do.”
The station's holding pen was nothing more than a chain-link fence with a single gate opened by a numeric code. The rookie exited the car, opened the back door of the cruiser and then the gate. Charlie grasped the chain of the cuffs securing the Green's legs and launched it into the holding area.
The creature hit with a thud and threw up a cloud of dirt as it ungracefully rolled to a stop. It opened its eyes, looked down at the restraints binding it, and exploded into raucous laughter while slapping its undulating arms against the ground. “Ooooh!” the thing expelled, then laughed even harder, “I mean, oww! Ouch! That's it. Oooouuuch...” it drawled, then giggled itself back to sleep.
Charlie closed the gate as he shook his head from side to side, retrieved a new set of handcuffs from the supply hanging off the fence and returned to the car. “Car fifty-one, there is a situation developing at Main and Fourth, please respond...” the radio barked.
“Dammit!” I muttered as I depressed the accelerator. “I wish we could just get rid of these things...” We were only a few blocks away, and the drive seemed to take mere seconds. Most likely because I was in no hurry to get to another situation.
My apprehension was justified as the car rounded the turn onto Main; I could see the pile of Greens from a block away, there must have been nearly a hundred of them writhing in the middle of the intersection. The spectacle was as close to an orgy of emerald bowling pins as I could imagine, though we still didn't know how they bred, so there was no telling what they were actually doing.
I hit the lights for the sake of the few pedestrians gawking at the conglomerate, but knew better than to waste my time with sirens or the loudspeaker. These, as all the others, would have to be removed by hand. We donned our plastic gloves and slowly made our way to the edge of the tangled, slimy mound of aliens.
Belches and wet slaps spouted from all over as they wriggled and romped through the mire and over one another, all the while depositing more bodily fluids and laughing hysterically. “Check that out!” wafted out from somewhere inside of the swarm of bodies. “Look at that stuff on their heads...”
“What is that?” another visitor questioned.
“They call it har,” one of the little drunkards confirmed, “Get it? Har, har, har...” and the entire mass erupted into mad laughter. Wet slaps and the gurgling of disturbed pockets of slime crept out of the pile as the contorting forms slid over and passed one another.
I hated them...
“These things are going to start drowning in their own fluids if they keep this up,” Charlie absently commented.
I started to agree, but something slammed into the forefront my mind and stuck there, and I stared at the side of the rookie's head with my mouth open for what seemed like a very long time. “Call for some wagons and extra cuffs, I'll get started with them...” I told Charlie and nodded towards the pile.
A questioning look slipped over Charlie's face, but he followed my instructions diligently. I took off my overcoat and leaned down as close to one of the visitors as I could without getting their mess on my shoes and began to whisper, “Hey, you know what? If you guys think this is fun,” I waived my hand at the air around me. “You should teleport to the ocean.”
“If you get this drunk from the air, just think of how buzzed you will get in deep water. The bottom of the ocean is made of the same stuff as our air, but there's more of it, and it’s in much higher concentrations.” I paused, “It's more potent, is what I'm saying.”
At the word ‘potent,’ the eyes of many of the lethargic creatures snapped open, and they began to disappear two and three at time. Within minutes, the last of the stumbling and laughing aliens had vanished, leaving a pile of malodorous goo covering the intersection. “What are you doing?” came from behind me.
I turned to see Charlie standing at the front of the cruiser with an uncharacteristic frown distorting his brow, “I'm solving our problems.”
“What are you talking about? They're just teleporting somewhere else to do the same thing, and you know it.”
“Not this time,” I revealed. “This time they're teleporting to the bottom of the oceans.”
Charlie's expression changed from one of confusion to shock, “You can't do that, the Alien Rights League will be all over you. It's against the law to kill them!”
“Take it easy. The ARL can't do anything, because I'm not killing them. They don't drown, they don't even breathe like us. They'll go to the bottoms of the oceans and get even more wasted than they are now, but they'll stay there.” I smiled as the realization fought its way into Charlie's head, then offered, “Problem solved...”
Over the next hour the reports started to flood the airwaves and the ether; the aliens were disappearing from all over the planet. The ARL was up in arms, but they had no justification for any recourse; no bodies were floating to the surface, and the visitors were leaving of their own free will. I beat them at their own game, and I was damn proud of it.
“Dude, you're going to be famous!” Charlie exclaimed.
“Don't call me dude, and yes, yes I am.” My phone rang, and the display informed me that the boss was calling. I had to hold the device away from my ear to spare my hearing as the seasoned cop sung my praises at the top of his husky lungs. It seemed I was being promoted and would be receiving a substantial raise for my accomplishment, which made the triumph over those little green turds even sweeter.
The rest of the day passed as I nervously stole glances at the silent radio. I expected a new call at any time... but none came. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and yet no sightings or situations were reported. Charlie and I began to get bored and restless. The holding pens were now empty, and we found ourselves with nothing to do day after day, other than milk my celebrity status. And then came the phone call from my boss.
“Morgan, you dumb-ass!” roared out from the telephone's tiny speaker before I could say hello, “Go look at a television, you idiot... You're fired!!!”
Charlie was staring at me as I stared at the phone, “What was that all about?” he asked.
I dropped the phone and steered the car toward the curb, depositing it at an angle with one of the front wheels up on the sidewalk. Leaving the vehicle running, and without acknowledging Charlie or closing the cruiser's door, I walked to the restaurant at the corner.
I forced my way to the bar, stared up at the television and struck the same dumbfounded expression of the patrons surrounding me. Ariel photos were flashing by to reveal large, thin swaths of ocean glowing with an eerie auburn from deep within, while the captions read, 'Strange lights beneath the waves...'
A chill danced up my spine, and the on-screen images changed to show miles and miles of beach and coastline inundated with the bright green bodies of the visitors, but they weren't dead. The little bastards were drunker than ever, and it was now obvious that they could also vomit, but only when sufficiently intoxicated.
Another series of images took over the display, and I quickly focused in on the repeating caption at the bottom to avoid seeing the disturbing image above it. 'Live: International Space Station' the scrolling marquee informed me.
My eyes reluctantly wandered upward to take in the video feed streaming in from above the Earth; the dark blue of the Pacific Ocean was starkly contrasted by the massive red arrow stretching across its floor, the tip pointing towards the deepest known part, the Mariana Trench. Just below the gargantuan arrow were the distinctly clear letters 'OPEN' in bright red. The 'E' blinked at random, as if it were ready to burn out, and it was all miles beneath the surface.
“Bartender!” I yelled, “Bourbon, now!” A middle-aged man stepped before me with a shot glass in one hand and a bottle in the other, but he kept stealing glances at the unfolding events on the television. Capitalizing on his distraction, I reached out and snatched the bottle from him, then walked out the door without a word.
I strode by the patrol car and my confused trainee, who was standing at the front of the vehicle.
“I give...” I said, and kept walking. I kept walking and walking until I had arrived at the beach. Millions of drunken aliens littered the shore as far as I could see in both directions. They were cavorting, falling down, relieving themselves at will and laughing; and more were literally rolling in with the surf, totally and hopelessly wasted.
I guess they are going to take over the world after all, just not the way either species thought. Oh well, if you can't beat 'em... Join 'em, echoed in the back of my weary mind.
I plopped down onto the sand, stretched out my legs and leaned over to rest on one elbow but placed it right into a pile of alien slime and slipped. After righting myself and wiping the smelly goo from my arm, I opened the bottle and drew a long, satisfying pull. A rousing cheer worked its way down the beach in celebration of my shot. I lifted a leg and forced out a resounding fart in response, which brought even more cheers.
I took another long slug from the bottle and let myself fall back onto the sand. I stared at the azure sky above; the squishing, slurping and laughing melded with the sounds of the surf. My eyes slid shut, and for the first time in a very, very long time a grin parted my face. Their numbers grew. I was being jostled and bumped from all directions, then I was floating on indifference and a carpet of extraterrestrials.
My shoes, and then my