“Yep,” said Omar. “Fresh pot.”
John sighed. That meant nothing. A fresh pot of horse shit, was still horse shit. Still, it had caffeine. He’d take it. Omar poured him a cup. John winced after taking his first sip. “Any luck with the new wire alignment?” he asked.
Omar frowned and shook his head.
“God damnit,” John said. “We’ve been at this for too long. I’m a fucking astrophysicist. I helped design satellites. Yet, when trying to figure out how this ship works I feel like a dog trying to ride a bicycle.”
Omar smirked. He’d grown used to John’s temporary freakouts. He’d also grown used to John’s strange metaphors. It provided him and the other bunker staff a few moments of levity.
John sat down and put his head in his hands. He was at his wits end. The elevator door dinged.
“How’d the realignment go?” Oleksii walked into the hull room, followed by Domino. The two had grown close since the escape from Las Vegas. Domino wagged his tale. He ran up to John and started licking his pants. John pushed Domino aside.
“What do you think?” John said, sarcastically.
Oleksii frowned. He could tell John was stressed. Spending five years on a project and not seeing any results must have been frustrating.
Since they’d got to the bunker, Oleksii had kept himself busy in the communications floor of the bunker. Despite the global satellite meltdown, some communication links still existed between countries. They communicated via Morse code. With satellite communication all but non-existent and with most radio towers destroyed by the motherships and AOJs, they had no choice. Communicating by traditional methods like telephone lines or cellular networks only worked over small distances, if at all. Morse code was dependable.
What Oleksii missed was the ability to communicate with satellites. The BlueStar nano-satellites he’d been using in Mission Control were not accessible from the bunker. All he had was tech from over two hundred years ago.
With Morse code, they had been able to set up some communication channels with a few countries. China, Russia, Great Britain and Canada were all responding to messages. Like the US, each country had been decimated by the invaders. Any kind of government or institution had been replaced by a group of survivors holed up in some military bunker. Every now and then, one of the bunkers they were communicating with would go dark and they’d never hear from it again.
In five years, not much had changed. The aliens still reigned supreme and whatever humans were left were hiding.
“What do you want?” John looked at Oleksii and motioned to him to get on with it.
“Oh, sorry,” Oleksii said. “Ethan sent me down here to tell you we need you in the command centre.”
“For fuck’s sake,” John said.
Oleksii shrugged. He pointed to the coffee and signalled to Omar for a cup. Omar poured him one. Oleksii took a sip.
“Well, if there is one thing about this bunker,” he said. “It’s that the coffee is really good.”
John left the hangar with a frown on his face.
Chapter 31
Quinton pulled the knife out of the bear. He wiped the blood from it with his shirt. One of the men in his hunting party ran up to him.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Quinton said. “I’m okay. But if I didn’t know any better, I’d think this bear is a sign from the aliens. This beast was compelled by our sin, by our failures as a group to accomplish any of our goals. They are letting us know that we failed them.”
The man knelt down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We have been sinful, great leader. We have failed you.”
Quinton stood up, wiped the dirt from his pants and smirked. He turned to the other men in the hunting party. There were seven of them and they were all on their knees. “Get up,” he said. “I haven’t had a bear steak in some time and I am hungry. Let’s make our way back. We will deal with this sin later.”
Quinton looked at the body of the bear. It had thirteen arrows sticking out of it and slash marks from his knife along its throat and skull. He admired the bear’s strength and its sheer desire to survive at all costs. It was a worthy opponent.
They’d spotted the bear while they were on their way to hunt some deer. Quinton heard the growl of the beast and motioned to the men to hide behind any nearby tree. The men wanted to take the bear down with their guns, but Quinton ordered them not to shoot. They needed to save their ammo. They’d need to take the bear out with arrows and knives.
Seconds after hearing it, the beast burst through the woods and grabbed one of the men by his backpack and threw him ten yards into the air. As the man flew through the air, the rest of the hunting party unloaded arrow after arrow into the creature. The bear stumbled back in pain and howled in rage. One of the arrows had struck a vein in its neck and it started to bleed out. As the beast stumbled back and forth and its thick red blood stained the muddy ground of the forest floor, Quinton snuck up behind the creature and jumped on top of its back, stabbing into its neck and head. He didn’t stop until he was sure it was dead. It was either him or the bear. There could only be one king of this forest and Quinton wasn’t going to give up his throne without a fight.
Now the bear was dead, a piece of flesh and fur that the camp butcher would have to cure and skin. Quinton turned away from it and signalled to the men to pick it up. This hunting trip had been a failure. The camp was low on food and while the bear’s meat would buy them some time, six or seven dead deer would have been better. Plus, now their arrows would need to be resharpened. This bear had set them back at least two days. The sun started to set. They’d need to return to the camp soon and start prepping for the next hunt.
The six men in the hunting party dragged the body of the bear through the Smoky Mountain woods back toward the camp. Quinton lead them.
As they hiked through the woods, Quinton thought of the rarity of the bear attack. He’d been in this woods for five years. And in that time, he’d never run into a bear, let alone heard one growl. In fact, the only bear he’d heard of living in these woods came from Sandra Connor, the woman that got away. Thinking of Sandra made his jaw clench. Thinking of her made him nauseous. That stupid bitch, didn’t she realize the power the two of them could have wielded over the camp? They could have created a new world out here in the woods? Instead she ran off and nearly undermined his efforts.
When he met Sandra, she told him that that the day before the invasion a bear attacked her family out in these woods. She said she killed it, that she shot an arrow straight throw its eye and into its brain. With no reason to doubt her, he took it as fact. Although the years since the invasion, he began to doubt the stories veracity. Maybe a part of him didn’t want to believe it, because if he did, then it meant that he’d lost someone special, someone who could have actually helped him. He looked back over the men in his hunting party. They meant well, but they were useless. It had taken him five years to get them to shoot straight with a bow and arrow. No one was like Sandra. No one would be.
This bear must’ve been related to the bear she killed. How else would it have learned to survive for years out here in the woods undetected. It’d most likely spent years watching from behind the trees, hiding from him and the camp. For years, it must’ve been content and in control, but something must’ve changed for it to venture out of its cave. It must’ve had no choice. Food must’ve been hard to come by. The same way food and supplies were running out for Quinton and his camp.
Since Sandra left that night five years ago, Quinton had lived out in old hunting cabins with the other members of his camp. Thankfully, the motherships never came close to the national park or the cabins. For the first few years, this freedom from the motherships afforded him the luxury of growing and taking care of the camp.
His wife helped him set up the camp at first. Then as other survivors arrived, he was able to get more done around the camp. Each survivor was as broken and scared as the last. They were all shocked that the world was
ending. They were looking for answers. It didn’t take long for Quinton to win their trust and establish himself as their leader. He gave them the answers that they wanted to hear. He told them all that they were the chosen ones. The chosen few who would create the new world. Everyone believed it. Everyone bought in. Everyone except Sandra.
Sandra and her kids escaped the camp when he’d offered her the role of second in command. When she refused his advances and knocked him unconscious, that stung like a thorn in Quinton’s side. He’d regretted not being more ready that night in the woods. At the time, he didn’t think she would fight back. He thought he’d won her over with his charm. It’d worked with everyone else. Why not her? But she was wild, like the bear he’d just cut down. And like a bear, the only way she’d be tamed was by a knife to the throat. He should’ve killed her. He regretted his discretion. He regretted his over confidence.
After Sandra escaped, a few others left the camp. Quinton let them. If they didn’t believe in him, then it was all for naught. If they’d lost faith in the cause, there was no point in keeping them around. Sandra was like a cancer. He had to make sure that all infected elements were removed. It was hard to to see the camp’s numbers diminish after her escape, but it was necessary. Every member mattered. But he had to make sure that the rot was neutralized.
He and the other hunters made it through the dense woods. The light from the cabins began to glow through the branches of the trees. Tiny red flames stood out like beacons to all passersby. The camp had changed a lot in the five years since the invasion. A small wall had been constructed out of logs, and each cabin was modified to serve some purpose. There was the butcher’s cabin, an ammunitions building, and a medical house. All were re-modeled to fit the camp’s needs. Six members of the camp stood guard at all times. They’d protect the camp from hostile survivors.
Quinton made sure that any one who was hostile stayed far from the camp. Once they’d fought off a group of attackers, he’d string their naked bodies up along the wall. Their rotting corpses would be left their until they were bones. He’d then take the skulls of each attacker and sit them atop the edge of the wall. The rest of the bones would be nailed to the wall. From an outsiders perspective, the wall was beginning to look like it was made out of human bone. The bone wall worked as a good deterrent. They weren’t attacked by too many hostile humans.
In the middle of the camp, there was a large building. Quinton designed it to look like a cathedral. Atop the entrance way, was the skull of the only other person who’d ever challenged his dominion over the camp besides Sandra. His name was Wallace Dupont.
Every night, Quinton would lead a service in the cathedral. It was there, where he would remind the survivors why the aliens had arrived. He’d remind them about there role as the chosen ones, about how they could appease the motherships if they gave in and accepted the aliens as the true gods of the Earth.
It was during one of these sermons that Wallace Dupont challenged Quinton. Wallace said that Quinton was full of shit and that there would be no atonement for the invasion, that no appeasement could be made to the aliens to stop their attacks and that they were not the chosen ones. Dupont had grown frustrated with Quinton’s sermons. He believed that the camp members should join up with a militia or surviving army unit and try to fight back against the aliens. He said this because he said he saw the writing on the wall. He knew the camp wouldn’t last much longer out in the Smokey Mountains. Food was scarce and supplies were running low. He said he was beginning to see through Quinton’s bullshit. Too bad the rest of the camp didn’t see it that way.
Quinton let Wallace speak. He didn’t want to interfere. He wanted the camp to hear Wallace’s argument. Part of him worried he was making the same mistake he’d made with Sandra. But the one big difference between the two defectors was that this time he was surrounded by his zealots. This time he was surrounded by the believers. Sandra had rebelled only days after the invasion, days after Quinton had set up the camp. He didn’t have the camp members’s trust yet. He did now. Wallace’s act of transgression came years after Sandra’s. The roots Quinton had established in the camp’s minds were deep. They lived and breathed his word. They believed that they were the chosen ones.
In a way, Wallace’s act of rebellion was a test. It tested the camp’s allegiance to Quinton. It tested their servitude. It didn’t take long for Quinton to learn how servile they had become.
One of the camp’s young members stood up during Wallace’s diatribe against Quinton. His name was Cleveland O’Ryan. He told Wallace to sit down and pay his respects. When Wallace didn’t comply. Cleveland picked up an axe and ran toward Wallace, shoving the metal tool into Wallace’s head. Blood splattered all over inside the cathedral. Camp members screamed out in shock. Even Quinton was taken aback by the viciousness of Cleveland’s attack. That said, he didn’t stop Cleveland from hacking into Wallace’s lifeless corpse. He watched as the globs of blood shot up into the air and landed on each camp members clothes. No one stopped Cleveland. They were all stained with Wallace’s blood. A smile crept along Quinton’s face as he watched it all happen. He knew that a firm message was being sent. Those who wanted to dissent would have to pay a price. It would not be pleasant.
Since Wallace Dupont’s failed rebellion, life in the camp was good. Everyone understood their place and their role. Cleveland O’Ryan became the closest thing Quinton had to a number two, even though Quinton didn’t like him. Cleveland wasn’t smart enough in Quinton’s eyes. He was just a useful believer. Not someone to trust with making decisions on behalf of the camp. Other than that, the only main concern was food. For a few years, wildlife had been plenty. But it was now getting harder to find the small game that had once been so plentiful. Each hunt would force them to go out farther into the woods. It meant risking their lives and the safety of the camp. That’s why they’d intended to travel far out into the woods to get to the deer. That’s why they were vulnerable to the bear.
Cleveland greeted the hunting party as they made their way back into the camp. His long red hair, slack-jawed chin, and straw hat made him look like the hillbilly he most definitely was. Quinton acknowledged Cleveland as he walked past the camp’s doors. Cleveland nodded at him and spit on the ground.
Quinton led the hunting party through the camp. The men carrying the dead body of the bear dropped it off at the butcher’s. The camp butcher, smiled. “The aliens have been kind to us to bring us this meat,” he said.
“They have not been kind to us,” Quinton snapped. “This bear was close to our camp. If we didn’t find it tonight, it may have killed some of our children. The bear was close because of our sin.”
“Of course,” the butcher said, lowering his head in respect to Quinton.
Quinton didn’t want to be negative to the camp members. He didn’t like to always be the harbinger of bad news. But he couldn’t help feel that this bear was a bad omen. If something this large could live so close to the camp undiscovered all these years, than what else could be out there? What other undiscovered threats lay hidden within the forest?
He decided that he should call an emergency camp sermon. Perhaps it was time to discuss their options? Maybe they should move camp locations?
It was while he was thinking about what to do when the forest floor began to shake and the trees began to rattle. The crackling of breaking branches and the falling trees made it clear. Quinton turned to the hunting party he had walked back to the camp with and screamed, “We’re under attack!”
Chapter 32
“Come on you piece of shit mother fucker!” Felix whacked his computer monitor. It’s screen flickered on and then off again.
For the past three days he’d made his way to the coast. He’d been guiding the yacht. Motherships were difficult to avoid. Every city that lined the coast had a mothership hovering over it. He needed to find a section of land that he could run aground on. One that was free of motherships. Once he found a safe bit of shoreline, he’d make
his way to Starpeak Mountain and radio tower. From there, he’d use it to find out what was interfering with his distress call.
But he had to make it to the shore for any of that to happen. He could feel the yacht’s power generator rumble. It wasn’t in good shape. As long as it lasted until he got to the shore, he’d be okay.
He hit his computer one more time. It flickered back on.
“You mother fucker,” he said. “If you do this again, I will throw you overboard.”
The computer’s hard drive buzzed as if to respond.
Felix clicked away at the now working computer. He’d been looking at a close up view of the shoreline around the Gulf. He was trying to spot the best place to land. He was hoping he’d find a place with a nearby road. He thought that’d make it easier to find his bearings and make his way to Colorado. He zoomed in to a particular spot on the map. “That’s the best place,” he said. He jumped up from his computer and made his way from the yacht’s cabin to the deck above. He took control of the ship’s wheel and guided it to the coordinates he’d found on his computer.
The area of land he guided the ship toward was fifty miles west of Houston. It was a small beach and there were no motherships in sight. But because he didn’t see any alien ships didn’t mean it was safe. He pulled out his binoculars and scanned it. It looked empty. He thought he spotted a truck driving off into the distance, but when he checked the spot again, he saw nothing. As much as he wanted to avoid the aliens, he also wanted to avoid other humans.
After the invasion began, Felix managed to intercept and read some of the messages being sent back and forth via BlueStar’s social media channels. It was illegal to look into private social media accounts, but who was going to arrest him now that the world was essentially over? The messages being sent across social media channels were clear. It wasn’t just the alien’s that were attacking human civilization, it was also the humans who had survived the initial attack. Until he got to Colorado and the bunker, he’d want to keep a low profile. He’d want to stay away from any survivors.
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