Invasion Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter Outline

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Item in the News

  Ten

  Eleven

  Item in the News

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Item in the News

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Item in the News

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Item in the News

  Twenty-Six

  Item in the News

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Item in the News

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Item in the News

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Item in the News

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Item in the News

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Item in the News

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Item in the News

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Item in the News

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Item in the News

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Note on Book Two

  Acknowledgments

  Invasion

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785651755

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785651762

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: September 2016

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2016 by George Cockcroft. 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 written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  To my wife Ann, who despite my continual complaints that I was

  dead, kept insisting that I was still breathing.

  “IF GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE,

  THEN WHO THE HELL CREATED THE FFS?”

  Anonymous Human

  “HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE PLANET’S

  WAY OF COMMITTING SUICIDE.”

  Anonymous FF

  CHAPTER OUTLINE

  1. BILLY. Billy brings home a funny fish.

  2. OFFICIAL HISTORY. Unit A looks for alien terrorists.

  3. BILLY. Louie cripples an innocent child.

  4. BILLY. The Arctic superdog is not at home.

  5. LUKE’S REPORT. Louie’s hacking of NSA is not appreciated.

  6. BILLY. Billy just can’t get rid of his friend Louie.

  7. BILLY. Billy admits he’s not a good red-blooded American.

  8. BILLY. Agent Johnson tells Billy he’s in big trouble.

  9. LUKE’S REPORT. President told of the danger of hairy balls.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Some Protean definitions.

  10. BILLY. Billy finds that half a million dollars doesn’t last long.

  11. LUKE’S REPORT. Media finds FFs amusing and murderous.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Polar bears in Central Park.

  12. BILLY. Billy reluctantly agrees to become a TV star.

  13. BILLY. The Mortons help Louie try to pretend to be a human.

  14. BILLY. Louie makes a guest appearance on TV, as do the Feds.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Six Basic Republican Principles.

  15. BILLY. Lita claims her Arctic dog can’t be a terrorist.

  16. BILLY. Louie, pregnant, needs Billy’s help.

  17. BILLY. A talk with the CEO of APE.

  18. OFFICIAL HISTORY. Grandma Moses, Mother Teresa on no-fly list.

  19. BILLY. Billy gets raped when going through security.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: NRA All Americans must be armed!

  20. BILLY. Louie gives birth to Louie-Twoie.

  21. LUKE’S REPORT. The Feds’ secret weapon nabs an FF.

  22. OFFICIAL HISTORY. Feds chainsaw and carve up Louie.

  23. LUKE’S REPORT. Louie-Twoie and Chubby to the rescue.

  24. BILLY. Good guys escape to sea with an acrobatic first mate.

  25. BILLY. Coast Guard finds nothing. Fears everything.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: A few more Protean definitions.

  26. OFFICIAL HISTORY. New law to make FFs humans. Sort of.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Louie’s op-ed piece for the Times.

  27. BILLY. First inter-universe sex.

  28. BILLY. Billy runs the boat aground and is happy to do so.

  29. LUKE’S REPORT. Molière on writing a play.

  30. BILLY. Louie wants to blow up Billy and his family.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Tsongalese move to Wali Wali.

  31. BILLY. Molière’s play opens. And closes.

  32. LUKE’S REPORT. Billy and family blown to smithereens.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: New girls’ sports cheer goes viral.

  33. BILLY. They’re alive, they’re alive!

  34. BILLY. Billy visits ruins in Iraq.

  35. LUKE’S REPORT. Lita prefers dirt.

  36. BILLY. Billy parties with an unusual CIA agent.

  37. OFFICIAL HISTORY. Agent Johnson thinks Billy is alive.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Democrats want to outlaw thinking.

  38. BILLY. The earth’s second Resurrection is planned.

  39. BILLY. The dead Mortons are a sensation when they talk.

  40. BILLY. Louie-Twoie corrupts Lucas and Jimmy.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Declining Xmas sales investigated.

  41. LUKE’S REPORT. The Morton boys go swimming in February.

  42. BILLY. Billy gets arrested for child neglect and two hundred other things.

  43. LUKE’S REPORT. Louis surrenders in Alice in Wonderland.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Republican candidate endorses money.

  44. BILLY. The FFs are beginning to lose.

  45. LUKE’S REPORT: Why Gibberish didn’t become president.

  46. OFFICIAL HISTORY. All Proteans are guilty until proven innocent.

  47. OFFICIAL HISTORY. Louie
and Johnson don’t see eye to beach ball.

  48. OFFICIAL HISTORY. Molière and the President don’t hit it off.

  49. LUKE’S REPORT. CI Rabb makes a despicable speech at NSA.

  50. LUKE’S REPORT. CI Rabb claims “I’m me!”

  51. BILLY. At his trial, it seems Louie may not be Louie.

  52. LUKE’S REPORT. CI Rabb announces: “We all may be FFs!”

  53. LUKE’S REPORT. Louie finds a hole in the wall.

  54. BILLY. How the FFs pulled off the Great Disappearing Act.

  55. BILLY. Louie suggests zapping FFs back to Ickieland.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: A few more Protean definitions.

  56. OFFICIAL HISTORY: “We are doomed, doomed, unless we…”

  57. BILLY. The planning of the largest Forthehelluvit event in human history.

  58. BILLY. Billy enjoys a ride on a mountain.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: Panicky tweets indicate a problem.

  59. LUKE’S REPORT: Feds try to explain why they nuked Bermuda.

  60. BILLY. In the midst of death the play goes on.

  61. LUKE’S REPORT. Manhattan Fun-In, part one.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS: LT’s thoughts about humans.

  62. BILLY. Billy and the boys meet cops and the NRA stands firm.

  63. LUKE’S REPORT. Organized chaos at the first national Fun-In.

  64. BILLY. On life in Central Park with almost a million friends.

  65. LUKE’S REPORT: Central Park Nation manifesto.

  66. BILLY. Can Billy and the FFs save the Central Park Nation from massacre?

  NOTE ON BOOK TWO

  ONE

  (From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 3–17)

  My name’s Billy Morton. When I met Louie I was captain of my own small fishing boat that runs out of Greenport on the North Fork of Long Island. I’d take her out into the Long Island Sound or over east of Montauk, and me and my crew of two happy-go-lucky nobodies would run out our nets and see what we could pull in. Might be out there three days, but now that my health isn’t all it should be, usually only two. I used to own two boats and actually make a bit of money, but a lot of the fish got tired of getting dragged up out of the water and chopped up into cat food, and they sort of began to go extinct. Had to sell half my fleet and settle for running just Vagabond, a thirty-five-footer whose diesel engine had been built during the Civil War, and the wood that went into her frame was so old the trees that provided it are extinct. But at least she was mine.

  I run a tight ship but a relaxed ship. I’m the boss and the guys know it. But they also know they can hack around a bit or take a ten-minute break without getting shouted at. In fact if they didn’t hack around a bit I’d never have hired them. Don’t like fellows who are too serious. As long as the work gets done, how it gets done don’t worry me much.

  So when Marty Beck said to me that some swell-belly fish had “climbed up on the coach roof,” I assumed Marty was having some fun and thought he was being clever. Marty’s a good man but cleverness isn’t one of his strengths. I knew, and he knew, that fish didn’t get from the working deck to the coach roof unless they were thrown there.

  But when I saw Sam Potter listening soberly as Marty reported the climbing fish, I thought either the whole crew was trying to pull my leg or that Marty was serious.

  “Fish got onto the coach roof, huh?” I said.

  “Yep,” replied Marty, scratching the inside of his right thigh through his rubberized overalls. “Bounced there.”

  “Bounced onto the coach roof,” says I.

  “After rolling away from us when we tried to throw him overboard again,” says Sam, nodding seriously, intent on getting the story straight.

  “Again.”

  “I threw him overboard,” Sam says. “Damnedest looking blowfish I ever seen. Big fella, like a basketball, but he looked useless. Tossed him off the stern and went back to work.”

  I was at the wheel at the time facing my two guys and waiting patiently for them to finish the story, still not sure if it was an elaborate joke or what.

  “Fish came back,” says Marty. “Popped up over the coaming and plopped right back onto the deck.”

  “Fish jumps up into the boat,” says I, still waiting for the punch line.

  “He did,” says Sam.

  “And then, when you tried to throw it overboard again, it hopped up onto the coach roof.”

  “Right. Bounced there with one bounce.”

  “Did it say anything?” I ask.

  The two men looked at me. They knew I was a kidder but were sometimes a little slow to pick it up. Sometimes wish there were brighter guys who wanted to work sixteen hours a day for peanuts, but then of course they wouldn’t be bright.

  “Let’s take a look,” says I.

  I turned the wheel over to Marty and went out of the cabin with Sam.

  When I looked up to the coach roof what I saw was a hairy basketball. Larger than a basketball, more like a beach ball. Covered with short silver-gray hairs. No blowfish.

  I reached up to take hold of the… thing, and it rolled away from me to the right. It had no mouth or fins or limbs or eyes, so how he saw me reach for him was a puzzle.

  So I moved myself a couple of steps to my right and reached up again. The thing rolled back to where it had been before.

  “Doesn’t want to get thrown overboard again, I guess,” says Sam.

  “What the fuck is it?” asks Marty from the helm.

  What the fuck indeed. I’d seen a lot of strange things dragged up from the deep but never a bouncing fish without fins, scales, eyes, or anything else that was fish-like. Just a stupid beach ball with a lot of smooth, fine hair.

  After staring at it a long time and trying to come up with something brilliant to say, I sighed and moved away.

  “It’s probably just another creature from outer space,” says I, and went back to the wheel.

  My two guys looked at me, then up at the beach ball on the coach roof. Then they went back to work.

  * * *

  Dockside, Marty and Sam unloaded the crates of iced fish into Sam’s big truck, cleaned the decks as well as it could be done, and then, it already getting dark, headed off to deliver the fish and then to their homes. Before they left, they each took a peek at the thing on the roof, and at me, and then went off trying to look cool and unconcerned.

  Cool and unconcerned is always a good strategy for a man, especially when he hasn’t the foggiest idea about what’s going on. I stood on the deck and looked up at it.

  “I’m heading home,” says I aloud. “You gonna hang out here?”

  The thing seemed to expand upwards a half foot, making itself look like a big hairy egg three-feet tall standing on end, then settled back down into a sphere.

  “Well, suit yourself,” says I.

  I went and got my duffel bag, walked aft to the ladder that led up to the dock, and climbed ashore. It was late, and my boat was docked off in a corner of the marina where most of the other boats seldom saw any more action than an occasional marina drinking session. And in late September, most boats had retired for the year. So there wasn’t anyone around when I got up on the pier and looked back.

  The thing fell or leapt or slid off the roof, hit the deck, and bounced neatly up onto the dock six feet from my boots.

  I nodded, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to have a fish bounce twelve feet off a boat as if it wanted to follow me home.

  After looking around to see if anyone else had seen the fishy acrobatics, I began to move off. As I walked to my pickup truck, the thing rolled along behind me.

  “Want to hang out a little longer, huh,” says I.

  At the truck I threw my duffel in the back, unlocked the passenger-side door, and then held it open. The thing, five feet behind me, stayed still a moment then rolled forward and bounced into the cab.

  Off to my right I noticed another guy opening his car door staring over at what had happened, but when I casually closed the passenger-
side door and gave him a little wave, he nodded and got into his car. Guess he figured that if a self-hopping beach ball didn’t bother me, it wouldn’t bother him.

  I got into my pickup and started the engine, then I turned and stared at the furry fish sitting beside me.

  “Yep,” says I.

  And drove home.

  * * *

  Our home is a mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse that has seen better days but is still breathing. When we bought it, it was one of the last surviving farmhouses on the North Road, most having long been torn down to make way for the wineries that for more than thirty years had spread across Eastern Long Island like the plague. Good plague, I guess, especially if you like wine, but it meant the death of the potato farms and the old farmhouses.

  Except ours, which squatted determinedly on only half an acre. But on one side was a vast field of grape vines, so close I could lean out our living room window and pick grapes whenever I got the urge. On the other side of our farmhouse was a big spread of lawn owned by the rich guy who lived next door—next door being two hundred feet away. And his house was a hundred feet off the road where ours was so close we could eavesdrop on conversations in the cars whizzing past.

  That early evening out on the back porch I wondered what I was doing. The beach ball was only five feet away sitting on the top step. Something that had come from the sea had followed me home. It wasn’t close to anything I’d ever experienced or heard of—except in the National Inquirer or a sci-fi novel. But for some reason I wasn’t scared.

  So I clomped into the kitchen the way I usually do, letting the screen door bang behind me, and tossing my duffel into a corner. Carlita was at the stove stirring something in a frying pan, and I heard our two kids arguing happily in the living room.

  Usually I march over to the fridge and pull out something cold and alcoholic, but this time I stopped in the middle of the kitchen and looked back at the screen door. The thing was sitting just outside it on the porch. I’m tempted to say “staring at me” but since the thing had no eyes, it made it tough for it to stare.

  I turned to Carlita.

  “We got a visitor,” says I. Lita glanced over at me and waited for me to explain. She’s almost twenty-five years younger than me, bright and a tough cookie who doesn’t put up with much bullshit.

  I looked at her and then marched back to the screen door and swung it open. The thing hesitated about a second and then rolled in and stopped ten feet from Carlita. Gotta hand it to her, Lita stood her ground, although I think she did raise her spatula into a defensive position. After giving the thing a long stare she turned to me.