Slowly, Chris turned to John. “Leave?”
“Yes, leave. We need to get the fuck out of here. Come on, let’s go.”
John grabbed Chris’s hand, but Chris didn’t move.
“For christ’s sake,” John said.
“I can’t. I should stay. Sharon’s making her way here.”
“If you stay, all she will find when she gets here is your corpse. Let’s go.”
Chris wouldn’t budge.
John had spent the last ten years of his life hating this man, but he didn’t want to see him die. He grabbed Chis by the collar and shook him.
“Listen to me, if you don’t move, you’re going to die. We will find Sharon. If she could survive five years of marriage with me, she can survive the first few days of an alien attack. Once we get out of here, we’ll try to find her. We’ll do whatever it takes. Plus, if you die. I’ll win her back. You don’t want that to happen do you?”
Tears streamed down Chris’s face. “Okay, okay.” He got up and made his way out of the command center with John and Oleksii.
As they made their way out, the building began to shake. John didn’t need to look at a computer monitor to know that the motherships were entering the atmosphere. It was only a matter of time before they would be hovering over the Mission Control buildings.
Chapter 5
It was dark. The sun set an hour ago the sky was lit up with stars and a bright full moon.
The walk down the hill toward the radio tower was full of dread. Each step was met with the anticipation that things could go wrong. that an alien ship might appear and vaporize them all. The men tried to be as quiet as possible. Every time they heard an AOJ they ducked. The alien ships weren’t close, but you could hear their engines. The thwap-thwap-thwap sound they made was unusual. Like the sound from the mothership, it got into your bones.
The men walked by many abandoned mansions. Homes belonging to Hollywood elite. Most mansions windows had been smashed open. Looters, probably. The apocalypse began only eight hours ago, but people were already doing whatever they had to do to survive. Save from killing anybody innocent, Rick knew that if he was in the same position, he’d have done no different.
The winding roads of the hills made the walk cumbersome. The dense foliage hid the moon. Every now and then, when the light broke through the trees, lighting up the road they were walking down, they’d see something horrific. Rick hadn’t seen many dead bodies in his life. He’d never seen a war up close. But this is what he imagined war would look like. They passed eight bodies on the walk. Seven of them were burned beyond recognition. The last one wasn’t killed by an alien blast, it died from something else. She was a young woman, strewn across the ground, half-naked. She didn’t look any older than twenty-five. Had an allien ship done this? Or was it a group of looters? Rick couldn’t bear the thought. Had society already crumbled apart? Eight hours into an alien invasion and civilization was reduced to pure anarchy.
In the distance they could hear the X-91s still fighting the AOJs. Beyond the rooftops of the mansions, they could see the glow of the explosions. Whatever was going on, it was intense. As long as he heard the battle, he knew there was still some hope.
“How’s it going up there, Sam?” Rick spoke into his walkie-talkie.
“Not good. We’ve lost a lot of jets. When will you be at the radio tower?”
“Soon,” Rick responded. “We’re about a half mile away.”
“Good,” Sam said.
Sam was still at the observatory. Despite the fact that he wasn’t able to communicate with Mission Control, he wanted to keep tabs on the battle. Army battalions had been communicating with him via short-range walkie-talkie broadcast. They needed his help. According to the last battalion he’d spoke to, the orders to retreat were about to be sent.
Rick ended communication with Sam and continued the walk down toward the radio tower. A group of survivors were approaching. Rick and the other two SpaceForce soldiers raised their weapons. After they’d spotted the body of the young woman, they knew they had to be careful. Three people in the group were pushing shopping carts, each one jam packed full of food, water and clothes. Rick and the soldiers lowered their weapons. The survivors walked past them.
After ten more minutes of walking, Rick, and the two soldiers, Davis, and McClusky, made it to the radio tower. The tower was actually atop an office building. They’d have to go inside and get to the roof to get access to the tower.
The building was four storeys tall and looked like your generic office. It had a concrete exterior and large, empty black windows. A large ‘BlueStar Communications’ logo was on the upper edge of the building.
“Alright,” Rick said. “Lets go.
Davis and McCluskey nodded.
They entered the building and were greeted by smoke and flickering light. Inside the lobby, they saw a couple bodies. McCluskey ran up to them and checked for vital signs. He grabbed each body by the wrist and listened. He turned back to Rick and shook his head.
“What’s the smoke coming from?” Davis asked.
“Electrical fire,” Rick said. “It would explain the flickering light. It’s only a matter of time before this building is a pile of rubble.”
Rick knelt on the ground and opened up his backpack. Inside was a respirator. He put it on. McCluskey and Davis followed suit.
As the elevators were down, they made their way to the service stairs. But they couldn’t get to the roof. The entrance to the roof was blocked. Part of the ceiling was caved in. They’d have to find another way up. They got off at the third floor and looked for a way to get to the roof.
The offices on the third floor were comprised of desks, water coolers, and plants. Each desk had a computer on it, some documents, pictures of loved ones. Everything had been left turned on. It looked exactly as it had when the aliens arrived. Everyone must’ve just got up and run. They searched the third floor, looking for a way to the roof. The only way to the top was through the service stairway or the elevator.
“Well, what now?” McCluskey joked.
Davis shrugged. He was looking through some documents on a desk, something about a new weapon that BlueStar was designing. A special high-grade military weapon that could make anyone a world-class marksman.
Rick ignored the two soldiers. There had to be a way to the roof. He looked out each window of the building. He opened up a window on the south-side of the building, letting a large plume of smoke out the window. As he looked outside, he spotted their way to the top. A window cleaning platform was outside. He called to Davis and McCluskey and the three men got onto the platform. They hit a button and the platform rose up to the roof.
As the platform rose, Rick saw the radio tower, but he also saw something else. A group of survivors were resting under the tower. There were four of them. An old man dressed in a nice suit, a woman, she looked like his secretary, and two custodial staff. The older man was lying on the ground, on his back. The woman and janitors were aiding him. When they saw Rick and the two SpaceForce soldiers, their faces lit up.
“Please help!” the woman yelled. “My names Patricia. This is Wayne.” She motioned the old man on the ground. “He’s injured. He’s had a heart attack. We need to get him to the hospital.”
The two janitors walked up to Rick, they looked like they wanted to hug him. “Hello,” one of them said. “My name is Manuel.”
The other janitor approached Rick and said, “I’m Jose. Thank god you are here.”
“What the hell are you doing up here?” Rick said.
Patricia looked at the old man and then back to Rick with a nervous expression on her face. “We were up here when the invasion began,” she said. “We were…”
She didn’t need to say anymore. Rick knew what they were doing up here. It was clear as the day. One of the custodial staff interjected. “We were in the service room on the third floor and ran to the roof to see the alien ships,” said Manuel.
“And you got tra
pped up here?”
“Yes,” said Patricia. “One of those smaller alien ships fired down at the building and destroyed our blocked the stairway.”
Rick looked at the four survivors. He couldn’t leave them up here. He’d have to help.
“You can come with us,” he said. “But I don’t think we can take the old man to the hospital. The city is destroyed. We’re from SpaceForce. We have a base of operations at the observatory, up the hill. There’s a doctor there. He can look at the old man. He can help.”
Patricia looked to Wayne. The older man was wheezing. His eyes were closed. His hand was on his chest. He was in bad shape. “Wayne,” she said. “Wayne.”
The old man opened his eyes. “Wayne, these men are here to help. They can’t take us to the hospital. But they can help.”
The old man mustered all his strength. “Okay,” he said.
“Before we head down, I need to attach a small node on the radio tower.”
“That won’t work,” Patricia said.
“What? Why?”
“The radio tower isn’t working.”
“You’re telling me that a BlueStar radio tower isn’t working?”
“No,” she said. “When the alien ship fired at the building, the explosion must have hit one of the power lines inside the building. The radio tower usually has a green light at the top when it is working. When the building was hit, the green light turned off.”
“Well, that’s great,” said Rick, sarcastically.
He walked away from the group of survivors. He called Sam on the walkie-talkie.
“Bad news,” Rick said.
“Give it to me,” Sam said on the other end.
“Radio tower is down.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Fuck, we should have known,” Sam said. “Alright, head back. We should evacuate. The city is lost. The battle is over.”
“We’ve also picked up some survivors. One of them is injured. We’ll bring them back to the base of operations.”
Sam and Rick ended their conversation. Rick didn’t like hearing that the battle was over. He came to Los Angeles to make a difference, to help turn the tide in the war against the aliens, but it was over now. He looked out at the battle unfolding over the Los Angeles skyline. He could only see four or five fighter jets left. It was hard to tell in the night sky. They circled the skyline and valiantly fought off the AOJs, which were numbered in the hundreds. He watched as one of the missiles from an X-91 hit an AOJ. The triangular alien craft twirled as it fell to the ground, creating a giant explosion as it made impact. He pulled out his binoculars and scanned the immediate area. Army troops were retreating. He couldn’t make out numbers, but he could see military trucks, anti-aircraft vehicles and tanks driving away from the city’s core. Every now and then he heard shots from soldier’s rifles. The retreating anti-aircraft vehicles fired the odd missile into the sky, but they were slow and useless against the agile AOJs. Every time a missile got close, the AOJ dove out of the way. The missle would veer off, either hitting a building or the ground. The tanks were useless, too. They were their to serve as shields for the ground troops. Shields that didn’t last long against the blue plasma blasts from the AOJs. He put his binoculars down and looked back at the survivors on the roof. The battle was over. It was time to retreat.
Rick, Davis and McCluskey helped the survivors up and one at a time, lowered them via the window cleaning platform to the third floor. The platform didn’t go all the way to the ground. It was a slow process, especially because they took special care with Wayne, but it was the only way down.
Davis and McCluskey were holding up Wayne as they made their way outside the building. They wouldn’t be able to carry the old man back to the observatory. It would be slow and they needed to conserve their strength. “Any of you folks have a vehicle?” Rick asked.
“We have a cleaning van,” Jose said. “There would be enough room for all of us.”
“Perfect,” said Rick.
Chapter 6
It was mid-afternoon when the motherships settled over Atlanta. Two hours later, the AOJs emerged from them and started to attack. Sandra Connor and her two young children, Billy and Claire, were far enough from the city that they were safe, but close enough that they could hear the explosions.
She was on the road with her kids because she was bringing them back from a hunting trip in the Smokey Mountains they’d just been on. The hunting trip that had gone wrong. She was hoping to find some relaxation and peace back in Atlanta. But that wasn’t going to happen now.
During the hunting trip, her daughter ended up getting lost. Sandra and her son searched through the woods for over twenty-four hours before finding her daughter trapped inside a cabin deep in the woods. Claire had been chased by a bear. When Sandra found her daughter, she had to fight the bear off. She ended up killing it with a shot through the eye with her crossbow. Bears were endangered animals and prohibited from hunters, but she knew that the park rangers would make an exception. She had to kill it, it was in self-defense. The bear didn’t go down easy, though. It managed to claw into Sandra’s leg. She didn’t lose a lot of blood. But the injury hurt and would take a few weeks to heal.
After she killed the bear, and confirmed that Claire was okay, her and her children went back to their camp and packed their things up.
They were almost home when the ships appeared. Thankfully, they were stuck in rush hour. If it wasn’t for rush hour, they might’ve been in the heart of the city.
When Sandra saw the ships, she turned off the cars autopilot and turned the car around. She drove over the grassy divide that separated both directions of the interstate. She drove away from the city, away from the aliens. She didn’t want to wait around for an attack to start. Her kids thought she was crazy as the car bumped up and down along the divide. They screamed at her to stop. She didn’t. As soon as her tires hit the pavement on the other side of the road, she slammed her foot on the gas. The tires squealed. They’d head back to the campground at the national park. Fighting off bears seemed a lot easier than fighting off alien spaceships.
While on the road toward the national park, Sandra called her mom, who lived in Atlanta on her cellphone.
“Hello?” her mom said. “Sandra?”
“Get out of the city, mom!”
“Sandra, what do you mean?”
“Listen to me. You need to get out of the city. Take a look out your window. You’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re heading back to the national park. You should meet us there. There’s no ships in the sky that way.”
“Ships?”
Her mother looked out her condo’s window. She saw what Sandra was talking about. She told her daughter that she would wake her husband up, he was having an afternoon nap, and together, they would make their way out of the city.
Sandra ended the call and put on the radio. She listened to the reports about the invasion. She knew it was only a matter of time before those things would attack. It was more than a gut feeling. She’d been studying this kind of stuff her whole life. This was a classic invasion scenario. Sandra was a professor of colonial history at Georgia State. She knew all about hostile invasions. If those ships weren’t a threat, they wouldn’t have positioned themselves the way they did above each city. If they were friendly, they would have sent one ship down at a time. War ships are meant to intimidate. Those ships in the sky were war ships. They were intimidating monoliths of metal, constructed from technology thousands of years more advanced than anything on Earth. Like the Spanish invasion of the Maya in the 16th century, this would be over quick. When the voice on the radio reported the first attack, she didn’t even flinch. It was never a question of if they would attack to her, it was just a question of when.
“I’m scared,” said Bobby, who was in the backseat. “What’s going on, mom? I want to go home.”
Of course he was scared, what nine-year-old wouldn’t be. Sandra didn’t know what to tell him. She ha
dn’t stopped to think about her kids since she saw the ships. Her drive to survive had taken over her. She wanted to protect her kids, keep them safe, but she didn’t think about the psychological trauma they were going through. From losing Claire in the woods, to killing the bear, and now the alien ships, Sandra needed time to breathe and think. She needed sleep. She wanted to console her son, but she couldn’t. She had to keep going. He’d understand later in life.
Claire was in the back with her brother. She looked at her mother. She could see that her mother was exhausted. She wanted to help. She turned to her brother. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll be alright. We will get back to the national park and wait for gran and gramps. It’ll be okay.” She put her arms around her brother and patted him on the back.
Seeing her daughter do that made Sandra smile. She couldn’t do this alone. It would be impossible. She needed Claire to help. Claire was the older of her two children. She was 14 years old, but now that the world was undergoing a rapid transformation, she’d be growing up real quick.
Bobby quieted down once Claire consoled him. Sandra focused on the road. They’d be at the national park soon.
Chapter 7
An AOJ had spotted them.
Blue plasma blasts fired down toward the van. Buildings, cars, street signs exploded all around them. The van handled like a piece of shit, but Rick knew how to drive. He veered around corners, through parking lots, and even drove through a fast food restaurant. Whatever it took to get away, he did it.
From the corner of his eye, he could see a plasma burst. He slammed his foot on the brakes. Everyone in the van flew forward. The plasma burst exploded in front of the van, sending a piece of metal flying toward the windshield. Fortunately, the metal lodged itself in the glass. Had it broken through, it would have hit Rick in the face. He would have been dead. He smiled. This was getting fun.
McCluskey was half out the passenger seat window, his rifle nestled into his shoulder, he was firing at the AOJ. Rick turned to McCluskey and said, “What the hell are you doing?”
Battle- Earth Page 4
