Page 6 of King from the Sky

Chapter Four

“So, you don’t have any idea who he is?” The cop asked for the tenth time.

Emily sipped her cup of nasty hospital coffee and rolled her eyes at the officer. He was a middle aged man who had obviously been a cop for a long time and had grown comfortable and very, very, fat in his slow paced role as a small town officer of the law. He hated to be dragged out of bed to apprehend some thug who may or may not be a menace to society only to find that the guy had run away already.

“No. I only met him by accident and saw that he needed help. I didn’t have a chance to get any notes together for his biography,” Emily replied. She was aware of how nasty she sounded, but she was both disappointed that Alex was gone and she was angry that this man wanted to give her shit about it.

“He wasn’t able to talk? You didn’t ask him his name or anything else about himself?”

“No. I thought I made that clear.”

“Do you often pick up stray men who have been shot and take them to the hospital yourself? They have these things called ambulances that do that for you and best thing is they have trained EMT’s that can help the patient on the way to the hospital. You didn’t think to call the three magic digits that any six-year-old knows to make that happen?”

Emily wanted to slap this cop back and forth until her hand was broken. How dare he speak to her that way? Emily was not usually one to cause mischief or trouble. In fact, she tried to avoid those things whenever humanly possible, but it was taking every ounce of her self-control to keep from telling this man what she thought.

“I was only a few blocks away; he looked really injured and I knew that he might bleed to death before an ambulance arrived. We didn’t have any time to waste. I work in the health care field. We work with science; not theories.”

“Well, I’ll tell you that if we find this man and we find out that you were hiding something from us then you are going to be in a lot of trouble. The man is obviously hiding something. He didn’t want an ambulance and he ran for daylight the second he had the chance after the doctors had patched him up. Now you don’t have to be a cop or some lady with a fancy degree to know that this sounds damn suspicious and that man is hiding something. Now, why don’t you cut out all the sarcastic crap and just tell us what he told you?”

The cop looked her dead in the eyes. He was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had a lot of experience with people lying to him and he had pretty much developed a real world PhD in it. But could she really tell him the truth? Could she really say that Alex was an alien of all things? This cop would have her committed if she did.

“We are waiting for an answer and we don’t have all night,” he said.

“He told me he was an alien.”

The cop paused for a moment and looked at the front desk lady. He glanced back at Emily and then burst out laughing.

“Are you serious? He told you he was an alien? You wouldn’t be making this up now would you?” The cop asked.

“You think someone would be stupid enough to make that up?” Emily asked.

The cop rolled his eyes obviously seeing her point. This was not the sort of thing a sane person would lie about.

“Ok, so he told you he was an alien. Well, now I’m almost positive it’s some sort of a drug deal gone south. That man had to be high as a kite. Plus, that would explain why he was not screaming in agony or going into shock by the time he came in here.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. That’s why I didn’t tell you. It seemed unimportant and I didn’t want to waste your time with such nonsense,” Emily said.

“Well, that is very kind of you to think of us. You can be on your way now, but we might need to talk with you again.”

Emily handed the cop her card. He glanced at it and huffed again; probably making fun of the “health field” she had claimed to be a member of. But the veterinarian sciences sure as hell counted in her opinion. Speaking of which she could not wait to get back to her animals and make sure they were ok. The events of last night had scared the hell out of them and they were all probably still freaking out about it. They had seen the lion and smelled its distinctive scent.

The cop huffed and glared daggers at her. Emily could not help the smile that crept across her face right then. It felt good to win the mental victory over this slob. She had never felt that way about law enforcement before, but if this was the best that her town had to offer than she was really disappointed.

The cop walked away with his tail between his legs and smoke coming out of his ears.

On the way home Emily’s mind raced a mile a minute trying to come to grips with what the strange man had told her. No matter what, she could not stop wondering if what he had said was true. And what that might mean for her or for the rest of the world even. Were the aliens gearing up for an attack of some sort? Why had he come here? Were they just trying to blend in to study the planet out of curiosity or was there a more sinister reason behind it?

And most troubling of all, she could not stop wondering who was after him? Who had shot him? Was it the government? Were there really a Men in Black or was it just a myth? Maybe he had found out some information he was not supposed to know or he had been found out to be an alien and they had tried to kill him before he could report anything back to his alien leaders.

Emily had to laugh at the dizzying ideas bouncing around in her head. The whole thing was starting to sound like a horrible bad dream and she wasn’t sure that she was ever really going to be able to wake up from it. But she had to try. There was no one that she could talk to about this. There was no one that she could trust. The cops back there had looked at her as if she were a lunatic. They knew that she was hiding something and they would drag it out of her eventually.

She just wished that she had not crossed paths with the mysterious man.

Emily found herself thinking about the way his body looked. It was so slender and sleek. Was it a real human body? Or was it just some sort of disguise. Did aliens actually look like us or was he just doing a great impersonation. If so, he had chosen a miraculous body. Every muscle was tight and delicious looking. She had not been able to get the images of his tight abs out of her mind, even though they were stained with blood most of the time she had seen him.

She wondered what would happen to her if the cops found out she was lying. Would they arrest her? Would they throw her in a cell and close the door, throwing away the key? What sort of penalty was in store for people who lied about evidence of alien life, she wondered!

But she didn’t have evidence of alien life. She just had a head full of scenes that were only hers. No one else had seen the lion. No one else had heard the words that Alex spoke to her. She was not in any danger. Nobody had to know anything about it. She was ok.

But as she drove to the kennel to check on the dogs, she didn’t feel ok.

She didn’t feel ok at all.