by Ian Woodhead
End of part Two.
Part three.
So, there we go. All’s well that ends well? I was reunited with my remaining family, we now had an army, and I had a girl who loved me. What better way to end my tale. Yeah, right, happy endings only exist in fairy tales.
The next couple of years passed me like one huge blur full to the brim of agony, nightmare, and torment. The aliens didn’t take too kindly to us fighting back. Hell, ain’t that the underestimation of the century.
Thing is, the one overriding quandary that I could never wrap my head around was how were we even still breathing. Oh sure, I could have spurted out all the usual macho bullshit about how they just managed to get the drop on us; that they caught us with our pants down. If the fuckers had attacked us properly, by that I mean one on one,—you know, their flying saucers against a few of our combat planes—we really would have kicked their arses all the way back to their star system. At least, that’s what some of our fighters used to say.
For me, though, I know what they are capable of; oh, we all know that they’re masters of changing flesh. Hell, we fought their abominations day in, day out. What I mean is that I chose not to block out the obvious, and the obvious was, why are we still breathing?
Turn this attack from the stars on its head, and put us humans in their place instead. Don’t mock, son. If you had seen some of the crap that your granddad used to watch, then this hypothetical scenario wouldn’t be that difficult to visualise. So, there you are, the proud leader of this huge invasion force. You’ve already won the battle before any of your shock troops fired a single shot.
That was the easy part, and thanks to modern technology, your boffins have changed nine tenths of the population into living weapons, every one of these monsters at your command. Not satisfied with just that, you’ve infected most of what remained with vile spider things, thereby enslaving what little of the enemy that could be a threat. So, that’s it, game over, right? Okay, so you have maybe a handful that escaped. Big deal, just nuke the fuckers, or gas them. There you go, problem solved.
Don’t you see the reason for my headache now? It just doesn’t add up. It’s not like they don’t have the capability, they’ve demonstrated that a thousand times over. I mean, here’s another example, what of the alien weapons that we were able to cut off the Black Sentinels. They could still unleash their flesh melting fury years after we hacked them off those monsters. There was no three month warrantee with those bastards.
None of us had the single clue as to how they worked. My dad once said that each weapon could contain a cold fusion device that was capable of self generating hot plasma. I didn’t understand any of that, and looking back, I bet he didn’t either. I assumed that plasma was something that they injected into modern televisions to make them work.
So, I say again, how the fuck are we still breathing? I’m making this sound as though we were able to spend our nights lazing around a fire, telling each other war stories, and debating about our current situation, our future, and perhaps how we might have been able to avert this slaughter.
I don’t remember having even one of those nights. For a start, the other commanders never slept in the same location for one good reason. After Stu’s bomb, the aliens raised the bar; we thought it had been bad before, but what happened after made the past few nightmare months look like a teddy bears picnic.
I won’t be able to take you back to exactly where I felt off here. As I’ve said, the aliens really did come down hard on us. All I can remember from the period following our so called ’great victory’ was fighting, running, and dying. We did too much of all three.
It took them literally hours to replace the Black Sentinels that the bomb destroyed. They swarmed throughout the town, an endless black ocean of death. That night, our town ceased to exist. Those monsters melted everything, turning Lorchester into a smooth plain of fused glass. They never got us though. By the time the new Black Sentinels had reached the perimeter of the town, we had all left, using their tunnels to get to the next town to meet up with the other groups.
Even now, I can’t believe that I never even thought of looking under our feet for a way out past the Spire Forests. I mean, it’s where the mushroom eggs came from, it’s how the Blood trees were able to snatch the poor humans. They’d turned below ground into a huge labyrinth of tunnel networks. Stu had even claimed that it might even be possible to get from one end of the county to the other. Well, it might be possible if the tunnels weren’t patrolled.
The joy of being reunited with my father lasted for about ten minutes. That’s the time it took for us to experience just how pissed the invaders were with us. We thought we’d be safe in the shelters. Mark wasn’t the only one still not fully converted. Stu had been a very busy bunny during his absence. My father had four shelters, each one with its own version of Mark, meaning four safe houses. We’d be able to fight the bastards during the day, rooting out their nests, killing the humanlikes we couldn’t capture, and be safe in our beds once the sun went down.
They took out every shelter, despite having their own safeguard. In one fell swoop, the aliens killed two thirds of my father’s resistance. We were effectively on the run, a condition that never changed for over four years.
Until one very memorable night, when everything changed.
***
The six explosions hit one after the other. The vibration from each detonation passed through my already tortured body; it felt like a giant had punched me half a dozen times. Not that I cared about the pain, the discomfort, the fact that I was bleeding from just about everywhere, or that I knew that our medic after last night’s raid had wasted his time. The stitching in my left shoulder had burst open, and old blood mixed with new blood. None of that mattered because, for the first time in years, I actually felt as though we’d achieved a victory. I eased my body forward, ignoring the ache, rested my chest on the sandbag, and peered through the narrow slit in the earthworks, waiting impatiently for the smoke and dust to clear.
I didn’t need for the detritus to clear to see that our labour hadn’t been in vain. That ever-present silhouette, that eye-watering stain on the landscape had changed, hopefully forever.
Our bombs had vapourised over half of the alien’s Spire Forest. As the dust fell to earth, we clearly saw the huge ugly holes left in that vile architecture, and I couldn’t stop grinning. I then noticed movement. “What the fuck? Ingrid, pass me those glasses!”
I pressed them to my eyes, not believing what I saw. The image showed me another creature, something that I’d never seen before. It was obviously similar to the Black Sentinels, but only as a spider is similar to an octopus.
There were thousands of them, streaming from every ragged hole. From here, they looked like ants, all congregating around our handiwork. The distance and the size of the Spire Forest made it hard to judge their size, but they must be huge, at least five times the size of the Black Sentinels. I imagined those things hunting us down, and involuntarily shivered. I have seen a lot of their creations, probably more than anyone else, with the exception of Stu, but I’d never seen anything so nightmarish than the creatures before me.
They did pass a resemblance to those daddy long legs, the alien things that merged with the stalks, but apart from the general shape and they only had a tiny body, the similarity ended. The legs weren’t segmented, nor did they move in any jerky manner. They were more organic, both in looks and motion. They slid in and out, above and below, their companions.
A collective moan of despair echoed from the others in the trench. I slammed my jaw shut, determined not to follow their lead, no matter how tempting it was. The creatures weren’t a new form of hostile enemy, they weren’t about to run down the walls of the Spire Forests and hunt us down. How could they? These things were the walls.
As hundreds more emerged from the holes, the first ones to arrive had already cemented their half of their limbs to the outer casing, whilst holding their others into the sky. T
he next batch climbed up and locked their legs against the first ones, and so it went on, building up a skeletal framework in minutes. Even more creatures streamed out of the ever smaller holes; they weren’t as large as the others, their legs were about the same length as their bodies, they clambered down to the join where the first batch had started their construction, and flattened their bodies against the interlocked legs of their companions. I blinked in astonishments when their bodies changed colour to match the original casing.
I lowered the binoculars, turned around, and slid down the mud wall, unable to look at my fellow soldiers. I had just discovered exactly how the bastards had built up the Spire Forests so quickly all those years ago, and it only took the deaths of four of my best men, including my only detonation expert to find out.
“What do we do now?”
The despair that accompanied my second in command was almost palatable. I stopped watching my blood seeping from one of the many wounds in my thigh, and looked at the man, keeping my gaze steady. He was one of the first humanlike that Stu had converted back when he’d left us. His military experience amounted to two years in the cadets back when he was a teenager, and a stint in the Territorial Army a few years later. He was hardly an experienced soldier, but compared to the others, including me, the lad was the best we had.
Walter Ennis’s watery blue eyes moved across our slumped bodies until they finally rested on my wife’s chest. The man quickly looked away when Ingrid caught him staring. He might be one of my best soldiers, popular with the men, as brave as they, and a crack shot with a bean weapon, but everyone knew just how much he resented the fact that Ingrid’s heart was mine.
“Travis, didn’t you hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you, Walter, and you know exactly what we are going to do next. Our plans haven’t changed.” I slowly got to my feet, trying not to let the pain or this idiot piss me off too much. “Come on, were you expecting the whole fucking structure to collapse like a block of badly stacked Lego? We hurt them, Walter. We actually caused them pain.”
“Are you having a laugh? All we’ve done is to irritate them!” He stood up, and pushed between me and Ingrid. “Didn’t you lot learn from the last time?” Walter glared at me. “You know, when your old man and Stu managed to almost fucking kill every one of my buddies. Do you remember that?”
It took effort not to put my hands around his throat and nut him into next week. There was one more thing that made him into a good soldier. He had a real mean streak, as well as the urge for revenge. His girl had been one of the soldiers taken out by the Black Sentinel’s assault on the safe houses.
And there’s me thinking that he only wanted to hurt the aliens; if I knew he had other plans, I would have left him wayside years ago. I turned back to the front and looked out. The structure now looked the same as before we attacked it. The only difference now was there was a huge black cloud heading straight for our position.
Don’t get me wrong, I felt for his loss, we all did. Hell, our shared loss was the one emotion that every human soul felt more than anything. It united us, it made us stronger. I seriously didn’t want to fight, yet I knew that nothing I could do now would be able to halt this impending train crash.
I knew Walter too well. This wasn’t some spontaneous outburst. This guy was working through a script. Oh, you could call it me being the ultimate cynic, if you want, that our operational failure was just the catalyst he needed.
His gun was already jammed between my ribs. I didn’t think the others were aware of Walter’s change to the plan. They were too busy licking their wounds, and wondering what would happen next. The cloud was now close enough for me to see the individual creatures.
Walter was right about one thing. Our attack had indeed initiated another change in the alien’s actions. “So, what next?” I whispered. “Do you squeeze that trigger, take me out, run off with Ingrid, and live happily ever after?” I looked straight at him. “It could work, sure, but you’ll have to kill Stu next, and that might be a problem; he’s not as trusting as me.”
I smiled, then looked forward. “Just don’t take too much time, buddy. From what I can see, time is one commodity that we’re fast running out of.” That cloud now filled my vision. It felt so strange to see three more alien creatures in just one day. As these fuckers flew closer, I idly wondered why we hadn’t seen these things years ago.
These flyers were obviously related to everything else I’d seen coming out of their perverted menagerie. Unlike the nightmares working on the Spire Forests these, just like the Black Sentinels, were designed for fighting. Imagine a giant dragonfly about the same size as a single bed. Instead of legs, they had four smaller beam weapons slung under their bodies. Unlike the Black Sentinels, these monsters did have a head, complete with a mouth full of grey, jagged teeth.
I felt rather privileged. It’s not every day where you got to choose whether to have the side of your body blown off, or have some alien monster to bite off the top of my head. And to think that when waking up this morning, my only worry was that the bomb would fail to explode.
Of course, neither scenarios were going to happen, it wasn’t my time to go. The flying monsters could very well obliterate this trench and its contents, but I suspect that we had a few more seconds before those weapons were in range. I looked straight at Walter, and then noticed his rage had slipped from his face. I saw confusion as well as fear, and perhaps annoyance. I look between us, and watched the man lower his gun at the same time as seeing yet another weapon pushed into Walter’s side.
“Honey, do you think you’d better get the men into the tunnels?”
For fuck sake! I really wish that Ingrid hadn’t done that. I took my hand off the handle of my knife, and smiled over Walter’s shoulder. “Sure, considering the circumstances, that’s probably the best plan.” I took Walter’s arms and pulled it up his back first. “Come on, you lot, shift it!” I grinned at them, watching the seven soldiers run towards the ladders that led down to this morning’s makeshift camp.
The way I saw it, if Walter had wanted me dead, I would have already have been in that state. He wanted something else. Ingrid’s intervention had caused the train to jump tracks, that’s all.
I could foresee exactly what Stu and Dad would do to Walter. They’d put him up against a wall, and put a bullet through his brain. There’d be no trial, court, or jury. So, why am I even bothered about his life? I mean, he was going to kill me. Simple as, and even if we did have some means of giving him a fair trial, then what? He’d only try again, and maybe next time he’d just pull the trigger before gobbing off.
As soon as the others were through the hatchway, I took his handgun from
Ingrid, and flipped it in my palm before smashing the handle into the back of Walter’s head.
“What the hell are you doing? Stu will need to talk to him.” She bared her teeth. “Then after he’s finished, I intend to kick his balls into the bastard’s throat.”
I gently lowered him to the floor, then pushed Ingrid through the hatchway, and followed her before shutting and locking the metal cover. “And if he lives through that, I’ll be happy to watch you kick the crap out of him.” She shot me a look that could have cracked glass before hurrying to catch up with the others. I doubt the others would agree with my verdict once Ingrid had relayed what she’d heard, but that was fine with me. The simple fact of it was that I just didn’t want anyone else to die, at least not from our own hands.
Up there, he did have a chance to survive. It wasn’t a large one, but it was a better chance than facing an execution squad. When I saw those spider things crawl out from those holes in the Spire Forest, I didn’t see aliens. I saw us, more altered humans. Those bastards have even made their fucking buildings out of us! Those flying things out there, they’ll be just the same. All we’ve been doing since this madness started is killing our own kind, and right now, the last thing I wanted to do was for us to take another human life.
The others w
ouldn’t see this as a failure, maybe a setback, but certainly not as a waste of time. After all, two advances had come from this mission. We now knew how the aliens built the Spires, and the aggressors were just not reliant on the Black Sentinels for soldiers. Even now, I could see both Stu and my dad getting all giddy over this new information. They’d have to find some method of capturing one of these new flying creatures. No doubt they’d want to launch yet another mission into the Spire Forest.
It was my dad’s idea to attack those structures in the first place, stating that we just had to try something different, something that would show these bastards that there was no way that we were going to go away. No matter how many times they tried to wipe us out, there’d always be some of us left, and as long as even one of us remained defiant, they’d never win.
I had to admit that standing at the back of the largest room we had, listening to my dad give his weekly moral boosting speech to the seventy-six remaining soldiers, made me feel proud. Okay, so I didn’t exactly have tears running down my cheeks, but his words certainly made sense, at least the ones about attacking the spire. I secretly believed that he’d stolen the last section from a Presidential speech, and most likely he’d heard it from a movie back before the aliens fucked it all up.
For almost a minute, I stood still, aware of the distant voices from further down the tunnel. From the general humour and banter, I’d say that the rest of my unit were back at our temporary barracks. We were lucky. Nobody from our unit lost anyone; otherwise, I wouldn’t be hearing anything right now. Even with the hubbub from my buddies, it couldn’t drown out the silence coming from beyond that hatch.
“I’m sorry, Walter.” I murmured. “I’m sorry that you lost your girl. I’m sorry that you thought we were the reason. I’m sorry that it took you so long to hit back.” I turned around and walked away. “Most of all, I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to help you when you needed it all those years ago.”
