Alien Skin Market by Lizzy Bequin

CHAPTER 3: MAUREEN

The sound of tiny, skittering feet woke her.

Maureen’s eyes shot open. She was no longer looking into a blinding white light, but an utter, inky blackness of such depth and totality it seemed to have a physical presence, like a palpable substance into which she had been completely submerged.

Was this what death was like?

That horrifying thought set Maureen’s pulse racing, and after ten rapid beats of her heart, she realized this must not be death after all. A dead woman wouldn’t have a heartbeat.

Gradually, she became aware of other physical sensations that further corroborated the fact of her survival. Her skull throbbed like a tequila hangover. Her throat felt scratchy and sore. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth like a piece of old painter’s tape that refused to come off.

She was dehydrated.

God, how long had she been unconscious?

And what the hell was that damn skittering sound all around her?

Maureen tried to sit up, but her muscles felt sluggish and achy. It was like the next morning after over-exerting herself in the gym, only ten times worse. It took a full minute before she managed to wrangle her weary body into a seated position, then another minute after that before she fully got her marbles back.

Her impulse was to panic, but she knew she needed to stay calm and take stock of the situation.

She still had her phone and her pistol, both items clutched in her left and right hands, respectively. She stowed the phone in the pocket of her jeans for the time being, but the gun stayed out, just in case.

All of her clothes were still on. That was a good sign. The soreness in her muscles did not extend between her legs, and as far as she could tell, she had not been molested or probed while she was out. Her clothing, however, was absolutely sodden with sweat, a detail which explained her intense dehydration.

There was extra dampness between her legs, and a quick check confirmed this to be urine. She’d pissed herself, something she had not done since childhood. That might have been due to the shock of being zapped aboard the giant hovering UFO—Maureen had to assume that’s where she was now—but more likely it was a result of prolonged unconsciousness.

Again she wondered just how long she had been out of it.

…skitter, skitter…

There was that sound again. It sent a jolt of adrenaline surging through Maureen’s system, giving her the strength to stand up. Once she was reasonably sure her wobbly legs would hold her, she retrieved the flashlight from her belt and flicked it on. The bluish-white LED beam lanced into the darkness.

“My God,” Maureen gasped.

She found herself standing at one end of a large, oblong chamber filled with living cattle. When the animals turned to look at her, their eyes reflected the beam of the flashlight, and their warm breath and body heat rose in ghostly swirls of steam. Maureen had been too addled to notice it before, but now she realized the air was overloaded with the cow’s musky barnyard aroma.

These must be the same cows who had been beamed up from the pasture. Now they were all trapped in some sort of holding chamber.

And Maureen was trapped with them.

Why would anyone want to steal a bunch of cows like this? And more important, who?

Maureen swept the beam to one side of the chamber, then the other, and finally up toward the high arched ceiling overhead. The moving circle of light licked over panels of dark metal etched with bizarre symbols and glyphs. For a long while, Maureen simply stared in awe at what she could only assume was alien technology.

…skitter, skitter…

Maureen started at the sound. She flicked the flashlight beam down to the floor. What she saw scurrying around her feet made her skin crawl with repulsion.

Rats.

Well, no…not rats exactly. At least not any species of rat Maureen had ever seen before. They were roughly the same size as rats, but these animals were just little balls of pale blond fluff with no visible features except for pink, bewhiskered noses and narrow, softly furred tails.

Were these things…alien vermin?

Whatever they were, the buggers were fast, and there were hundreds of them, all scurrying and darting between the legs of the cattle. The little critters seemed not to react to the flashlight, and Maureen surmised they might be blind, like cave-dwelling animals that had adapted to living in total darkness.

Maureen had heard stories of rat-infestations on ocean-going vessels. Maybe the same sort of problem existed aboard alien spaceships as well?

But it was better not to jump to conclusions.

Despite everything she had seen so far, Maureen couldn’t be certain she was really on an alien spaceship. For all she knew, she was still somewhere back on Earth. She certainly hoped that was the case.

Maureen holstered her gun long enough to take out her iPhone. She hadn’t expected there to be any bars, but what she discovered was even more troubling.

Her battery was dead. It had been at least half charged before.

At least she thought it had.

A chill prickled between her shoulders. How long would it have taken the battery to drain when the phone wasn’t being used? A day? Two days? Three?

Maureen tucked the phone back into her pocket and drew her gun again.

The next step was to check the perimeter of the chamber. There had to be some way in and out of this place, right?

Squeezing between the grunting cattle and kicking at the little scurrying fuzzballs around her feet, Maureen made her way to the nearest wall and methodically worked her way around the room, carefully searching with the flashlight. She found a single door constructed of solid metal, but there was no handle on the damn thing, and despite her best efforts, she couldn’t get it to budge.

Mechanical. And presumably locked from the outside.

That was bad.

Briefly, Maureen considered shooting the door, but she immediately canceled that idea. The chances a bullet would have any effect were minuscule, and the possibility of a ricochet was too dangerous. Plus the noise would just alert her captors—whoever they were—to the fact that she was packing heat. It would spoil any element of surprise she might have over them.

That meant there was only one thing to do.

She had to wait.

Sooner or later, someone—or something—was going to open that door. And when that happened, Maureen would be ready. She had the flashlight, which she could use to blind her captors—assuming they had eyes. And more important, she had her .40-cal.

The gun carried fifteen rounds in the magazine, plus one in the chamber, and she had another spare fifteen-shot magazine on her belt.

Enough firepower to shoot her way out of here.

Or die trying.

With a bit of shoving and slapping of bovine rumps, Maureen managed to clear the area around the door. Then she moved to the far wall, which was where she intended to post herself until her jailers arrived.

But first, she needed to clear a place to sit amid the little scrambling furballs.

“Shoo!” she hissed, and stomped her feet on the metal floor. “Shoo, you little fuckers! Shoo! Shoo!”

Thankfully, that seemed to do the trick. The vermin around her dispersed and scuttled away to the other end of the chamber.

“That’s more like it,” Maureen muttered.

She leaned against the wall and slumped down onto the floor. The cold metal was hardly comfortable, but it felt good to sit down. Her muscles still felt weary and depleted—a side effect of her dehydration and whatever the beam of light had done to her body.

It was a struggle to keep her eyes open, and the slow, steady vibration of the ship was lulling her back to sleep. But she needed to stay alert for when her captors arrived.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too long.

Maureen hated waiting.

She turned off the flashlight to conserve the battery and placed it on the floor beside her. She kept the pistol at the ready, aimed in the general direction of the door.

Now she was left with nothing but the darkness and her thoughts.

The Bureau would be probably looking for her by now. After the way her phone call with Bradley had ended amid panicked yelling and confusion, her colleague most certainly would have contacted their superiors to let them know Maureen was in danger.

But what would they find? Her car, still parked under the trees with case files piled on the passenger seat. A field that was short a few dozen cows. Some footprints.

And then what?

Maureen didn’t have any next of kin to notify. Her workaholic lifestyle was partly to blame for that. As for her parents, they were both dead, taken from her when she was still a little girl, which was the reason she had such an obsessive devotion to law enforcement in the first place. She had been raised by her grandparents, her dad’s parents, but both of them were long since deceased as well.

There was Bradley, of course. He would no doubt be upset about Maureen’s disappearance. But they were not a couple, not by any stretch of the imagination. Though they had never actually spoken about it, there was clearly no expectation of exclusivity. A guy like Bradley would have no trouble finding another flame. In fact, it was something Maureen had occasionally urged him to do.

As she sat in the darkness, listening to the grunting, shuffling cows, it occurred to Maureen just how little she was leaving behind.

In one sense, that was a good thing. Less pain, less heartbreak. But in another sense, it was depressing to think about just how empty her life had become.

Between these dismal introspections, her worsening dehydration, and the pitch-black darkness surrounding her, Maureen found herself growing increasingly sleepy. Her leaden eyelids drooped. Her mind faded.

Just as her consciousness was sinking into that pleasant, hazy state between waking and sleep, a new sound came from the darkness a few feet away.

A tiny voice.

“Rawn?”