by Edward Crae
“Well fuck,” Jake said. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I don’t see anything out there,” Cliff said. “If there are explosions happening, they ain’t anywhere near us.”
“But we felt them,” Jake said. “I can’t believe you didn’t feel the first one.”
Cliff shook his head. “Look man. I heard it just like you did, and it sounded far off. It might be Gephardt doing some shit. Who knows?”
Nobody spoke, but Jake sighed, looking at Dan. Dan could see the concern in his eyes. He wasn’t telling them something. Something he saw maybe? Something else?
“What is it?” Dan asked.
Jake shook his head, sighing again. “Something outside when I looked out. Another shadow…”
“Shadow person?” Dan said, his heart racing.
Jake nodded. “There but not there.”
Max was blown to the side with the impact of a nearby bomb, but regained his footing, blending into the group of soldiers that swarmed out of the compound. They were intent on repelling the attack, and for some reason he couldn’t fathom, he was too. This wasn’t his battle, but he felt that he needed to help.
For those people, he realized. He needed to help those poor people.
He raced along with the group, leaping over rubble and debris, his heart racing with not only fear, but excitement. It was a feeling he had only felt on the digital battlefield, which was real enough for him at the time, but now paled in comparison. This was the real deal. These were real weapons. These were real enemies. This was real death.
There would be no respawning this time.
A flying vehicle appeared over a giant pile of rubble and began firing greenish lasers at the scattering crowd. Everywhere the beams hit, the ground exploded, and Max could smell the vaporous rock.
“Jesus Christ,” he shouted, ducking behind an overturned truck… or something. He could see Barty nearby, breathing heavily and wide-eyed as a Manga version of a white guy. Barty was scared shitless, likely never having been outside during an attack. He could feel for the guy.
Max raised his rifle, aiming at the craft as it made another pass. He didn’t know what the hell it was but something had to be similar to an Earth craft. He spied an engine on the side, thrusting downward like a hovercraft or Harrier jet engine. It spewed a column of bright red plasma that held it aloft as it slowly passed overhead. Shots from his companions bounced off the hull harmlessly, and even the darkened window in the front seemed impervious.
But Max decided to take it down anyway.
He aimed straight up the engine as it passed overhead, firing several shots into the plasma beam. The engine exploded with a loud burst that knocked him off his feet. But the craft began spinning out of control, turning on its side as the failed engine lost its thrust. The others fired at it, hitting the damaged wing and crippling it further. The craft flipped over in the air, heading straight for a nearby mountain of rubble and garbage.
It exploded on impact, knocking everyone from their feet and shaking the ground. Something flew out of the cockpit, bouncing on the ground a ways away. It looked humanoid, with two arms and legs, and fully engulfed in flames as it flopped dead on the rocks. Max looked over at Barty, who was smiling.
“Did you see that shit?” Max shouted.
“I saw that shit!” Barty shouted back.
But the battle wasn’t over. The soldiers were still firing off into the distance, shooting at what looked like a group of enemies marching in their direction. They were excessively tall, each with a fully armored suit, and long rifle to boot.
“What are those?” he asked a soldier as he ran up to the line.
“That’s them,” the soldier shouted, sounding familiar.
Max looked at the man’s face, realizing he was looking at…
“Drew?” Max shouted.
The man turned to him, raising a brow. “Barty?”
“No,” Max said. “Max. Are you Drew?”
It was Drew. It had to be.
“Andy,” the man said. “Some people call me that. Shut up and get ready.”
“Fire!” a voice shouted nearby.
Everyone let loose, firing toward the approaching group. Max joined in, taking aim and sending his own fire down the line. Though most of their shots bounced off, some of them knocked their targets back. But then more explosions sounded.
Another craft rose up behind the line of enemies and fired into the crowd. Everyone scattered as the ground exploded, and Max lost sight of Drew. He ducked behind the same overturned truck, looking around. He saw Barty again, but this time his double was lying face down in the rubble.
“Barty!” Max yelled, rushing toward him.
As he reached Barty, with explosions sounding all around him, he realized there was a blackened hole in the thick coat that Barty was wearing.
“Oh no,” Max said, flipping him over.
On Barty’s chest, there was a giant hole, blackened and burnt. Barty was barely breathing, but he was alive. For the moment. He opened his eyes, took a few breaths, and then focused on Max.
“Don’t let them die,” he said. “Get them back to your world. Find…”
He began coughing heavily, spewing blood from his mouth as he struggled to speak again.
“Find… Rose,” he said. “She can help. But you may… have to kill her. Flashing… lights. Epilep… seizure.”
With that, Barty slipped away.
“Shit,” Max said, not sure how he felt at the moment.
“Dude,” he heard a voice call out.
Then, a hand grabbed his coat and pulled him up. It was Drew, or Andy. Whatever his fucking name was.
“He’s fucking toast,” Drew yelled over the deafening sound of engines. “Let’s move!”
Max took one last look at his counterpart and followed Drew, leaving himself behind, it seemed. The two joined the larger group, who were fleeing away from the compound. Evidently they were trying to draw the aliens away to protect the others. That was a good idea, but what if they didn’t care? What if they decided to attack the compound?
Everyone would die.
“We can’t just leave them!” Max shouted.
“Dude, we’re drawing them away!” Drew shouted back.
“I know,” Max said. “But what if the fuckers don’t fall for it?”
Drew stopped running, looking back at the compound. He sighed. “True. Let’s go.”
They changed direction, heading back toward the compound. They ducked behind a large scrap pile, which was actually a tunnel of sorts that led to the south side of the bunker, opposite from the attackers.
“Where are we going?” Max asked.
“There’s a platform back here with four cannons,” Drew said. “Plasma cannons. Powerful shit. Big enough to rip a hole in time and space.”
“Well that’s not a good—“
He saw Rose scrambled away ahead of them. She was obviously hiding out in the tunnel, and saw them coming. Barty had said to find her.
“Rose!” he shouted.
“Fuck her,” Drew said. “We need to fight back and protect the others. She’s on her own.”
“But we might need her,” Max protested. “I might need her.”
“For what?” Drew asked. “You some kind of perv?”
“What?” Max said, shaking his head. “No. I just need—“
“Forget her. Those cannons aren’t gonna shoot themselves.”
Fire. Max thought. The proper word is fire.
Jake and Dan crept out the back door of the hardware store, still miffed about the strange explosions. Neither of them smelled any smoke, nor saw any fire anywhere. Even so, every baddies that was around before was gathered in a circle around the entire building, seemingly afraid to approach.
There was a shamble in sight, sniffing and switching, intent on attacking. But, the two noticed that, like everything else, it was being held back by something. There was a strange quality to the air as well, as if a giant TV
had been turned on and was emitting that weird smell, high-pitched whistle, and staticy ambience.
“Do you feel that?” Jake asked.
Dan nodded, still looking around at the swirling and writhing mass of shufflers and shamblers. He was confused and bewildered, but still intent on finding any shadow people out there among them. As he remembered, the dark figures seemed to either avoid or attack the creature for some reason he couldn’t fathom.
“Where did you see the shadow person?” he asked.
“Out front here,” Jake replied. “But it was just for a brief second. It looked like it was holding something. Maybe a gun. But it disappeared as soon as I saw it.”
“Well,” Dan said, seeing nothing but darkness in the parking lot. “I don’t see shit. But let’s look around some more. The air feels weird.”
Just then, the ground shook once more. They froze, looking at each other. They had both felt a blast of heat—Dan could see it in Jake’s eyes—but there was no explosion anywhere. There was just the jolting and the shaking along with the heat.
“What the fuck’s going on man?” Jake whispered.
Dan shrugged, looking around the corner to the front of the building. He though he saw movement of some kind, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t really even sure if it was movement, maybe some kind of shimmering, like heat coming off of a highway. But it was there.
“Take a look,” he said, urging Jake to peek around the corner.
Jake looked for a moment, then stepped back. His lips were pursed and a brow was cocked. “That’s weird,” he said. “What the fuck?”
“Do you see the shimmering?”
Jake nodded. “Maybe that’s what happened when Max disappeared.”
Dan clicked his teeth together. Of course. Maybe that’s what Max had seen and as he went to investigate…
POOF! He was gone.
“If that’s what made him go bye-bye maybe we should stay away from it. Who knows what actually happened to him.”
“Yeah,” Jake said quietly. “Fried like buttered eggs or turned into inter-dimensional goo. Toasted on the spot.”
Then, there was a scream. A little girl’s scream.
“She doing it again, damn it!” Drew shouted angrily. “She’s going to give away our position.”
“What’s happening?” Max said, following Drew to the cannons, breathless and about to collapse.
“Seizures,” Drew replied. “Every time she has one, those fuckers know where to target us.”
“I thought you were all trying to help her.”
Drew shook his head as they reached a metal staircase at the end of the makeshift tunnel. “No way, man. Fuck her. She causes more trouble than she’s worth. She’s like a stray dog that eats all of your outdoor cats’ food and chases them away.”
He vaulted the stairs, pulling Max along with him. There, at the top, were three giant guns mounted on swiveling platforms, each with its own comfy-looking chair. Drew smiled as he turned to Max.
“Hop on one and follow my lead,” Drew said.
Just then another craft flew overhead, its spotlights flaring downward as it searched for anything below it.
“Don’t worry,” Drew said. “It can’t see the guns, only our heat signatures. But we’re alright. I don’t think it saw us.
The ship swiveled in the air, searching the ground nearby. Max could hear Rose scream, and his eyes went wide with fear.
“We have to help her,” he protested.
“She’s alright. We need her to distract the ship so we can blow it the fuck out of the sky.”
Drew hopped on one cannon and began flipping switches. The cannon came to life and began swiveling its barrel toward the alien craft.
“Get on one of the others!” he shouted.
Max ran to one of the other cannons, taking a quick look at the switches and controls. There were two joysticks, much like a 1980s robot fighting game. There was a big red button nearby, along with some gauges and dials. And the chair… boy was the chair comfy. He hopped on, looking down at the controls. Though the writing was in an unfamiliar language, Max could figure it out.
Big red button.
The cannon whirred into life, and Max smiled large. He spun the cannon around toward the ship as Drew had and gave him a nod.
“Light it up!”
Both cannons blazed, sending twin jets of some kind of green and blue swirling plasma toward the craft. The entire thing exploded, sending debris everywhere. Max raised a fist in the air, seeing Drew do the same. Then, Drew swiveled around toward him.
“Go for the foot soldiers,” Drew shouted. “These will blow the shit outta them!”
Max gulped and spun his gun around, looking for the alien soldiers in the distance. He spotted their guns blazing, and it reminded him of a future scene in The Terminator when an entire army of naked T-800s descended upon a hapless, ill-prepared assembly of resistance fighters. He gritted his teeth, curling his upper lip in kind of a crooked smile.
“For John Connor!” he shouted.
He pulled the triggers, blasting a beam of liquid sunshine into the alien line. Fire exploded around them, blasting them away and leaving a hole in their offensive. He shouted in triumph, looking over at Drew, who had spun away and was aiming elsewhere.
“What are you doing?” Max yelled.
“I’m trying to blast a hole in the tunnel so Rose can get out!”
“Why!?”
Drew shook his head. “It’s starting! She’s doing it! Goddamnit!”
Then, a bright flash of light appeared down below where the two had vaulted the stairs. It flashed on and off quickly like a strobe light, but reddish in color and with much more intensity. It seemed to be moving, heading out the way they had come, and toward the line of alien soldiers. Max watched closely, seeing the spinning form of Rose rising into the air as her screams increased.
Then, there was another bright flash, and she was gone.
“I hear her,” Jake said. “That same screech.”
Dan peeked around the corner. He began to feel the static in the air getting stronger, and the smell of ozone become overpowering. The screeching that Jake had described before was an understatement. It not only creeped him out, but seemed to jab at his very soul. He gritted his teeth, preparing to close his eyes when he saw her.
The flaming form of a small girl flashed into existence for a brief second, disappearing just as quickly as it had come. Then it appeared again just a ways away, then was gone again. Dan’s heart began to race with wonder. What was happening?
“What the fuck, man?” he said, realizing he was shouting.
But he had to.
The noise was reaching deafening levels, and the ground began to shake. He looked back at Jake, who seemed confused and surprised as well.
“This didn’t happened before,” the big guy said.
“What didn’t happen before?”
“This noise, the shaking.”
He raced around the corner, aiming his rifle at the area where the creature was flashing in and out of existence. Dan watched the strange process, realizing that there was as pattern. Something like a design a kid could make with a Spirograph toy on paper with colored pens.
A daisy? A fractal? Some other shit?
He joined Jake, watching the dizzying display. The flashing being was getting faster and faster, and the screeching was growing louder, coupled with a strange whirring noise that seemed to vibrate the air.
“Something weird’s going on, man,” Jake said. “Something different.”
“What the fuck is that thing?”
Jake couldn’t answer. He only had time to turn his head toward Dan before the explosion, and the bright light that blinded them both.
Then there was silence as the brightness faded.
From the boarded up window of the hardware store, Toni watched Jake and Dan disappear into thin air in a bright flash of light. Remembering Max’s departure, she froze in terror.
“Mother fucker,” she whispered.
Chapter Seven
“What was that?” Max asked as the giant flash settled down.
Drew dismounted his gun, walking over to the edge of the bunker. Max followed, curious as to what had just happened. As the smoke began to clear, he could see the dismembered bodies of dozens of troopers in the distance.
“They’re dead,” he said. “We got ‘em. Or… something did, at least.”
“Dude,” Drew whispered. “Look.”
Drew pointed down toward the center of the blast where Rose lie on her back, sprawled out like a passed out drunk. Max could see her stomach rising and falling, telling him that she was still alive. But it wasn’t Rose that Drew was pointing at.
There near the edge of the blast, were two men; one large and one about Max’s height. They were both familiar, and Max grinned widely as he recognized them.
“Dan! Jake!” Max shouted at the top of his lungs.
The two men looked up at him, bewildered and a bit disoriented, but alive. Dan shrugged.
“What the fuck!” Dan shouted back.
“Let’s go,” Max said. “Those are my friends.”
“Wha… okay.”
“What the hell is going on?” Jake asked, scratching his head. “What is this fucking place? It looks like Obama’s basement.”
Dan was shocked at the scene around him. Everything was dark, foggy, and crumbled. It was like a giant earthquake had leveled a large city, and choked out the sun with massive clouds of dust. He couldn’t see the sky at all, only the faint glow of the moon as it shown through the layers of clouds.
“I think we’re still in the same place,” Dan said. “Just a different…”
“Something,” Jake finished him.
“Yeah…”
“Guys!” Max called out as he emerged from a nearby rubble pile.
The kid smacked into him, hugging him tightly. Dan patted him on the back, not sure what the hell was going on. Max pulled back, grinning like a little kid.
“Drew’s alive,” Max said. “Look.”
Dan looked at the other guy who was following Max. As he neared, Dan’s heart fluttered. It was Drew; alive and in the mother fucking flesh. Dan was even more bewildered than before, and from the look on Jake’s face, he was too.
