08/09/2024
First Alien extract by Maddie Marzola.
A mysterious landing.
A mind-controlling alien.
Two women battling each other for the fate of the world.
The air didn’t smell right. The musky scent of the trees was there, as was the earthy undertone of the damp ground, but it was all dulled by a tasteless extra layer. The woods shouldn’t smell like that.
In Lucy’s list of complaints, however, that was barely in the top five. Her boyfriend Matthew’s idea of a fun hike in the Forest of Dean had already presented her with cold, hunger, and a generous amount of pain at the back of her right heel. It all was made even worse by the daunting awareness that whatever distance she hiked forwards, she’d have to hike back.
Even Frank hadn’t been too convinced about going in the woods on a muggy November day, despite his general enthusiasm for whatever Matthew suggested. Looking at him, Lucy sometimes wondered if it shouldn’t be her brother dating Matthew after all. It had become an inside joke.
Leaning against a tree to catch her breath, Lucy looked ahead. Frank was waiting for her by a giant oak tree. “Are you alright back there?”
Not surprisingly, it was her brother who turned to check on her. After her powerful morning display of passive aggressiveness, Matthew was keeping his distance. She could barely spot him further ahead amongst the fir trees, a smudge of red waterproof fabric amidst the grey hue of the woods on that muggy day.
She still wasn’t going to apologise. She was never going to fall in love with hiking boots and muddy trails just because her boyfriend’s mum had suddenly shown up with a tip on a new trail in the Wye Valley – and she still thought it was rather odd how insistent Mrs Cavell had been about them going that very weekend.
“Is there a reward at the end of this pain or is he leading us to starvation?” she asked as she joined her brother and leaned heavily against the oak trunk.
He raised an eyebrow in amusement. “Are you asking for a piggy ride?”
Lucy glared at him. “F**k you,” she said, raising her favourite finger, lest he misunderstood her tone.
He laughed at that, and she couldn’t hold back a smile herself. Then Frank’s grin waned, and he cocked his head in that condescending way of his. “Seriously, though, we can stop for a bit, if you need to rest.”
How she hated that tone. “Frank, I can walk.”
He turned away, hands thrown high in a gesture of surrender, but she could still see his eyes rolling.
Annoying tone aside, she was glad he had agreed to join them. He was a buffering force to Matthew’s sulky mood.
Then he tilted his head up, sniffing the air. “Do you smell that?”
“I know, it’s weird.”
“Maybe somebody’s having a bonfire somewhere nearby,” he guessed.
“Why would you think it’s a bonfire?”
“Because it smells like burning, and bonfires are famous for that.” His smirk was infuriating.
She limited her reaction to a dull gaze. “I’m humbled by your superior wisdom, milord.”
He was about to reply when something else caught his attention. Further up the path, Matthew had stopped walking. Standing a few feet off the track, he was gazing at something in the distance. Lucy squinted to catch what it was and for a second the odd scent felt a bit stronger, as if electricity was burning up her nostrils. As if a storm was coming and they were walking amongst the charged clouds. It made her want to sneeze.
Past Matthew, something large and dark nested amongst the trees.
Ignoring the persisting pain up her calves, Lucy scurried forward until she reached the edge of the clearing. Even from there, it didn’t look like anything she’d seen before, starting from the colour – a shade of black that wanted to absorb all the light around it, so much so that a halo of darkness seemed to envelop the whole thing.
The metal structure – because it had to be some kind of metal – took up most of the space, and it seemed to have knocked down a few trees as well, as if it had crashed into them while parking itself there. Something that looked like a wing spread out from a thicker and rounder main body. Aside from that, there was no other indication of what it might be.
“What the hell is that?” she managed, while her brain kept on processing.
“Holy moly,” whispered Frank as he stepped next to her.
She glanced sideways at him. “Frankie, your non-swearing attitude is getting ridiculous. This is clearly a holy f**k kind of moment.”
The only one of them to remain nonplussed seemed to be Matthew. “There’s a few old and new RAF bases in the region,” he said as he walked up to their side. “This is probably one of their prototypes. It must have gotten lost in the woods.”
“Because that sounds likely,” commented Lucy.
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“Better than the army losing their new toy in the middle of a national park? Yes, I think I can come up with something.”
Before Matthew could retort, Frank jumped in between them. “Who wants to go and have a look?”
Bless his heart – or his scientific curiosity, as he liked to call it. Give him a weird shiny trinket in the middle of the woods, and Frank would revert to the recklessness of a six-year-old on a sugar rush, to the point where Lucy had to be the sensible one getting him out of trouble. Given that she was the one with a criminal record, the irony of that wasn’t lost on anybody.
Matthew, on the other hand, wasn’t keen on running towards the flame. “I don’t think so. Better stay away and call the authorities on this one. It’s clearly none of our business.”
Lucy gave him a condescending look. “Are you scared of meeting the little green passengers?”
“Luce, this doesn’t look like a joke. It might be dangerous.”
Once again, Frank stepped in to quell the argument and rested a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “Ten minutes,” he pleaded.
Lucy grinned at him, in spite of everything. She wasn’t excited about following him into a mysterious and quite certainly dangerous metal container. “Yeah, ten minutes,” she said, then turned to Matthew. “Fifteen tops, then I’ll bring the baby back to the pram, and you can go ahead and call James Bond to examine the relic.”
Frank was already a few steps ahead, waiting for Lucy to join. Matthew sighed. “No way to stop him, is there?”
“You know him. Not a chance.”
She rushed to join her brother, spikes of pain forcing her to slow her pace as she got closer. She was really going to feel it the next day, she thought. She leaned on Frank once she was close enough.
“You really should stop hopping around like that,” he scolded her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you going to be okay walking back?”
She shrugged. “Unless we fly this thing out of here, I’ll have to.”
As they walked closer, they tried to stay clear of the overhanging wing-shaped structure, the electricity in the air around them getting stronger, much like how the light of day seemed to be getting dimmer.
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First Alien by Maddie Marzola
