days. Wonder which private zoo they got that from.”
“He lives in a house with his family, and what's a zoo?”
“You don't seem to know much about much, Sarah. Where did you say you were from again?”
“Out of town,” Erica interjected. “We’re just here for our friend.”
“Your friend the extinct animal that lives in a house?”
“Yes, do keep up. How much longer until we get there?”
“About ten minutes, thirty if we break down, never if we crash. Plenty of time for questions.”
“Why did you hit that man?” Sarah asked.
“My questions, I meant.”
“You didn't specify, so why did you hit that man?”
“His name is Darren – that’s almost reason enough. We don't get along; he's a bootlicker, couldn't lie straight in his coffin. Most people are, but we're supposed to be better than that.”
“And punching him made you better?” Erica asked.
“No, but it shut him the hell up, so I'll take being a hypocrite.”
The car pulled down the off-ramp and disappeared under the sprawling mess of roadways that writhed across the skyline like enormous concrete boa constrictors wrapping themselves around the sun, blotting it out for miles, if not tens of miles, at a time. Danielle set the headlights to the lowest beam possible and slowed to a crawl. The residential building in which she lived was more or less two miles in a straight line from where they were, though there hadn’t be a serviceable road in that direction for a long time. She navigated a circuitous route that often cut back in the direction she just came from, and by time she turned off the street and down into the parking garage below the residential building, the two miles had become five or six. The lights flickered meekly and gave scant glimpses of the filthy, potholed garage floor that lay beyond the barrier, while the rear section of the garage sat veiled in darkness.
Danielle leant across the passenger seat and opened the glove box, and from retrieved a wrench that she then attached to the remains of a small handle on her door. She cranked the wrench and the window slowly slid open. She produced a plastic card from her pocket, then leant out and swiped it through the device on the wall. The gate creakily rose out of the way and Danielle pulled into the space closest to the entrance. She did her best to ignore the scraping sounds and the sparks that danced like fireworks in the gloom.
“You live in a cave?” Erica asked.
“The car lives in a cave, the cavewoman lives upstairs, smart arse.” The doors at some point in their lives had been lockable, but Danielle couldn't remember how long ago that was. A year back, a couple of teenagers stole it for a joyride. She remembered vividly one of them coming back and asking for a push, and had seriously considered doing it. “Not far now. Just follow me, and if you step in something on the way, try not to think about it too much. Probably a rat.” Danielle pointed at a dim light that highlighted a set of lift doors on the back wall. She walked towards it without checking to see if the girls were behind her.
“Why don't you just ask them what they want?” Sarah said
“I'll just get my human-to-rat dictionary.”
“Oh, do they not speak here? I thought they were just being rude.” Danielle wasn't in the business of not knowing what to say, but it felt like she'd just taken out a small loan and bought into one.
The lift doors closed in the sort of way that gave the impression that the only way they'd open again is with the jaws of life. She pressed the button for the seventeenth floor and the lift, with no great urgency, began to move upwards. Sarah’s stomach rose up and formally introduced itself to her lungs.
“How do you reckon this works?” she said queasily. “Counter-weight?”
“How would it know how many people there were? Some kind of pulley, maybe.”
“I could probably make one.”
“Not in my bloody house you're not.”
“It's my house, too!”
“Then maybe you should clean it.” The lift stopped and the bell made a noise that sounded like a cat caught in a washing machine. The doors slid open, then did that thing where they forget why they opened in the first place and close on the first person that tries to get out.
“I'm telling you, I could make one better than this,” Sarah said as she struggled to free Erica's leg from the door.
“By better, you mean it would have had my leg off by now?”
Danielle watched as the sister's bickered. She pressed a button on the control panel, the doors opened and the sisters landed in a crumpled heap in the hallway. Said hallway was long and narrow and contained scarcely enough room for two people to pass side-by-side, and was lit by several rows of candles. The dim lighting seemed to only serve to highlight the many faults of the décor while obfuscating the more presentable parts. From their position on the floor, the girls noted that the carpet wasn't one of them. It was dark red with the texture of Velcro, and there were several squares of it missing, all optimistically stacked in the corner. They’d been stacked there for the better part of seven years of 'I'm sure someone will do it at the weekend.' The adhesive on the floor shared the same optimism, and Sarah wrestled to free her hand from its grasp.
Danielle stepped over the still-bickering heap and slid the same plastic card from earlier through a device on the door handle. Nothing happened. She tried it again but slower, then faster, then at the exact same speed as the first time while swearing. The door clicked open. She stepped inside and pressed the light-switch; the lights didn't flicker on as much as they gradually came into existence. The bulbs were designed to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly, but all that really meant was you had to stand around in the dark for longer. She scooted from alcove-to-alcove, shelving unit-to-unit and lit row upon row of candles, then she turned the lights back off. “Oh, I see,” Erica said, taking time away from being stuck to her sister's hair. “I didn't expect that.”
