“I love you too.”
I kissed her. She tasted like a bruised peach … My favorite flavor of woman.
When she pulled away she asked, “So, what was that thing?”
I smiled. “Just one of Bobby’s goons, he must have been waiting in a car outside.”
“No silly, the ugly motherfucking monster.”
“It sounds crazy, but I’m thinking alien.”
“Me too. There’s no chance that was an animal.”
“What do you think is happening? The power outage, the alien, something serious is going down.”
“Yeah, it seems like end of the world kinda stuff.”
“Let’s get your foot bandaged, then get out of here, if this is the end of the world, I don’t want to spend my last moments in my shitty gym.”
“What about spending your last moments fucking me?”
“I’d stay in the gym for that.” I kissed her again but it was cut short by a large explosion outside, a fireball visible through the windows that lined the top of the gym’s walls. “Shit, that was close.”
“Go and have a look, see if you can figure out the safest way for us to get out of here, I’ll go fix my foot.”
“You take the flash. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
I helped Sara up and she started to hobble toward the office as I made my way to the gym’s doors. I opened them up, the fire from the explosion was lighting the whole street. It was raging in a warehouse across from me. I slowly walked down the steps and peeked around the side of the building. Three of the aliens ran past, heading in the opposite direction. When their bodies parted enough for me to look beyond the creatures, I could see a car speeding away from them.
At that moment a door of one the stores they were running past opened. A man left the building, carrying a rifle of some kind. He fired a shot at the aliens, and was loading in a new round with the bolt action when one of them turned toward him and changed its direction to attack him.
The man got off another shot before the alien reached him. I’m not sure if the bullet hit the monster, but it didn’t stop it if it did. The alien grabbed hold of the man and picked him up from the ground with its long arms. It brought him to its mouth and in one quick snap removed the man’s head.
A Humvee sped onto the scene and skidded to a stop. It was military, had a large gun on the top, a soldier manning it. The gun roared to life with deafening thuds and cut the alien who had just attacked the rifleman into soggy bits.
The other two aliens had flipped the car they were chasing, they reached their long arms through the side windows and each pulled a person from the wreck. Their heads were gone quickly.
The gun on the Humvee fired again. One of the aliens was blasted apart but the other dodged the incoming bullets and ran for the military vehicle. It weaved from the stream of bullets cutting up the ground toward it and jumped when it was close enough.
The alien landed next to the Humvee, it pulled the gunner from his weapon, bit his head off and tossed the body. The Humvee sped off, heading in my direction, the alien running behind it, snapping its mouths at the rear of the vehicle, only just missing.
I ducked back into the cover the gym provided to see the Humvee stop in my line of sight; the alien had hold of it, its three fingers on its right hand wrapped around the gun on top.
A soldier jumped out of the passenger’s side door and placed his rifle to his shoulder. He fired a full magazine into the alien. The shots had good affect and the monster fell to the ground, its oily blood running from its body.
The soldier was just getting back in the Humvee when I hollered, “Hey, help!”
He stopped, one foot in the vehicle, and turned to me. “Get back in the building, barricade yourself inside, it’s safer indoors.”
I ran to the Humvee. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. I’ve just killed one of those things in my gym.”
“I’m sorry, we have orders to follow.”
“You’re just going to leave a fellow soldier here to die, and his wife too?”
“Pardon, sir?”
“I was a Ranger, did a tour in Afghanistan, felt like my country turned its back on me then, and now you’re going to do the same to me now, and my wife too? Where’s the honor in that?” It was all bullshit. I wasn’t even sure what a Ranger was.
“Fuck … okay, get in.”
“First I get my wife.”
“Okay, hurry.”
“Thank you, soldier.” I turned to leave, but stopped and asked him, “What’s going on here?
“It’s an invasion. An alien invasion.”
ZACK
Something grabbed my shoulder. I jumped and spun in that direction. It was Cynthia. She jumped too. “Shit, I’m sorry. You scared me.”
“It’s okay, I’m sorry too. What is that thing?”
“I’m not sure. I think its what that monster came out of though, looks almost like a spaceship, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I mean I’ve never seen a real one before, but I guess that’s kinda how I’d imagined one might look. This one looks like it came from underground though, as if it pushed right up from underneath the college.”
“Yeah, I think it did.”
“We need to call the police, the army, a dog catcher, whoever is equipped to deal with that thing, and Mikey, poor Mikey, we need to find him.”
“Fear not, I’m here.” I turned back to the pod, Mikey was peeking his head around from the other side, a big smile on his face. “It was a bitch to find you in the dark … This thing is super cool, we should shoot the scene in front, turn the movie into a sci-fi flick, instant production value and all.”
“Are you okay?” Cynthia asked him.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Mikey pushed past the pod to stand next to us. He let his eyes roam over it. “This is amazing, look at those lights, the technology, this must be one of the things they were talking about on the radio.”
“The radio, you heard some news about what’s happening?”
“Yeah, when I was in my car, cutting eyeholes in the black sheet, which I’ve since lost on my way here. Dropping a black sheet on the ground in pitch black isn’t conducive to finding the damn thing again. So making a sci-fi movie makes sense, since we don’t have your costume anymore.” He ran his hand over a section of the circuit. “That thing is hot.”
“We’re not continuing with the movie shoot,” I said.
“You concerned about the improvisation? What if you play the alien? You don’t have to panic about coming up with lines then, you can just grunt and shit.”
“I’m not playing an alien, plus we’ve seen something far more suited to that part.”
Mikey spun to me, a smile beaming again. “You saw an alien, didn’t you? It came from this pod, didn’t it? Tell me you saw it. I need my camera.”
He moved to push past me. I stopped him by placing my hand on his chest. “First of all, your camera is fucked, broken, no use.”
“You’re joking?”
“No. If I were joking I’d tell you making a sci-fi movie at this very moment was a good idea. Second, you don’t want to get anywhere near this monstrous fucker.”
“It was that scary?”
“Yeah,” Cynthia said. “It wasn’t the cute Disney kinda alien.”
“Wow, so this is really happening. An alien invasion, that’s cool, man.”
“Mikey, what did you hear on the radio?” I asked, sighing, losing my patience.
“I was listening to some tunes when a news broadcast interrupted them. They were only able to get out a few words before the radio died, which was when the quake hit, then it came back live for a moment, before it cut out again, that time they were only able to get out a few screams.”
“What they did say?”
“Mainly, ahhhhhh, noooooo.”
“Not the screams, the words, you idiot.”
“Sorry, they said something about pods popping up out of the ground in the UK, France, some other places, and that they believed it would happen here soon, I guess they were right.”
“We need to get somewhere safe,” Cynthia said as she grabbed hold of my hand.
“She’s right, how did it look outside, Mikey?”
“It was clear, I didn’t see a soul … or any aliens.”
“Good. Let’s get to your car, where do you think would be a good place to drive to?”
“I need to check that my family is safe.” Cynthia’s grip tightened on my hand. “Our house has a massive basement, my mom is one of those coupon whores, she has so much food stored down there. I have no idea why she does it, we could afford to buy every item in the store five times over but the stored food would come in useful now. I mean, we don’t know how long this thing will last for.”
“My parents are on vacation,” I said as I swallowed. “In England.”
“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said. “How about you, Mikey?”
“I only have my dad, he was going to a poker game tonight.”
“Do you know where?” Cynthia asked.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll pick him up and then head to my house. Is everyone okay with that?”
Mikey nodded. I said, “Yeah.”
Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash.
The alien’s long arm reached over the top of the pod and its three nails dug into Mikey’s face as he screamed. He was yanked over the top of the pod and out of our view.
I turned and pulled on Cynthia’s hand. With the light from the pod behind us, we were able to move quicker than the dark should have allowed, but the floor was slippery with all the water. I almost fell, twice. Then Cynthia did, dragging me to the floor with her.
I landed on my butt; she was on her stomach, her face under the water. I pulled her from the drink and looked over my shoulder. The alien was squeezing past the pod, munching something in its mouths, blood running from all the corners and onto its shiny body.
I got into a crouched position and helped Cynthia to do the same. She saw the alien too, and screamed. I got us both back upright and dragged her forward again. Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash. There was no doubt the alien was chasing us.
We turned the corner back into the room we’d planned to shoot the movie in. It was pitch black … it was also a dead-end. I ran to the far wall and placed my back to it. I used my free hand to pull Cynthia next to me, so her back was to the wall too.
The silhouetted form of the alien came into the room. It scanned its big bugged eyes around the space. They locked onto us with no trouble. I made a decision at that moment that it was able to see in the dark.
It charged at us. Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash. I pushed Cynthia from me. I heard her impact with the water. Splish-Splash. Splish-Splash. I slid my back along the wall, in the opposite direction to where I’d pushed Cynthia. The alien’s snapping jaws hit the brick where I’d just been.
My head hit one of the many pipes, and in a dizzying rush of wooziness, I fell to the floor myself, landing on top of Mikey’s bags. The alien roared. I reached my hand under the water, felt for the opening in the bag, and reached in.
The alien’s claws wrapped around one of my legs and I was lifted off the floor, water dripping from me, and toward the monster, swinging back and forth, upside down.
It was just positioning me to bite my head off, its mouths wide, and the smell raping my insides with a rotten odor, when I stabbed the knife into one of its big eyes. The ball popped goop in my face and it screamed agonizing vocalizations that cut into my head.
It let go of my leg. I splashed down onto the floor, a horrible pain shooting through my body. I was facedown, my head under the water, my lungs filling with the stuff. It tasted horrible, dirty, old iron-like. I spun onto my back, jackknifed, spat water from my mouth and stabbed the knife into the alien’s leg.
It pulled back from me, but couldn’t get far enough away to stop my next attack. The pipes clanged on its back as it wailed and clutched at its injured eye, choosing to ignore the wound in its leg.
I stood, and rammed the knife into its chest. It kicked out and its foot connected with me. I took off into the air, the knife still stuck in its chest, and stopped when my back hit the hard surface of a wall.
I splashed down again, the wind completely gone from me, an ache throbbing through my whole body. I was on my hands and knees in the water when I heard the Splish-Splash, Splish-Splash, moving toward me. I looked up in time to see both of its hands clapping together toward my head.
I ducked under them, and they smashed together, a whip-like sound cracking the air. I stood, my legs going in an odd direction, the water and the dizziness equally to blame. I didn’t fall. Well, I did, but I managed to stay upright by grabbing hold of the knife in the alien.
I pulled the blade from its chest and had to duck again as it swung one of its hands at me. The claws cut into the wall behind me, sending rubble and dust flying. When I came back upright I stabbed once more. I’m not sure where I hit, but I felt the oily goop hit me.
I wiped it from my eyes then jumped into the air, the knife held above my head, it was the only way to reach its other eye. I was falling back downward when the point of the blade went in and burst the ball.
The alien screamed again, clutched at the latest eye to go bye-bye, and turned from me. It was all over the place, taking a few steps in one direction, then changing course soon after, to only do the same again.