Xeno Activity Chapter 5 - Stories Online Edit 1

Chapter 5

Cornwall, England

With carefully measured movements he pruned his prized roses; it was done with great care, much knowledge and experience. Here in his glass house everything was in meticulous order and this is how retired Brigadier Hadley Morgan liked things to be. There was little evidence that this ramrod straight, white haired gentleman wearing that straw hat was over ninety years old.

He had been retired for a long time now, and while his short-term memory played tricks on him now more often than not, his memories of the military, his service for Country and Queen were as crystal clear as ever. He chuckled, yes the Queen, she was still at it. Not much longer for sure, but perhaps he would die before he saw a new monarch on the throne of England.

So much had changed since Princess Elizabeth came down from the famous tree-house hotel in Africa, and became Queen of England, because her father the King had died while she was on Safari on the Dark Continent. Back then the Queen of England was still the ruler of an Empire, the lion strong and respected. Today everyone was let in and you did not even have to speak English to get an English passport. Local courts considered to accept and consider Sharia law and bombing the tube or busses and killing dozens was not murder and a hanging offense, but an expression of anger against the evil Britons who didn't understand the needs of the oh-so-poor and misunderstood. Police tiptoed around the real issues. Hadley was actually glad he would not see too much of the future and the things to come.

He heard the glass door and expected it to be his live-in nurse bringing him a cup of tea. He turned to lecture her about the importance of knocking and then to thank her for the tea, Sarah the nurse had been with him now for ten years or even longer, he could not remember. He knew she would not mind his lecture, she was used to it. That she was mentioned in his last will and would receive a tidy sum of money, was his way of expressing his gratitude towards the young woman.

But before he could turn his motorized wheel chair someone grabbed the push handles of it and the little green light on his controls blinked out.

"How often did I tell you to charge the bloody thing?" he snarled. The nurse went around his chair to face him, he heard the faint whisper of her dress, and unlike many old men his hearing was as sharp as ever. He insisted that she wore a proper nurse's dress and not one of those newfangled unisex things that were in style now. The very word Unisex was an atrocity to good old British values, in his opinion.

He looked up and the next sentence he was about to utter, died in his throat. The nurse before him wore a clear plastic mask before her face and underneath the perfectly coifed auburn locks. The nurse was not alone!

Hands grabbed his arms and secured them with plastic cable ties to the armrests of his wheel chair. He was old, but he had been a member of the old Secret Intelligence Service before it was called MI6 and he was no fool. "What is this all about?" he asked with as much steel as he could put in his voice.

"We want your Antarctica Files. The files you kept and all the photos. We already got the manuscript of your book and most of your material, but we know there is more."

"I don't know what you are talking about and there isn't much you can do to make me talk! I am old and death holds no terrors for me."

The masked nurse laughed coldly, and then retrieved a little metal bottle of lighter fluid, a well-known brand and a lighter from her apron pocket." First I am going to burn your roses. If that doesn't loosen your tongue, we will make you watch as we burn your nurse and your niece. If that doesn't work, there is always the chemical way. Now we could do it the easy way but I prefer old fashioned mental and physical torture."

"Not my Roses!" he gasped! "No one is missing those old files and who will believe an old fool writing a book that no one will ever read?"

"You know better than that, Brigadier. You have been on Queen Maud Land and we know you have seen things. You are the last."

"Who are you?" But even as he asked he knew who he was dealing with, "Bloody Nazis!"

"That's a label, no more. We existed before it bore that label, and we will exist long after the label is forgotten. Now do I have to set fire to that pink one over there?"

He pressed his lips together but then said, "What you are looking for is in the second fertilizer bag, over there."

A man dressed in a track suit, the hood drawn tight around a plastic masked face rushed to the spot. He opened the plastic sack and nodded. "It seems to be all here, documents, pictures and a roll of film."

He sighed. "Now you will kill me, I know and I am ready. The world has changed. The Empire is gone and my beloved England is a shadow of its former glory. Seeing what it has turned into, I sometimes wish your Fuhrer had won. This decadence and unmoral behavior is worse, much worse!"

"Yes, Old Man, you must die now, but rest assured the world as you know it won't last much longer."

She retrieved a tiny syringe, with a fine short needle. It was filled with a yellowish liquid. "It will be quick!"