by Scott Shoyer
The creatures watched his every move as he approached the scout ship. He walked over with his head held high and as a man of importance and power. He held out his arm to show them the mark where his tattoo had been removed. This was the defining mark of all The Council members. Well, the ones that were still alive.
The aliens were even more intimidating up close than they were when he’d seen them on the monitors. They were killing machines. These creatures were nothing like the frail aliens he’d met with all those years ago.
As he walked closer to the scout ship, one of the aliens stepped forward. Rickard assumed this was the one in charge and slowed his pace as he approached it. He stopped about five feet away from the creature and smiled. The creature looked at him and tilted its head to the side. Fluid dripped from its deadly mouth as it looked Rickard up and down. The man extended his arm to again show the area where his tattoo had been removed. The creature looked at Rickard’s arm and then back up to his eyes.
In an instant, the creature grabbed Rickard’s arm and snapped it at the elbow until the ulna bone forced its way through the skin. Rickard screamed at the assault.
“We had a deal, you bastards,” Rickard said between tears and cries. “We had a fucking deal.”
The creature twisted and yanked on Rickard’s arm and tore it off the man’s body. Blood shot everywhere as three more aliens walked toward the screaming man.
“Get away from me you bastards!” Rickard cried out. “I’ll fucking kill all of you, you fuckers.”
One alien thrust its clawed hand into Rickard’s mouth. The man’s eyes went wide as his lower jaw was torn from his body. His tongue wiggled back and forth as blood poured from the wound.
One of the others creatures slashed his throat with its claws and watched as the man fell to the floor. Blood pooled around the dying man and more of the aliens gathered around to watch the life drain from his body.
Rickard looked at the aliens around him. Curses filled his head but died on his tongue. He no longer had the mechanism to speak. A chill crept through his body and he lay still on his back. His jawless face stared at the aliens and his body began to shake as he laughed.
Rickard was a man who’d lived his entire life not giving a shit about consequences. Consequences were for other people to worry about. He was a man of power, and he only cared how his actions affected himself. As he crept closer to death, he laughed, because the actions that he and The Council had taken had doomed the world. He thought he’d covered his own ass, but he’d gotten screwed in the end.
He laughed because he knew the other Council members were now on their way, and they too had no idea that the deal was off.
Screw them, was Rickard’s last thought. Screw them and fuck the world.
3
Underground Facility, Schoepke Springs
The creature formerly known as Butsko ordered the other aliens to slow down on the final security door. He wanted to be there when it was opened, and he first needed to take care of the business in The Discovery.
He and the Fi-alien walked through the corridor of The Discovery. They both smelled the unmistakable scent of the humans that’d been inside not too long ago. It angered them that humans had breached the craft and stolen the vials, but there was nothing they could do about that now except make it right.
The Butsko and Fi-aliens reached the large chamber and walked directly toward the five life pods. This was a big moment, and they wanted to make sure they did everything right. While they’d gone through the transformation in their cocoons, all the knowledge of their species had been given to them through The Consciousness. Their minds were like hard drives and were devoid of their previous memories. Their humanity had been forever erased in order to clear the way for new information and their new history.
Part of the new memories they now possessed was how to awaken the five aliens in the pods in front of them.
The Fi-alien went to the wall and waved her three-clawed hand over it. The wall came to life with various blinking lights, buttons, and levers. The lower, left-centered panel monitored the life pods, and this was the one she focused on. As the Fi-alien tapped on alien-looking symbols, the pods behind her hummed to life.
The pods had a vague bullet-like shape to them and were made of the same metallic gray material as the outside of the scout ship. Looking at them, one would think they were solid objects.
The aliens inside had slept for a long time. The scout ship had crashed into the ocean in the late 1950s, and the aliens put themselves into stasis soon after. But with the mothership arriving, it was time to wake them up.
The Butsko and Fi-aliens knew the mothership had erected the energy wall around the facility. They took comfort in knowing they could take their time and wake up the aliens. Even if the humans made a run for it, the wall would stop them, and they would kill the humans and retrieve the vials.
Nothing got past the wall.
The Butsko and Fi-aliens stood back as the life pods opened. The pods were beautiful works of art from a technological standpoint. There were no seams anywhere on the pods until the correct sequence of buttons were pushed. Then the entire top half of the capsule seemed to separate and glide into itself to reveal the inhabitants.
The aliens also wore facemasks that pumped an alien gas to them and brought them back to consciousness quicker. Although they’d been asleep for over fifty years, they would be energetic and vital upon awakening and feel as though they only gone into the pods a few hours ago.
The Butsko and Fi-aliens saw the aliens’ chests rise and fall. One of the aliens opened its eyes and breathed the gas deeper. It removed its facemask and sat up in the pod. As it stood, it felt its strength return. The four other aliens stood as well, tapped into The Consciousness, and within seconds were caught up on the progress of the invasion and the importance of getting the vials back.
The Consciousness even updated them on what was done to the man Rickard.
The aliens’ jaws seemed to become wider as they smiled at the fate of Rickard. To think they would ever form an alliance with the humans.
You don’t make deals with your food.
When it saw the five aliens had successfully been woken, the Butsko-alien left The Discovery to join the others that worked to bring the security door down.
The Fi-creature stayed with the newly awoken. They all walked around her and admired their work. These were the five aliens who’d engineered the virus, and now they finally saw the fruits of their labors. The aliens they’d engineered were taller and stronger. They knew that if their species were to survive, they needed to create a more virile version of themselves.
The aliens were happy with their work. The goal on this planet, which had been their goal all along, was to ensure the future of their species for the next thousand years. Human beings were an annoyance, but they’d proven to be the perfect blank canvas for their new creations. There were now hundreds of millions of them worldwide, and there was nothing the human beings could do at this point to stop them.
*
As the Butsko-alien climbed down the hatch, it experienced the same sensation as before. It became dizzy as human faces the Butsko-alien felt as though it knew flashed through its mind. One man in particular kept flashing through his mind. A man with cold, steely eyes looked somehow familiar to the creature.
Did it know this person… this human?
Where would it have known this person from?
The Butsko-alien knew one thing for certain: the face that flashed before its eyes was a human being, and all human beings were to be rounded up to be either killed or bred for food.
It climbed down the rest of the ladder and walked down the long corridor that attached to the bunker where the remaining humans hid. As it walked past one of the security doors, the Butsko-alien couldn’t help but smile. The thick, heavy doors were no match. There was nothing that could stop them. It looked at the thick steel that was peeled back as though it was a huge banana.
The Butsko-alien joined the others at the final security door. This door was thicker and stronger than the others, but it was still no match for the aliens. This door might take a little more time, but it would be opened, the human beings would be slaughtered, and the vials would be recovered.
As it started to work on the security door, the creature formerly known as Butsko thought back to the human faces that, just minutes before, had flashed through his mind.
4
I-71
Outskirts of the Town of Spicewood, Texas
The man sat on the hood of a broken-down car and stared at the wall in front of him. He threw several different objects against the impenetrable wall, and each object vaporized. He didn’t know exactly why the wall was created by the aliens, but he knew it was meant to keep something inside of it.
The ship that had created the wall no longer hovered over the area. After the wall stabilized, the hatch on the bottom of the alien ship had closed, and the craft had then headed eastward.
The man contemplated simply walking around the wall to continue his journey, but he knew he was meant to be in the town of Spicewood. More specifically, and for reasons he didn’t understand, he knew he was supposed to be at Schoepke Springs.
He knew the where, he just didn’t know the how or the why.
The man hadn’t seen or heard any of the alien-looking creatures since he’d arrived at the wall. He saw a few as they ran around inside the wall, but they ignored him. He looked down at his hands as he thought, Could I kill any of those things with my hands? Do I have it in me to survive whatever it is that’s happening to me?
Then it dawned on him.
My hands.
He stood, walked over to the wall, and placed his hands on the barrier. He immediately felt the warmth of the wall and the vibrations that emanated from it. The warm sensation from the wall increased and grew hotter. At the same time, the vibrations also became more intense.
The man realized that he could see through the wall now. There was no more haze. About thirty feet behind the wall, twelve of the alien-creatures gathered around a broken down semi-truck. They watched the man as his hands were pressed against the wall.
The man threw his head back as the heat from the wall increased. His teeth chattered as the vibrations shook his body. The aliens inside the wall watched him intently. They almost looked… scared.
There was a loud buzzing in the man’s ears, and his eyes grew wider as he realized the heat and vibrations weren’t coming from the wall.
The heat was coming from him.
From the second he touched the wall, his body began to grow warmer. No, he realized. Not his body, just his hands. As soon as his hands touched the wall, his hands began to heat up. The heat should have been unbearable at this point, but besides the man being a little uncomfortable from the heat, he was unharmed.
As he looked up the wall and toward the spaceship that hovered above him, he felt something change. The wall beneath his hands looked as though it was melting away. This reminded him of when he was a little boy and he used to melt his little plastic army figures with a lighter. He remembered the way the plastic hadn’t dissolved, but how it’d just melted and solidified elsewhere on the toy. This is what was happening in front of him. Starting from his hands and extending around them, the wall was melting away.
As an opening appeared in the wall, the man realized he’d created a door. Just as the cocoons around him withered and died, so too was the wall susceptible to whatever power lived inside him.
He peered through the hole in the wall and saw the group of aliens as they watched him. With no fear, the man walked through the opening. As soon as he moved his hands, the door he created got smaller as the wall reformed and patched the hole. The creatures that stood away from him ran off into the woods as the man took a step toward them.
The man crouched down to one knee and looked at his hands. He didn’t know what he’d find as he rolled them around. Part of him was expecting to find burn marks or any kind of disfigurement as a result of the intense heat.
As he looked at his hands, he gasped at what he found.
Nothing.
There was nothing wrong with his hands. They weren’t even red from the heat.
A few feet away was an abandoned Greyhound bus. The man was exhausted and needed to lay down and sleep. He thought about the group of aliens that watched him walk through the wall, but wasn’t worried about them. He knew they wouldn’t get near him after witnessing what he’d done to the wall.
The man walked over to the Greyhound bus and chose a seat toward the back. As he lay his head on the cushion, his body relaxed and he felt the warmth inside himself regenerate.
He would continue his journey to Schoepke Springs when he woke up, but for now, he drifted off into a deep sleep.
Chapter Eleven
1
Sub-Facility, Schoepke Springs
Wilder led Cheryl to the armory. If they wanted to set a trap to slow the aliens down once they broke through the last security door, they were going to need explosives.
Lots of explosives.
The last door was the heaviest of all the security doors. The door was five feet thick, and had three steel bars, each with a radius of four inches that extended into the reinforced concrete wall. Wilder knew the aliens would get through it, but it was going to take them some time.
Josef might be a crazy, megalomaniac that rivals any James Bond villain, Wilder thought, but he definitely didn’t spare any expenses when it came to building this bunker.
They entered the armory and Wilder immediately began rifling through the shelves and patting down the walls.
“What are you looking for?” Cheryl asked.
“I’m looking for the hidden door,” Wilder said as he continued his search.
“How the hell do you know there’s a hidden door?” Cheryl asked.
“Because,” Wilder said as he stopped searching and smiled, “there’s always a hidden door.”
Something clicked and they watched as a panel slid open. Inside the hidden compartment were ten blocks. On the side of the bricks were two symbols: a letter and a number.
C-4.
“Holy shit,” Cheryl said as she looked at the explosives. “How’d you know?”
“Like I said,” Wilder winked at Cheryl, “there’s always a hidden door.” Wilder grabbed all ten bricks of the C-4 and loaded them into his backpack.
“Whoa, whoa,” Cheryl said as she took a few steps back. “Don’t you think you should be more careful with that stuff?”
“Don’t worry,” Wilder said as he placed the last block in his bag. “C-4 is a very stable explosive. I could empty my pistol into it, throw it against the wall, and even toss it into a fire and it wouldn’t explode. It needs a detonator to set it off.” Wilder reached deeper into the wall panel and pulled out the detonators.
“I figured since we’re abandoning this place, we may as well use up all the party favors,” Wilder said. “We’ll head down to the final security door and leave those alien fuckers a nice surprise.”
“What if they’ve already broken through it?” Cheryl asked as they headed out of the armory.
“I think we’d know if they had,” Wilder said.
*
“That should do it,” Josef said as he pushed himself away from the computer in front of him. “The bombs have been activated and I have the switch.”
“I can’t believe this whole bunker is rigged with explosives,” Howard said, his complexion still pale.
“You know what we’re dealing with up there, Howard,” Josef said. “I couldn’t take any chances.”
“So you really have known about the aliens’ plans all this time,” Howard said. “How could you not do anything?”
Josef looked Howard in the eyes and then looked down at the ground.
“Greed, my friend,” Josef almost whispered. “Pure and simple greed, and selfishness. Rickard came to my grandfather to ask a favor an
d make a promise. If we housed the scout ship and studied it, we’d be safe when the world ended.”
Josef returned his gaze to the scientist. “The man was persuasive and he seemed to have every resource at his fingertips. If we needed some kind of technology we didn’t think was even invented yet, Rickard knew a lab that had a prototype.”
“But you sold out humanity and this planet,” Howard said. “That’s… that’s…”
“Monstrous,” Josef said as he completed Howard’s thought. “Yes, it was, and I’ll go to my grave knowing I helped usher in humanity’s extinction.”
Despite knowing better, Howard almost felt sorry for Josef. Josef was a brilliant man that had come from a brilliant family that had arguably ushered in a new age of modern warfare. Howard knew that part of Josef’s motivation was to honor and make his grandfather, Heinrich, proud. On the other hand, the thought of Josef’s ego made Howard want to laugh.
You couldn’t get a more perfect example of hubris, Howard thought as he looked at Josef. Aristotle himself would be speechless.
“You don’t have the detonator hooked up to your vitals, do you?” Howard asked.
“No, no, Howard,” Josef said as he stood from the chair. “I didn’t have time to hook it up.” Josef walked toward the door that led to the garage. “Are you coming?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” Howard said as he gathered his stuff. He walked behind Josef and wanted to believe the old man was joking about hooking the detonator to his vitals.
But Howard doubted Josef knew how to joke.
*
Steele, Stefan, and Jennie prepped the two armored vehicles. They topped off the tanks with fuel and made sure everything was secured. After they started the vehicles, Steele went back to the armory for a final sweep. When he walked into the weapon’s room, he noticed an open panel on the wall he hadn’t seen before.
Left behind were three blasting caps.
Looks like Wilder is planning on going out with a bang, Steele thought.
