When Earth is conquered by the sinister Greys and the alien who killed Evie's husband returns seeking her help, she must find a way to enact her revenge and fight the growing feelings for the creature who is an exact replica of the man she loved.
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Surobi, Afghanistan.
Run.
Oh god, keep running.
The crunch of gravel and stone under my feet. The sharp, shallow wheezing of my breath. And them, the sound of their footsteps getting closer and closer, echoing like a crack of gunshots through the narrow streets behind me.
The breeze has been picking up all day, and now it's grown in violent waves of turbulent air, catching the reams of brightly-coloured silks and soft linens outside the fabric store and sweeping them up high. The storekeeper comes out with his hooked-pole to take them down and shut up shop for the night and he glares at me as I pass.
'Devil boy,' he calls out, but he has no idea.
No idea at all.
I'm not the Devil here. They are. He was.
The wind catches my sob, forcing the cry back into my throat as I picture his face in my mind. It's a good thing. I can't be weakened by tears now. I can't be slowed down by sorrow. I just have to keep running, even though it hurts so very much.
Reaching the end of the row of stores, I take a sharp left and almost wish I hadn't. The market-place is so full of her that I can't bear it. The traders have all gone home, but I see her as clear as day.
She's picking fruit here from the stalls. Huge, lush pomegranates with their reddish-purple husk, sweet melons the size of rugby-balls, and the largest, juicest grapes I've ever seen. A bag of rice for the palaw. Flour for the bread. She hands me a tub of yoghut so large and so heavy, I'm petrified I will drop it to the ground. Potatoes and eggplant and pungent onions. The air is thick with orange peel and spices.
As night draws in, it's still thick with orange peel and spices and now, with her blood too, which drenches the front of my clothing, its sharp, coppery tang salting the air. I can still feel her body in my arms, how I'd cradled her head, my fingers finding the edge of the hole where her skull bone had shattered at the back. It's as if I'm carrying her as I run. The ghost weight of her still-warm corpse makes my muscles ache and my legs feel like they're wading through water.
I can't give up now. I can't slow down, not even for a second. I have to cast her ghost aside if I am to escape. Leave her where her body lays lifeless. Leave it all and just flee as fast as I can.
Focus. Run.
Run, child.
That's what he'd said. The Devil.
Run.
And I did.
I'm still running now, even though my feet scream and my heart wails with grief. There's a strange static noise in my head, like the sound the radio makes when you're turning the dial to find a frequency. Every now and then, it clears for a split-second, and as soon as I think I'm free of it, the white noise crowds my mind, filling my ears with an irritating buzzing, like sandflies hitting a lantern again and again and again.
