by Adam Moon
“Let me know if anything weird happens to you. I don’t understand what that alien mist did to you or your friends but I was under the assumption that it only benefited you. If I find out the reverse is true, I’ll have to reevaluate what should be done with the orb that’s coming here.”
For the first time, the orb had Jack worried too. If someone else was subjected to its locked up potential and they died as a result, it would be on Jack’s head if he didn’t warn everyone about its dangers.
He finally admitted, “I may have exaggerated just now about reigning in the powers. I’m trying but they still surge through me against my will. I’m sorry for lying just now. I just saw how worried you looked and I thought a white lie might help you relax. But you’re right; it would be terrible to subject someone else to the mist when we don’t know for sure how safe it is.”
Watson pursed his lips and stared over Jack’s shoulder, deep in thought. Finally he said, “Get some sleep, son. We’ll talk more about this in the morning.”
“Alright then. Goodnight.”
State of the World
Jack stayed up for a while watching the news. It was an obsession that most people now shared. The world had been nearly destroyed by aliens and watching the aftermath, now that the threat was gone, was like being some type of voyeur. It was a way to detach ones self from the chaos whilst still taking it all in.
You could watch an entire city tear itself apart with looting and murder, from the safety of your home. You could witness a fire engulf an entire town.
Reports from Europe surfaced every now and again. For the most part, Europe had been wiped clean. Great Britain was a ghost nation. Germany housed marauding bandits who lived off of the land now that disease and rodents had taken everything else from them. Parts of Russia had made it but they were the remote, sparsely populated areas that no one cared about and few people had ever even heard of.
Big Ben was demolished, as well as the Kremlin and Versailles. The Eiffel Tower was still intact but no one was tending to it anymore since no one cared about things as trivial as national monuments these days so it would probably come down on its own from neglect.
The Vatican was being restored but there was a decidedly lackluster tone to the work. The invasion should have united mankind under a single banner. The Vatican was being rebuilt because there was the notion that the common man would unite under a Christian God. But people weren’t looking to the heavens for God anymore; they were looking for the second wave of attacks. Maybe when mankind started to live decadently again, with few worries, as the apex predator, God would come into the picture again. But there were more pressing concerns than saving ones soul. Saving ones ass was now tantamount with saving the species coming in as a close runner up. Jack was sure that once people started to truly rebuild human civilization, the rebuilding of the Vatican would resume at lightning speed. Until then, people just had to figure out how to get their next meal and survive to see tomorrow.
The President of America was a woman. She used to be Secretary of Education until the invasion wiped out everyone above her. And a new President was just what the doctor ordered. America didn’t need a career politician, they needed someone who could roll with the punches and put politics aside to get things done. Defenses had to be erected. Strategies had to make it past the drawing board. Political machinations were no longer tolerated, and for good reason. America was no longer a bloated, overly rich nation detached from the rest of the worlds’ problems; it was a country on the brink of disaster, just like every other country on Earth.
And according to the news, Jack and Melanie were the new opiate to alleviate the world’s pain. Snippets from their interviews popped up periodically as intellectuals weighed their merits. But the common man didn’t care what a few celebrity intellectuals deemed, A new, unknown danger. The common man wanted hope and Jack and Melanie embodied their hopes for a safer future. Superheroes were known to save the day. Superheroes never failed.
Jack’s stomach started to knot up. It was too much pressure to be viewed as the only real hope of mankind, so he turned the TV off and looked for a different distraction.
He turned his phone on. He didn’t have any bars so deep within the mountain but he didn’t need to make any calls anyway. He checked his email. He had over four thousand unread messages. That wasn’t remotely normal for him. On a busy day he’d have maybe a dozen.
He started to scroll through them. Most of them were friend requests from Facebook or followers from Twitter. He’d learned from the news that he’d become a phenomenon but he was able to detach himself from that. With real life people trying to connect with him, he had no choice but to accept that he was now special in the eyes of many. He had several messages requesting for him to follow or like a newly erected fan page; his fan page, set up by others. One fan page was called: I want to have Jack’s babies. It had eighteen thousand fans already. Another one was simply called: Superheroes of Ault, and featured both him and Melanie.
It was more than he could take in all at once. He’d become a hero and a sort of sex symbol overnight. That was just too much to handle for a small town boy from dirt-country, USA.
But it did give him an ego boost. He flexed his biceps in the little mirror by the door. His arms bulged with veins, his muscles looking like the skin was only barely able to contain them. He thought about the eighteen thousand fans of the I want to have Jack’s babies, fan page. He imagined they were all girls, and hopefully all around his age and beautiful. His imagination went wild with the possibilities. He’d had a hard enough time ever getting a girl to pay attention to him before, but now he’d have to beat them off with a stick. It was a nice problem to have.
He pushed the thoughts aside; Melanie was just down the corridor and she’d probably be pretty mad if she found out he was fantasizing about other girls that he’d never even met before.
Only then did he realize what an idiot he was. The world was dying out there, licking its wounds from coming so close to utter annihilation, trying its best to salvage what it could from the catastrophe, and here he was, tucked away safe in a mountain bunker, daydreaming about girls.
He turned his phone off and plugged in the charger. Technology was one of the few things unaffected by the invasion. Funnily enough, the first wave of alien invaders hadn’t even bothered trying to knock out communications satellites before they’d attacked. On the surface, that would seem like a boneheaded move, but Jack knew it wasn’t negligence or poor planning on their part. He knew they were brimming with so much confidence that they never even considered they’d need additional advantages to overcome mankind. They came in thinking it would be a quick victory. They were wrong.
Dreams
Molly shot out of bed like she was spring loaded. She was hyperventilating, sweating and shivering because of her dream.
Her dreams about that Grey leader, Shaylo now took a back seat. Shaylo was still strategizing, according to her dreams, so even though he was a threat, he wasn’t going to attack for some time still. But something frightening was right on the horizon that didn’t have the patience to wait. And much death would soon come in its wake.
She whispered, “Super villains,” and then tried to jostle Dan out of his slumber so she could relay her dream to him before she forgot the details.
Dan sat up and his pillow instantly caught fire.
Molly grabbed her pint-sized bedside fire extinguisher and quickly put out the flames. It was the norm in their household for their stuff to go up in a blaze.
Dan rubbed his eyes and said, “What’s so important that you had to go and ruin another pillow?”
That made her mad. “You ruined the pillow, dumbass!”
“It was fine until you started shoving me.” His hair stood on end and his eyes glowed blue in the dark.
Molly said, “Oh shit,” and jumped out of bed, rushing from the room just as a thick rope of lightning burst forth from Dan’s index finger.
He called o
ut, “Sorry. I’m all better now. It grounded out in the TV. What was so important?”
She walked back in, shaking her head. “I don’t remember any more. Go back to sleep.”
She sat beside him in the dark, trying her best to try and remember the dream, but in all the mayhem, it was gone from her mind.
All she could think about was that they needed to keep at least a dozen TV’s on hand for when Dan lost control of his burgeoning power. Either that or she needed to have him install lightning rods around the house so that he would ground out safely from now on. Either way, he was more trouble than he was worth.
He was already snoring like a chainsaw by the time the smoke had cleared and she was ready to try and get some more sleep. Maybe the dream would come to her again if she could find a way to sleep through Dan’s commotion but she wasn’t hopeful about that.
Night Watch
Hank Beltran and Sally Hopkins stood watch inside the front entrance to the bunker, awaiting the arrival of an armored truck. They’d been instructed to wake up Commander Watson as soon as it arrived. It was already after three in the morning, although time was a relative thing inside the mountain.
Hank shivered against the permeating cold that seeped into his bones and took up long term residence there. “What do you think is in the truck?”
“I don’t know but it’s not worth this crap. It’s freezing here.”
“I bet it’s nice and warm in that girl’s bed,” Hank said devilishly, referring to Melanie.
Sally didn’t play along. Hank was always making sexual references about other girls, probably to test the waters and see if Sally reacted in any way. Because she wasn’t interested in him, she refused to respond, expressly or in any physical way.
She brooded. “She was a hero before now, but now that she’s being directed by our Commanders, I bet she becomes a coward just like they are.”
Hank shook his head and stared off into space. He hated being around Sally when she got like this. He changed the subject. “I heard they’re going to get a face to face with the Grey’s tomorrow morning.” Because no one knew what the grey aliens called themselves, they gave them nicknames like the Grey’s or the Big Heads or the Skinnies.
Sally seemed to jolly out of her foul mood. “I wonder what the super heroes will do to them.”
“I hope they vaporize them with laser eyes or heat breath or something.”
“I don’t think they can do that, can they?”
“I don’t really know.”
Sally started to hop up and down to stave off the cold when the blast doors opened to the outside and a huge truck noisily rolled towards them.
Hank said, “Oh, thank God. I’m exhausted. Let’s get this over with and get some sleep.”
Disintegration
The truck came to a complete stop as one of the outside sentries followed after it. He closed the blast doors from the inside of the mountain and then waited for the three armed men to step down from the rig.
The men had an air of superiority about them that immediately angered Hank and Sally. Hank stepped forward and said, “I’ll let Commander Watson know you’re here.”
One of the men said angrily, “You will do no such thing. We have our orders and so long as this alien artifact is in our custody, you’ll do as we say.” He then pointed to the sentry and ordered, “Take us directly to the Commander.” Then to Hank and Sally, “Guard this truck until we return.”
Sally said huffily, “It’s inside a nuclear-blast proof mountain bunker. It’s already as well guarded as anything in the world. We’ve been up all damn night waiting for you so go ahead and shove your orders up your ass.”
The man’s face went beet red and screwed up into an angry knot. He stepped forward, chest puffed out and fists balled when Hank stepped between them and said, “Settle down. We’ll watch the truck. Now hurry the hell up and get this over with.”
The sentry guard said, “Come this way.”
The distraction seemed to cool down the angry trucker. He and his men followed the sentry.
When they were gone, Hank said to Sally, “You’ve got to stop antagonizing people. You’re going to get us both in trouble.”
“Did you see the way that prick was looking at us? Did you hear how he spoke to us? Screw that guy.”
Sally was right of course but as usual, she took it too far. Hank stared at the truck intently as Sally ranted and raved about unfair treatment and the ineptitude of their superior officers.
Her pitch was rising when Hank cut her off. “I want to see what’s inside this truck. The Grey’s are guarded by a single door guard. The super heroes aren’t being guarded at all, but this truck was being secured by three soldiers. Whatever’s in it has to be important beyond belief.
Sally smiled and nodded. “I like the way you think. We just need to find a key.”
Hank didn’t see an exterior lock so he stepped up into the cab and looked around. Against the back wall was a lever. He pulled it with all of his might and then heard Sally yell from the outside, “That’s it. Hurry up before they come back.”
Hank’s heart was racing. If they got caught, they were in trouble. He made his mind up on the spot to blame Sally if they got nabbed. Sally had a track record of insubordination so they’d buy his story readily even when Sally disputed it.
She’d rebuffed his advances for so long that he barely cared that she was his only friend and that his instincts should’ve dictated he protect her. Every moment of ambivalence from her only drove him further away, emotionally. She’d managed to break his heart without even trying. Hank was too young to deal with such sour emotions so he reverted back to his old self; if someone hurt him, they’d get hurt too. It hardly mattered to him that he had never actually had the guts to tell her how he felt. She should’ve simply known. But he was pretty certain she did know by the way she looked away from him every time he tried to tease her or test her. She had rejected him and it hurt the more he realized it.
Sally was already climbing into the back of the truck when Hank reached her. He followed behind her. Before them was a large metallic sphere, propped up on a plastic skid and secured by bungies latched to the walls. It had faint etchings all over it and it seemed to radiate its own heat.
Sally knelt down and touched it, a smile widening across her face, giving her a demented look. “This looks just like the orb those teenage superheroes described.”
Hank grabbed her shoulder and whispered, “Alright, we saw it. Now let’s lock it back up before anyone gets back.”
Sally shrugged him off and said, “Let them catch us. Who cares?”
That was fine by Hank. He’d just get out and make sure to act flabbergasted when the others returned, blaming the whole thing on Sally. Just so she wasn’t surprised when he blamed her, he said, “Well I’m getting down. If you want to stay and get caught, you can just take all of the blame.” But before he had a chance to get away, the sphere hummed. The hum intensified to a deep vibration until it started to shake. Then it split open like an egg. A thick blue mist engulfed them, choking them on contact. Sally fell over backwards clutching her throat with both hands. Hank fell to his knees as his vision went hazy. Then the floor rushed up at him and he saw nothing more.
Disappearing Sphere
Watson was livid. There was no sphere in the truck. But two of his troops were in there, knocked unconscious.
He turned on the soldier’s who’d delivered it. “What’s the meaning of this? Where’s the sphere? What did you do to my men?”
The truckers had no response. They were as perplexed as Watson was.
Finally one of them said, “The sphere was there. I saw them loading it myself. We checked every ten miles to make sure it was secured. Those men of yours must’ve done something with it.
Watson shook his head, partly out of anger and partly of frustration. He keyed his radio to call for someone to move the unconscious soldiers. When Hank and Sally were removed from the scene, Watson
gingerly approached the area where only an empty skid and loose bungie cords now stood.
The air smelled odd, equal parts decomposition and some unidentifiable disinfectant. The floor was slick. When he knelt down to inspect it, he saw a faint blue glow. And then he remembered that part of the interview that the teenagers gave to Fox News. They said they were assaulted by a blue mist that knocked them out and that when they awoke, the sphere had vanished.
Had that just happened to his men?
So close to the floor, he was able to discern a sizzling sound. He followed the noise to one of the leg depressions in the plastic skid. Inside the depression was a silvery metallic concave object the size of his hand that was rapidly disintegrating into a blue haze. So the entire sphere was made of the blue mist. That explained why it vanished; it disintegrated into fine particles that dispersed, leaving behind no trace of their origin.
It was quickly diminishing before his eyes. He acted quickly, pulling one of the latex gloves he’d brought with him from his pocket. He put it on his right hand and then threw caution to the wind. He picked the crumbling chunk up. It was hot to the touch but not so much so that it burned him. It continued to crumble into dust so he quickly flipped the glove inside out. Stray blew particles swirled out of the glove until he tied the end in a knot.
He’d arrived in the nick of time. A minute later and there would’ve been no trace of the orb left. Perhaps it was possible to synthesize the mist with what he’d secured inside the glove. Either way, he was sure he’d made the right decision to contain what was left of the alien artifact.
Delacourt
When Watson informed Commander Delacourt of the situation, he assumed he’d turn his plane around and head back to where he’d came from since there was no longer an alien artifact to deal with, but he was wrong.
