We’re big fans of Daniel Isn’t Real director Adam Egypt Mortimer around these parts, and when we heard he and Daniel co-writer Brian DeLeeuw were working on a novel about an alien invasion from the alien’s point of view, we knew we had to hear more.
That novel, Invader, is on its way, and here’s the official synopsis, courtesy of our pals at Bloody Disgusting:
A meteor carrying liquid-crystal alien organisms crashes into the California desert. Desperate to survive these harsh conditions, the aliens soon begin husking and copying bodies — a cat, a coyote, an old man dying of cancer, a young woman deep into a mushroom trip, and Paige, an officer with the Bureau of Land Management.
The aliens are part of an ancient hive mind — the SisterMind — drifting through space from planet to planet, where they replicate, reproduce, and colonize, gutting each planet of its resources before leaving to do it all over again. This is their plan for our Earth as well…
But when alien Paige finds herself with a human mind and emotions and family in all of their complexities, she resists the plan — leading to a war between different SisterMind factions led by a sinister corporate CEO and a young, psychedelic cult leader in the desert.
A brain-melting mix of body-horror, philosophical sci-fi, and high-octane thriller, Invader asks — is the terrifying miracle of human consciousness enough to stop an alien invasion?
Well, we’re sold. But in case you aren’t, Adam has hooked us up with an exclusive excerpt, as well as a piece of interior art from the acclaimed Jock (who’s providing TWENTY illustrations for the novel)! Check out both below; the project’s Kickstarter campaign begins tomorrow, and you can reserve your copy then.
Callahan leaned the bike against the wood siding and took off his sand-filled sneakers. The sun hadn’t reached this part of the property yet, and it was probably because of these shadows that he didn’t see the puddle before planting his bare foot square into the center of it.
The pain in his heel was immediate and severe, like stepping onto a sea urchin. Or a bristling packet of white-hot sewing needles. Callahan yelled out loud. He braced himself against the side of the house and peered at his wounded heel. He didn’t find anything that should cause this kind of pain. He looked down at the puddle—the hose must be leaking again; he made a mental note to tighten the gasket—expecting to see a broken beer bottle or shard of metal protruding from the water. But there was nothing.
He limped inside the house, made his way to the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the tub. He wiped his heel’s tough skin clear of sand and grime. He inspected things again, this time under the bright bathroom bulbs. There was no blood—he’d expected blood, how could there not be blood with this kind of pain? But nope, no flap of opened skin, no slash or gouge. Instead, all he found was a constellation of tiny black dots in the center of his heel, each individual mark smaller than a pinhead. He ran his finger over the marks. He thought they’d feel like raised bumps, like a rash, but instead they felt concave, cratered. Punctures, points of entry. But for what?
At least the pain was subsiding. Its hot fire had cooled to a dull glow, a kind of muffled throb. Just to be safe, Callahan got out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and poured some over his heel. Nothing happened. No vigorous white bubbling or sharp stab of cleansing pain. The rash or punctures or whatever they were didn’t react at all.
In theory, this should’ve been comforting, but it had the opposite effect on Callahan. He had the sudden sense that something within his body needed to be neutralized—to be scoured, disinfected, expelled—and if the hydrogen peroxide wasn’t doing it, then he needed to find another way.
But this was paranoid thinking. He’d stepped into a puddle and suffered some kind of abrasion. Nothing more than that.
The desert was always trying to prod or prick you, to find its way in, whether it was a scorpion’s barb or something as simple as the sand blowing into your eyes. The point was that he’d endured much worse than this—many times over—during his forty-five years in the Mojave. Just because he was old didn’t mean he had to get hysterical about things. Besides, if he wanted to worry about something, he should be worrying about that pain in his side, which was clearly playing the long game. Worry about that, Callahan told himself as he limped to the kitchen to fry up some lunch, not some dumb rash on your foot.
He went to bed early, before it was even dark outside. He’d been feeling strange all afternoon, lethargic and jittery all at once, like he’d drank a pot of coffee laced with tranquilizers, and he didn’t have any better idea than sleeping it off. But sleep didn’t last long. He woke up after an hour, racked with violent chills and the bizarre sensation that his body was somehow expanding. He reached his hands out towards the edges of the mattress: the familiar distance was the same. He wasn’t literally getting bigger. But that’s not quite what it felt like anyway. What it felt like was that his insides were growing, while his outside remained the same. Like his organs and veins and layers of muscle and fat—even his bones—were swelling up against his resistant skin.
Callahan turned on the bedside lamp and looked down the length of his torso. Nothing remarkable beyond the familiar ravages of old age. He turned the lamp towards his heel. The rash was still there. It didn’t seem any worse, maybe even faded a bit, as though it were already healing. He turned off the lamp.
The rash began to glow.
The color was pink, but not in the fleshy sense, not like an open wound. The pink was… neon, basically. And it wasn’t just the punctures that were glowing—there were traces of pink running up his ankle and calf, threading just underneath the skin. He turned the lamp on. The pink disappeared under the bulb’s glare. He turned the lamp off. There it was again, bright as a roadhouse sign. Phosphorescent. And spreading now, moving farther up his leg.
He heaved himself out of bed, gripped and shaken by relentless chills, and headed to the bathroom. He looked into the mirror, leaving the lights off. His eyes were two pinpricks of pink light reflecting in the dark glass. He opened his mouth and a pink glow leaked out.
He was shining, lit from inside. And the light wanted to get out.
That was when Callahan started screaming.