Alien Hunter: Underworld by Whitley Strieber Read Free Book Online

aliens had been revealed to him. This was not a matter of a few alien criminals filtering through to Earth from a planet that was basically good. Something was terribly wrong on Aeon.
    So far, everything that came from Aeon had been insane except Oltisis, and maybe the whole damn place was one big madhouse. He shook his head, then got the quilt off the bed and threw it over the poor couple.
    He left the house and went and got his car. Carefully, not using lights, he drove it up to the front porch, parking it as close as he could. He could carry 150 pounds, but the two bodies, melted together as they were, had to weigh 300, maybe more.
    Maybe this wasn’t just an act of insanity. Maybe it was some sort of statement about the sins of the lovers, mad and ugly and vile, but possibly founded in some distorted moral sense. Eve’s bedding her lover the night after her husband died wasn’t pretty, but it sure as hell didn’t deserve this. It was also a warning, no question, that was directed at Flynn. It was meant to terrify and to say, Yes, you can kill us, but we have powers beyond anything you can imagine.
    He returned to the house, registered the stillness of the living room, then went back upstairs.
    As his head rose above the level of the second-story floor, he stopped.
    What in hell?
    It couldn’t be.
    Cautiously, he mounted another step. No, the thing was gone.
    He drew his gun. With two quick strides, he went to the top of the stairs. He turned—and lying there in the bed were the two people. He ran to them, and saw by their darkly open eyes that they were in the profound state of unconsciousness that the aliens used to render their victims helpless.
    With a gentle hand, he drew the quilt up over the naked forms.
    It was hard to believe that the thing he had seen was never really there. But, like the spider, it had been an illusion on a whole new level, perhaps generated out of desperation.
    But they’d all been dead when he found the melted bodies. Or had they? Was there another creature?
    He returned to the car and got his forensic pack. The two sleepers would be like that for hours—insensible, impossible to awaken—so he didn’t need to worry about them as he returned to his original task, which was to now strip the place of every trace of what had happened.
    He opened the kit, drawing out the small, powerful flashlight, the brushes, and the bags. He set to work, moving methodically, meticulously catching every speck of strange flesh here and throughout the house.
    Once outside, he gathered the remains of the aliens. They stank of hot plastic and rotten meat, and looked like huge, broken insects.
    First, he put on his thick rubber gloves, then carefully lifted the first body, bunching the claws up into a fist so they wouldn’t slice into him.
    There was a severed head, which he lifted quickly, choking back his disgust, and thrust into one of the bags. Everything in him hated this part, but he was nevertheless extremely careful.
    He thrust the last of the remains into one of the reinforced bags, then sealed them with CLASSIFIED MATERIALS tags. He dumped them into the trunk.
    A fog was rising, turning the trees into ghosts.
    The sky overhead, which had been filled with stars, was now as black as the interior of a cave. Or no, that wasn’t quite right, was it? The sky didn’t look dark; it looked empty. Could clouds have come in so high that they weren’t reflective, or was it that there was too little local ground light?
    He considered this, then looked away. Of course it was clouds—what else could it be?
    As he got in the tired FBI executive vehicle he’d been given, the sheer exertion of the night overcame him. A headache came on. Closing his eyes, he sat back. The pain radiated down from the top of his head, involving his eye sockets, his temples, and his neck.
    Stress fatigue. He pressed his fists into his eyes, and slowly, it passed.
    Feeling a little