by Scott Shoyer
Even the aliens’ smiles were horrifying.
Just as the lead alien tapped into The Consciousness to send out the order to attack the survivors with everything they had, an interference prevented it from sending its thought.
All around it, the walls began to crumble and the ground violently shook. It heard a series of explosions rip through the facility. It could feel from the ground below that there were explosions going off everywhere. It knew the bunker below would soon be filled with thousands of tons of rock and dirt, but the alien would never experience that.
The alien pointed up toward something jammed in the corner of The Discovery. The other aliens followed its clawed finger to the small tan package that had a blinking red light on it. Before the aliens realized what it was, the C-4 exploded and ripped through The Discovery. The aliens were killed instantly in the blast and would never feel the other explosions that caused the sub-facility to cave in and collapse to the bunker below.
7
“Ho-ly shit!” Steele yelled out. “The entire research facility and bunker beneath it is gone!”
They all covered their noses and mouths as the dust and smoke drifted past them.
Wilder dropped the now-useless detonator and again yelled for everyone to take cover. He pulled out the device to blow up the scout ship, which would also destroy the energy wall, and told everyone to duck. They managed to run about thirty feet away and had the cover of the woods to protect them.
He hoped.
Wilder knew the aliens inside the craft when the bunker and facility blew up would be unharmed. But the next explosion would take care of them. He heard the creatures as they approached the back exit that he and the others went through. Wilder waited until he saw the first alien poke its head out of the scout ship and he ducked down as he pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
Wilder pressed the button again and again to the same results. The C-4 didn’t detonate.
He glanced at the exit of the ship and saw one of the aliens looking at him. The creature let some objects drop from its hands. Wilder squinted to see what the alien had dropped and realized it had found the C-4 and pulled the detonators out of them. The detonators now lay at its feet.
“Uh, guys,” Wilder said to the others, “I think we have a problem.”
*
The man watched as the aliens charged out of the scout ship and toward the other human beings. He could tell from the reaction of the tall man who held the black device that something hadn’t gone as planned.
The man guessed that at least a hundred aliens were inside the scout ship when the first bomb went off.
At least.
Now they attacked the humans, and the man knew the humans didn’t have a chance.
*
Wilder and the others watched as the aliens ran out of the scout ship. Steele was out of ammo and Wilder was down to one magazine. Cheryl, Riker, and Kimberly weren’t much better off. They all had machetes, but it took a lot to kill these aliens with a single blade.
Wilder opened fire as the aliens got closer, but thirty cartridges wouldn’t go very far with a hundred aliens attacking. In less than a minute, Wilder was out of ammo. He drew his machete and prepared himself.
“Get ready, everyone!” Wilder shouted. “This is going to get bloody!”
Wilder thought about all the people close to him that he’d lost over the years--people he’d loved and considered family. Butsko was one of those people. He’d never known anyone like Butsko, and it tore him up as he thought of Butsko’s fate. The man had basically died twice--once when he’d been bitten by a zombie near the piece of the scout ship, and then again when he’d blown up one of the bombs in the warehouse.
Wilder was glad he’d gotten to see Butsko one last time. Even though the creature hadn’t looked anything like Butsko, inside he’d known it was him. Butsko had beat every odd and gone against an entire alien species by retaining his humanity. In the end, he’d been able to help Wilder, but what good had it done?
Butsko had died anyway.
Wilder’s eyes narrowed as he thought about what the aliens had in store for the human survivors.
That shit is unacceptable.
Wilder felt the warrior begin to emerge as the aliens got closer. He knew he wouldn’t live to see tomorrow, but he promised that many of the bastards running toward him wouldn’t either.
“Stay close together and help each other!” Wilder yelled.
This was their last stand.
Their Alamo.
Cheryl, Kimberly, and Riker fired their remaining rounds into the horde of aliens and saw a few of the creatures drop. Cheryl threw her gun into the approaching mass and threw her machete over to Wilder. Cheryl then grabbed Stevie in a two-handed grip and dug her feet into the grass and dirt.
Steele held the sledgehammer in a batter’s pose and waited for the first alien to get close enough.
Kimberly squeezed the machete tightly in her hands.
Riker stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Kimberly. The first few aliens got closer and Steele took a few steps forward and swung the sledgehammer. There was a wet thud as the weapon smashed into an alien’s upper chest and crushed its windpipe. The alien went down, but there were many more that took its place.
Cheryl thrust Stevie at an alien that twisted at the last moment to dodge a killing hit. The nails were buried in the creature’s shoulder. Cheryl held onto the baseball bat and twisted her body around to loosen the nails from meat.
More aliens ran toward her, and she huddled down and tried to knock them off balance.
The alien closest to Kimberly raised its arm and slashed its clawed hand at her face. Kimberly leaned backwards as the deadly claws whizzed past her face. The creature swung again, but this time she was ready for it. She met the creature’s deadly claw with the machete and buried the blade between its thumb and first finger. The alien howled in pain and Kimberly twisted the blade and tried to cut the alien’s hand off, but the creature’s bones were too thick.
After Riker emptied his Sig Sauer into the approaching horde, he grabbed his Beretta and put down three more creatures. He shot the bastards in the eyes. As the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, Riker threw the pistol at an alien and in one fluid motion grabbed his machete and buried it in the bastard’s throat.
Riker looked at Kimberly and he swung his weapon at the attacking creature’s head, but when it ducked, the momentum of the powerful swing knocked Riker off balance. He stumbled forward a few steps and was stopped by another creature. The creature looked down at Riker and slammed its clawed hands against each side of Riker’s head.
The alien squeezed Riker’s temples. Bones started to fracture and blood poured out of his nose.
Before Kimberly could do anything, Riker screamed as the sides of his head caved in. His sinus cavities filled with bone fragments and blood and his brains leaked between the shattered bones.
Kimberly screamed as the alien threw Riker’s lifeless body to the ground and flicked the pieces of bone and brain from its hands. She charged the alien and pulled the machete back. The alien was ready for her and grabbed her wrist as she swung the blade at it. The creature moved in as it held the blade away from its body. Kimberly tried to back away from the alien, but it had a firm grasp on her wrist. As she leaned away, all she did was give the alien a target.
The alien leaned in and opened its teeth-filled, horrifying mouth and clamped down on Kimberly’s throat. The alien thrashed its head around and ripped out Kimberly’s trachea and larynx. The alien’s bite was so deep and ferocious that parts of the lung were still attached.
A wet, gurgling noise came from the hole in Kimberly’s neck and she dropped to the ground. Blood pooled around her head.
Steele got cut off from Wilder and Cheryl and had a growing pile of dead and injured aliens around him. He rammed the metal part of the weapon into the stomach of one alien and turned around and grabbed another one’s throat as it was leaning in to bite
him.
He tightened his grip around the alien’s throat and barely made an indentation in the thing’s tough skin. Steele grabbed the sledgehammer close to the metal and used it to ram the wooden handle into the alien’s stomach. The force of his blow made the creature lean over, and Steele dropped the weapon and wrapped both his hands around the alien’s head. With all his strength, Steele pulled down on the alien’s head and smashed its face into his knee. There was a wet crunch as the cartilage in the creature’s face was crushed. He quickly lifted the alien’s head up and then down again, this time ramming his knee into the creature’s mouth.
Its teeth shattered and its clear blood sprayed everywhere.
“Smile at that, cunt-face!” Steele shouted.
Wilder was in full warrior mode and used the two machetes to cut a path through the aliens. He was covered in alien blood and even had pieces of a few of their guts on his arms and chest. He kicked one alien that was close to him in the chest and swung around to face another. The blades whistled through the air and looked like a windmill as they cut deeply into the alien’s neck and top of its head.
Wilder used his foot to loosen the blades from the dead alien and crouched down low and thrust one of the machetes through the alien’s calf muscle. Once the blade was through, he quickly twisted it three times and sliced outward. The muscle dangled off the alien’s leg and it fell to the ground. Wilder knew it wouldn’t die from this wound, but at least it wouldn’t walk anytime soon.
Wilder swung the other blade toward another alien’s knee but missed his target. Instead, the machete sliced through the meat of the muscle above the knee. He tried to pull the machete out of the creature, but the blade was buried in the alien’s bone.
The alien hissed in pain and kicked Wilder away. The soldier fell backward as the alien limped toward him. In an amazing feat of strength, the alien pulled the machete from its bone and muscle and swung it at Wilder. He put his arms up and tried to roll away from the blade, but the alien was too fast.
Wilder felt the blade cut right above the wrist and break through the bones in his arm. Wilder screamed as the alien cut off his left hand. Blood pumped out of the stump and Wilder felt nauseous from the trauma and immediate blood loss.
As the alien leaned in to finish off the warrior, Wilder saw a flash of metal and knew Steele was there. The sledgehammer smashed the alien in the mouth and pushed its deadly teeth through the back of its throat.
Cheryl swung Stevie toward the alien, but the alien that had cut off Wilder’s hand wasn’t going down easy. It moved away from the baseball bat and Cheryl had too much momentum to stop the swing. The nails from the bat dug into the ground, and before she could pull Stevie free, the alien stomped on the wooden bat right underneath the last row of nails and snapped Stevie in two.
Cheryl stared in disbelief at the broken bat in her hand. She held up the foot-long broken piece of wood. Anger and frustration of fighting a battle she knew she’d never walk away from turned her face beat red. She took the broken bat handle and jammed the splintered part deep into where the aliens groin might have been.
She put all her weight behind the jab and the broken bat buried itself into the alien’s lower intestines. The alien fell over, and Steele crushed the bastard’s head with the sledgehammer as he finished the job.
Steele, Cheryl, and Wilder huddled together on the ground. Steele’s strength and energy was tapped, Cheryl had lost the only weapon she had, and Wilder was bleeding out.
As they huddled together on the ground, the aliens circled around and slowly approached them as though they wanted to prolong this moment.
“It was an honor to fight alongside you two,” Wilder said through his clenched teeth.
“Same here, brother,” Steele said.
“I can’t believe it is going to end this way,” Cheryl said.
“Did you have a better ending in mind?” Steele asked.
“Yeah,” Cheryl said as she tried to smile. “Drunk on a beach somewhere.”
Steele wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer. Cheryl reached over and grabbed Wilder.
The aliens got closer, but before the aliens could finish them off, everyone turned around when they heard someone scream at the top of their lungs.
8
The man watched the others fight for their lives. He found himself frozen with fear as he watched the brave survivors fight off a never-ending horde of aliens.
As he finally gathered the courage, he moved forward and touched various aliens and watched them fall to the ground and die. There were so many of them, and he was only one man with two hands.
He watched as a man and woman fell to the creatures and became angry with himself for not being able to help them. He watched helplessly as the tall man’s hand was cut off at the wrist. He swore that no one else would lose their lives today.
No one human, that was.
The man stood behind the horde of aliens and screamed to get their attention. It worked, and the aliens stopped their assault on the remaining humans.
The man looked at them as the aliens parted and saw the fear and confusion on their faces. The aliens stayed away from the man and especially his touch. They knew the man had more power in his hands than all the various weapons the humans had used against them.
There were hundreds of aliens around them, with more coming by the minute. The man guessed that every alien within the wall was gathered somewhere on the Schoepke Springs property.
He made his way through the aliens until he was standing next to the three injured humans. He could see how exhausted and vulnerable they were.
“Who… who are you?” the man with one hand asked.
“I don’t know,” the man truthfully answered. “But I know I’m supposed to be right here.”
The man looked around at the ever-growing ring of aliens. The aliens kept their distance and formed a circle five feet away from the humans.
“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Cheryl asked. “We’re completely defenseless.”
“You were completely defenseless,” the man answered. As he said, that he leaned his head back and extended his arms. The man remembered the bolt of light that’d hit him back in the hotel room and how that moment had changed him forever. He’d been bitten before that, and had been on his way to becoming just another one of the undead. If he’d stayed on the course he’d been on, he would have eventually entered into the cocoon and gone through the change.
He could’ve ended up like the thousands of creatures that stood around him, but something else, some other road, had been created for him.
It was all clear now, and he breathed in and controlled his heartbeat. He felt the blood flow through his veins and the synapses fire in his brain.
He tapped into The Consciousness, or at least a part of it--the part that one particular alien had set aside just for him. Now he knew everything.
Now he knew what he was.
What he was to do.
He was a weapon who’d been created by a rogue alien to take down the invaders.
*
As the man stood with his hands outstretched to space and his head tilted back, the others noticed a dull glow around him. The glow reminded Steele of the effect standing in front of a bright light. It had to be a trick of the light. Right?
A low growl could be heard coming from the man. The light increased in intensity and the man suddenly began to float. He only hovered a few inches off the ground, but as the glow got brighter, he rose in the air a little higher.
The aliens around them moved in a little closer, but were still hesitant to attack.
The branches of the nearby trees and the blades of grass began to vibrate. Whatever the man was doing, he affected the material world around him. The low humming noise that began with the dull glow also increased in intensity as the glow got brighter.
The man now floated a foot off the ground and continued to rise. Even though he no longer stood next to the other humans, the aliens
dared not attack the ones left behind. They too watched as the man rose higher in the air.
“I feel it!” the man shouted. “I can feel everything. The world vibrates through me. I feel its pulse.”
Steele, Wilder, and Cheryl looked at each other and remained still.
“This world is ours!” the man shouted as he rose two feet above the ground. “We would have welcomed you, but you wanted Earth for yourselves. Now you get nothing.”
The man continued to rise faster into the air until he reached a height of about thirty feet. He glowed so brightly that Wilder and the others could no longer look at him. The man’s clothes burned off his body, but the light didn’t harm his skin. The light was no longer something separate from him.
He and the light were the same thing.
The man finally stopped rising when he reached fifty feet. The light was so bright that none of the man’s features could be seen. He was no longer a man.
No longer human.
He was now only light.
As the aliens looked up, they began to scatter. They left the three humans shielding their eyes while huddled on the ground. The light was as intense as the sun, and as Cheryl looked through fingers at the man, what looked like streams of light began shooting from him.
The streaks of light shot out in all directions, including toward the earth. The light instantly killed any alien in its path. More and more lights shot out of the man in every direction.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of aliens killed instantly by the touch of the light.
*
The beams of light that shot from the man traveled the planet and sought out every alien life. When it found anything alien, it eradicated all traces of it. The lights swept across Europe, Canada, China, and every square inch of the Earth. From the biggest cities in the world to the smallest villages, anything that was not of this Earth was destroyed. There was no car, house, or cave the aliens could hide within.
