On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 243, of 266 so far.

Foreign

The incoming minister was young by Cabinet standards, but not outrageously so, at a tender forty-one years old. He was impeccably British — thus he steadfastly hid the nervousness which accompanied his third day in his new role — and his name was David Hutchison.

The morning briefings had been unremarkable, but that was perhaps because his mind had been focused entirely on his next meeting. The green door swung open to reveal a wood-panelled office, with a vast but empty desk towards one side, and a pair of leather sofas in the bay window. One of them was occupied.

“Come in, David,” the defence secretary said without looking up, and Hutchison walked over to sit on the opposite sofa from the silver-haired and distinctly ruddy-faced man.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Hutchison replied, and the older man gave a small wave of his hand. He was still peering at a binder, and after a few more seconds he closed it and looked up.

“You must think we’ve all gone mad.”

Hutchison shifted uncomfortably, but to his credit he neither denied the observation nor did he break eye contact. The older man smiled. After a moment, Hutchison spoke.

“She sent me to speak to you, secretary, when I pressed for an answer on what possible reason there could be for what we’re all doing. Every analysis, every piece of advice, every forecast is resoundingly negative. My predecessor lasted all of nineteen days in this role before resigning. Frankly, I’m wondering whether I ought to follow suit.”

The defence secretary nodded sympathetically. “I’ve had a similar conversation — or the beginning of one — with four other people in the past year, all sitting exactly where you are now, David. I think it’s time to change the script, don’t you?”

Hutchison didn’t reply, but he did incline his head slightly. The movement seemed to satisfy the secretary, who spread his hands expansively in the air above his own knees.

“Let’s begin as we mean to go on,” he said. “Ask the question.”

Hutchison sighed, and then nodded. “Alright. What the bloody hell are we doing leaving the European Union?”

The secretary’s expression became crafty now, and he nodded in return. “That is indeed the question. Brexit, as it has so distastefully become known, spells definite economic and political damage to the United Kingdom. As you said, every forecast and analysis advises against it. And they’re all correct, as far as they go. Nonetheless, it’s going to happen, and it must happen, because ultimately we were unable to come to an agreement with Brussels on a single critical issue.”

“The colour of our passports?” Hutchison suggested, but the secretary ignored the flippant remark. Instead, he leaned forward, and when he spoke, his voice was much quieter than before.

“Rabies,” he said.

Hutchison waited for a moment to see if the other man was joking, or at least using an analogy, but the secretary only stared at him intently. When he didn’t continue, Hutchison cleared his throat.

“Rabies… the viral disease?”

The secretary nodded. “What do you know about it?”

Hutchison frowned, thinking for a moment. “Well, I don’t really… it can be carried by various animals; often bats. Transmitted by bites via infected saliva. I hear they can cure it if treated immediately after infection, but if symptoms have developed then it’s a death sentence. What does it have to do with exiting the EU?”

The secretary smiled darkly. “The British Government knows something that Brussels doesn’t, and unfortunately we’ve had to take an extremely hard line on how we deal with such things. We’ve been unable to reach agreement, and thus the so-called Brexit referendum was engineered to give us a reason to invoke Article 50.”

Hutchison stared at the other man, still wondering whether this was an elaborate joke. The face looking back at him made it clear there was no humour involved. Before he could even formulate another question, the secretary was speaking again.

“Do you remember how we handled animal import in the old days? The quarantines for six months, and so on?”

Hutchison nodded, and the secretary mirrored the gesture as he continued speaking. “That’s all done away with now. Because we have vaccines, and rabies immunoglobulin, and a coordinated system of certification which falls under the EU harmonised animal movement rules. A minor miracle of modern medicine and diplomacy.”

“I’ve heard about it,” Hutchison said slowly. “Animals can move freely between EU member states with documentation of a rabies vaccination. But are you saying that…?”

“Indeed I am, David,” the older man said, his voice more stern now. “We’ve deliberately created the environment — and a measure of nominal popular consensus — for leaving the European Union because we absolutely must reinstate border quarantines for all animals. Most especially dogs.”

“But dogs barely even carry the—”

“The rabies virus is merely the excuse,” the secretary interrupted, his voice quieter once more. “There will be a minor outbreak of rabies somewhere in the UK in the coming months, in order to justify changes to our laws, of course. Somewhere unimportant; in the north, probably. Perhaps in Scotland. But that too will be engineered. A bit of public outcry; the usual thing.”

“So what’s this all really about, for god’s sake?” Hutchison asked, his disbelief and confusion sharpening his tone beyond what etiquette would normally allow. The older man was unperturbed, and simply sat back against the luxurious leather sofa.

“Foreign animals,” he replied.

Hutchison only frowned again. “We already covered that. That’s the excuse, you said.” But now the secretary shook his head.

“You’re not listening carefully enough. The problem is that of Foreign animals.”

Somewhere out on the Whitehall streets, a bus sounded its horn. The noise was muffled but still noticeable, particularly in the sudden silence of the office.

“That’s… I was led to believe those matters were hypothetical,” Hutchison said in a hushed voice, now regretting the large breakfast he’d had several hours earlier.

“I’m quite sure you were,” the secretary replied. “Allow me to burst your bubble, as they say. We intercepted — and indeed quarantined, after shooting the thing down — a small Foreign vessel in a godforsaken forest in the north of Wales almost eight years ago. It’s currently at Boscombe Down, under the heaviest guard, as I’m quite sure you can imagine.”

“Manned?” Hutchison asked, and he felt like the entirety of his body was prickling with gooseflesh. He thought it might be a panic attack coming on, but he willed it away.

The secretary lifted a hand, palm upwards, in an ambiguous gesture.

“I think that manned isn’t quite the right word, wouldn’t you agree? They — or this particular they, I should say — really have much more in common with our earlier topic of discussion.”

“Rabies?”

“Quite so. At least, they seem to be transmissible genetic sequences, hosted by other lifeforms. And to the infinite delight of Her Majesty’s Government, we are decidedly incompatible, thank god. The same cannot be said for lesser mammals, however. Our best intelligence says that four such inhabited creatures escaped to the continent. We’re expecting that they’ll probably want their ship back at some point.”

Hutchison also sat back. There was silence for a few moments before he spoke.

“And we can… test for them?”

“We can,” the secretary replied enthusiastically. “Readily detectable via a full blood panel and genetic profile. Two of them died in the unplanned landing, allowing us plenty of material for analysis. We initially thought that the creatures themselves were the pilots, but we believe they were simply the most recent hosts. Perhaps the vessel was actually theirs too. In any case, the real Foreign visitors attempted to take back their craft almost immediately, having already inhabited some of our own indigenous mammal species. One was a sad-eyed little Staffordshire terrier, and another was a stunning specimen of a red deer. A stag, even. I’m told it needed more than twenty-five bullets.”

“So we need to reinstate our animal movement quarantines,” Hutchison said. It wasn’t a question, and his face had become pale.

“Which isn’t something we can either explain or justify to our European brothers and sisters. Nor is it something we can make into a red-line issue in Brussels without drawing unacceptable attention. So regrettably, there really was only one remaining option.”

Hutchison nodded slowly. As astonishing as it was, it did make a sort of twisted sense — the first time that any of this business ever had. He let out a short huff of breath.

“We have to leave the European Union,” he said.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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