by Sean Shake
“I don’t know.”
“It would have happened right away.”
“How—” Abigail arrived with the keys, interrupting my question. She shook them, like ringing a dinner bell. “I don’t want to go in there alone.”
“You’re not going to.” I looked to Emma. “Get your bear spray, and grab my blade.”
17
The three of us stood at the door, Emma holding her bear spray, me holding my blade, and Abigail holding her keys.
Her hands shook, the keys rattling, as she stuck the house key in the deadbolt and twisted.
She reached for the door handle and wrapped her fingers around it, then froze.
After ten seconds, I said, “Abigail?”
“I can’t. I’m too afraid of what I’ll find.”
“If there were any more of those things, I think they would’ve—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean my parents. If they’re…”
“Oh.” She didn’t need to finish. If one of those things had been out here, maybe it had been in there as well.
But I didn’t see any damage to the door, nor any broken windows.
“No signs of break-in,” I assured her. “Come on.” I gently moved her hand out of the way, twisted the knob, and pushed open the door.
We stood staring into darkness, the house completely black, the only light coming from the multicolored Christmas lights strung above our heads.
“Mom? Dad?”
Silence.
Abigail’s breathing was heavy, labored.
I put my hand on her shoulder, again without thinking, and again quickly withdrew it. “It’s okay Abigail,” I said. Then, my blade at the ready, I stepped past her, and into the dark.
I stood and listened. I heard no sounds. I didn’t smell blood, or death. Though if they were very fresh kills, I might not.
I felt along the wall for a light switch, found one, and flicked it on.
I covered my eyes against the sudden brightness, squinting through splayed fingers at the room.
After a second I dropped my hand, but had to keep my eyes squinted against the bright light.
My eyes hurt, and they seemed to be taking longer than they should have to adjust to the brightness.
Abigail and Emma stepped in beside me, Emma holding her bear spray at the ready, Abigail looking lost.
“Dad?” she called. “Hello?”
All remained silent, except for the truck’s labored engine from outside.
“Are they heavy sleepers?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Where’s their bedroom?”
“This way.” She started moving toward it, and this time I caught myself before grabbing her arm with my hand.
It hadn’t done anything so far the two times I’d accidentally touched her, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t. “Wait,” I said.
She looked back at me, and I stepped in front of her. “Stay behind me.”
She told me which way to go, and we made our way steadily to a closed door, which she said led to her parents’ bedroom.
For some reason I got a flashback to the prison, as we tried to enter the warden’s office, to Emma kicking the door in.
But this door seemed to have no lock, and this was certainly no prison.
I twisted the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped back, raising my blade.
No creature leapt out at us, no alien tried to steal our humanity.
Abigail rushed in before I could stop her, and being familiar with the house, instantly found the switch on the wall without fumbling, casting the bedroom into light.
The empty bedroom.
We stood looking around, the unoccupied, unmade bed in front of us.
“Where are they?” Abigail asked no one in particular.
I saw no blood, no signs of struggle.
“Maybe they went to a shelter,” Emma said.
Abigail nodded. “Maybe… They aren’t really those kind of people, the kind to go to a shelter instead of sticking it out, but who knows with an alien invasion how they’d react.”
“You haven’t talked to them recently?” I asked.
“Earlier today. But things weren’t like this then. What do we do now?”
It was a damn good question.
If those things were all the way out here, they were probably anywhere people were, especially if the news was right and they were turning us into them.
The fact that the one I’d killed turned into a human after it died nearly sealed the deal.
Why else would that happen, if it hadn’t once been human?
And the fact that Abigail recognized it as her neighbor…
Never assume you understand the enemy, Gage. Be confident, but not cocky. Always open to the fact that you may be wrong.
I couldn’t pretend to understand alien motivations. Maybe it was some trick, or some side effect of being on earth.
In any case, one of them being out here meant there was nowhere that was truly safe. At least nowhere there were humans.
And I wasn’t about to go to Antarctica. Though, come to think of it, even that now had people on it.
If only the North Pole were real. Maybe Santa and his elves wouldn’t be affected.
Santa Vs Aliens, I thought, and chuckled.
“It’s not funny,” Abigail said.
“It’s not that. Alright, we need to go somewhere we can defend. Somewhere that no one can get into if we don’t want them to.”
“What about the prison?” Abigail asked. “Emma works in a prison.”
“I’m aware,” I said. “The prison is not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are those things everywhere.”
“But we could—”
“No,” I interrupted. “We’re not going back there.” I thought of the eyeless guard. “Is there anything else you can think of that would be defensible?” Although the idea of running and hiding didn’t appeal to me very much, I had to think of these two girls, had keep them safe.
“Just farmhouses,” Abigail said.
Our conversation was interrupted by noises from outside.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Hit the lights,” I said, going to the window to peer outside.
We were plunged into darkness, but it was still so dark outside that I could barely see, especially after being blinded by the bedroom lights.
I carefully and quietly cracked open the window, and listened.
The sounds were coming from far away, but not far away enough.
“Let’s get out here. I don’t like this.”
I headed toward the bedroom door, slamming my foot into something on the way.
“Careful,” Abigail said.
“Thanks,” I muttered. At least I was wearing boots now. That would have hurt like hell if I’d still been barefoot.
The girls followed me out to the front door.
The sounds were louder now, and I put my hands out to indicate to them to halt.
I scanned the area, but didn’t see anything.
“Maybe we should stay here,” Abigail said. “Hide out.”
I shook my head. “We—”
Something landed on the truck’s cab, crushing it, and causing the whole truck to bounce, the headlights jittering wildly before it settled back down.
I shut the front door.
“Your parents have a car?” I asked Abigail.
18
In the garage sat a massive monster truck.
The wheels were almost three-fourths of my height, and you practically needed a ladder to climb up into the thing.
It barely even fit in the garage, the top of it nearly touching the ceiling.
And the garage wasn’t a normal one, these ceilings maybe ten or fifteen feet high.
“Not bad,” I said. “Where are the keys?”
We’d started off in a Prius, then upgraded to a pickup truck. Now this.
&
nbsp; At least one thing was going right.
Maybe next we would get a tank, and then a fighter jet.
Hell, maybe a spaceship.
Although with aliens in the sky, that probably wasn’t the best choice of vehicle.
“Mom’s SUV is gone,” Abigail said excitedly. “That means they might be okay.”
“If you don’t get us those keys, we might not be.”
Abigail ran to a pegboard and pulled down a set of keys. Showing that she could learn, she tossed them to me and then went around to the passenger side.
I was starting to like her.
I tossed my blade in, then climbed up into the driver’s seat and waited for the girls to get in.
Emma climbed in last, but stopped before sitting down, standing on the riser, door open.
“What?” I asked.
“All our stuff is in the truck. Maybe we should go get some food from inside the house.”
I was about to tell her we didn’t have time, but crashing from inside the house obviated that need.
“Or not,” she said, climbed in, and slammed the door.
Abigail leaned forward from the backseat and hit a button above my head.
The garage door started sliding open in front of us.
I started up the truck, and it roared to life, the rumble loud enough to feel in my chest.
“All right,” I said, my right foot itching to hit the accelerator.
I shifted the truck into gear, and waited for the door to roll up.
“Can this thing go any slower?” I complained.
“They didn’t build it with getting away from aliens in mind,” Abigail quipped.
Something crashed into the garage with us, perhaps attracted by the sound of the door opening or the rumbling engine, and slammed into some part of the truck.
We were too high off the ground for me to tell what. Either one of the back wheels, or the truck’s bed.
The door wasn’t quite open yet, and I feared if I tried to plow through it, it would decapitate the top of the truck.
And possibly us.
That door looked solid.
“Come on you son of a bitch,” I muttered at the door.
There was an inhuman screeching sound and the truck rocked again.
I hoped whatever it was didn’t puncture one of the tires.
Then the garage door ground to a halt.
Thankfully fully open.
I took my foot off the brake and floored it out of here.
We rocketed out, and somehow got minor air as we left the confines of the garage.
“Oh my God,” Abigail said in a mix of awe and horror.
At first I thought it was at my driving skills, but then I glanced out the side window, and saw several monsters, twenty or thirty of them.
And they all were now coming after us.
19
We jolted up and down as we plowed through the field, even this monstrous truck being thrown around as we tried to get away from the horde of monsters chasing after us.
I clutched the steering wheel tightly after one particularly violent jolt and—
And suddenly a blade rocketed out from my fist, sliced the gear shift lever clean off, and then plunged into the digital speedometer.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed. What the hell was that?
“They’re getting closer,” Abigail agreed, apparently misinterpreting my exclamation.
I let go of the steering wheel to examine the blade that had shot out from my fist, but as soon as I did, it disappeared.
Something landed in the truck bed, distracting me, and I looked back to see what looked like a giant moth clinging to the bed.
Its grip wasn’t perfect though, sliding back as it was pushed by the wind.
Then we hit another bump, and the giant insect was flung into the air.
“I wish this thing had a camper shell.”
“Where are we going?” Emma asked. She seemed entirely too calm.
I had no idea, just away from those things.
“You’re the one who’s from here,” I said to Abigail. “How do we get onto a highway?”
“Just keep going straight,” she said from the backseat, clutching the oh shit handle.
In the dark, I couldn’t tell if she was wearing her seatbelt.
I hoped so. I wouldn’t want her to go slamming into the windshield if we hit something or suddenly came to a stop.
“Helpful.”
“It’s not far. You see that light?”
“Yeah.”
“Head toward it. It’s a call box. Then hang a left once we reach it. It’ll take us right onto the highway.”
It felt like an eternity before we reached it—and having to keep my right hand loose on the steering wheel for fear of a blade appearing again didn’t help my control of the vehicle—but we made it, and I hung a hard left onto the asphalt, the huge truck nearly tipping over as I did.
“Don’t take turns so fast!” Abigail shouted at me. “This isn’t Emma’s Prius.”
But we didn’t roll over, which was good, because those things were still on our tail.
Some of them, anyway. Many had fallen back, perhaps to find easier targets, but the ones that could fly were still behind us.
The ‘highway’ we turned onto was not much more than a two-lane road, but at least it was paved.
I floored the accelerator, though with the damaged speedometer, I couldn’t tell how fast we were going.
Actually, I couldn’t tell anything, as the entire gauge cluster was black now.
Stupid technology. Being digital, the whole thing was out of service just because the screen was damaged.
It felt like we were going fast, but I’d never been in a truck this large, so it might’ve just been the size and being so high off the ground deceiving me.
“Are those things still behind us?” I asked.
Emma turned around in her seat next to me to look.
“I don’t see anything,” Abigail said.
“Me neither,” Emma agreed.
I relaxed a little. Then I glanced at my right hand. It was still black, but there was no blade coming from it.
What the hell had that been about?
If it weren’t for the gear-shift lever missing its top half, and the broken instrument cluster, I would’ve thought I’d hallucinated it.
Wouldn’t be the first time I’d hallucinated something in periods of extreme stress.
Though usually nothing so vividly.
I glanced at Emma, who didn’t look to have noticed.
I was afraid to close my fist again, for fear that it would create another blade. I didn’t know how long it would be, and I didn’t want to pierce the windshield or the truck’s roof.
I looked at my left hand and saw with surprise a curved black disc floating above it.
When I released the tension in my left hand the disc disappeared.
What was the saying? Curiouser and curiouser.
“What are we gonna do?” Abigail whined from the backseat. “All our stuff was in the truck. My cell phone was in there.”
“Oh how horrible,” I said. “You lost your cell phone. Maybe we should go back and get it.”
“Do you think that would be safe?”
I sighed. She was hot, and her naked body had been damn near irresistible, but she had a lot to learn yet.
Emma turned on the radio, scanning through the channels, looking for news stations, but couldn’t find any.
“Try AM,” I told her.
She did, after a few seconds to figure out how, and at first there was nothing, but then she found a single station broadcasting.
“…awful,” a male voice was saying. “But they’re not unstoppable. We’ve heard people have killed them with weapons.”
“Yeah,” another male voice said, this one with a slight accent I couldn’t quite place, “and where have you heard that from?” He sounded dismissive. “All I know, is I saw someone shoot one of those things poi
ntblank with a shotgun. You want to know what happened? The guy who shot it with that bigass ten gauge got eaten. That slug didn’t do a damn thing to it.”
“And which one was it? What kind?”
“It was one of the terminators.”
“Well there you go. For those you need to use different weapons.”
“Yeah, like what? Nukes? Or maybe we need to lower them into some molten lava.” There was a distorted disdainful laugh, then he said, “Thank you caller, we’ve got many other calls to take.”
“Yeah, I doubt that. The phone lines are—” But then he was cut off.
“Welcome caller, you’re on Mark’s Shit’s Hit the Fan show.”
“Thanks Mark. I’m not really a long time listener or caller. I was scanning the radio and yours is the only show that’s still on.”
A chuckle. “Yeah. Let’s just say my equipment is not up to FTC regulations. Or down to it, if you wanna be specific. But when the shit hit the fan, I wanted to be sure I could still broadcast. Plus, I think all those other stations evaced the fuck out. Them bastards kept coming for em.” Another chuckle, and I wondered if this man was entirely sane. “But not me. I’m safe up here.”
“Right, sure. I just wanted to know what’s going on.”
“What’s going on? Haven’t you looked outside?”
“That’s the thing, I’ve been out on my boat, on vacation, fishing for the past two weeks. No internet or phones, just nature. Then I come back in and find the town empty and…” He trailed off.
“Well you might want to go back to fishing. Sorry to say it, but it looks like the apocalypse is finally here. Not exactly how any of us thought it would be. I know I didn’t prep for this exactly. But I did prepare, and now, long as one of those things doesn’t find me and eat me, I got plenty of food and water and supplies to ride this thing out.
“And don’t any of you listeners be getting any ideas. I’ve also got guns. And ammo.”
“But what are they?” the caller asked.
“No one knows. About all anyone has figured is that there are the beasts, the terminators, and the hellspawns. I’m not so sure they’re actual demons. I mean, those ships are still hovering in the sky above New York, so that—”
“What ships?”
“Oh man, you really have a lot to catch up on. All right, here’s a short version: A few days back, three ships appeared above New York City. Just floating there, like got-damn UFOs, except way bigger. Way bigger. All these little tiny lights on them that look like windows, but that if you get a telescope and try to look into, all you see is just… light.
