Whistleblower: a World Turned Upside Down: Whistleblower Series, #1

By David Smith

'Whistleblower' is a near future Scifi / Horror detective story. 

Earth is suddenly blighted by kids that kill, but they’re just a symptom of something much more sinister. Jake Redwood is a lowly cop whose job it is to catch them. When he meets a beautiful stranger, who tells him why they’re really here, it’s the start of a very bad week for Jake.

He discovers that a race of humanlike aliens, intent on exploiting the Earth’s resources, are planning to wipe out the human species. Some have worked their way into positions of power across the globe. When their leader, Krillik, discovers what Jake knows, it’s a white-knuckle race to stay alive and save mankind from a very nasty end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Smith
• Release date: Jun 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781386038832

Book preview

DAVID SMITH

Earth is suddenly blighted with kids that kill.

Jake Redwood is a cop whose job it is to catch them.

When he meets a beautiful stranger who tells him why

they’re really here it’s the start of a very bad week for Jake.

WHISTLEBLOWER

A white knuckle race to save mankind from a very nasty end.

This novel is entirely fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent.

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This book is my ninth. Like the last one and all the others before it’s dedicated to Ally, my wonderful wife and my best friend.

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The author would welcome any feedback about this book.

If you would like to contact the author with any feedback or comments please e-mail:

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Contents:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Whistleblower

Part One

Everyone has to earn their keep in our town. Some tend gardens, some cook, some run stores, some work on mechanical things. The clever ones teach or preach. My name’s Jake Redwood, Red to my buddies. My job’s investigating. I work for SOS, Security Of Species. It’s a shitty job.

I’m the one that has to look deep into a child’s eyes, the anxious parents watching, and ask all the questions, little tricky questions designed to expose the tiny cracks. It’s my job to find those cracks then split them wide open.

‘Look at the circle, right at the dot in the middle.’

‘Okay,’ the kid’ll say, looking scared, wary.

‘Keep looking at the dot in the middle. Now, keeping your focus on the dot, what colour is the disc to the right of the circle?’

‘Blue, I think,’ the kid might say, ‘…could be green. Is it green?’

I’ll tick a box and move on to the next question,

‘Now the one on the left.’

I ask, but I know already the thing’s an implant. Peripheral colour blindness is their one flaw, at least the only one we’ve found so far we can use to weed them out.

It’s my job to tell the parents to wait outside a mo while I complete the tests. They’ll know then, the clever ones. They’ll know they’ll never see little Johnny, Mary-Jane, or whatever the little fucker’s called again. The clever ones pretend, get up and walk out calmly.

‘See you in a few minutes honey, we’ll grab a burger on the way home.’

Every muscle, every fibre of their body is screaming ‘gotta protect my child,’ but that’d only get them the same medicine as awaits the implant.

The stupid ones start screaming and wailing, clinging on to the furniture in the room, clawing at my face with their nails if they can get near.

‘Oh, please don’t take little Johnny away from us, please, please!’

Those I’ll ask a few questions later. When were you aware you’d been implanted? How old is the little fucker really? A month? A year? How many kills is it responsible for?

They’ll know, of course. The clever ones come clean, play the victim. They’ll go to jail. The dumb ones lie. I’ll catch ‘em out. They’ll get the death sentence.

Of course they know how many kills. Implants are like cats. They bring their victims’ head home if they can cut it off in time. Leave it lying around like a trophy, its face all chewed off. I’ll send a team over to the folks’ house. We’ll find heads buried somewhere, or stashed in the basement. The dead are real people, not like implants. We’ll DNA test, find out who the poor bastards were, then tell the kin. That’s the really hard part of this job.

The thing about implants that had us fooled for years is that, because they look and behave just like kids, society is geared up to treat them the same. If some sicko cuts the head off an old lady and gnaws her face away you stick him in an electric chair and fry him, easy-peasy. But if an eight year old girl gets caught red handed doing it, well, that’s a tough one. Y’see, everything in our society, every sinew in our bodies screams no!

But if you stick one of these little fuckers in a juvenile detention centre the bodies soon start piling up. No, you gotta fry ‘em just like you would a grown up.

We haven’t figured out where the implants come from yet. Most popular theory is aliens. But there’s plenty think they’re man made, a virus, a weapon made by white supremacists or Islamic extremists. Hell, there’s even a theory that the Chinese started it all to reduce their population. That’s got legs, seeing as it all started in China and they’ve lost the most folks so far. Their implants decimated nearly half their population before the Chinese started killing all their kids indiscriminately. It was only when the Russians came up with the colour blindness tests that they eased off otherwise there’d be nobody in their country left alive under ten years old.

We got hit pretty bad here for the first few years. The Chinese kept a tight lid on their problems so we hadn’t a clue what was going on when it started here. It began quietly enough, just a noticeable increase in unsolved homicides. The murders all followed the same pattern, random victim, always after dark, hideous head trauma to the victim. Decapitated bodies were found in public places, dumped in folk’s gardens or on their front porches, just left there, no attempt to hide ‘em. The cops thought it was a serial killer, but then as the unsolved cases started piling up across the country, the theory switched to it being a cult. The deaths were some sort of ritualistic killings.

Then Bam! Bodies were all over the place, every state, every town, virtually every street. No one had a clue what the fuck was going on. Then Mickey Durant happened. A sweet little kid, nine years old, mamma’s pride and joy, butter wouldn’t melt, caught red-handed sucking the eyes out of his neighbour’s skull. The kid took ten Taser hits to stop him, then eight cops to pin him down. The little fucker had super-human strength and fought like the devil. They had to make a special cell to hold the thing in, snapped the bars clean through the one in the Sheriff’s office.

I joined the SOS because of my wife. I was lucky. I was in the army, so on active duty when she caught the implant. Those things affect your brain as soon as they take hold in the host’s womb. It affects everyone in the family, God knows how. The scientists think its some kind of pheromone the host gives out when impregnated. If you’re connected to it you’d lie, cheat even kill for its survival. I came home on a weekend’s furlough; she was the equivalent of eight months gone. I’d been away three weeks.

It was obvious she’d picked up an implant so I got out of the house straight away and called it in to the SOS. Broke my heart, but she was as good as dead having that thing inside her. If I’d have stuck around I’d be right alongside her, lying through my teeth, telling everybody little Johnny was a treasure and wouldn’t hurt a fly. As it was the SOS took her to one of their hospitals. The thing came out a couple of days later, nine pound girl. That was the form it took anyway. My wife died of heartbreak a few weeks after they killed it. It didn’t help we’d been trying for years to have a kid, but it wasn’t to be. So, losing this, even though it was an implant, was too much for her.

You’ve got about a month before they reach killing age. By then they look about six or seven. It’s best to kill ‘em before they get to that stage. The oldest one ever caught was tracked at eight months old but looked just like a twelve year old. We think they die around that age. No one knows for sure but we haven’t seen any teenage versions of the suckers yet, thank God.

No one knows for sure why they even exist. They’re not trying to take us over, or even kill us all off. They just appeared, a phenomenon, an unpleasantness of life, like wasps or fire ants. It’s not my job to understand the philosophy, morality, or jack shit about them. I just have to flush ‘em and fry ‘em, pick up my pay check and hope one of the little fuckers doesn’t turn up on my front porch one night. 

*****

So I’m eating breakfast on my day off and I get a call. I’m needed at the Sheriff’s office in Polk, like urgent. I pour my unfinished coffee into a thermos and head over. The Deputy meets me at the door.

‘We got a real live one in there, Red,’ he says, ‘…asked for you special.’

I’m stumped. Why would an implant ask for me by name? The guy takes me to the cube in the basement, the six sided cage made with Titanium bars. There’s a chair in the middle. Sitting on it is a teenager, about fifteen, looks the part, shaggy hair and acne, a sneer like everyone’s dumb but him.

‘Caught him chewing on old Pop Jefferson in his gun shop last night. Biggest fucker I ever saw. Had to use one of the new Hi-V Tasers to take him down. Took near on all of us in the building to get him in there.’

‘Did he give his name?’

‘Nope. Only thing he’s said so far is he wants to speak to you.’

‘Mentioned me by my name, you said.’

‘Yep. Not Red like we call you, he asked specifically to speak to Jake Redwood.’

I look him up and down. He smiles, like I’m his Dad or a long lost friend. I hate what I see. It’s hate at first sight.

‘Fry him. I’ll do the paperwork upstairs.’

 I turn and start for the door. He leaps at the bars like a chimpanzee, suddenly animated, almost desperate.

‘Hey, hold up Jake. We need to talk.’

I ignore the little fucker and keep on walking.

‘Wait up!’

He’s almost screaming. I keep walking.

‘If we don’t talk you’ll never know. I can tell you things, things about the implants. I want to be on your team, Jake.’

My hand is on the door when he says something that stops me in my tracks.

‘The implants, they’re a fuck up. They’re just a symptom of what’s going on, not the cause. We’re what you need to be worried about. You can’t blow our cover with your dumb-ass colour test. Let me live and I’ll tell you what’s really going on.’

I stop, turn, and walk to within a yard from the cage, as near eyeball to eyeball as I think is safe.

‘Go on,’ I say, doing my best to stare into whatever passes as its soul.

‘…just you and me Jake,’ it says, nodding at the Deputy.

‘Give us a minute,’ I say.

The Dep shakes his head and leaves the room muttering to himself, ‘Hope you know what you’re doing Red.’

When the door closes I pull over a chair to a safe distance and sit looking the thing up and down.

‘Go on.’

It relaxes when we’re alone, sits down facing me, ready for a nice cosy chin-wag.

‘I want to live,’ it says after a few moments of silence, ‘just as much as those kids, those poor little suckers you sentence to death.’

‘They’re not kids.’

‘Are you sure?’ it says, smirking, ‘…you’ve never scorched a real kid?’

‘There have been mistakes.’

There’s no point in lying. Our test is a blunt instrument. About one in twenty that fails the test is human.’

‘Breaks your heart, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s a price we have to pay.’

‘You’re right there bro, but those implants are something else, eh? They sure had you humans fooled for years. I know what they are, and I can tell you how to catch them easy if you let me live.’

I look at it impassively, waiting for it to spill more.

‘…they’re just Zygs, space dust, should’ve been harmless, but now, if a female breathes one in. Kapow! They got a host. You know the story from there. But what you don’t know…’ It checks itself, ‘Oh, there’s so much you don’t know.’

‘So they are aliens,’ I say.

‘Yeah, if you like. They certainly don’t see in the same spectrum humans do, but you’ll know that from your stone-age tests.’

‘Why do they kill?’

‘Come on…give me an amnesty and I’ll tell you.’

‘You’re wasting my fucking time,’ I say, scraping back my chair.

‘Really? I’ll tell you this to whet your appetite. They kill because they need certain enzymes and chemicals. Their bodies can’t make ‘em. Do you want to know why they attack the face? To eat the tongue, retinas and olfactory bulb. They couldn’t give a fuck about the rest of the carcass. You check the autopsies. Sure, they do a lot of damage but at the end of the day what’s always missing?  Go on. Check it out.’

It takes out a pen from its pocket and writes on the palm of its hand. When it’s finished it holds it’s hand up to me. It’s written a name and a telephone number.

I walk back and sit down again.

‘Ring this number. You need to compare notes. You two are made for each other,’ it says enigmatically, ‘We’ve been watching you ever since you ratted on your wife. The Zyg that infected your old lady would have drenched you with pheromones, but you still turned her in. Their defence cloud never worked on you. You’re unique.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘That’s another story for after I get my amnesty. I don’t expect your side to let me go. I’m not dumb. But I don’t want to die. Like I said, you let me live and I’ll help you along.’

‘You’re a killer.’

‘What? Jefferson? He wasn’t human, he was one of us. I chewed his face so you’d think he’d been attacked by a Zyg. Just bad luck getting caught.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘Only the same as you killed all those innocent little children you fry just because they can’t distinguish colours like you think they should.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘By your definition, yes, but I did it to save human lives, thousands of them.’

‘Bullshit.’ I scrape my chair back again and stand to leave.

‘Check his little ol’ gun shop. Nice Mom and Pop business. It’s a front. He sells custom made shells, yeah? Packs ‘em himself. He’s got canisters full of Zyg sperm hidden in the basement marked as gunpowder. You wouldn’t know what it was. Looks and acts like shell powder. He’s been spraying it around the town for months. There’s a guy like him in every town now. You’ll never stop ‘em unless you let me help. Even if you slaughter every kid under twelve, these guys are pumping out the Zyg sperm making more.’

It has my attention.

‘So that’s how it’s done, an aerosol. That’s how the women get contaminated.’

‘Zyg sperm can only last a few days in air. They have to keep putting it out there. But don’t get hung up on the Zygs. They’re a symptom, a side issue, like getting obsessed with the bullets when it’s the bastard firing the gun that’s the real problem.’

‘Go on.’

‘Amnesty?’

‘I’ll make a call.’

*****

I’m upstairs in the office. I ring the number the kid gave me. On the end of the phone is a woman, Jane Krieff. She’s a statistician. Claims no one will listen to her, believe her analysis. She tells me there’s one common factor in all the killings. I say the removal of the tongue, retinas and olfactory bulb. It’s like a weight lifted off her shoulders. I tell her about the thing in the cage. She’s practically on her way over before I finish. I don’t want to talk to the thing downstairs till I’ve spoken to Jane, so I’m on my third coffee when she arrives.

Jane Krieff, thirties, lean, fit, a figure to die for, plus brains, the full package. I find a quiet room and we talk. She’s a good listener. When we’re finished I make another call to the chief to talk options on the thing downstairs.

He tells me, ‘Get what you can out of it then burn it.’ Seems like a good plan to me. We go down to the cell.

‘Hello Jane,’ says the kid as soon as she walks in.

‘Tommy?’ She’s shocked. I can see her shaking.

‘You know this?’

‘He’s my neighbour’s kid. He cleans my yard.’

‘Y’see Jake? You two are special. Jane here is immune to Zygs, just like you. I sprayed her rooms with sperm a dozen times but no takers. Nothing personal Jane, but you were getting too close to us.’

‘Who exactly is us?’ I ask.

‘That would be telling…which I’m happy to do after we agree an amnesty.’

‘I’ve spoken to the top man. He’s prepared to let you live,’ I lie, ‘but we’ve gotta know a lot more before he’ll make it official.’

It looks at me as if I’m as stupid as I think it is.

‘Okay,’ it says, ‘So how about I prove my worth? Let’s take a little trip, after which we’ll make our deal.’

I don’t know how the hell it happens but suddenly we’re no longer in the basement at the Sheriff’s office. We’re standing in a dimly lit cellar, a single bulb above us. The three of us are in a row, me, Jane and the kid, like we’d just been holding hands.

‘Pull the fly sheet off,’ says the kid. He’s pointing at a tarpaulin covering something in the corner of the room. I recognise where we are. It’s Pop Jefferson’s basement. I walk over to the tarp, too dumbstruck by what has happened to resist. I tug it off. Underneath there are six canisters marked ‘Danger - Highly Explosive.’ Next to them is an aerosol sprayer, a pressure fogging back pack. Then just as suddenly we’re right back where we were, in the Sheriff’s basement, the kid still in the cage. It looks wiped but has a big grin stuck to its face.

‘Did you like that?’ it says, panting, ‘Are you ready to deal?’

*****

I don’t know how the little sucker did it. An hour later when Jane and I really search Pop Jefferson’s cellar we find the tarpaulin dragged onto the floor just like it was in the vision, the six canisters, and the fogger, all where we’d seen them. The air feels the same, damp, stale, clammy-cold, the single bulb above us.

Had we actually been transported? If we had then the little bastard could get out of that cage any time it wanted to. So why all this crap about an amnesty and us not killing it? Was that just to get our attention? Or, is it just a way to get Jane and me together, two unique specimens immune to their Zygs? Is it studying us? But if it killed Pop Jefferson to stop him spreading the Zygs, then does it genuinely want to work with us?

Back at the sheriff’s office I check the CCTV footage for the cage. It’s mysteriously blank, just shows static for the time we were at Pop Jefferson’s.

‘Told you,’ says the kid as we walk back into the room, so sure we’d seen what it wanted to show us.

‘D’you want something to eat?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ says the kid, ‘Cheeseburger and a coke.’

While we’re waiting for the food I say, ‘Here’s the deal. You never leave this cage unless in Graphene cuffs and leg irons. You work with us for three months. If things work out we’ll permanently stay execution, all official.’

‘Yeah,’ says the kid, hardly giving it any thought, ‘I’ll go for that. Get me a lawyer and get it signed and sealed.’

I nod.

Half an hour later and it’s all done. The kid seems happy enough, even though it probably knows the amnesty isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The thing eats its meal, just like a human kid would, chomp, chew, sip.

‘Oh, by the way,’ says the kid, real casual, ‘they’ll know I’ve flipped by now. Expect a raid.’

‘What?’

‘Get some guns, you’ll need ‘em.’

It’s probably talking crap but I don’t dare take the risk. I call up the chief and he promises to send a squad over pronto, witness protection guys. When the thing in the cage is reassured that men are on their way he starts to talk.

‘Why are the implants so hard to