And then after one month, in the Kitum caves near Kitale, he finally woke and sat himself up. He saw his leg in a splint and yet found the strength to hobble on his good leg. He limped from his bed to find a group of men hunched near a wood-fire in a dimly lit room. But then, he looked around and it was no room. Cool night breeze sent a chill down his spine and he realized he was outdoors; in a closed space outdoors. He looked around himself, peering through the darkness with help of the light from the wood-fire and saw large rocky walls that went up a good twenty meters to a dark ceiling above.
The men around the fire took notice of him and ran to him.
They had white paint smeared in flowing designs on their half-naked body. They were tall and had shaved heads and wrinkled old skin. The only cloth adorning their body was a thick, coarse rug, draped across their body, hung from a shoulder on one side. They were all speaking to Alex, all at once and in a tongue of which he did not make a single word of.
They took hold of his arms and led him to a seat around the fire, a large rock with leaves on it. They sat with him, on rocks around the fire, looking at him. A young boy came with another man, who sat across Alex. He was younger and to Alex’s relief, spoke English
‘Glad to have you back. My name is Xhaxir. We are a nomadic tribe in eastern Kenya. Our tribesmen saw you fall from the ship and brought you here.’
Alex listened to every word he said, trying to come to grasp with the situation he was in. The boy had pronounced his name as ‘ZhaaZhi’.
‘Xhaxir, how long have I been here?’
‘It’s been a month. Thirty days to be precise. What is your name?’
Alex introduced himself.
‘So you are U.S Army. What were you doing up in the sky? We called you ‘The Man who fell from the sky’.’
‘I had been captured by the Aliens. I was there for four days. Then I escaped. I fell while trying to get off from the harvester.’
‘Yeah, that we saw. You were badly injured. Bad injuries. Lucky you are alive.’
Alex nodded at him and then others, expressing his gratitude.
‘I need to go back to U.S. How do I go back to U.S?’
Xhaxir shook his head
‘No war in U.S. They surrendered to the Aliens. No war in US now. They have sealed their borders. No one gets in or out. Not possible.’
‘What do you mean no war? What about the American people?’
Xhaxir’s face frowned with dislike and disdain writ on it when he spoke the following words
‘Cowards and traitors, your countrymen. They struck a deal with the Aliens’ he paused and repeated, ‘No war there. People okay there. Our people dying here.’
Alex had nothing to offer in his defense
‘I do not know anything about it.’ He did in fact, from what he had seen in the ‘library’ above. He wondered what William was onto, back on the ship.
‘You said something?’ Xhaxir asked him.
‘Did I? No, nothing. I need to get back to U.S.’
Alex realized that he had already said that before. Xhaxir shook his head. But, Alex had to get back.
‘Can I send a message across? A phone call perhaps.’
‘Our phone network is done. Some local connections do work. No international calls, especially to U.S. They have stopped all contact from the outside world.’
‘Then how do you know they are okay? They could all be already dead.’
Xhaxir did not say anything. He appeared to be in his thirties, a young man who had a frown on his face and whose shoulders stooped down, defeated. He rarely looked up and never met Alex’s gaze.
‘I want you to come with me tomorrow. The Colonel wants to meet you.’
Alex did not understand.
‘Which Colonel? Who wants to meet me?’
‘Colonel Masab. Head of Ugandan rebel militia, now fighting against the aliens. You do not know it but you are famous, very famous.’
‘Famous. How am I famous?’ Alex did not understand how he could be famous in Kenya.
‘Well, you are famous because you came from the machines. You are the man from the sky!’
‘Man from the sky! Sounds ominous.’ Alex understood now why he was famous. He could be of help to those fighting the aliens. He had promised William that he would fight the aliens and he was bang in the middle of it, far from home but yes, right in the thick of the fight. But he had made a promise to Sienna and his daughters too, and he had to keep that promise too.
He should meet this militia head. Maybe Alex could help him with inputs about aliens and in return, he could help Alex get across to U.S.
Alex looked up at Xhaxir
‘Yes, I would like to meet the Colonel too.’
Chapter 19
Peace and Reconciliation
Hampton, Virginia
28th February 2019
Carter looked at Sienna sleep.
She was just a few years older to him and yet looked way older now. She had aged right in front of his eyes, in this past one month. A month, that had been filled with grief, desolation and mourning. He had been there, next to her all throughout, grieving with her, sharing her burden.
Susan’s friend had broken the bad news to Sienna. Carter stood by her as she recounted the horrific tale. The alien pods had started attacking the buildings and their hostel was struck. The walls collapsed around them and they were trapped in a small crevice within the fallen debris. They had somehow survived the fall of the building. But, then the alien harvester came along, rooting out the debris, searching for people. The debris above them was plucked off by the claws of the harvester, and they made a run for safety, away from their hostel. But, there was nowhere to hide, all buildings having met almost similar fates. They kept running and soon, she was running all alone. When she turned around, she saw that Susan had been clawed and harvested, the claws having pierced through her chest, her head hanging flail from her neck, the claws retracting up into the machine, dragging her body slowly through the air. She ran straight up, till she stumbled on some debris, fell through, a flight of stairs and lost consciousness. When she came to, it was dark and the sounds had subsided. The war was over.
Sienna asked a million questions but there was nothing more the girl could say. She was pretty sure it was Susan she saw. There was nothing else to know. They had gone over to the place where they found Alex’s truck and did not find any other clue. The truck was burnt in what looked like an alien attack. Sienna had come back and had slumped on the bed, not speaking and not eating for the next two days. He had somehow convinced her to climb into the car and then he had driven her back to Virginia. She had walked around the house like a zombie for the next couple of days, sorting through things that belonged to Alex and her daughters. She slept with the photographs and with the collection of toys that her daughters had accumulated through their childhood. Carter stood around her and did not know if she even noticed him there. He made food for her, fed her and protected her through those days.
He had nowhere to go and he found her orphaned like himself. She came to him on the third day in the house, hugged him and cried. She wailed, screamed and wept, hugging him and her hand clutching at his chest. He stood still, letting her cleanse the grief out of herself. The stupor lessened but the grief somehow remained, entrenched deep within her.
It was now almost a month after their return.
Now, he just stood by the door, looking at her as she slept. He looked at her thin and slender frame as she slept on her side, her hands clasping each other, her chest rising with each breath. The breaths looked labored and a wisp of hair was blown across her face with each breath. Never had he seen anyone so beautiful, so delicate, the grief strangely accentuating her vulnerability and her beauty.
There was no regular electricity still and he had made a temporary wood-fireplace to keep the room warm. He saw the fire dwindling and stoked a few wood pieces within to keep it going. The noise woke Sienna up and she saw Carter stoking the fire. She
got up and Carter turned to her. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
‘Well, good morning. Did you sleep well? Coffee?’
Sienna nodded her head.
‘Coming right up’ Carter got up and went out to get her coffee.
Sienna walked to the window and looked out.
The neighborhood was up and about. She had slept till late today. She looked out of the window and saw people going about their business. A couple of earthmovers were still dredging the debris gathered from their neighborhood in a corner. Many people walked in their office clothes, with their bags and briefcases. Families stood outside their house, soaking up the Sun. The Sun had come up in full glory on the third day after the surrender. The aliens had lifted the eclipse on Earth by moving their mother ship.
People had returned to their homes after cessation of hostilities. Most of the houses around Sienna’s home were occupied now. Almost every family had lost someone. A few houses still lay vacant. Maybe no one from these houses had survived to return to them. A few of the neighbors had formed a guard duty roster. Policing was still limping back to normal and people needed to protect their belongings from looters and arsonists. Carter had joined their ranks.
TV services were slowly returning. Network after network put up their news services as soon as they could. Sienna sat through them, not knowing what was of use to her. The aliens had landed their planes on the St. Andrews. That was off limits for the U.S military. In fact, the majority of military bases were now under alien control. The U.S was declared an alien protectorate and its armed forces were disbanded, barring essential staff. The President and the Chief of the Services had surrendered to the Alien Command in a ceremony. The pictures of the ceremony were the first pictures of aliens broadcast on TV. None from the public had till then seen the face of the enemy.
The alien beings came in different sizes. The officious aliens who presided over the ceremonial surrender were recognized easily by the masses. They looked identical to the omniscient ‘Greys’ that had dominated the alien folklore since the early twentieth Century. They had a broad forehead, two large angulated eyes, and a small mouth set on an inverted triangular base. They were biped, with thin, scrawny legs and arms and a slender frame for their body. They wore metallic looking jackets that molded against their bodies. These aliens were further guarded and protected by a different set of aliens. These guard aliens looked similar to the ‘Greys’ excepting that they were beefed up versions of them. They were bulkier and yet had an edgy cattiness about them. They wore some kind of armor on their body. They had sensors embedded on their skin and pads underneath translucent skin patches on their forearms. These patches flashed symbols, signals, and images and were in all probability a kind of communicator that had been enmeshed within their bodies.
People viewed these images with the resentment and the helplessness of a conquered race. President McGee was taken into protective custody and an alien ‘Grey’ was appointed the ‘Chief of Affairs’. He was thereafter simply referred to as the ‘Chief’ by the news channels. He gave an address to the nation, telecast on CNN.
He sat behind a desk, with a small visible device directly attached to the hairless temporal region of his head. His lips barely moved but the message was conveyed in a human voice in American English into the speaker placed before him. He promised peace and return to normalcy. He promised that they would be on their way once their mission on Earth was over. Their stated mission was to give Earth a chance to regenerate and repopulate itself. He stated that at the current rate of consumption, the Earth and its non-human species would be destroyed within another hundred years. They were here to decimate the humans and other dominant species so as to even out the playing field for the others. They had plans to leave out pockets of population all over where from they expected a slow re-colonization over the next ten thousand and odd years. And then they would then return to establish order once again.
What he said next was the most disturbing. The ‘Chief’ announced that he was just a messenger and an enforcer for his masters, the ‘Daiits’, who were the cosmos-faring masters and rulers of over a thousand worlds. The ‘Greys’ had been recruited into their service five thousand years ago, when their world had been similarly ‘saved’ by the ‘Daiits’. They had found some potential in humans too and a chosen lucky few would be inducted into service during this great space-journey of the ‘Daiits’.
The speech sent shivers down Sienna’s spine
‘Great journey my foot! Bastards’ thought Sienna. They had to bear the consequences now that they had let the wolves inside their home. But, there wasn’t any other way, was there? Maybe there was and maybe they were hasty in surrendering. Sienna did not know anymore. She felt guilty knowing that millions were being killed elsewhere in the world right now and that the peace that they had bought had the blood of millions smeared over it, had possibly the blood of Susan smeared over it.
Chapter 20
Beacon of Hope
Mombasa, Kenya
15th March 2019
There was a UN jeep driven by a couple of armed militia, in front of Alex’s cave the next day. They picked up Alex and drove south through the forested terrains of Eldoret and Kisumu before crossing over the border into Tanzania near Tarime. It took them three days to reach Musoma near the banks of Lake Victoria, which housed an underground rebel base.
They were scheduled to take rest there for a couple of days.
Alex explored the labyrinth that had been dug up, supported with girders made up of cast iron and wood. The mouth of the base faced the lake and the entrails extended underground under a hillock by the lake. It housed closed to two hundred rebels and had a ‘garage’ for over fifty armored and non-armored vehicles. Many of the vehicles belonged to U.S Army and Alex wondered how they had gotten there. The soldiers there had stocked a huge load of ammunitions with a large inventory of U.S Army stock M110 sniper rifles.
Alex was known around the base as the ‘man from the sky’. Everyone asked him about his experiences aboard the alien ship and he narrated what he could to the limited understanding of English in the rebel soldiers. He told them that the aliens were not very different from us humans, and that they could be hurt, killed and defeated. That brought a cheer and happiness to the faces of the soldiers and did a little to dispel the general sense of gloom in the base.
Alex further learned from general loose talk, of a secret weapon that was soon to be inducted into the arsenal of the soldiers. There were reports of the weapon having been tested in Hunan in China and in the urban battlefield of Tokyo. These reports said that this weapon was capable of inflicting serious damage on the alien ships and that these had successfully repelled many alien attacks. It was the weapon ‘that vomited fire’ and had earned the name of ‘Hellraiser’ for itself.
After two days at base, Alex and Xhaxir climbed into an armored Humvee with their escorts and then travelled across Serengeti through Karatu, Arusha, Moshi and Usangi to reach Mombasa after two days. Much of the shrub in Serengeti was on fire and much of the Serengeti was bereft of wildlife. It pained Alex to see elephants and wildebeests wandering alone, their herd taken away from them by the alien harvesters. There had been a massive culling of herded animals and a large number of trees too had been uprooted and harvested.
Colonel Masab’s base is Mombasa was located in the underbelly of the erstwhile Shipping Directorate’s office. The building on the ground had been shelled to a pile of debris by the aliens and the way to the base was through the bars of a sewer hole. Colonel Masab was an ageing, potbellied, loud man who was easily six feet plus in height and over two hundred and fifty pounds in weight. Masab had a lot of questions for Alex which he answered to the best of his knowledge. He told him of his journey from the streets of Florida to being the hostage of alien monsters, how he barely survived becoming dinner for them and how he escaped in a harvester to ‘fall from the sky’.
Alex skipped the part of his meeting William and the other
s in the alien ship.
This was a war and the wars have ears.
He did not want his loose tongue being responsible for William and others to face repercussions on the ship.
Colonel Masab was silent for a long time and then he said
‘Can we win this war?’
Alex was beginning to understand his role now. Being almost the only person who had returned alive, from the clutches of the aliens, he was a beacon of hope, an example of a small triumph over the marauding aliens. He was the living proof that aliens could be outsmarted.
‘Yes, I believe we can. They are living beings that breathe air, walk on their limbs and need to eat food like us. That means that they are susceptible to choke without their air, limp without their limbs and starve without their food. They are dependent on machines and on technology and that can fail. They are not infallible and there from I know that they can be defeated.’
Alex said these words with all the conviction that he could muster. Masab nodded his head.
‘Hmmm…your words bring us hope. Thanks.’
Alex bowed his head slightly.
Masab asked others to leave the room and then continued
‘I did not call you here to conduct this personal interview. I have been asked to hand you over to your people.’
‘My people? What do you mean?’
‘A renegade group of U.S marines have been helping us in the fight. We are going to hand you over to them, the next time we meet them.’
‘What do you mean by renegade?’
‘As you know by now, that the U.S government has surrendered to the aliens. That means that any act of direct aggression against them would be seen as an act of betrayal by the aliens. This group of soldiers and marines are supporting the war effort against the aliens by providing weapons and logistics and by moving men and machines between different theatres of war. They have become a nodal center in themselves, orchestrating the human resistance against the aliens.’
Exodus (The Domus Series Book 2) Page 12
