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Meet the Author, Scott Skipper
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Category:
Action/Thriller
Type: Fiction
ISBN-13: 9781311326621
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Sequel to Alien Affairs. Earthly and extraterrestrial action.
The aliens left the entire human race infertile. Carrie Player is searching for a cure in the vast cache of data stored on the reading device that the alien, Deshler, gave her as a parting gift. While the species is dwindling ISIS is trying to hasten the end by unleashing a deadly epidemic on America. To battle the new threat the CIA puts a different woman on the case, a very different woman.
Excerpt
Carrie Player sat propped in bed with a bolster behind her lower back. She sipped a cup of coffee and prepared to watch the Rose Parade but wondered why since it seldom varied. Perhaps, she thought, it was just to see the sunny weather and the palm trees.
“What the hell?” she said aloud. The image did not register. She clicked rewind and watched it again. A pedestrian moving in front of the bleachers disintegrated. “Oh, my God,” she said.
The pandemonium in the crowd and the garbled narration of the commentators—adept at describing horses and flowers, but ill equipped for suicide bombings—baffled Carrie’s senses. She stared transfixed at people trying to move from the epicenter, at people wiping gore from their clothes and parents shielding their children’s eyes. In seconds the camera switched to a close-up of the commentators who stammered in disbelief over what had happened. The only coherent thing Carrie heard them say was that there had been three explosions.
The phone rang. “Mom, are you watching the parade?”
“Yes, dear. Isn’t it awful?”
“I can’t believe there is anybody evil enough to do that,” Sherrie said.
“Especially since what the aliens just did to us.”
“What’s the point in killing people if the human race is going extinct?”
“It’s all some people know how to do.”
“They’re not really people. They’re subhuman. Your alien friend Deshler was more humane than these bastards and he wanted to destroy the human race.”
“Well, yeah, but he repented.”
“Afterward.”
“Don’t worry, we’re going to find a way to repair the damage and get you out of the president’s bunker.”
“You better hurry. I want out of this cave.”
“It won’t be long.”
“Two years.”
Carrie changed the subject. “There is something I haven’t told you.”
“Longer than two years?”
“No, I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how it happened, but it’s true.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how it happened? I know how it happened.”
“I just mean that I’m too old.”
“Apparently not. Who’s the guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, my God. My mother has been sleeping around.”
“No, it’s just that the circumstances were a little confusing.”
“Huh? Were you drugged and date raped?”
“Well, maybe.”
“Maybe? This is getting too weird. Tell me what happened.”
Carrie hesitated trying to find a way to explain to her daughter what she did not understand herself. “I went to bed with a nice guy—just once—and now I can’t find him.”
“Well, that’s not so strange.”
“Yeah, but now I’m not sure if he was real.”
Sherrie didn’t respond for several seconds. “So you were drugged. Well, at least this proves that Deshler’s virus stuff didn’t make everybody sterile.”
“I think he may have made me a special case.”
“You mean he reversed the effects?”
“Something like that.”
Sherrie paused again. “Are you going to have an abortion?”
“Sherrie, be serious. The entire human race has been sterilized by an alien virus, except for the few hundred of you in underground shelters, and me. Anybody who can, has an obligation to reproduce, and that means you—and apparently me.”
“Mother, there is nobody down here I’m going to do it with.”
“What about Lance, the astronaut I met on the trip to Bikini Atoll?”
“He isn’t down here.”
“Turkey baster.”
“Forget it, I’m not doing it with a turkey baster. Anyway, in effect you’re going to have your own grandbaby.”
“I just wonder what it will be.”
“You haven’t had an ultrasound yet?”
“That’s not what I mean. I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl.”
Sherrie paused even longer. “You don’t mean...”
“I might have been abducted.”
“Oh, gross. This is crazy. You’ve got to get a new job.”
“It’s too late now. Besides, I’ve got to keep looking for a solution in the alien ereader.”
“Whatever, just don’t go to any more places like Egypt. I don’t want my mom getting beheaded.”
“Okay, I promise. With the aliens on their way home, and all the virus canisters accounted for, I won’t be doing anymore field work.”
“That’s good.”
“I guess we’re not going to get to see a parade.”
“Everything’s crazy.”
“You’re right. Love you.”
“You too, bye.”
Carrie switched to Fox News and watched until the report became repetitious, then she showered. Brushing her hair she thought about her father who gave her those hazel eyes, and her mother from whom she got the thick brown hair that fell to her shoulders. And the face, well, it came from both of them. She was satisfied with her face. It was more open than beautiful, but her smile was easy and warm. Then she stepped back from the mirror and examined her shape. Dammit, she was aging pretty well. “Face it,” she thought, “you’re alien bait.”
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