The Gastropoda Imperative by Peter Barns (ebook reader computer TXT) 📖

Chapter 16

Reaching the spot where he’d staked out the cow, Piers carefully opened the small box he was carrying and took out the stainless steel contact rods, screwing them together into one long probe. Next he attached the amplifier and display screen to one end, and fitted the set of stereo headphones over his ears. The fact that he was wearing a pair of butcher’s chain-mail gloves made the operation all the harder, but he kept at it until he was satisfied.

Pushing the end of his probe into the ground, Piers checked the reading on the meter. Then he moved to a new position and took another reading, nodding his approval. Yes, it was working. He could hear the aliens moving through the ground. The difference between the two readings told him which way they were moving: softer - away from him, louder - towards him. The little aliens had fed, so he should be safe following them, but any noise might attract them so he needed to be very careful if he wasn’t going to end up like the cow.

Piers moved with a stealthy determination. When he found out where their nest was, he’d come back and leave some poisoned chicken carcasses to kill them all. He smiled as he crept along, probing the ground at regular intervals. He would watch them as they all died in agony, just as his mother had.

***

Lyra finished tidying and cleaning the bothy, stuffing the dirty laundry into a black bin liner to take back to the cottage for her aunt to wash in the machine. She was fascinated by the science fiction novels stacked up along one wall, wondering if Piers had actually read them all. Frowning, she picked a few up, flicking through the pages. She never realised that there were so many different ones. There must be at least a couple of hundred here.

Picking up the bin liner, Lyra turned to leave, but before she reached the door it banged open and Piers came in. He was holding a yellow plastic box, which he carefully placed on the floor beside his mattress.

“Hello, Piers,” Lyra said, doing her best not to stare too hard at the tin cans Pier’s had wired to his boots and legs. “My aunt asked me to come over and clean up for you.”

Piers hadn’t seen Lyra standing across the room from him and jumped when she spoke. “Oh,” he said, his face turning red.

Lyra thought he looked a little frightened and held out a placating hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Piers looked around the room and nodded. “Thank you for tidying up.”

“You’ve got a lot of books. Have you read them all?” Piers nodded and looked at the floor. “Are they all sci-fi?” Lyra asked, trying to keep the conversation going.

“Yes. Yes they are. I like science fiction books. They . . . they sort of take me away. Away from here to a safer, better place.” Piers’ statement was followed by a long, uncomfortable silence.

“What’s in the box?” Lyra asked.

Piers looked shifty for a moment. Then, after a short pause, he walked over and opened it for her. She saw he was wearing some kind of metal gloves.

Lyra looked inside. It was an instrument of some sort. “What’s it for? What does it do?”

“It tells me where the little aliens are.” Piers went to the window and looked out. “It helped me to find their nest. Now I can kill them.”

Momentarily nonplussed, Lyra couldn’t hold the question back any longer. “Piers, what on earth have you got tin cans on your feet for?”

Piers’ faced flushed red, but he chose to ignore her question. “It listens underground and tells me which way they are going.”

Now she was totally confused. “So where did you get it?”

“I borrowed it from a van some men had. They were digging a hole in the road. To find a water leak, I think. I took it when they weren’t looking. But I’ll put it back when I’ve finished.”

Lyra knew she probably should have felt alarmed at being stuck in a bothy in the middle of nowhere with a man dressed up like the tin-man out of the Wizard of Oz, but somehow she didn’t feel in the least bit frightened. There was something about Piers’ naivety and honest directness that made him seem vulnerable. It brought out an unexpected protectiveness in her.

Piers turned from the window and looked at her, a worried frown on his face. “It’s dark,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out in the fields in the dark. They can hurt you. You have to stay on the road, on the hard ground when you go home.” Moving across to the mattress, he sat cross-legged, searching for something.

“I threw it away,” Lyra said, guessing that he was looking for the bottle she had found when she’d been cleaning up. “There wasn’t much left. You shouldn’t drink so much, Piers. It’s bad for you.”

Lyra gave a tight smile. Christ she was beginning to sound more and more like her mother every day! Piers’ eyes flashed anger for a moment, but then quickly calmed as he looked across at her.

Lyra sat down on an old orange box that Piers used as a bedside table. “Please Piers, promise me you’ll try not to drink so much. My dad drinks a lot. It’s why him and my mum split up.”

Piers nodded, pulling off his strange gloves and attacking the wires holding the tin cans on his feet. She’d seen the comedy films where people wore tinfoil on their heads to stop aliens invading their minds and wondered if Piers had covered himself completely with baked bean cans, or only his legs and feet.

“Why have you dressed yourself in tin? And don’t think you can put me off by ignoring me this time.” Lyra was both troubled and curious about the world that Piers had built for himself.

Piers frowned, looking at the floor again. He seemed to be having an internal struggle. Lyra stayed silent. Finally he looked up at her. “If I tell you, you must promise not to laugh at me. Like the others do.”

“Like Troy and his friends you mean?”

Piers nodded, hunching his shoulders, making himself as small as he could. Lyra could see the shame in his eyes as his gaze flicked around the room from point to point. It was as though he was searching for a safe place to hide.

“Of course I won’t laugh at you Piers,” Lyra said, getting off the box and sitting crossed legged on the mattress in front of him.

He looked across at her, a soft, tentative movement on his lips that was almost a smile. When she smiled back and took his hands in hers, he looked down at his feet, face colouring slightly.

“So?” she said. “The tin cans?”

***

”The police took me away today. To the police station.”

Lyra dropped Piers’ hand at his bald statement and sat back a little. He seemed not to notice the uneasiness his words had caused her.

“I told them about the aliens, that it was probably them that had taken the children, but they just wanted to know where I’d put them. They wouldn’t believe me.”

Lyra leant forward, the tip of her tongue wetting her lips. “The children? You mean the twins that disappeared on the beach?”

Piers nodded. “Yes, they kept asking me what I’d done to them, over and over. They wouldn’t stop.”

This was the first that Lyra had heard about Piers being a suspect in the disappearance of the twin boys. She wondered if she should just get up right now and leave. Piers seemed to pick up on her feelings and looked at her, his grey eyes searching hers.

“I didn’t do anything to them. I swear. I was doing a job for Mr Gerome when they disappeared. They checked that and let me go.”

Lyra relaxed a little, her heart settling down again. For a moment there she’d thought— Well, she didn’t know what she’d thought, but it wasn’t pleasant. Piers’ voice was sulky as he carried on. Like a small child after being told off. “They didn’t want to come and see the nest I found. They said I was being silly. Told me to go. But I’m not being silly, Lyra. I’ve been watching the aliens for a long, long time now.”

Lyra realised that this was the first time that Piers had used her name and somehow it made her feel good. She seemed to be gaining his trust.

Pulling the last of the tins from around his legs, Piers suddenly pushed them across the mattress at her. “You have to go now,” he said. “Put these on.”

Lyra could see that he’d become very agitated. “It’s okay. I can stay a little longer if you want me to.”

“Troy said I mustn’t talk to you.”

“What?”

“Troy told me not to talk to you. So you must go now. Before he finds out.”

Lyra couldn’t believe that Troy would have said such a thing. But then why would Piers say he had, if he hadn’t? “Did Troy threaten you Piers?”

Piers looked at the floor, then pushed the cans across at her again. They rattled liked castanets.

“I can’t walk around in those.”

“You have too. They’ll protect you from the aliens. You must!”

Piers almost spat the last word at her and Lyra jumped to her feet, worried now that he might be going to hurt her. She headed for the door but he was there before she was halfway across the room, his face red and blotchy, his breathing ragged.

“Put them on.”

His tone frightened Lyra and she backed across the room, one hand feeling behind her for the cans, too frightened to take her eyes off the him. She sat on the mattress and tied the cans around her feet and legs as fast as she could. The wires were thick and she had trouble twisting them together.

Piers was at her side in a moment when he saw the trouble she was having, pliers in hand, tying the cans tightly so that no spaces were left. He was gentle, trying not to touch her skin, muttering to himself that he had to keep her safe.

Lyra finally grabbed the washing bag and ran from the bothy, heart beating rapidly in her chest. Stopping a little way from the building, she turned back to make sure that he wasn’t following her. He was standing at the open bothy door, the camper light in the room behind him casting his long shadow across the ground towards her.

“Don’t forget. Keep on the hard ground,” he shouted.

Shuddering, Lyra half-ran all the way back to the cottage.

Chapter 17

Lyra heard the sound of crying as she entered the cottage and made her way through to the kitchen. Her mother was standing behind her aunt, rubbing her back.

“Oh hello Lyra. Your—” Her mother’s greeting stumbled to a confused halt when she saw what her daughter was wearing on her feet and legs.

Her aunt’s sobs turned to choked half-laughs when she spotted her niece. “You’ve been to the bothy then I see,” she said. “I’ve got a pair of shoes and socks just like those out in the shed that Piers made me wear the last time I had to come home from there in the dark.”

“What on earth’s going on?” her mother asked.

“Why were you crying auntie? Has something gone wrong with your operation?” Lyra felt a flutter in her stomach as she asked the question, not sure whether she wanted to hear the answer or not.

“No, nothing like that, Lyra,” he mother said. “It’s the chickens.”

“Something has taken them all,” her aunt said. “We didn’t find any bodies, so I expect its a family of foxes. Sorry to be such an idiot and cry like this, but I really did