Here is the next part of my novella...thanks to all of those who read this so far, please pass it on...hope you enjoy (chapters 1/2 are posted and available to read also)
03
Two men observed in silence, as Hak ran out of the gates of the Churchyard and headed towards the City centre.
No one saw them. No one ever saw them. They were the epitome of blended in.
“That’s her?” Asked the passenger, loading the last bullet into the last empty cylinder of his gun, locking the barrel into place.
“That’s her.” Confirmed the driver, his vigil suddenly distracted by the gun. “What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done,” said Mortimer stoically.
Albert’s mind reeled like a slinky on an upward escalator. “Are you insane? You can’t kill her! Not here!”
“I was going to wound her, actually.” Snarled Mortimer in prissy contempt.
“Mortimer, she is a Chosen One! You can’t put a bullet in a Chosen One! Not until she opens the envelope!”
“You know as well as I, Albert, that it will be too late if we wait until she opens the envelope!”
“And you know as well as I what happens if you interfere with the work of the Consorts of Destiny!”
“Which is why we wound her, take her and the envelope, and negotiate.”
Albert reeled in incredulity, “in which way is wounding and kidnapping her not interfering in your world?”
Hak disappeared from sight, along with Mortimer’s patience. “Your right. Letting her get away is a much better plan. Well done.”
Albert started the car, and after a nine-point manoeuvre, finally managed to get back on Hak’s tail. “Why can’t humans just invent something that hovers?” He grappled with the primitive gearstick, stalling in second for the third time.
“Be serious, they are still excited about making telephone calls!”
Albert finally settled in to the drive, unable to see five feet ahead due to the blizzard and one wonky windscreen wiper piling snow into his eye line.
“Put your gun away, you’re going to draw attention.”
Mortimer unhappily sheathed his weapon, “Need I remind you what happened with the last Chosen One?”
Albert tried to ignore him, concentrating on the road ahead. It wasn’t working.
“If you had listened to me then we could have been off this rock 2000 years ago!” Mortimer raged
“Things were different then.”
“Different how? Before the first Chosen One came along we had this planet sewn up! It was ours! Our leaders were pleased with us. If you had listened to me then, we would not have been banished.”
“And if you listen to me now, we will be able to return home with our heads held high!”
“Do you learn nothing Albert? Does the word history have no meaning to you? You are making the same choice! I cannot believe you are stupid enough to let the second coming get away so easily!”
“Who said anything about letting her get away?”
“You are making a grave mistake Albert.”
“Perhaps, but as you said, it won’t be the first time, and I’m actually growing to enjoy them. Buckle up.”
04
Hak negotiated her way through the slippery streets, pushing her way past people rudely, ignoring their insults as she ran to her office. She could hear her phone ringing in her pocket. She ignored that too.
The reception area of Simple City’s Observed Newspaper was small and unwelcoming. Beige woodchip wallpaper peeled from the wall-tops like dying bark from a tree. The once-green carpet was threadbare and stained; it had not been cleaned in living memory.
On a square table pushed into the left hand side of the room there was a plastic plant still decorated with a solitary strand of silver tinsel from the Christmas office party of 1990. Next to the table there was a black two-seater sofa, which was half-occupied by a man named Harlan J Crib.
He stared dead ahead clutching onto a briefcase he was prepared to protect with his life. As Hak ran into the reception area it took one glimpse of Harlan for her instinct to push her to run just as quickly out again.
“Miss Sinclair!” Exclaimed the short over-weight man standing to immediate attention. He wore a long grey coat and longer blue scarf, green wellington boots and a baseball cap carrying the logo of the national Spanish football team.
His eyes and features were small and piggish but his nose could have steered an aeroplane. It was unfair to call him ugly, but untruthful to call him anything less than unfortunate.
“Mr…Crib…” Hak panted.
“Miss Sinclair, pleased to see you again and I hope your health is above the average for this season.” The words shot out of his mouth like bullets from a stuttering machine gun, making them almost impossible to comprehend or avoid. He stepped forward. “We need to talk, it’s a matter of life and death. They would kill me if they knew I was telling you this,” he twitched. “I am risking my life, but they are going to kill you whatever I say, so you must RUN!”
“Who? Who is going to kill me?” She was far more peeved than curious, and kicked herself immediately for leading him on.
“The aliens. You are this planets last hope!”
“Of course I am…” Hak first encountered the strange Mr Crib three years previously in her first week working for the newspaper. He was an office joke, a test for fresher’s in the team to get to grip with what more senior reporters called Simple City Life. Harlan had made it his business to convince every reporter he encountered that he had been the subject of repeated alien abductions. The list of his inconveniences did not end there, and were not, according to Harlan, conspiracy theory but conspiracy fact.
Hak had given him no reason to favour her; at times she was deliberately ruder than usual to him in order to shake him. But he always came back for his bi-monthly confessional.
“Mr Crib this will have to wait, I am sorry.”
“Miss Sinclair it will be too late if something is not done about this immediately! It is very important that whatever you are about to do, you do not do. We need to talk, or this will all end in DOOM.”
Hak, with no effort at civility all, turned her back and approached Sylvia, a middle- aged receptionist who always wore too much eye shadow for someone who plucked the majority of her eyebrows and whose choice of pink lipstick always clashed with her tobacco stained teeth.
Sylvia did nothing to hide her repulsion at the desperate Mr Crib who hung behind Hak like a lost shadow, but went straight to business. “Miss Hak I have been informed by the Chief himself that you are in deep trouble if you do not report to him as soon as you enter the building. He used quite a few more profanities than that, which I will save you from, as I am a lady of higher principles than he could possibly attain, and believe there are better ways of expressing oneself than using the language of the guttersnipe.”
Sylvia was a skeletal thin woman who lived on light cigarettes and tea. Her breath always smelled of mint, but the acrid smell of stale tobacco hung on her clothes and gave her 40-a-day habit away.
Hak deducted from her far-more-amicable-than-usual manner that Sylvia had recently had her fix, but it would not be long before the ticking bomb of addiction would begin to over ride…If Sylvia could add an extra hour to a day, it would be so she could smoke seven more than usual.
“Miss Sinclair,” interrupted Harlan much to Sylvia’s displeasure, “we are all DOOMED if this continues any further! Your story must end now! This story must never be written!”
Hak closed her eyes and counted to ten…slowly.
Sylvia snarled directly at him. “Mr Crib, I have been head receptionist of this Godforsaken backwater office for almost 20 years now. Day in, day out I am forced to sit behind this little desk with about as much gratitude thrown my way as a horsefly at Ascot.
“Now, I need not remind you that this is a newspaper. So unless you have something to report that we are not already perfectly aware of, I suggest you take your prophecies of doom and gloom elsewhere! Good day sir!”
Sylvia took a deep swill of tea from a mug, which read: Men are like floor tiles, lay them right the first time and you can walk over them for the rest of your life. Hak wondered how flat Mr Sylvia was by now as she stood flabbergast.
She felt sorry for Harlan as he swallowed up the tongue-lashing. He looked used to being bullied. He probably had more experience in rejection than any other form of pain. Hak could identify deeply.
“Sooner or later you will find out the truth Miss Sinclair. You are going to need friends.” And Harlan walked out into the cold.
Without losing pace Sylvia resumed. “You have a further two messages. Your Mother called.”
“My mother?” Just when Hak thought the day could not get any worse. “What the hell did she want?”
“Hardly a way to speak of your parent Miss Hak, especially one with such an eloquent and polite manner.”
“I think you’ll find most psychopaths are quite charming when you first meet them.” Hak snarled.
“And a gentleman professor, no less than five minutes before you burst in the door called. His message was that if you are not at your desk the next time he calls there will be no interview.”
“WHAT! Did he say when he would call again?”
“No.”
Hak felt dizzy. If she had been a cartoon character she would have vamooshed from Sylvia’s desk leaving a trail of dust behind her.
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