Read Alien Virus Online

Authors: Steve Howrie

Tags: #scotland, #aliens, #mind control, #viruses, #salt, #orkney, #future adventure science, #other universes

Alien Virus (8 page)

BOOK: Alien Virus
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“I suppose you thought she could be one of
us – seeing things like we do, and be part of the team.” He nodded
wistfully.

“At one time it seemed like that. Then she
got scared. Her mother was worried about her health – what with all
the scares about salt and that – and asked her to go to the doctor.
She wasn’t ill, not in any way, but she wanted to put her mum’s
mind at rest, y’know. Anyway, the doc says: ‘You’re putting your
life in danger – don’t you know how dangerous it is going without
meat and taking in so much sodium? You’re heading for a heart
attack.’. Anyway, she was frightened and thought it best to be safe
than sorry and when back to the animal eating and cut out salt.
That’s when she changed. I think the virus took over then – we
never saw eye–to–eye after that.”

“But she still wanted to see you?”

“She did. I’d like to think she still loved
me. But now I know about the virus, I don’t know what’s controlling
people any more. You know, another potential victim – one more
human for the parasite to control and
eat.
” Sandi winced at
the picture. Being eaten from the inside by an alien bug was not
something she wanted to dwell upon. After spending nearly an hour
in the gardens, watching the autumn leaves fall from the huge
trees, they decided it was safe to wander back to Kate’s flat –
keeping their eyes peeled along the way.

Inside the two
-
bedroomed
apartment,
Sandi put on the kettle and invited Gareth to relax in the
lounge.

“Kate said I could play anything from her CD
collection – so what d’you fancy?”

“I don’t suppose she’s got any Zero
Seven?”

“What! You can’t be serious…”

“I know they’re not everyone’s taste,”
Gareth replied defensively – a little hurt.

“No, I mean – I love Zero Seven.
‘When it
Falls’
was so cool.”

“Amazing! Well, put it on then.”

Sandi made some tea, and fetched the bottle
of Shiraz she’d picked up from the local corner store. They sat
closely on the sofa relaxing with the warmth of the drinks and each
other.

“Gareth, how did you get into all this?” He
settled further back into the sofa, recalling those memories.

“I was working in a Wholefoods store off
Nicolson Square, in the student area. An English guy comes in and
asks for cashew nuts. I tell him the ones we have are very, very
salty, and the boss had told us not to sell them. He says – great –
the saltier the better, and asks for two kilos. So I say – you’re
having me on, right? That much salt is harmful. He says – no, salt
isn’t bad for you – quite the opposite. I asked him where he’d
heard that, and he tells me he works at the University and one of
his colleagues of his is doing a load of research in Microbiology
and come up with some interesting results. So I’m intrigued now,
right, and ask where I can read this research. He says it’s not
published yet, but if I wanted to come down to the Minto Hotel at
around five pm, the man would be there.

“So after I finish at five, I walk down to
the Minto and there’s the English guy with his mate. Both of them
sitting in a corner, chatting. The one I know gets up as soon as he
sees me and buys me a drink. A pint of eighty shillings I think it
was. Anyway, I find out that the one who came into the shop is
Tony, and the other guy – the one who’s done all the research – is
Frank. No second names, very informal and very friendly. Frank
starts to tell me about his research project, and then suddenly –
right out of the blue – he says, ‘Do you believe in alien life
Gareth?’ I’m like, ‘Whoa – what’s
this
all about!’ So he
repeated it, and I had to say that I did, but everyone else thinks
I’m daft. And then he adds, ‘Well, the aliens have landed.’ And at
that point he had me – I would have signed on the dotted line there
and then, because I always knew there were aliens on this planet –
only I didn’t know how fucking small they were!”

Sandi smiled as she listened to Gareth. He
was like a big kid really. That was partly his attraction. Plus the
fact that he was a hunk of a man.

“So you started to get involved from then
on?”

“I had to – once they’d told me the
situation.”

“And you never doubted it?”

“No. I can’t say I understood everything
they said, but it all made so much sense. And the strange thing
was, the more I stopped eating animal, the more I realized things
for myself.”

“Such as?” She gently brushed his dark brown
hair out of his eyes and looked at him lovingly.

“Well, animals – wild animals. Have you
noticed that no matter what we do to try to protect them, they are
still disappearing from this planet – and at an alarming rate. The
animals have all these protection agencies, and funds set up to
preserve them – yet still they are being driven to extinction. The
aliens feed off the animals – they’re parasites. And once the
animals have gone, Man’s next.”

Sandi didn’t hear the last few words – she
had fallen asleep curled up next to Gareth. And after a few
minutes, his eyes were also shut.

 

***

Eleven

 

Tony stood pouring over a map of Orkney, and
pondered. It was at times like these that Frank Peters was sorely
missed. Frank would be there at Tony’s side, enthusing about the
future, about where they could go and what they could do. There
would never be any question of whether this action was right, or
that decision correct; and no concerns of what if this happened or
that occurred. Not in the beginning any way.

He turned to the old, grey lady sitting in
an armchair reading a magazine.

“Audrey – what do you think about going up
to Orkney?”

She put down her magazine and looked over
the top of her spectacles.

“You’re not going to ask me what Frank would
have done, are you?” Tony gave her a sort of pinched look. “To be
honest,” she continued, “I know nothing about Orkney – and nor did
Frank. I’m afraid you’re on your own on this one Tony.” There was a
touch of coldness in her voice, as she picked up her magazine – as
if she thought that Tony only missed Frank when he could be of some
use to him.

“I know it’s hard without Frank. I just want
to do the right thing.”

“Frank was never concerned about ‘
doing
the right thing
’ – he just did it,” she replied without looking
up from the magazine.

At least Tony was never in any doubt about
sending Kate and I to reconnoiter the area. It made sense for
several reasons: Kate had been to Orkney as a child, and I was a
journalist and didn’t mind probing for information about anything.
Plus the fact that Tony couldn’t have missed the mutual attraction
we felt for each other.

After my recent escapade in London, Tony
thought it wise if I leave my car and take his – he would hide my
motor until I got back. For the same reason, he suggested I leave
my mobile with him, He said he had a spare – which I suspected was
Frank Peters’ old phone. I thought that Tony would really have
liked to go up to Orkney to explore himself; but he knew it was
best for him to stay home at the ‘Control Centre’. I promised him
we’d get started on setting up the website as soon as possible. I
had contact details on my laptop for the Swedish Internet company
we had discussed, and I could email Frida Stronson from Orkney.

*

It’s a straightforward, but often tiring,
journey up to the Orkney Isles. The best route from Edinburgh is
across the Forth Bridge, then head up North on the M90 to meet the
A9 at Perth. That takes you all the way to Thurso – and the nearby
port of Scrabster, from where a car ferry departs for
Stromness.

Kate and I made good time after leaving
Edinburgh, and after stopping off in Inverness for an hour – lazily
resting on the banks of the river Ness – we arrive in Thurso after
a winding, uphill road, negotiating several hairpin bends on the
way. We were in time for the seven o’clock evening crossing from
the port of Scrabster.

On the way up we’d talked about the past,
and I asked her how she’d met the others.

“Frank was speaking at a Seminar at Glasgow
University. It was on the reaction of Lymphocytes to external
stimuli. Half way through his talk he threw in an astounding remark
about the white cells being controlled by an alien virus. There was
very little reaction to this from the rest of the audience, but it
had a big effect on me. I cornered him after the Seminar and asked
lots of questions. He told me he regularly held meetings at a small
hotel in Edinburgh with interested people – and if I wanted to come
along I’d be very welcome. I couldn’t get there fast enough. My
Masters was on the causes of irrational
behaviour
in white blood cells, and I was intrigued
by his viewpoint. I came over to the meeting at the Minto Hotel in
Edinburgh, and that’s where I met Frank, Tony and Gareth.

“Why do you think you were so interested in
Frank’s research when no-one else was?” I asked.

“At the time, I didn’t really think about
it. I suppose I rationalized that it was right up my street – the
subject of my research. But that applied to others there as well.
Looking back, I think it was because it was it meant to be...
almost as if the lecture was set up just for me. Oh, that sounds
very self-centred, I’m sorry.”

“No no, I do know what you mean. I had the
same feeling when I met Frank in London.”

“I know I’m trained as a scientist, but I
believe there’s much more to life than scientific logic or reason.
Ancient
civilisations
knew this – the
Egyptians, the Greeks. They recognized there was a pattern to life
– and it didn’t end with the death of the physical body.”

“Are you religious, Kate?” I asked.

“No – not at all. My parents were a little –
but they never went to church. I grew up without any particular
beliefs – though I could never accept that when you die that’s it.
It didn’t make sense. So when I went into Science and saw all the
patterns in nature, it was just too much to believe that all this
came about through random events.”

“Not a Darwinist then?”

“No, not at all. But not a ‘Universe created
in five days’ person either. I’d never found anyone who shared my
view about the Universe – until I met Frank.”

I hadn’t known this about Frank – that he
had wider views. I wondered how his philosophy fitted in with his
ideas about the alien virus.

“I used to have such long discussions with
Frank. I’d often miss the last train back to Glasgow, and have to
stay at Audrey’s. The big question I had was this: was the
introduction of the virus a random event, or was it part of an
experiment?”

“An experiment!”

“Yes. If you take the view that there is
Intelligent Design in the Universe, then you have to ask the
question: did the intelligence allow or even arrange for the virus
to come to Earth; or was this a flaw in the Intelligence… it
literally didn’t see it coming? It’s a very important question. If
it’s a flaw in the Intelligence, then we’re in trouble because we
never know when we are at risk from unforeseen events. But if the
whole thing was planned and controlled, then whatever happens the
virus can never really win – it can’t spread to other
Universes.”

“Unless that’s part of the plan,” I
countered.

“That’s right!” Kate smiled.

The more Kate talked, the more I fell in
love with her. I was drawn to her innate intelligence and beauty...
where had she been all my life? I asked her what conclusion she
came to regarding Intelligent Design.

“Frank and Tony were always divided on the
issue, and I tended to side with Tony. We believed that the
introduction of the virus was an experiment – in the same way that
we would introduce viruses in the laboratory. Controlled
experiments where we knew exactly what we were doing, and no harm
could really be done.”

“Except to the guinea pigs,” I pointed
out.

“Yes,” admitted Kate a little guiltily. She
continued: “Frank, on the other hand, recognized there was some
sort of Intelligent Design in the Universe, but believed that the
Intelligence might not be equipped to deal with unknown
threats…”

“Like the virus?”

“Exactly. And he believed that the
consequences of Man being wiped out by the virus were catastrophic
– and not just to this planet. This was the rift between Tony and
Frank in the end. Whilst Tony was inclined to watch the experiment
unfold, Frank thought the only hope was for us to take an active
role and do whatever it would take to defeat the virus.

“So that took Frank off to London to do his
bit?”

“Yes.”

“And now – who do you think was right?”

“I know we can’t sit back and do nothing.
Whether it’s an experiment or not, if mankind is wiped out, then
that’s the end for all of us, whatever way you look at it. Where
the virus goes from there – if it is allowed to go anywhere –
doesn’t really matter… not to us anyway.

 

Arriving in Thurso, we had time for a bite
to eat before boarding the ferry and stopped at a small café before
the short drive to Scrabster. Kate got us a table whilst I ordered
the food. Then I noticed that there were no salt cellars to be seen
in the cafe.

“It’s started,” I observed, my eyes
indicating the lack of condiments. Kate nodded. The food soon
arrived, and we were glad to stop moving for a while.

“What’s your angle on all this, Kevin? What
do you think we should do?”

“I suppose I just want people to know the
truth about the virus. After I met you all in Edinburgh, there was
no question about what I should do. It wasn’t the sort of thing I
could turn my back on.”

“How did you meet Sandi? Through work?”

“Yes. You probably know how it is – you work
with someone, and the more time you spend together, the more you
get to like them. It started with just drinks – then a movie after
work. It just happened really. We liked each other, and it seemed
the natural thing to get closer. The next thing I knew, we were
living together.”

BOOK: Alien Virus
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