Squealers
a sci-fi story by Michael W. Clark
Summer busy-ness has caught up to me the last few weeks, including a bout with sickness, but we are back for more! What follows is a surreal detective story set in an alternate (or future?) version of Earth that I’d as soon steer clear of. Warning! Some language and foul scenes included, including barf. You were warned.
Squealers
By Michael W. Clark
“Oh no, its squealers.” With this corner dark as usual, the man pulled out his dull grey .45. No reflection. He grew up on the streets—territory was everything.
The noise was distinct. Four hoofed, multiple individuals. “Got damn monsters.” He aimed as carefully as he could and fired in rapid succession. The noises stopped. He listened as he reloaded.
He turned too late. The bulk was moving too fast. It hit him on the side. There were two grunts, one from him falling to the ground and one from the horned face that stood over him. He tried to aim at its immense abdomen, but the tusked mouth bit hard on his neck. Territory ceased to matter. He ceased living at that moment. In the next few moments, he was eaten.
#
John Carter stood at the entrance to the trash-strewn playground. It looked about as abandoned as any public facility could. Since the Great Con, people have avoided gathering conspicuously, and most parents kept their kids close. Birds filled the trees given the human abandonment.
John Carter noticed details. He was still a detective, but he was surprised at having a job. He tried very hard not to be intoxicated “on the job.” “On the job” thus was a fluid definition. He rubbed his face. He had shaved recently and was pleasantly surprised at the fact. He smiled.
“This another Barfer call?” He was talking to his present partner, Detective Sergeant Ethel Mirts. She never shaved. She hadn’t yet needed to but that day was approaching.
Mirts pointed at a trail of remains. “Partially digested human remains. Yes. A Barfer call.”
“Won’t know they are human until the DNA is done.” John Carter quivered because his stomach reacted more than his head did. “What’s the point in having us here?”
“Barfer events are appearing all over now. Want to know what is happening.” Mirts pulled out of the muck the front part of a human foot. All five toes were attached. “Definitely bipedal, highly likely human. No DNA needed.”
“I don’t have an evidence bag big enough for that.” John Carter checked to see if he had his Service revolver. “Oh good.” He did.
“You never have any sized evidence bags.” Mirts had the part of a foot already in the evidence bag she carried. “Why are you here?”
“Why am I here?” John Carter looked at the wristwatch he still wore. It was noon. He had lost the department-provided smart phone. “Looks like lunch to me.” He backed away from the trashy playground.
Mirts waved goodbye. “Why bother eating if you are just going to throw it all back up again?” It was a general comment that could apply to whomever it fit. Mirts didn’t have enough bags for all of the partially-digested remains. She would have to call in the coroner’s folks. She pulled off her latex gloves and did.
#
The coroner was tall with a very dark complexion that made cosmetics unnecessary. Everyone referred to the coroner as Frank, a description of demeanor, nothing more. “The remains of the day.” Frank's people had spread the collected remains over three tables. The choice was arbitrary.
John Carter had not shown up. It didn’t really matter. Mirts stood at the third table. “Are there six feet?”
“That would be a convenience if there were, would it not?” Frank stood at the first table. “There is an odd number, and it is not one.”
“Used to not be wild boar in Michigan.” Mirts had been to a few of the Barfer scenes. The remains never smelled like vomit, although they clearly were.
“Swine are very adaptable. They can eat most anything.” Frank never smelled anything anymore. “Bite marks do indicate a non-human. Swine though? It is not clear.”
“This didn’t happen before the Great Con. I have found no record of it.”
Frank shrugged. “I have no knowledge of the aliens. No personal knowledge. One day I heard the aliens had seized Borneo. Then civilization became unbalanced. Could be a mutant pig, feral or wild. I have heard nothing about the alien weapons.”
“The Great Con. We gave them presents. The dumb ass bosses of the world believed the grift. The only attacking I heard about though was our forces attacking them. I have not heard they were hostile, just deceitful.” Mirts never liked thinking about the Great Con. It embarrassed her. “We gave them our used reactor fuel rods. Who knows what they did with them?”
Frank shrugged again. “Like those atomic monsters of the old movies.” Frank shrugged yet again. “Who knows now. Anything could have happened.”
“But Borneo is on the other side of the planet.” Mirts shrugged too. “Never found any tracks around a Barfer scene. World's making less and less sense.”
“I would not know what an alien footprint looks like. I have not seen any images of the aliens. Have you heard what their appearance is like?” Frank's voice was getting vague, as if there was a loss of interest.
“A thousand descriptions. None I believe. You think DNA will ID the victims?”
“Analysis is underway. At least, it might indicate the number of victims.” Frank sighed. “Of course, in a sense we are all victims now.”
“The Great Con did that too. Yes, it did.”
#
John Carter had not been on the job since lunch. Instead, he was looking down at his feet. Actually, it was his shoes. He was looking down because looking up was a bad idea when he was “off the job.” Why did he eat lunch when he knew it would come to this? He always drank too fast and upset his stomach. “But it feels so good to eat. ‘Bout the only thing that does feel good.” He wobbled and heaved. Apparently, he’d had a light lunch. Nothing much was lost. “Nothing left to lose, I guess?”
John Carter used to be a good detective. He used to be a lot of things he wasn’t now. He was also surprised to find that it was dark. He looked at his wristwatch—12:00 but obviously not lunch time. Twelve hours had disappeared, but he was back at the trashy playground.
“Boom a rang. Must be an Australian detective. Ha! Return to the scene of the crime?” It was a very dark midnight. The overcast sky held little light, and a mist obstructed what light that was left. John Carter had a flashlight attached to his Service revolver, and he pulled the revolver out to use the light.
The thin beam drifted over the shrubs around the trashy playground. There was a rustling in that shrubbery. But there was always rustling in the shrubbery now. Since the Great Con, people had lost their homes. The financial collapse caused most people to run and hide wherever they could. Most hiding places were taken, even in the bushes. John Carter thought it was too late to demand the cause of the rustling to “Show yourself.”
He giggled. “Do I want to see it, really?” He was trying to decide which way was the best way to go when something big slammed into his side. The flashlight beam illuminated a curved tusk. There was an eye and a squeal. “Guess no hangover tomorrow.” John Carter had given up so many years before, so this surrender was easy. The sky was dark nothingness, and soon so was John Carter. It was easy.
#
Mirts was thorough. All her departmental evaluations said that in some paragraph. Being thorough meant she made things happen. That phrase always appeared somewhere too. Most of the department was not thorough and little got done, except for Mirts and a few others. Being thorough, she stood at the trashy playground in the morning light. A re-search of the crime scene was underway. “Anyone seen John Carter?”
One of the not-so-thorough detectives who came with Mirts laughed. “Mars most likely. John Carter of Mars. Ha! He told me that the bosses told him ‘not to come to work drunk.’ John Carter always followed direct orders, so when he drunk, he doesn’t work. Ha! A reasonable conclusion says I.”
Mirts didn’t think so but knew a contradiction would be of no benefit now. She just kept looking at the ground. “There must be some footprints, hoof prints, some kind of tracks.” She talked to herself in an attempt to make it so. She was looking on the north side of the vomit trail. There was more shrubbery in the area. If things wanted to hide, it was an obvious place. But everything looked overly disturbed. There was a randomness that nature usually didn’t do. “Intentionally disturbed? Covering your tracks? But what might those tracks be?”
“Detective Sergeant!” It was from the south side of the vomit trail. “Come. It is a must see.”
Mirts walked over to the “must see” still scanning the ground. Much of it was overly disturbed. “What must I…?” And then she saw it. A service revolver with flashlight attached, the light still on. “That looks like John Carter's.” His flashlight was not department issue. He had lost that one. This flashlight was pink and duct-taped on. “I don’t see any of his shoe prints, either.” She spun around. “Nothing. Too much of nothing.”
“Pretty smart animal. Clearing up evidence.” Another detective scratched her head.
“Except for the vomit.” The other detective added. “Did they check the vomit for beast DNA, like an orangutan?”
Mirts put her hand on her nose. “No predator type animal DNA in the remains. Don’t think they checked for Orangutan.”
“They are real smart.”
“And vegetarian.” Mirts sighed.
“So, what was that thing Alice in Wonderland said?” The other detective bent down to examine the revolver more closely.
“There is no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Mirts looked up into the trees. They looked overly disturbed too.
“No. The other one.”
“We are all mad there?” Mirts looked at the revolver and sighed. “There must be another fresh vomit trail around.”
“What do the barfers do with the cloths? Do they get digested while the flesh and bone don’t?” The other detective could still think.
“They must strip the victim and leave the clothes on the ground. I think the displaced folks take them.” Mirts had always thought that. She was never confused about the lack of clothes. “Why wasn’t the revolver taken too?”
“Cop stuff. The displaced are afraid of cop stuff. It brings bad luck.” The other detective knew why they thought that. He was partly responsible.
“So, his badge should be around here too.” She didn’t know John Carter well, but knowing he wasn’t alive made things more serious.
#
There had been rustling in the shrubbery, and Mirts had chased it. The brush shook in every direction. She had gotten separated from the other detectives, but persistent was another description of her. She ran. The displaced were harder to catch than she first thought. They just hide in the bushes, but they know the ground cover since they’d been hiding there since the Great Con.
Mirts finally cornered a guy in a drainage pipe. He was in his 50s, it looked like, and quivered in front of her. Her Service revolver pointed over his head. She didn’t want to hurt him. “I just want to know what you saw around here the last few nights.” She was out of breath.
He shook his head. “I don’t look. You shouldn’t either.” He was muttering and glancing around.
“Ok. Did you hear anything odd? Unusual.” She breathed heavily.
“Squealers. Odd but not unusual.” He pointed to the sky. “They have been coming in, down. Squeals, no lights.”
Mirts looked up. Tree branches did seem excessively broken around here. The sun was shining brightly on the ground. “Sounds coming from the sky?” He made a swooping motion with his hand. He glanced around even more, obviously cautious of what might be out there. “Oh. A vehicle? Flew in? Did you see it? Anyone get out of it?”
“Didn’t look. Never look.” He collapsed into a ball on the concrete of the drain. He might have been crying.
She felt bad, causing him more distress. The Alien trickery unnerved most every human on Earth in some way. His fear was understandable.
She shivered. Fear was contagious. Mirts walked away from him and the drainage ditch still holding her revolver in her hand but at her side. The Sun's rays should have felt good on her face, but they didn’t.
#
She’d sat there since sunset. It was the only reasonable thing to do—the cop standard, the stake-out. There was no reason for lightning to strike three times in a row, but life wasn’t predictable, especially now. And what else was there to do? She had her backup gun along with her service revolver. She had extra clips and extra batteries. She didn’t bring coffee. Coffee had too distinct a smell, and it made her pee. Her smartphone would be her agent of record. She had charged it and had a rapid charger with her just in case. She had an extra jacket—there were no clouds in the sky, so it could get cold. She had everything but a partner because overtime had been cut back. She was doing this on her own. She hadn’t told anyone because it may not get any results.
Most of the night she’d heard the faint voices. She’d heard the rustling in the shrubbery. She couldn’t see the displaced, but she could hear them. The only thing she was afraid of was disappointment. The night had been disappointing so far.
But then the rustling stopped along with the voices. There was a sound from above, faint but increasing. More a whine than a squeal. She held her smartphone in her left hand. Her right hand was on her Service revolver. She had the flashlight set to come on when she pulled the revolver from the holster. It was a leather holster, and it creaked as she pushed down on the revolver.
There it was above the clearing in the trees, the size of a golf cart. It sort of sounded like a golf cart, too, but it flew, and didn’t hesitate in landing. As it touched the ground, she pulled out her gun, and the light illuminated the flying golf cart interior. She recorded video. The occupants were monstrous. Long faces with curled tusks, eyes that reflected the light. They spoke words, but Mirts had never heard such a language.
Something blazed back at her. She dropped to the ground as the heat passed over her, and she fired multiple times. The squeal intensified. Another heat blasted at her, but she was rounding to the side. She grabbed her backup gun and fired more at the now-ascending golf cart. It shot off to the south. Only the flames in the shrubbery made noise.
“Third time's a charm.” Mirts had been in combat before. The thrill never lessened. She was shaking all over from the adrenaline rush. “Standard cop work. Pays off every time.” She played back her video. Yes, she saw correctly. “Not a disappointment at all. Ugly aliens. No wonder they never show them to the public.”
#
“Aliens? Fuckin' fuckers are in Borneo, wherever that is.” Mirts’ captain was the niece of the Mayor. Captain Twat who don’t know squat, they called her. She was appointed into the Captain’s chair because it would have been too dangerous for her to be anywhere else but behind a desk. “Nobody comes to Detroit unless they make a wrong turn.” The Captain giggled. No one else did.
“Squealers they have been called no matter where an incident occurs.” Mirts had taken charge of the Squealer cases because no one else wanted them. And no one cared if she did. “Better she than me” was heard all over the station.
“It may be the craft they arrive in,” she added.
“Monsters squeal. Animal monsters do,” the sole member of the station's cleaning staff added. He was standing by the trash bin listening.
Mirts pointed at him. “Good point. No animal DNA have been found in the vomited remains. No predators, wolf, bear, cat or dog.”
“Bigfoot?” The cleaning staff added.
“Don’t have a reference sample for Bigfoot.” Frank was there too.
“Also, no reference sample for alien.” Mirts pointed at the sky.
“If they have DNA.” Frank stated.
“What the hell?” The Captain looked more confused than she normally did. “You saying aliens are coming here for a snack?”
“And their eyes are bigger than their stomach?” added the cleaning staff.
The other detectives looked at the floor. They seemed to be inspecting the cleaning staff's effectiveness. It wasn’t very good.
“Who talks to the aliens?” The Captain scratched her head.
“You mean the Earth liaison, or who of us?” Mirts had taken charge again.
“Ah, both.” The Captain was happy to let Mirts do it.
“Space command I suspect and I will do the follow-ups.” Mirts could hear the sighs of relief around the room. One even came from the cleaning staff, which puzzled her enough that she ended the meeting.
They had found John Carter's badge. She was going to ask the Captain to give it to what was left of Carter’s family, but she decided at that moment to do it herself. She exhaled loudly and walked to her desk. Only the Captain hesitated to do the same.
#
The lieutenant at space command was startled by Detective Sergeant Mirts. Back when defense of the planet was administered from the stray space rock, the building’s lobby shone with the pride of the force. But then they showed up.
The Potential Intelligent Genus. A military witticism, meant to be a joke. “P.I.G. from space.” Like most jokes in the service, it was taken seriously by the upper levels. They never got any of the jokes.
Once the P.I.G. showed up, pride in the force was hard to come by—embarrassment was more common. And after the Great Con, most of the staff regarded the floor throughout the day. The building seemed to be ashamed, too. Its previous shine had dulled. Even the lighting had faded.
Mirts stood distinctly in the dull dark lobby. She was a strong determined woman, older but still attractive. She seemed to stand out from the dreary background. The Lieutenant had expected an old fat guy, maybe drunk or maybe not. Mirts, he hadn’t thought possible. She appeared to care about what she did. He could tell from the way she nodded to him.
“What could the police want with space command?” He thought it was an amusing comment for no specific reason.
“I put it in my request for interview application.” She spoke with a commanding voice that made the Lieutenant come to attention.
“Yes, Detective. Yes, you did. It is about the Pigs, ah, the aliens. You want information.”
“Pigs? You call the aliens pigs?” She glared at the Lieutenant.
“It is a joke name. It is unimportant.” The Lieutenant was feeling worse than he thought he would. “The, uh, their origin planet is classified for security reasons.”
“So, you don’t know it then.” Mirts had spoken bureaucratic longer than the Lieutenant had lived. She had gone into the Army right out of college. She knew military bureaucrats too well. “Have these pigs left Borneo? Do they make excursions to North America?”
The Lieutenant maintained his attention but wanted to faint. “There is a treaty. It restricts access to the rest of the Earth.”
“So, yes, there have been sorties out from the Borneo force dome.” She still maintained her glare at the Lieutenant. “Are they frequent? Are they tracked?”
The Lieutenant felt more a failure now than he did before he met her. “It…well…”
“Is there someone in authority I can talk with?” Mirts made it sound like an order.
The Lieutenant wished he could cry. The General will be very disappointed with him. The General usually was.
#
The General's office was large, but had suffered the fate of the lobby, having lost its shine. The General didn’t stand up when Mirts entered. She walked to the front of the desk and stood at attention. A General was a General. It was in her army training. She stood there until spoken to. “Squealers. You here about the Squealers.” The General seemed slightly intoxicated.
Mirts had not referred to the incidents as Squealers, but Space Command knew about the events. “Well, I was present at one of these landings. The vehicle they travel in squeals. I don’t know how it operates, but no rockets were involved. The aliens fired upon me, and I returned fire. To no result, unfortunately.”
“Fuckin' pigs.” The General muttered. “You ever lived with an adolescent? Fuckin' irrational at times.”
Mirts shook her head. “Career before family. I never saw a point in subjecting other people to that.”
“Control, yeah. Control is best, self-control.” The General spun his chair slowly around. He took a drink of something when the back of his chair was toward Mirts. He continued around to face her. “You want to know. I know. Everyone wants to know.”
“It, uh, yes. The Aliens. They are infiltrating North America.” Mirts was trained to show respect even to a drunken General. “I—”
“Not,” the General sighed.
“Civilians are being killed for no clear reason.”
“Adolescents. Don’t need reasons. Well, reasonable reasons.” The General seemed to think about turning around again but didn’t.
“These sorties?”
“Joy rides. Not military.” The urge to turn was stronger.
“Pranks? Alien pranks? People, humans are dying.”
“They, ah… The Pigs can’t eat Earth biologicals. Particularly, us humans are toxic to them.” His restrain evaporated, and he slowly turned.
Mirts waited. “You mean it makes them high? They eat humans to get high?”
The General nodded. “It gets too much for them and then they puke.” The General looked like he was approaching similar state.
“I presume you have spoken to, ah, their parents about restraint.” Mirts was furious. The Great Con was worse than anyone knew. Any civilian. Adolescent aliens. All she could think was, “Motherfuckers.”
The General nodded. “Many times.” The General sighed loudly. “Treaty. They come back with the Treaty thing.”
“So, the military can’t do anything.”
The General nodded. “Self-abuse is better than no abuse at all.” His face reddened, but he chuckled sadly.
“Can the vehicles they use be tracked by radar?”
The General nodded. “But they fly low. Smart little fuckers.”
“The force shield around Borneo?”
“Fuckin' force shield.”
“Do the golf carts have such protection devices?”
The General thought for a moment then shook his head. “Power requirements are too big. Ha! Golf carts. Yeah, fuckin' pigs in golf carts. Ha!”
“May I be dismissed, sir?”
“Sorry, Detective Sergeant.”
“The Great Con, sir. I know.”
The General stared at her and then said casually, “Dismissed.”
#
The confiscated property officer slept most of his shift. Mirts was the first departmental personnel to ask him a question in months. He had to turn on the computer to answer the question. Most shifts he didn’t bother turning it on. “Yeah, yeah. It’s here. Yeah, the other one too. So much of it. It’s in outside storage.”
Mirts nodded. “I need access to it.”
He was confused. “Why you asking me? Just go out there. Here are the grid numbers.” He slid her a piece of old and dusty paper.
Mirts was uncomfortable with his lack of proper procedure, but, of course, she was going to violate a number of them now, and a number of departmental protocols and federal laws. So, she didn’t say anything to him. “Very good, officer.”
#
Of the confiscated weapons in the yard, about half were inoperable. She chose and tested. She needed as many heavy weapons as she could find. “Junior needs to be taught a lesson,” she kept saying to herself. The Great Con had caused humans to lose confidence in themselves. “Superior intelligence? They can’t control their kids. Just like us. Ha!”
Mirts had been a cop a long time. Most of the perps were teens or twenty-somethings, and mostly male, too. “Peter Pans. Never want to grow up. Who does? But there has to be some adults around. Someone responsible.” She talked to herself as she was checking the weapons. She had always been thorough, always been responsible. She was going to be so again, now. “So, I start a war with the pigs. Earth is defeated now.”
#
“RPG. Point and pull. Simple.” Mirts handed the weapon to one of the uniform officers. “You see a golf cart in the sky. Point that end at it and pull this trigger right here.” She pointed with her right index finger. “Oh, and best if you run like hell the other way. No telling what might happen.”
The uniform officer nodded her head. The uniforms had more guts than the detectives. None of them showed up to this stake out. It was unpaid, of course. There had been so many nights now with nothing. Non-squealer events. But they would come back she knew. Her years on the force dealing with the adolescent-minded criminals told her they would be back. When they did, their ugly tusk-filled faces would get blasted. “Teach little Johnny a lesson to remember.”
“The alien is named Johnny?” The uniform officer appeared confused.
“Likely couldn't pronounce their names.” Mirts looked up into the night sky. “Johnny is a good a name as any.” Then she heard it. “Golf cart approacheth.” She grabbed an RPG and ran off to the side.
She had officers at the four corners of the forest clearing. She was a fifth point, a pentagram. The Squealer slowly approached. As it hovered over the clearing, the first RPG launched, followed almost immediately by two more. Then another. The uniforms followed orders and ran away.
Mirts waited for a result. Metal burned in the sky, but it didn’t move. It didn’t fly away or fall. It puzzled Mirts. Standing still wasn’t in her options.
There was only one thing to do. She pointed and pulled. Her rocket struck the burning ball dead center with an explosion more violent than the others. “Ok. A palpable hit.” As confirmation, the golf cart fell out of the sky and burned on the ground.
Mirts stood still. It might explode more. The uniform officers came back with appropriate caution, and the five of them watched the burning craft. There was no other sound than the crackle of the flames.
“Somebody will notice that,” one of the uniforms stated.
Mirts nodded. “Someone will, at that. That’s America. Teach the kids a lesson.”
#
And Mirts waited. She waited ready. She was braced for the attack from any side: the aliens; the UN; Space Command; the Mayor. She was thorough. She was prepared. She wasn’t afraid. She’d moved, and you don't move without knowing something will push back.
She went to work. She did her job. There were no further Squealer events reported. Nothing happened to her, not even a pay cut. Every day or so she returned to the site and saw a large chunk of melted metal still there. It had taken a week to cool enough to touch it, but no one did.
Nothing happened. And again, nothing happened. After another month of nothing happening Mirts ventured to say, but only to herself, “I guess they aren’t so dumb. They can learn a serious lesson.” But she had worked around criminals too long to believe it. “Wait and see” had been her mother’s advice to most uncertain situations. It seemed most appropriate now.
Meet the author:
Michael W. Clark is a former research biologist, a college professor turned writer with fifty short stories published. Most recently his stories have appeared in UC Berkeley’s Imaginirarium, Black Heart Magazine, Altered Reality, Infernal Ink, Piker Press, Frontier Tales, and Schlock. He also has stories in the anthologies Fat Zombies, Creature Stew, Gumshoe Mysteries, Future Visions Vol. 3, Nightmares, Delusions and Waking Dreams, and Devils We Know. January through March 2019, his sci-fi adventure Novella, The Last Dung Beetle appeared in www.serialpulp.com. He is the editor and content provider for the web site www.ahickshope.wordpress.com