BLACK RAIN'S GONNA FALL

Black rain is falling in Glen Hartwell, & something shiny and deadly is hidden in the rain

"Black rain's gonna fall
"As the nightmare realm comes,
"Black rain's gonna fall
"Desperate people gonna run,
"They're gonna run for their life
"They've gotta run through the night
"Acid Rain falling down.
"Black rain's falling down
"Falling down all around,
"Falling all around this town
"Black rain's falling down."
-Phil Roberts April, 2024

Sound asleep on the first storey of the Yellow House in Rochester Road, Merridale, Sheila Bennett only vaguely heard the pounding rain outside. It was the 7th of January, and it had been a hot summer by Victorian standards, but a hard rain had started pouring down suddenly. The rain had no cooling effect, however, so the house remained swelteringly hot inside and out.
Awakened by the heat, not the machine-gun sound of the rain, Sheila pressed the light button on her bedside clock and was surprised:
"Six-thirty?" Looking out through the bedroom window, the orange-and-black-haired Goth chick could see only blackness. It should be light outside by now, she thought. Especially with daylight saving.
Although breakfast wouldn't be ready till seven, she decided to get up and hurriedly dressed in her police uniform.
Puzzled, she listened to what sounded like heavy machinery outside the window, before realising that it was unrelenting rain.
In the middle of summer? she thought. She checked on her Venus Flytrap, Venice, then headed out into the hallway.
Yawning, Sheila went downstairs to the dining room, where she found Deidre Morton, the owner of the Yellow House, already preparing waffles, strawberries, and whipped cream for breakfast. Around the table sat the other houseguests.
"Rip Van Sheila is finally up," teased Terri Scott. A beautiful ash blonde, Terri was the top cop of the area, and Sheila's immediate boss, and Colin Klein's Fiancé.
"What'a you mean finally?" demanded Sheila. "Breakfast is usually at seven o'clock. Let me guess, no one could sleep through the rain?"
"The heat, actually," corrected Colin Klein. A tall, handsome redheaded Englishman, Colin had worked as a crime reporter for thirty years before immigrating to Australia and joining the Glen Hartwell Police Force.
"But as long as we're having raffles, strawberries, whipped cream, and brandy, who cares?" asked Tommy Turner. A reformed alcoholic, Tommy was short and pudgy and was allowed one tot of alcohol with each of his meals.
"Please tell us, you don't want your tot of brandy poured over your waffles, strawberries, and cream?" begged Natasha Lipzing, at seventy-one, the oldest resident of the Yellow House.
"Course," said Tommy. "It's delish."
"God save us from Philistines," said Leo Laxman. A black Jamaican by birth, Leo now worked as a nurse at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.
"Don't bring religion into it," said Tommy, grinning widely as Deidre reluctantly poured brandy straight from the bottle onto his breakfast.
Then, taking the bottle across to a black cabinet, the only non-yellow furniture in the dining room, Deidre safely locked it away.
Trying their best not to watch Tommy eating, they quickly consumed their breakfasts before starting outside with the intention of heading around to the Mitchell Street Police Station in Glen Hartwell.
The designated driver, Sheila Bennett, opened the front door, looked out, and stopped. Looking back, she asked:
"Hey, Tare, when did you have your Lexus spray painted silver?"
"Don't be a nong," said Terry.
The blonde pushed past Sheila to look outside, where the black rain still pounded down, flooding the street, and splashing off her once police-blue Lexus, which indeed was now shining silvery, stripped clean of paint.
"What the fuck?" asked Colin. "Don't tell me there's a gang of rogue grit-blasters going around stripping the paint from cars." He pointed to where other cars on Rochester Road were also shiny, silvery, and stripped of paint.
"Don't think so," said Sheila. "The windows are crystal clear. The glass would be fuzzed over if they'd been grit- or sand-blasted."
"Well spotted, Sheils," said Terri, moving to step out into the pouring rain.
Colin grabbed her arm to hold her back, saying, "Wait up, Babe."
Picking up a large black umbrella from a wooden stand beside the door, Colin held the brolly out into the rain.
"What are you...?" began Terri, stopping as the rain started to eat through the fabric of the umbrella.
"Acid rain!" said Sheila and Terri together.
"Looks like we won't be going outside today until the rain stops," said Colin.
As they headed back to the dining room, Sheila said, "Well, at least it'll keep the crime rate down. Crooks aren't likely to go out into the acid rain either."
Terri opened her mobile phone to ring through to the Mitchell Street Police Station, then, receiving no reply, she rang through to Suzette Cummings' home address. Suzette was an eighteen-year-old ravenette, a police trainee, due to go to Melbourne later in 2025 for her final exams.
"Been outside yet?" asked Terri.
"Nope," said Suzette.
"Well, don't, there's acid rain falling."
"I thought that was a myth."
"Nope, is your Corolla parked outside?"
"Of course."
"What colour is it?"
"Police blue, natch."
"Guess again," said Terri before disconnecting.
Puzzled, Suzette walked across to open the front door of Mrs. Miggins's boarding house in Wilson Street, Lenoak, and stared in shock at her shiny silver Corolla.

Draped out in a thick, transparent plastic raincoat and carrying a wraparound see-through umbrella, which came down over his head and neck, Tony Redman had no qualms about braving the acid rain. He had to pick up his work van at Ed Bussy's repair shop and saw no reason to stay home because of pounding rain.
Rain is rain, he thought. Just some is harsher than the rest.
He was heading down Robinson's Drive, Glen Hartwell, heading toward the Northern end of the Glen, when the large shiny silvery object whooshed past him.
What the shit? wondered Tony, a tall, barrel-chested, redheaded man.
As the object reversed direction, he saw as it rushed back that it was perhaps the size of a large sheep. But with a shiny, metallic sheen.
A robot sheep? He thought jokingly. But then he noticed that the object seemed to have metallic wings and was soaring through the acid rain, as though it were its natural element.
It also made a loud metallic buzzing sound, possibly from the rapid flapping of its metallic grey wings, which flapped so fast they were almost invisible.
What is it, a giant drone? wondered Tony. If so, what's it doing out flying in the black rain?
As the object buzzed back and forth, Tony stopped and tried to discern exactly what it was. It looked more like a gigantic silvery metal hornet than a drone.
Then the 'hornet' changed direction and soared straight at Tony. The big man managed to fall to the concrete footpath in time, so that the drone zoomed within centimetres of him. Close enough so he felt a whoosh of wind as it barely missed him.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Tony shouted to no one in particular.
Ignoring his words, the hornet reversed direction, without bothering to turn, and started back toward the fallen man.
Struggling, without success to get back to his feet, Tony could only roll sideways across the concrete path, causing the hornet to miss him by centimetres again.
As Tony struggled to pull himself to his feet upon a grey Besser brick fence, the hornet's angry-bee buzzing took on a higher pitch as though furious that its intended victim had managed to avoid it twice.
"Fuck off!" shouted Tony.
Then, as the silvery hornet reversed direction and headed at him again, he stood his ground as though intending to let it strike him ... falling over the Besser brick fence onto acid-rain sodden earth.
"Yes!" cried Tony in satisfaction at the sound of the hornet colliding at full pelt into the solid brick fence. You can rely on Besser! he thought confidently, expecting the hornet to be smashed to a thousand pieces.
When he looked over the fence, though, although swaying drunkenly from side to side, the hornet had managed to stay airborne!
You evil fucker! thought Tony, looking about desperately for somewhere to hide.
In a panic, he made the mistake of climbing back over the Besser brick fence to start running back down Robinson's Drive in the hope of escaping the sight (sensors?) of the metallic monster before it returned to its senses. As he ran, he tried to keep his breathing as steady as possible so he could hear if/when the hornet started back after him.
Looks like the fucker is dead after all, he thought, realising that if it was robotic then 'dead' was the wrong word.
Tony had started to tire, but kept running, hoping to get his second wind, when he heard the angry-bee buzzing again.
Jesus save me! thought Tony crossing himself as he tried to accelerate to safety. However, the faster he ran, the louder the buzzing became, as the hornet started catching up to its chosen victim.
Although damaged by the collision with the Besser bricks and unable to whoosh as rapidly as it had previously done, the hornet was still able to easily outpace a rapidly tiring Tony Redman, intent upon making its first kill in Glen Hartwell.
"Fuck off, you monster!" Tony shrieked without daring to look around as the buzzing became almost deafening, as the hornet was less than a metre behind the running man.
For the second time, Tony tried to escape his pursuer by climbing over a brick fence. However, he was balanced precariously atop the fence when the hornet connected and, using shovel blade-sized metallic teeth, ripped a large chunk of flesh and muscle out of Tony's back.
The big man shrieked and fell face down upon the sun-dried grass. In agony, he tried pulling himself away as the metallic creature devoured part of his body.
Then, looking up, the hornet buzzed again, this time in satisfaction. Its damaged system had already started to repair itself, expedited by the food it had devoured.
The creature made a strange hiccupping sound as though laughing at Tony's flimsy efforts to drag himself to safety. Then, leaping off the fence, it landed upon the injured man's back and began eating him alive, ripping and rending huge chunks of meat and bone from the shrieking man's body.
The acid rain, continuing to fall, helped to soften, partly dissolving Tony's muscle and bone, making it easier for the hornet to devour its prey. Each mouthful of meat helped to restore its living metal as the metallic creature feasted. By the time it had devoured Tony Redman's flesh, muscle, fat, and much of his bones, the creature was fully recovered from its crash with the Besser bricks.
At last sated, the metallic life form took off and whooshed down Robinson's Drive, flying toward the northern end of Glen Hartwell, then out into the sweet-smelling pine and eucalyptus forest, taking the pounding acid black rain with it.

At the Yellow House, they were just settling down to tea or coffee with raspberry tartlets when the machine-gun roar of the pounding black rain suddenly stopped.
"Hey, the rain has finally stopped," said Terri.
"We can finally go to work," said Colin, standing up from the yellow floral-patterned sofa in the lounge room.
"Dammit," said Sheila, stuffing two raspberry tartlets into her mouth.
"Aw, come on Sheils, you can't expect to get the whole day off with pay," said Terri as they headed for the front of the house.
"Why not?" complained the Goth chick. "They get snow days off school in America, why can't we get acid-rain days off work in Australia?"
They were still arguing the point as they put on their gumboots, then headed outside to take a look at Terri's Lexus.
Sheila gave the car a few taps on the roof, then said, "It seems solid enough, the acid rain just melted away the paint."
Colin gave one of the tyres a kick, then said, "Tyres seem okay too."
"Okay, let's go," said Terri and the climbed into the now silver-grey Lexus.
They were almost at the Mitchell Street Police Station when Suzette Cummings rang Terri to tell them a corpse had been found in the lawn of a house in Robinson's Drive.
"Any sign of the cause of death?" asked Terri.
"Whoever it was has been eaten alive. Stripped to the bones, which are shiny clean, possibly in part due to the acid rain."
"Let's go," said Terri and ten minutes later they pulled up at Robinson's Drive where an ambulance was already parked, along with Suzette Cummings, the local coroner, Elvis Green (an avid Elvis Presley fan), along with various hospital staff.
"Chezza, Strong Arm," said Terri by way of greeting to the two paramedics, Cheryl Pritchard and Derek Armstrong a black paramedic and Sheila's boyfriend.
"Tezza, Col, Sheils," said Cheryl and Derek as one.
"Don't call me Tezza," said Terri.
Leaving Sheila to talk to Derek and Cheryl, Terri and Colin walked across to where a pile of bones lay on the dry grass outside number 98 Robinson's Drive.
"So, Docs," said Terri, "what's the verdict so far?"
"So far we can say for certain, someone has been eaten by something," said Tilly Lombstrom, a tall attractive fifty-something surgeon from the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.
"Don't bury us in details, Tils," teased Terri.
"We don't really know anything else yet," said Jesus Costello (pronounced Hee-Zeus), the administrator and chief surgeon of the G.H. Hospital.
"Other than the fact that the remaining bones ... some were devoured ... have an extreme sheen on them," said Elvis Green, "possibly cleaned by the acid rain."
"After or while the victim was being eaten?" asked Terri.
"At this stage, unknown," said Jesus. "Although what kind of creature could have been out devouring someone while acid rain was pounding down?"


After the creature is killed, they dissect it and discover that it is a metallic life form, not a robot.
Sheila says, "In the first season, in 1963, Doctor Who postulated the existence of metallic life forms."
"When you say 'Doctor Who postulated', I hope you don't expect us to be as impressed as if you had said 'Albert Einstein postulated'?" asked Terri.
"Or Stephen Hawking postulated?" asked Colin.
"Aw, you blokes ... I know when you're stirring," said Sheila, making them all laugh.

THE END
© Copyright 2024 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia