Why God Made Beer

By A. C. Williams

The stout at the Crown is frothy and just a bit sweet. Not sure how many I’ve drunk, but tonight isn’t the night for counting. If I was sure there’d be beer in heaven, I might be elsewhere.

Aliens. The outer-space sort. Came down from beyond months ago and decided last week they’d play merry hell with Earth’s national monuments. Knaresborough Castle came down yesterday by one of their bombs, but—joke’s on them, lads. It was rubble to start.

Another explosion rocks the world outside the wavery glass windows of the old tavern.

They already razed York and Leeds to the ground, though why anybody would want to invade Knaresborough is a mystery to me. But they are aliens. Maybe they’re keen on the North.

I push my empty glass with gnarled, aching fingers to the barkeep cowering under the counter. Only a tuft of his red hair shows, sticking up amidst the taps like a grassy weed.

“Seriously, mate, shouldn’t you be home?” The young man raises high enough to blink at me with wide blue eyes. “Haven’t you got family?”

“Lost them years ago.” I knock on the counter. “I’ve been waiting to die for longer than you’ve been alive, boy.”

Owlish and stammering, the barkeep stands, fills my glass, and pushes it back to me as another explosion rattles the walls. He squeaks like a mouse and drops again.

“Get up.” I gulp my beer and wipe froth from the silver stubble around my mouth. “That weren’t even a bad one.”

The boy glares. “How would you know?”

“I lived through the Blitz.” I salute the walls with my stout. “When Hitler sent his bombs to break us apart, we kept calm and carried on.”

The barkeep points toward the ceiling with a shaking finger. “This isn’t Hitler, you old loon.” His voice creaks with panic. “This is an alien invasion!”

“Aliens, Nazis, no difference.” I drink. “Bullies, the lot of them. Well, they can blow up the world if they like, but someone will stop them.”

The barkeep furrows his brow. “Who are you?”

“Thaddeus P. Birtwistle.” I extend my hand, wobbly and shrunk with old age. “Corporal Thaddeus P. Birtwistle, that is. Retired.”

The barkeep shakes my hand timidly.

I nod at the taps. “Get yourself a stout, my lad. No one will tell. I certainly won’t.”

The barkeep stares between me and the taps while I count off three more explosions in the distance, then snatches a glass and pours himself a pint of bitter. He comes round the bar and takes the chair beside me.

He lifts up his glass with a heartfelt grin. “To keeping calm and carrying on.”

I knock my glass against his. “This is why God made beer, mate.”

But before I can take a drink, the door to the Crown bursts from its hinges as an armored fellow shoulders his way inside like a living tank. Boots the size of cinder blocks crush the carpet with every step, and his four arms rise on either side of his broad chest like cobras.

The soldier utters a horrifying sound, something between a growl and a shriek.

Blimey. At least Nazis were prettier.

The poor barkeep is on the ground with his hands over his head, face in the carpet, whimpering in terror. I don’t blame the lad. If I were younger, I’d probably be down there with him, but I’ve got a beer to finish.

The soldier marches toward me—aiming some kind of weapon—but I’m not bothered. What’s the worst that can happen? He shoots me before I finish my stout? Well, that’d be a shame, of course, but it’s not the worst way to go.

But he doesn’t shoot.

The soldier hangs about, staring at me, growling like an ill-tempered cat.

I finish my stout and gaze at the soldier. Its armor is something out of a science fiction movie, the ones my friends’ grandkids all like going to see at the cinemas. The soldier peers back at me.

Poor sod. Does it even want to be here? Did it leave a family to come wreck our mudball of a planet?

I hold the glass out to it. “Want some?”

The soldier makes a noise, something like a snuffling grunt.

I slide off the chair and limp around the bar, cursing the arthritis in my knees. I pour another round of stout, one for me and one for the alien octopus. I offer it toward the soldier, and, to my surprise, it accepts, snatching the pint right out of my hands.

I hobble closer to the fiend. “To the end of the world.”  I drink.

Flapping its free hands in some kind of salute, the alien chitters behind its protective face mask. It lifts the lower half of the helmet to show a mouth crowded with needle-like teeth and takes a giant swig of the stout.

Instantly, the alien’s four arms go rigid. It chokes. It flails. It seizes like a spider in a shower of pesticide. Gagging, gurgling, and gasping, it tumbles backward, sprawls on the carpet, and hisses before going limp.

I nudge it with my foot. “Can’t say I expected that.”

The young barkeep straightens and looks from me to the fallen alien soldier. Slowly, he creeps toward it and pokes it, but the soldier doesn’t move.

“It died.” The barkeep gawks.

“Guess he couldn’t hold his liquor.”

“Maybe it’s an allergy.” The barkeep scrambles to his feet.

“What? Like them folks what can’t eat bread?”

The boy grabs his coat from the rack and races for the door. “My cousin’s in the military. I need to tell him about this.”

The young barkeep dashes out into the rainy Knaresborough night, and I finish my stout and pour another.

“Blimey. Maybe that’s why God made beer.” I salute the dead alien at my feet. “Cheers, mate.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A. C. Williams is an author and entrepreneur who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. She’d rather be barefoot, and if she isn’t her socks will never match. A proud Hufflepuff, she takes her coffee with cream, her pizza with pineapple, and her stories with spaceships. Follow her travel adventures with Hermes the Frog on social media.

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