Alien Skin Market by Lizzy Bequin

CHAPTER 2: MAUREEN

“What…the…hell?”

Ahead of her, the growing shadow now encompassed half the pasture, and the darkness was devouring more and more with each passing second. It couldn’t be a cloud; the edge of it was too perfectly delineated. Plus, the agitated behavior of the cows indicated something truly strange was happening.

Was this something these cows had witnessed before?

“Mo?” Bradley’s voice came from the phone. All traces of flirtation were gone from his tone, replaced now with genuine concern. “Mo, what’s going on?”

“I think I’ve got something here,” she whispered.

Maureen kept the phone in her hand. She might need it for snapping a picture, and she wanted Bradley on the line in case she ran into trouble. She opened the driver’s side door and stepped out. As soon as she was standing clear of the vehicle, she switched the phone over to her left hand and used her right to draw her pistol.

“Something?” Bradley asked. “What do you mean something?”

“Hush, I’m checking it out.”

“And what’s that weird humming sound?”

“I said hush.”

Maureen moved toward the pasture with quick but cautious steps. The worn soles of her sneakers squished over the dew-sodden grass. Her pulse pounded in her ears like a bass drum.

As she stepped out of the overhanging branches and moved into the open pasture, she tilted her face skyward.

What she saw there made her blood run hot and cold in her veins.

It was a UFO.

And it was huge.

The hovering object was circular, and it was a good two hundred yards in diameter, if not more. The bottom was flat and dark, but Maureen could just make out the tracings of panels, conduit tubes, and unfamiliar machinery.

She had heard all the conspiracy theories about UFOs before. Suggestions that they were actually top secret experimental aircraft created by the military. But there was no way this hovering ship could have been built by human hands. It was far too massive, yet at the same time it was almost entirely silent, aside from that deep, throbbing vibration that was resonating in Maureen’s skull.

There was no doubt about it. Whatever the hell that thing was, it had come from another world. Or another dimension.

“Jesus,” she breathed.

Part of Maureen’s brain was screaming for her to retreat. Run back to the car and get the hell out of Dodge. But she was simply too dumbstruck by the sight to look away. And besides, this thing was obviously connected to the disappearances she was investigating. As the agent assigned to the case, Maureen had a duty to figure out what was going on. There was no way she was going to turn tail and run now.

She moved deeper into the pasture, keeping her eyes locked on the behemoth craft hovering overhead.

“Mo, what do you see?” Bradley’s voice was low and anxious.

“I…I don’t know…It’s a UFO. A freaking flying saucer, Bradley. And it’s a big one.”

“Very funny, Mo.”

“Do you think I would joke about something like that? Actually, hang on a second. I’ll take a picture of it.”

Maureen switched her phone to camera mode, and she was just about to raise it and snap a photo, when all of a sudden, a narrow column of white light shafted downward from the dark underbelly of the massive ship.

That glowing beam fell on one of the cows like a spotlight. The animal let out a single plaintive moo before its body suddenly distorted like a glitched-out computer image, then disappeared completely in an upward pulse of energy.

“Holy shit…”

“Mo, what’s going on out there?”

“I think the UFO just…beamed up…a cow?”

An instant later, even more lights appeared, lancing downward to the pasture and capturing more helpless cattle in the same manner as the first one.

That’s when it occurred to Maureen that it would be a good idea to scram.

The cows had the same idea. The animals were now rumbling across the pasture, and most of them were headed in Maureen’s direction.

“Shit!” she shouted. “No! Don’t come this way!”

“Mo, who are you yelling at?”

“The cows!”

“What?”

There was no time for Maureen to explain to Bradley the crazy scene transpiring around her. Dozens of startled cows were now stampeding toward her while the white beams of light continued to pick them off one by one.

Maureen turned on her heels and started to sprint back the way she had come. But to her horror, she now saw that she’d wandered much farther into the pasture than she’d realized. Her car and the cover of the woods lay a good fifty yards away.

Shit.

The remaining cows were all around her now. Their hooves thundered over the ground like a minor earthquake, and the air filled with their panicked lowing.

In her peripheral vision, Maureen saw one of the beams strike terrifyingly close to her position. She heard the stifled moo of the captured animal, felt the sudden heat emanating from the beam, smelled the reek of ozone left in its wake.

But by some miracle, the beams had not captured Maureen.

Not yet.

She sprinted as fast as her legs would carry her. The muscles of her thighs burned like acid, and her lungs filled with fire.

She was getting close to safety now.

So very close…

Maureen’s sneakers slipped on the damp grass.

Her feet skidded out from under her, sending her airborne. The world spun out of control around her. Time seemed to stretch out. For a hanging moment, Maureen silently cursed herself for not trashing those old sneakers ages ago and getting a pair with some real traction.

Her body hit the ground, forcing all the air from her lungs and filling her vision with glittering stars.

Maureen was lying on her back with the cold dew soaking through her shirt and jeans. Her right hand still tightly clutched her pistol, and the phone was still in her left. She could hear Bradley’s worried voice shouting at her, but in her dazed state, she couldn’t register what he was saying, only that he was concerned.

She needed to get up…needed to move…

Before Maureen could sit up, a blinding white light filled her vision and pinned her to the grass like a physical weight.

She had been caught by one of the beams.

That humming, thrumming, buzzing sensation surrounded her now, penetrating her skin, her muscles, her guts. At first it was just a deep, ticklish vibration. Under other circumstances, it might have actually felt good, like a deep tissue massage. But as the frequency of the vibration increased, the sensation transitioned into an unpleasant itching, then an agonized burning as she felt her physical body being torn apart piece by piece, atom by atom.

Maureen tried to scream, but no sound came out.

So this is it, she thought distantly. This is how it ends…

Her final thoughts were a funny mixture of pride and frustration. Pride that she had finally made some headway with her case—she’d figured out what had happened to the farmer and the reporter—and frustration that she would never know the full story of who or what was operating that enormous ship.

But wasn’t that the way life always turned out? Every answer just raised another question. Real closure was always just a mirage, a rainbow that never got any closer no matter how persistently one chased it.

Light exploded in Maureen’s vision, obliterating her senses, erasing reality as she knew it, and replacing everything with a whiteness so pristine and pure and blinding that it verged on total nothingness.

Then it really was nothing.

She was gone.