Max Carlton lay sprawled across the sofa in the other room, resting a tumbler of whisky against his grinning mouth. 'Yes, I'm listening,' he said. 'Nag away, Jess.'
'I'm not nagging!' she cried. 'I'm simply expressing my anger. Have you any idea what it's like waiting to hear from you, never knowing where you are or what you're doing? You call me up out of the blue and ask me to come over, expecting me to drop everything and come running. Which I do. Because I'm stupid and need my brain cells looking at.'
'You know I appreciate everything you do for me, Jess.'
She came to the kitchen door and leaned against the frame, crossing her arms tightly in front of her. 'No you don't,' she said. 'You only invite me over for dinner when you have nothing in the house, knowing full well that I, prat that I am, will go out, buy food and cook it for you.'
'You're a wonderful cook.'
'That's not the point, Max, and you know it. Why don't we eat out instead?'
'Because I'm tired.'
'Why are you tired? You never tell me!' She threw up her arms and huffed dramatically. 'My secretary keeps asking me about the charming man who leaves messages cancelling dates, and I can't tell her a thing, not a thing. I wouldn't anyway, she's such an awful gossip, but it would be rather nice for me to know more than your name, age and address.'
'I've told you what I do.'
'You've told me you work in some top-notch capacity for the Ministry of Defence. That tells me bugger all.'
'I don't like to discuss my work, Jess.'
'Why not? It's ridiculous! I ask you where you've been today, what you've done, who your colleagues are, if you've bonked any Whitehall secretaries lately, and you say it's Classified Information.'
'It is. And I haven't.'
'Haven't what?'
'Bonked any Whitehall secretaries. Not recently.'
'Oh, so the Ministry of Defence does employ secretaries then? I thought it was an official secret. Will you carted off and locked up for divulging that piece of highly sensitive information?'
'Jess.' Max put his glass down on the coffee table and sat up. 'I'm not in the mood for this.'
'But I assume you're in the mood to eat, since that's what I was summoned here for.'
'If that's what's bothering you, I'll open up a tin of soup - '
'I didn't buy any soup, Max! I bought proper food for a proper meal to make up for all the times you eat out of baked bean tins. And this I do after a hard day grovelling to new clients and dealing with the appalling financial records of an equally appalling solicitor.'
She stopped, breathing heavily. Max smiled at her. It was a smile that melted her guts; warm, genuine and, aimed directly at her, more potent than any aphrodisiac.
'Have you quite finished?' he asked amiably. 'Can I get a word in edgeways now?'
'What?'
'You look beautiful when you're angry.'
'Oh you patronising, male-chauvinistic - !' She charged across the room towards him, laughing, half hating herself for laughing but laughing all the same. He caught the hands going for his throat, and gently brought her down on the sofa beside him. She tutted and tried to look away, but was held by his mesmerising green eyes and magnetised by the close proximity of his wildly sensuous mouth.
'I missed you,' she breathed, allowing herself to be encompassed in his arms. 'What with your work and my business trips, we never get to see each other. I talk to your answering machine more than I talk to you.'
He nuzzled her blonde hair and lowered his head to kiss each of her diamond-blue eyes, the end of her pert little nose and, finally, lingered on her bee-stung lips.
'You can't get round me that easily,' she whispered. 'I know that ploy. Get her all hot and excited and she'll forget to ask so many irritating questions. But we really do need to sort this out, Max. I've never met anyone who could hedge as well as you can, and I've met some chronic hedgers in my time, especially when it comes to tax returns. You have to - '
He silenced her with a kiss that made goose-bumps rise all over her skin. How could he evoke such strong reactions in her with just a kiss? Did he have to be so utterly irresistible?
For long moments she succumbed to his soft lips and his warm, exploring tongue. Then, determined not to be thwarted again, she drew away, looked straight into his emerald eyes, and said, 'Tell me, Max.'
She thought she heard him sigh, and definitely felt his arms relax around her. He toyed briefly with her hair, making the back of her neck tingle deliciously, and then he disentangled himself entirely and sat up. Jessica smoothed down the grey office suite she hadn't had time to change out of, such was her haste to see him - she'd even cancelled a dinner meeting with an important client. She waited. He said nothing.
'Right,' she prompted, 'I'm ready.'
There was a smiling silence, and she saw amusement playing in his eyes. That should have angered her, but it didn't because he did it, like he did everything, with such benevolent charm. So she faked her anger.
'Stop being such an enigmatic bastard,' she raged, 'And spill a few beans about the human being lurking beneath that impossibly hunky exterior.'
'I'm an atheist,' he said.
'Yes. That's good. I now know you're an atheist. Its a start.' More silence followed. His eyes never left hers, and there was a serious danger that his smile would overwhelm her objectives. 'Is that it?' she asked. 'Is that all you're going to tell me about yourself.'
'I don't eat meat, either,' he said.
'Just baked beans from tins, but you're far too charming to flatulate anywhere but in private.'
He laughed and touched her hand. She knew if she wasn't careful she was going to lose it and learn nothing. She pulled her hand away and assumed an impassive expression.
'Okay, he relented, shifting sideways to face her fully. Her heartbeat quickened as his deep voice said, 'My work involves being in charge of a specialised team of men and women. I can't tell you exactly what we do, but my job is to make sure things are done properly, that procedures are followed and national security isn't breached. I'm an expert in my particular field with top security clearance, and I'm expected to make myself available whenever I'm needed. I'm tired because I've been awake for the last thirty six hours trying to talk some sense into some high-ranking idiots who think they know it all.'
There was a long silence as Jessica digested all of this, feeling awed and privileged that he, for the first time in their twelve month relationship, had finally revealed something important about himself. He trusted her.
'Thankyou,' she said.
'You're welcome.'
'So,' she said brightly, unwilling to ruin the moment by demanding more than he was willing to give, 'What do you want to eat?'
'You,' he said, and pulled her towards him.
His body felt warm and solid against hers, and she could hear his heart beating as fast as her own as he gently pushed her onto her back and moved above her on the sofa. She opened her mouth to him, loving the taste of him, the smell of him, the sound of his breath thick with desire. She sucked on his tongue as if she were sucking his cock, making them both groan.
'Jessica,' he gasped, trailing his lips down her neck, pulling the blouse away from her shoulders and biting on her white flesh. He ran a hand underneath her skirt, massaging her inner thighs and higher, while his lips moved down to tug through the material at her nipples.
'Fuck me,' she sighed. 'Forget foreplay, I just need a fuck.'
He brought her legs up over his shoulders and pushed his erection passed the crotch of her knickers. He began with a slow, prodding entry, lowering his head to fill her mouth with his tongue and breathing so heavily she thought she would come from the sound of him alone. She clawed at his back and his buttocks, forcing him to enter her harder and faster and deeper. Biting on her neck, he made electric tingles run up and down her spine, and she sighed in exquisite delight. The sigh turned into a groan, soft at first, then louder as the heat between her legs bloomed and Yes! it was working, she was almost there and he was gasping and throwing his head back with his eyes tightly closed and the muscles in his neck straining and ...
The telephone rang. He stopped pounding her into the cushions. She opened her eyes in disbelieving horror and snapped, 'Don't answer it!'
'I have to.'
'Let the machine pick it up.'
The answering machine clicked on after the third ring. Max's recorded voice said, 'I'm not here, leave a message.' There was a beep, and another hoarser voice said, 'This is Mortimer.'
Max immediately reached over and lifted the receiver from the table at the side of the sofa. 'Sir,' he said.
Jessica closed her eyes tightly and tried not to scream. She could feel him shrinking inside her. A great surge of anger built up in the pit of her stomach, but she remained resignedly motionless beneath him, her top lip sore from his unshaven face, her desire still throbbing like a erratic heartbeat between her legs.
'Where?' Max was saying. 'Right, fine. I'll be there as soon as I can.'
'We do have time to finish, don't we?' she asked, after he'd hung up.
He clambered off her, pushing his wrinkled penis back into his pants and pulling up his zip. 'I'm sorry, Jess. I have to go.'
'But you've been awake for thirty six hours. Surely they don't expect you to - '
'It's an emergency.'
'Great!' She roughly pulled her clothes together and sat up, pouting furiously. 'We're cursed. One completed fuck in three weeks is not good, you know, Max. It's not exactly the national average.'
He was already striding towards the hallway for his jacket saying, 'I'll make it up to you, I promise.'
'Every time you try, the bloody phone rings.' She rested her chin on the back of the sofa, watching him come back into the room. 'How long will you be gone? No, don't tell me, you don't know, and even if you did, you couldn't tell me. Right?'
'Next time will be different,' he said.
'Next time will be exactly the same as this time, Max. And the time before that. And the time before that.'
He sighed and stood in the doorway resting his hands on his hips - his thoughtful stance, she called it. 'This isn't any fun for you, is it?' he said.
'Don't worry, I came prepared for just such a disaster.' He raised an enquiring eyebrow, and she added, 'I picked up some batteries for my rubber friend on the way here. I'll call your answering machine later and let you know if the earth moved or not.'
'Look, Jess, if you want to call this off - '
'Do you?'
'No, but - '
'I love you.' She shrugged. 'I can't help it. I know I should admit defeat and date other men, but other men seem so boring compared to you. I can't think why. You're reticent, we rarely have time to talk, our work constantly keeps us apart, and trying to fornicate is a nightmare. But I love you. Go figure it!'
She smiled. He smiled back, and said, 'Next time, I promise.'
'Yeah, sure.'
'Have you seen my car keys anywhere?'
The smile fell from her face like a heavy weight. 'Oh God!'
'What?'
'My car's in for a service.'
'Another paint job?'
'It's just the side panel. It got a bit ... dented.'
'What did you hit this time?'
Jessica sucked her lips into her mouth, determined not to tell him about the dog and the lamp-post.
'Where there any fatalities?' he asked
'No!' she cried, 'I never kill anyone!'
'Please don't give me the details, I don't want to know. Now, have you seen my car keys lying around, or not?'
'Well, the thing is, Max, I came over by taxi and, when I saw your food cupboards empty, I kind of borrowed your car to go shopping.'
'Jess!'
'You were sleeping! I didn't want to wake you. I didn't think you'd mind and ... it wasn't my fault, Max. Honest to God it wasn't.'
Max closed his eyes tight and slowly asked, 'Have you wrecked my car, Jess?'
'No, no,' she said, furiously shaking her head. 'Well, not exactly wrecked it.'
'What, exactly, have you done?'
'Well.' Jessica paused, hesitated, struggled to find the right words. 'I was trying to squeeze into this little parking space outside the supermarket, and some stupid idiot had left all these metal poles sticking out the back of a lorry.'
'And?'
'And ... there's a hole in the back of your window about the size of a bowling ball only not quite so ... round.'
'Oh Jess.'
'I didn't see it! It didn't have a red flag tied to the end of it like it's supposed to, and it was sticking out further than the others.'
'You impaled my car on the end of a metal pole!'
'Please don't say impaled, Max. It makes me very moist.'
He sighed again. 'Is it fit to drive?'
'Oh yes,' she enthused. 'I patched it up with polythene until I can get it repaired. It should be okay, as long as it doesn't rain. Say something, Max.'
'It's difficult to say anything that wouldn't sound like a criticism of your driving technique, Jess. Just give me the keys to what's left of my car?'
* * *
He didn't tell her where he was going the next morning. The events of the previous evening had shook her up pretty badly.
'It wasn't so much the light,' Patsy kept saying, as she made a pot of tea in the kitchen. 'It was like ... like something had arrived that shouldn't be here, and I witnessed it but couldn't do anything to stop it. I felt - still feel - so small and helpless.'
'You are small and - '
'Don't joke, Clive. I'm serious. Something terrible has happened. Even Leo seems to sense it.'
'Leo's picking up your tension, and you're tense because you're ignorant of the facts, we both are.'
'What facts?' Patsy said. 'There aren't any facts. We saw what we saw and we can't explain it.'
'The truth will turn out to be something very boring and ordinary. Listen to the news reports. There will be a perfectly rational explanation, Pats.'
'You think so?' Clive nodded. 'So,' she said, 'If you're not in the least bit worried, why haven't you gone to work today?'
'Because I'm the boss, and the boss can take a day off to spend with his wife if he wants to. Now stop worrying. The only terrible thing to have occurred is that I haven't got my cup of tea yet.'
She brought it across and set it down on the breakfast table in front of him. 'You don't feel anything, then?' she asked quietly. 'You don't feel something heavy hanging in the air?'
'Cow dung, Pats. That's what you get for living in the country.'
'Seriously, Clive.'
'Seriously?' He looked up at her, and saw the desperation in her eyes. 'You look tired,' he said. 'Too many late shifts. You should cut down your hours at the home.'
She was quiet for a long time. 'You have no sense of dread, then?' she eventually asked.
'I dread the traffic jams into the city on a Monday morning. I dread finding out what Leo's devoured when I get home. I dread shopping at Sainsbury's on a Saturday afternoon and - '
'You're not the least bit concerned about that thing we saw in the sky last night?'
He looked away. 'No, I'm not.'
But he was. That sensation, which seemed to gnaw into his guts and make his bowels loose, pervaded every molecule in his body. He did feel something, but he wouldn't acknowledge it, couldn't risk letting it out and making it real, and certainly couldn't let Patsy know that he felt anxious, too. That would really throw her.
He turned in his seat to look out of the kitchen window. The birds outside had missed all the excitement of the previous night and flew around the garden as if nothing had happened, squawking and twittering as they always did. The sun shone from an almost unblemished sky, and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the oak tree. Everything appeared normal, with distance planes flying overhead and cars driving passed on their way to work or off to do some shopping.
Yet, despite all this normality, Clive was acutely aware of the tension growing inside the cottage. Leo was refusing to eat or move from his bed in the kitchen, Patsy was as taut as a violin string, and he felt as if he was waiting for some hypothetical bomb to go off.
He knew he couldn't keep up the pretence of being calm and relaxed for Patsy's sake for long. He had to get out, breathe some fresh air and forget all about it for a while. He made an excuse to go into town.
'I need cigars,' he said, covering the rectangular bulge in his cardigan pocket. 'Do you want anything?'
'Get me a bottle of Valium and a laser gun. Oh, and on you way out, can you check the garden for huge pods oozing foam?'
They both laughed, but it was a strained sound.
Clive manoeuvred his car out of the driveway and turned left, up the lane and over the crest of Simmonds hill. He didn't carry straight on into town. Instead, he took the first turning left down a single track lane.
Second right took him into the heart of the forest.
* * *
There were police cars - some marked, some unmarked but which belched police jargon from their radio's - parked all along the lane from one end to the other. The forest swarmed with activity within the confines of yellow marker tape tied around tree trunks, effectively quarantining the area.
A few curious onlookers had gathered around the edges, craning their necks to see further into the forest. A cordon of policemen told them there was Nothing To See with a conviction that wasn't the least bit convincing - policemen always said there was Nothing To See even if there were segmented bodies hung over branches dripping blood and guts onto the ground. And if there was Nothing To See, what were the police doing there in the first place?
PC Steeles was waiting to be issued with orders. Those in authority - whoever they were, nobody would tell him - seemed to have enough man-power at their disposal, but they apparently required the local constabulary to keep the area clear of spectators.
All Steeles knew was that an aircraft had supposedly crashed last night, and PC Harris had come across the wreck and had subsequently been carted off to hospital under armed escort. There were rumours that he'd been severely burned and was in a critical condition, but nobody had any details and nobody knew if he was still alive. There were also rumours that the Ministry of Defence were in charge, which accounted for all the suited bodies milling around with bleeping instruments and strange looking metal detectors. Above Steeles head, helicopters circled repeatedly, sending great clouds of leaves and vegetation up from the forest floor when they hovered above the treetops.
Men with chainsaws appeared and proceeded to cut down trees, some of which looked like they'd been around since the ice-age. Numerous vans and trucks with green tarpaulins began to arrive, easing their offside wheels up the grassy banks in order to get passed the parked cars in the lane. A multitude of soldiers in full combat gear poured out of the trucks and marched into forest. Shortly afterwards, an articulated lorry pulled up and delicately made its way through the trees along a specially widened track.
'Must be a secret weapon of some kind,' said the policeman standing guard next to Steeles. 'They've got some national security fella's down here, so it must be pretty hot stuff. You seen Williams anywhere?'
'I heard he was taken away for debriefing,' Steeles said.
'Certainly seems as if something serious is going on. Wonder if its a nuclear bomb?'
'I think they would have cleared a wider area than this if it was.'
'Yeah, you're right. Must be a small bomb, then.'
'Bomb?' a woman behind them gasped. 'Excuse me, officer, but did you say there was a bomb?'
The other policeman turned around with a Nothing To Worry About smile embedded in his features, and said, 'No, madam, I said burn. They're worried about forest fires after all the hot weather we've been having lately, that's all. There's not bombs.' He turned to Steeles and winked. Steeles rolled his eyes and moved further on down the yellow-taped perimeter.
* * *
The area had been cleared of debris. Soil samples had been taken, and no residual radiation was found. One body had been recovered, and orders were issued to have it transported to a secure military facility.
It was unusual to find just one body, and Max was uncomfortable about it. He organised an intensive search of the area, and troops had spent several hours combing the voracious undergrowth inch by inch. They found nothing, but Max remained uneasy. Two or three, sometimes even four, but never one. There was always more than one.
The Extraterrestrial Biological Entity was one of the more common type 'Greys'; pale grey in colour, just over a metre in length, skeletally thin and hairless, with a large pear-shaped head which had earholes on either side, and two small slits for a nose. The mouth was a long gash above the pointed chin. There were no teeth.
What was unusual about this EBE were the long fingernails extending from the four digits of each hand. Fifteen centimetres in length, they were tapered at the end to form a point, like a claw. Max had never come across this characteristic before.
The most striking feature about his alien, and all of its kind, were the eyes. They remained unblemished whilst the rest of the body shrivelled in the heat, its semi-transparent skin shrinking against its delicate bones. Max never lost his fascination with those slightly slanting eyes. They were disproportionately large for its head, bulging from its face like black, almond-shaped crystals. Some bright spark amongst the crew said they gave it the appearance of a demon from hell, which did nothing to ease the all-pervading tension on the site. To Max, however, those eyes were mesmerising, the body lithe and beautiful - too beautiful to be examined so irreverently by the medical officer.
'Fracture across the base of the skull suggests it probably died on impact,' the MO declared, prodding and poking the small figure on the ground like a piece of meat in a butchers shop. 'The body contains the usual high concentration of acid-based fluids, which causes this rapid decomposure when exposed to our atmosphere. Another few hours and there'd have been hardly anything left of it at all.'
'We lose a lot that way,' Max said.
'This specimen should last a while. I'll travel back with it and make a few more tests on the way, see it I can identify and neutralise the acids and preserve enough of the body for a full autopsy.'
Max turned away as an image of the tiny corpse ripped apart on some surgical table filled his mind. He'd viewed the procedure only once, and it had been a traumatic experience, like he'd been witness to some appalling act of violence. Now he left the bloody decimations to those without conscience whilst he continued to battle with his own. It kept him awake at night.
Standing with his hands on his hips, Max carefully surveyed the site around him. It was a frantic hive of activity, with things being sealed in bags, being examined and tested and labelled. The whole operation had gone smoothly, according to plan, according to procedure. Yet Max still felt uneasy. There was something wrong with this retrieval. Some gut instinct told him he was missing something; he sensed an empty space where something important should be, like a piece of a jigsaw floating around waiting for someone to notice it and slot it into place. A vital but unknown piece he couldn't see, couldn't find, couldn't identify.
'What will we tell the media this time?' Sheldon, the ministry's PR Officer, had appeared at his side. 'We've already got journalists and television reporters crawling all around the perimeter screaming about freedom of information.'
'So what's new?' Max sighed. 'Give them one of your highly imaginative statements, Sheldon. That's what you're paid to do.'
Sheldon stared off into space for a moment, tapping a plastic biro against his teeth. 'An unarmed military aircraft executed an emergency landing,' he said, scribbling it down. 'No fatalities, and absolutely no danger to the public.'
Max raised an eyebrow. 'Do you think they'll buy that old story?'
'It's boring,' Sheldon said. 'They'll soon lose interest.'
'What about the policeman?'
'Yeah, that's tricky. Did you read the report?'
'Third degree burns.'
'External and internal,' Sheldon said. 'I heard his organs were like flash-fried meat. Poor guy didn't stand a chance. I've cleared it with the medics.' He laughed. 'You should have seen their faces when I read them the official secrets - '
'The media, Sheldon.'
'Right. I'll prepare a statement to the effect that PC ... ' He flicked through the sheets of paper attached to his clipboard. 'PC Harris stumbled down the embankment and fell into the burning wreckage of the plane.'
'Fine. And give them some photographs of crashed aircraft from the files. Suitable photographs, Sheldon,' he added, grinning. 'Don't give them pictures of a wreckage in the Sahara desert, will you?'
'Ah shit, man! One mistake, one tiny little mistake, and nobody ever lets me forget it!'
Sheldon wandered off, still muttering furiously, to check on security surrounding the main shell of the wreckage.
Two rows of armed soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the pewter-coloured sphere as it was slowly winched up onto the back of a lorry. They kept their eyes averted, as ordered, until huge sheets of tarpaulin had been tied in place. Only a handful of people with top-security clearance had eye- or hands-on contact with the battered craft.
The two soldiers who had discovered the alien corpse huddled beneath the sphere had been quickly escorted from the site for a de-briefing. The only unauthorised witness - a photographer hanging from a tree taking shots with a telescopic lens - had been arrested by military police and taken away, his film destroyed.
It had been a fairly straightforward operation with very few complication, unlike that botched-up affair at Rendlesham, where information was leaked to the press like water through a colander. Max should have felt satisfied with this retrieval, but he wasn't.
One body, he kept thinking. Only one body.
Whilst everyone else loaded up and slowly left the site, Max remained, standing beside the mounds of fresh earth and breathing in the vague smell of burnt sulphur. Nothing much remained of the crash except a few felled trees, some broken branches and scorched trunks. The huge crater in the ground had been partly filled in and partly lengthened, to give the impression of a long aircraft hitting the ground horizontally as opposed to a round object crashing vertically. Every fragment of metal, every scrap of evidence, had been meticulously removed.
'One body,' Max said out loud. 'Only one body?'
The craft had obviously been designed for two.
* * *
An interminable amount of time had passed. It could no longer hear the humans moving around on the surface or feel the vibrations of their heavy machinery. It could smell nothing except the overpowering stench of carbon dioxide. Everything was dark and quiet.
It had crawled into the hole seeking refuge, seeking a place to hide from the humans that would inevitably come. It could not allow itself to be found. They did terrible things to its kind, and it could sense their approaching hostility, their ignorance, and their desperate quest for knowledge.
So the creature had crawled away, far away, as far as it could go without risking discovery. Sucking at the foul air and dragging its body through the vegetation, it came upon a hole in the earth and slipped down a narrow tunnel into an underground cavity.
Where it remained, cowering in the claustrophobic darkness, afraid and alone beside a small red corpse - the remains of an indigenous quadruped that had bolted into the hole a short while later. When the quadruped first saw the hairless thing it froze, then it stealthily drew nearer, nudging the creature's motionless body with its nose. When the creature raised a hand to ward it off, the quadruped had bared its small white fangs and sank them into a limb.
The creature squealed in pain. The quadruped jumped back in alarm, its furry body hitting the roof of the underground cavity near the entrance. Dirt caved in, leaving nothing but a tiny fissure at the top. Trapped beneath the ground with a squealing creature, the quadruped had panicked and attacked again.
Disposing of it had been a remarkably easy task. It died the instant its furry body was pierced with one sharp talon. Life ran out of it in the form of bright red liquid, so unlike the thick yellow substance that trickled from the creature's injured limb and dripped onto the floor making tiny hissing sounds.
The liquid from the quadruped congealed. It gave off a foul stench that assailed the creature's olfactory senses. The creature sat motionless, slumped up against the dirt wall, with its long fingers clasping its legs to its thin body. Its huge eyes, black as the holes in space, peered into the darkness.
It sat beneath the ground, weak, growing weaker, and waited. Waited for the humans to go.
Waited to die.
* * *
Clive parked his car at an angle along a steep bank at the side of the lane. He got out slowly, intimidated by all those flashing blue lights but, when not approached or stopped, he made his way into the forest.
A hundred yards inside, his path was blocked by plastic yellow ribbon tied around tree trunks. Policemen stood at regular intervals along the boundary, keeping back a straggling group of onlookers. He recognised the faces of a few people from the town. Others stomped through the vegetation in their walking boots, tightly clutching the straps of their back-packs.
'What's going on?' he asked someone.
The person shrugged and continued to stare into the forest, at the arc lights on long poles which had lit the frenzied work throughout the night. Clive moved closer to the tape that flapped in the breeze like a string of yellow butterflies.
'What happened?' he asked a policeman.
The policeman ignored him. Clive moved down a little way and repeated the question to an officer, who turned and said, with a cold edge of authority, 'It's nothing to concern yourself with, sir.'
'But I live nearby. I have a right to know if there's any danger to my family - '
'There's no danger, sir. This is strictly a military matter.'
Clive wanted to ask if it was anything to do with the light he had seen the night before, but a hiker wearing a CND badge on his muddy jacket shouted, 'They're testing weapons that will destroy mankind.'
The officer clasped his hands behind his back and pursed his lips. 'You people go about your own business,' he said. 'There's nothing to see here.'
'If there's nothing to see, why are you lot here?' the hiker called back. 'This is public property and we have every right to cross this land.'
The crowd all nodded in agreement and began to shuffle forwards through the undergrowth.
'Once the area has been cleared,' the officer said, 'You'll be allowed free access.'
'We have a right to know what's going on,' someone shouted.
The crowd pressed against the yellow strips as uniformed men gathered to form a human barrier in front of them.
'You'll be informed in due time,' the officer said.
'We want to know now.'
The crowd quickly became restless and noisy, shouting questions, demanding information and pushing against the police line.
'Clear the area, Steeles,' the officer said above the noise. 'Get these people out of here.'
'We're not moving until we know - '
'You'll leave of your own free will,' the officer yelled back, going red in the face, 'Or else you'll all be escorted from the area.'
'We refuse to be intimidated,' the hiker jeered, raising his fist in the air and gaining support from the people around him.
'Then,' the officer said, 'I'll have no other option but to arrest anyone who refuses to co-operate.'
The crowd fell silent.
'On what charge?' the hiker demanded to know.
'Obstructing official police business,' the officer said, 'Threatening to destroy evidence, and creating a nuisance.'
The crowd looked from one to the other. A few at the back started moving off towards the roadway. The hiker and the officer glared at each other over the plastic yellow barrier. The hiker looked away first and hissed, 'Bloody pigs!'. Grabbing the arm of the girl standing by his side, he pulled her after him, following the others as they made their way through he proliferating weeds and out of the forest.
Clive left too. On his way back to his car, he had to climb an incline that lead up to the road. He slipped into a boggy ditch at the bottom of the incline, and his foot stuck in the mud. Heaving it out with a loud squelching sound, leaving his shoe stuck in the mud, he almost lost his balance. Throwing his bare foot forward to steady himself, Clive impaled it onto a broken bottle jutting up from the ground. The glass sank deep into his heel. Ignoring the pain, he struggled to retrieve his shoe and slipped in on over his muddy, bloody sock. On the drive home, he saw the blood filling his shoe and soaking into the car mat beneath the pedals.
He didn't tell Patsy about the injury when he got back to the cottage. She would only fuss and insist he have horrible things like stitches and tetanus jabs. He might be married to a nurse, but he personally couldn't stand the sterile atmosphere wafting down white hospital corridors.
Instead, he locked himself in the bathroom and cleaned the wound himself, applying antiseptic that brought tears to his eyes. He rummaged in the medicine cabinet until he found a large enough plaster, and gently pressed it onto the throbbing gash. He stood up. It hurt like hell.
But the pain was only a mild distraction from the steadily increasing tension he felt inside.
There was definitely something strange happening out there.
