Touched by an Alien

Table of Contents

 

 

I WENT TO THE BOX AND LOOKED IN.

It was a man, dead, as far as I could tell. At least, I hoped so. He had long, sharp claws where his fingers and toes should have been, and his teeth were long and jagged and looked razor sharp. His expression was a contortion of fury and hatred.

“He looks like the man I killed. Right before I killed him, I mean.”

“They all look like that,” Martini said quietly.

“What are they? And don’t say mutants,” I added.

“Superbeings is what we call them,” White replied. “Roswell’s history is somewhat true. Aliens did crash-land here in the late nineteen-forties. However, when we opened the ship, the aliens were all dead. Our scientists studied them, of course. Different body structures, but they were more like humans than not. There were what we took to be books with them, and those were in a language so different from ours that it took decades to decipher.”

“What did the books say?” I asked, wanting to stop looking at the dead superbeing in front of me and not being able to.

“Turned out the aliens were on a mission of mercy,” White said. “They weren’t the only ones sent out, just the only ones sent to Earth. Their planet had been invaded by a parasitic race. They’d learned how to fight against the parasites, but they knew this would only make other planets targets. So they sent emissaries out to warn the other populated planets of the threat.”

“What do the parasites do?”

“Guess,” Martini said softly.

When White didn’t counter that, I gave what I was in some way hoping was the wrong answer. “The parasite attaches to someone and alters them into a superbeing, capable of great destruction. They’re attracted to rage and fear, or whatever pheromones are given off from those emotions. That’s how they pick their new host.”

DAW Books Presents GINI KOCH’s
Alien
Novels:

 

TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN

 

ALIEN TANGO

(
Available December 2010
)

Copyright © 2010 by Jeanne Cook.

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

DAW Book Collectors No. 1506.

 

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

 

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-18632-9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing, April 2010

They say writing is a solitary pursuit, but not the way I do it. Unsurprisingly, therefore, I have a lot of people I want to thank for a variety of reasons.

First off, a huge thank you to my agent, Cherry Weiner, for taking me on even though she had a full list, and for also being the best agent, and friend, any writer could hope to have.

To Sheila Gilbert, my awesome editor, thanks so much for taking a chance on a new author and making the entire publishing and editing process a joy—I’m spoiled by having the best the first time out of the gate.

Special thanks to Lisa Dovichi, critique partner extraordinaire, BBFF and barometer. Could not, literally, have done it without you.

And now, the really long roll call. Thanks to: Phyllis, for saying “of course you can write” way back when and never taking it back; Mary, for being the best and most dedicated beta reader in the world, and Sal, for not complaining about the reams of paper used in the pursuit of this dream; Kay, for always believing in me, even those few times when I didn’t; all the girls (and guys) at Innerlooks Salon, for biweekly support and cheerleading; Dixie, for pushing for me to “write funny” for years; Pauline, for always being excited about my writing career and getting everyone around her excited about it, too; Kenne, Joe, Amy, James, Michelle, Keith, and Peggy, for always making even my most minor literary accomplishments sound like I was taking the world by storm; Willie, for speed beta reading and the English Professor eye; Mom, Dad, and Danny for being excited and supportive before they even understood that writing was going to consume my life; Jeanne, Michelle, Melba, Carol, Barbara, Cathy, and Marlene for being there when I had to scream about real life and then reminding me that writing was my real life; all the wonderful women and brave men in Desert Rose—you set a fabulous example of success and made it easy to duplicate; Danielle, Sean and Hilary, for long-distance European atta girls; Josh, partner in crime; Nick, for emotional support and soul cleansing at any time of day, from any and every part of the world; the Big Dawg Pack, for moral as well as writing support; Absolute Write Water Cooler, for education, support and motivation; Brittany, Kathie, Kathy, Norma, Ellen, Evelyn, Amy, Suzella, Jo, Carole, Mike, Christine, Akiko, John, Jill, Miranda, John, Mike, Michelle, Tom, Talene, and everyone else who helped along the way—you know who you are.

Most importantly, love and thanks to my most demanding critics: Veronica, for being supportive, excited, helpful and understanding of her mother’s obsession; and Steve, for being the most patient, supportive and understanding husband any writer could hope for, especially after I burned out the fifth PC in a row and all you said was, “Let’s go get you a better one.”

WHAT GETS ME IS THAT IN ALL THE COMIC BOOKS
and movies and even novels, whenever someone gets superpowers, there’s at least an eighty percent likelihood they’ll use said powers for good.

It’s always some man or woman of science looking for a cure for the world’s ills who gets hit with the gamma rays, or an outcast kid who happens to have a wise oldster around to show him the right ropes as soon as the mutation hits. The few bad guys who turn superpowered always have some fatal flaw that renders them easy pickings for the good guys, who also manage to outnumber the baddies every time it matters.

In real life, of course, it never works that way. At all.

In real life, there are no superheroes.

Of course, this doesn’t mean there are no superpowered beings.

But never fear—I’m on it.

 

Yeah, it doesn’t sound all that comforting to me, either.

MY FIRST SUPERBEING WAS AN ACCIDENT
. Literally and figuratively.

I was walking from the courthouse to the parking garage. Jury duty was over, I’d been released early, right after the lunch break, so I was free to go back to work and try to catch up on my missed half a day.

The parking garage was across the street, so I had to wait for the light. As I stood there hoping I wouldn’t sunburn, I witnessed a small fender bender. One slow-moving car rear-ended another right in front of the courthouse, about fifty feet away from me.

The drivers got out—man from the front car, woman from the rear—and he started yelling at her immediately. At first I figured he was raging because he’d been hit and the start of summer in Arizona always makes everyone here a little crazy, but I could hear him, and it dawned on me that this was his wife.