Stranger Than Normal

By Graham Pryor

Some people claim that extra-terrestrials are already here among us, but how would we recognise them if they don’t look very different to ourselves? We are such a diverse people that, if anyone diverges from the norm – whatever that is – by what means would we identify them as stranger than normal?
Juv is an accidental guest of a government research installation, where his ‘alienness’ is for a time obscured by the nature of the clandestine undertakings being pursued. When a threat to the entire planet is revealed, he resorts to a very human response to avert disaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781008953086

Graham Pryor

Graham Pryor studied American Studies and English at the University of Hull. Subsequently, he pursued a career in information management, leaving his childhood home in Hythe, Kent, for the north-east of Scotland, where he has lived and worked for the past forty years. Cerberus is his fifteenth novel and, he says, his favourite.

Book preview

1

The typical representation of an alien, in comic books and Hollywood films, is of a markedly slender figure with large almond-shaped eyes, long and narrow limbs, and skin the colour either of a ripe aubergine or an alligator’s greenish-grey. A humanoid yes, but distinctly non-human, the eyes predominantly pupil, deep with wonder and dark with hidden threat, the teeth often pointed, the skull elongated, the head hairless and smooth. Large, often three-fingered, hands complete the image, hands that are waved sometimes with confusion, sometimes with menace. Often this alien is glimpsed only fleetingly as it darts into shadows or skulks outside an open window.

The alien that hit the Nevada dust only last month was nothing like that. He could easily have passed for a fair-haired all-American boy or been mistaken for a visiting Scandinavian.

McBride, the lead engineer for the recovery team, was unconvinced. He don’t have those googly eyes, he complained, he don’t look different to you or me. He challenged his crew: And above all, he ain’t hurt.

Just some kid gotten caught where he ought not to be, ventured Willis, the electrical guru. Up from one of them desert festivals, I guess. Damned perimeter fence must be down again.

Only, what kid from around here would drive something as exotic as the machine they’d helped him crawl from just the day before? Just a kid in his teens, wearing one of those skintight jumpsuits underneath a skimpy sleeveless gilet, decorated all over with colourful symbols and motifs that would have meaning only for his peers. It fitted him so closely they could see the ripples of muscle in his torso, the tick of a pulse in his arm.

Tattoos, I reckon, said McBride. Someone’s done a good job on him, you’d think it was a tunic but it ain’t. He exhaled through his teeth. They’re all at it these days; disfigurement I call it.

A helmet had lain in the young man’s lap, wires loosely hanging from the rim, with speakers built in.

Now, he was expecting a rough ride. Willis picked up the helmet he’d recovered and examined the inside, noticing the unusual speaker arrangement, now silent. Listening to something tasty, no doubt, took his eyes off the road I’d guess. Crazy kid.

No larger than a standard pick-up, the car they’d pulled him from was a bright bronze-coloured wreck, its shiny surface torn and crumpled, from the nose that had lodged in the sandbank to halfway down its sleek wing on the driver’s side. The gullwing door was lifted high over the roof and twisted at an awkward angle, exposing the driver’s forward compartment and the lively fascia that would have supported the steering wheel in a conventional vehicle. Inside, where there was little visible damage, the recovery team was intrigued to find a cocoon of soft furnishing more suited to the comfort of a lounge bar in a private club than a road-going automobile. From the moulded seat to the door panel and then to the roof, the padding was sumptuous and entire. It was more like an isolation cell in a lunatic asylum than the cabin of a bog-standard sedan, even were that sedan to be recognisable as a luxury vehicle – which it wasn’t.

Must be one of those European imports, concluded Willis. Never seen anything like it before. But they couldn’t find a badge anywhere that might identify its source. There was no sign of a marque on either the bodywork or the dashboard.

Wonder who his rich daddy is, mused Willis. He’s clearly not from around these parts.

Whilst the front of the vehicle was firmly lodged in the sandbank, a solid ridge that ran the length of the highway, the rest of the vehicle protruded from the unyielding dirt with its rear end a good two meters higher than its buried nose; it was materially intact and shone in the sun’s unforgiving desert glare with an ironic flawlessness. The gleam from the unmarked flank of the car – which made them screw up their eyes, it was like looking into the sun – together with the extraordinarily crafted finish, and the incongruous juxtaposition of car and ridge in which it was embedded, all somehow conspired to mask the men’s perception of their find. So it was that no-one had remarked the absence of rear wheels, despite the back end being raised above eye-level, and no-one thought to examine the multiple-orificed exhaust cone or the unusual arrangement of small vanes that adorned the trunk. All eyes were on the driver, the cabin and the joystick that seemed to take the place of a steering wheel.

Well, pimp my ride, one of the team exclaimed. This kid sure has customised his motor.

The dashboard was a single screen that stretched the width of the cabin, with pictorial images displaying in yellows and blues instead of the usual dials and digital read-outs. A single lamp in florescent green flashed at its centre and, as it lit up, the other crowding images momentarily disappeared, only to reemerge when the green light dissolved.

I’d say that was some kind of warning, said McBride, only it’s the wrong colour for a warning.

They could find no obvious on/off button or an ignition key and had to leave the display to run down of its own accord. All was silent and there seemed little danger of the engine still being active. How long the battery would last, well who cared out here in the desert? Were the car to explode it wouldn’t matter.

Even without the risk of fire the structure of the internal panels was enough to make the men feel creepy. It was like the inside of a wasp’s nest, almost a honeycomb, a geometric array of interlocking hexagons that covered every aspect of the padded surface, the hexagon walls wafer thin and raised up only an inch or so above the leather-like shell; they resembled the kinds of subtle aquatic algae that colonise an underwater reef. As the men eased the driver out of his seat the hexagons made a sucking noise and tightened into the shape of his torso that he left behind.

Let’s get this fella outta here before there’s a fire or something, had snapped McBride. I wouldn’t bank on one of these foreign motors being impact safe. Might go at any time.

Initial word that an alien spacecraft had crash-landed a mile north of the base was now treated with a grin. Everyone was more concerned with extricating the driver without exacerbating his injuries and with getting themselves away before the fear of a fire turned into reality. This was no spacecraft: there were no wings, no spiky aerials, no airlock portals. It was an odd vehicle though, that they all agreed, but examination of the car had been cursory, their main purpose was to retrieve the driver, although Willis took a dozen shots on his camera – just for the record, he explained, and Security will want to know, that’s for sure.

And McBride was correct about the man’s eyes. Although they weren’t ‘googly’ they were unusual. He’d blinked as they loaded him into the back of their jeep. He was barely awake.

He’s conscious, the third member of their team had observed, noting the unusual violet iris as the man’s eyes flicked open.

Hey, Buddy, McBride spoke closely to his face. Gotta name? And when there’d come no answer, not even a groan: Just hang on in there, we got you, ok?

When they returned, early the next morning, with a flatbed low loader, the green light at the centre of the dashboard was still blinking. The car, on the other hand, had neither exploded nor burst into flames whilst they were away. With some relief, the three men jostled to be the first over the door sill, Jackson the auto mechanic immediately pointing to the green light and remarking to himself Now, what’s that telling us?

Fuck knows. McBride was feeling edgy after a night’s drinking.

Some kind of alert, said Jackson, the third member of their team.

Wrong colour. I already said, countered McBride, testily. Red’s for danger, not green.

There followed one of those unnecessary arguments that men seem to relish, a heated debate about trivia being the stuff of workplace camaraderie. But this wasn’t exactly their workplace and the purpose of the flashing light, although they didn’t realise it, was not trivial.

Jackson had grown up on the coast and knew his way around the rules and regulations for coastal shipping. Green on a harbour wall is used to mark channels and hazards ahead. So maybe this is…

What this ain’t, barked McBride, is anywhere close to a harbour. We’re over one hundred miles from the coast, you asshole.

Well, retorted Jackson, holding up his index finger, that may be just so, but what I can hear are sounds close to being a surf breaking.

They stopped their squabble and listened with disbelief. The noise that had caught Jackson’s attention was more like the sound of a large kettle boiling, a low rumble and the turbulent generation of steam in an enclosed container. Then they felt it, a knocking somewhere in the buried hull, it leant the machine a sense of being animated, alive.

Sounds as if it’s got chronic indigestion, observed Willis. Whatever drives this thing is still live, so we need to be careful.

No-one would be ready yet to admit it, but his choice of words marked a change in the three men’s understanding of what they had been sent to retrieve. It resembled a car, with a three-box section, it had crashed by the side of the highway, and it had left skid marks across the pale tarmac. But now it began to feel otherwise. Once they had winched it free from the sandbank and up onto a ramp, their initial error became plain to see.

Jeez! exclaimed Willis, he must have been going at a fair lick – look, he’s lost his wheels. Where’s his wheels gone? He scanned the desert.

Never had wheels, this jalopy, McBride looked thoughtful. Fuck, how come we didn’t..? See: no axle, no differential, nothing. We got something a bit special here boys. I just can’t believe we didn’t notice this shit yesterday.

Now it was free of the sandbank they could see other features that were distinctly unusual. Instead of a standard windscreen the cabin was fronted by a flush curve of glass, looking a little like the gun turret of a World War II Flying Fortress. The length of what they had expected to call the car’s hood was peppered with lights in a regular pattern, none of which were illuminated, and where they had presumed to find a conventional auto’s undercarriage was just a line of flaps that looked immovable and without obvious purpose.

The nose of the vehicle they’d retrieved from the dirt was, to their great surprise, undamaged. It shone in the morning sunlight as if it had been freshly polished, a deceptive bronze mirror that, if you looked closely enough, was not bronze at all but purplish, or was that green? It was hard to say in the shifting light. The sandbank, on the other hand, bore the mark of a powerful impact, the cavity left in the dirt and rock solid and smooth where it had been compressed. There was just a slight trickle of sand as the vehicle finally broke free and was winched away.

At that precise moment the rumbling that they’d heard in the belly of the machine abruptly ceased and an array of lamps in the cockpit flashed noiselessly. The green light went off and all was quiet.

I guess we killed it, laughed Jackson nervously, pulling it free. All three of them tensed; was this the signal for something to happen, an explosion or something else that would prove hazardous?

But all remained silent. The only change was in the attitude of the men toward this strange machine. This had gone from being the recovery of a crashed motor car to the discovery of something they had yet to define. Some kind of vehicle that could have been a plane instead but had no wings. Something Jackson felt he had to