Earth (The Invasion Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

“Wow, I haven’t seen a girl
puke like that since that chick at Mal’s party drank half a keg of beer,” Hank says quietly to me. He’s been standing on my other side.

For some reason
, the three of us—Lisa, Hank and myself—have formed a weird friendship, and I don’t exactly understand why. Well okay, I do. Lisa and Hank are completely hot for each other, although also in denial. They’re good friends, so that way they can stay close to each other without actually having to do anything about their feelings. I’m best friends with Lisa as well as being her roommate, so we’re kind of a package deal.

Hank plays basketball here at the university
, and from the games I’ve seen, he’s really good. Tall, handsome and fit, he makes most girls swoon, and boy does Lisa often swoon. It’s a bit sickening really. They would honestly make a gorgeous couple if they could admit their feelings.

While Hank is tall and bulky, Lisa is petite and short. She is Asian
with perfect skin, not a single blemish. If you’d seen us go for a run together, you’d think she was superhuman. She is fitter than I am with only trying half as much as I do, and I’m fairly certain she doesn’t sweat. I’m not sure that’s possible except that she never appears to. She is sweet and a little neurotic while Hank is funny and completely calm about everything.

Even though I’m not a mushy person, I can totally see them married with several beautiful children and some obscenely happy future. I think their biggest question will be where they’ll raise these imaginary children
because I know how homesick Lisa is and Hank is a blue-blooded American.

He comes from a family of cops
—his dad and older brother are both police officers, his uncle is a detective and his grandfather was a police officer for thirty-eight years. He’s admitted to us that, even though his family is happy for him to go pro with basketball, he doesn’t really want to. He wants to be a cop like the rest of the men in his family. It wouldn’t surprise me if he gave up basketball and did that anyway.

I reali
se I’ve drifted off with my thoughts again. I haven’t even noticed that Hank left my side, doting over Lisa and making sure she’s okay. I’ve also missed a lot of what Sergeant Casper has said.

I think I would have stayed in my thoughts if a man hadn’t pushed a thick wad of paper at me. I open it up and find a map of Northern America and some parts of Canada on it as well. I gather that we’re being sent
further up north. Since the last reports I’ve heard have been about Canada going dark, I have no doubt that we’ll be finding out what exactly happens when a place goes silent very soon.

I know I should be afraid
—a normal response is to fear death, fear the unknown—but I think I’m still in too much shock to be afraid, or at least the correct amount. I assume a sane person would probably be in the fetal position, weeping right now—sort of how Lisa looks next to Hank. I just can’t wrap my head around this. I’m still hoping it is all just some horrible joke and the world is doing some belated April fool’s joke on us. That’s possible, right? Or this is just some super realistic nightmare that, even though it’s taking me forever to live through it, I’ll wake up from this and I’ll have only been asleep for a couple of hours. That is more probable. I’m going to hope for the latter.

A lot of people have gone into full meltdown mode. Many
have up and left to go home as soon as the blackouts started to happen around the world. Maybe if I could have gotten a flight home, I’d have left, too. However, most commercial airlines closed down and none were going anywhere near Australia. So I stayed and Lisa stayed because she has been stuck in the same position I have. Hank has stayed at the campus because his family is already on the streets helping, and I don’t think he could bear to leave Lisa.

So when they rounded up everyone left on campus and
the people living in the area, looking for volunteers, we came down to the football field, and that is where we’ve been recruited to fight. Sergeant Casper has made this all sound so practical, so organized, and so easy. We just have to protect a certain area and shoot anything that isn’t human. Easy, right? Who cares that we’re all untrained, unprepared and underequipped for any of this. I mean, a handgun, a rifle, some ammo and a map? Really?

Obviously their decent weapons are tied up elsewhere
, and no doubt, some of these will have been gathered from seizures, donations or gun shops. All it adds up to is the fact that we’re screwed.

“Let’s try and stay together.” Hank takes my hand while he has Lisa wrapped up under his other arm, holding her close to his side. She looks dazed and ill. I think we’re going to be in for a
vomit-filled ride.

We’re
eventually loaded into transport vehicles. After that, it’s a long five hours before we arrive in Seattle. From there we are moved into another truck and driven closer to the border. We’re given a new speech as an attempt to motivate us and new orders to stay where we are dropped off. We’re also given one radio, which we’re to use at the first sign of those scary machines. I get the feeling they want us to be a warning system and we’re really just being sent out here because we’re expendable—we can give others a better chance of knowing when and how to expect our enemy.

I think a lot of people begin to reali
se the hopelessness of our situation because, as soon as we’re dropped off, many just appear to breakdown. Some sob, some just sit on the ground and stare blankly into the distance, some even scream in a fit of rage and despair.

Lisa wails into Hank’s shoulder
. I know she’s thinking, not about her own mortality, but of her family. She has a big family with seven or eight siblings—I always forget how many and have no chance of being able to remember their names—who Lisa is super close to as well as her parents.

Moving to another country was the craziest thing anyone in her family
has done. They were proud of her; I heard it whenever they spoke on Skype. And now she has no idea if they’re dead or alive, in pain or suffering. It’s the unknown that is killing her. The unknown about my own family is hurting me, too.

“It’s going to be all right
,” Hank tries to assure her, though his words are empty. I still have her weapons and ammo on me, I don’t think she cares to have them back.

We’ve been left in a field with no obvious landmarks in sight. On the map we were given
, there are circles for command centres, places where we can get help if needed, but they’ve failed to tell us where we are on it.

“What are we supposed to do?” I ask Hank
while Lisa continues sobbing into his shoulder.

As sound like thunder reverberates through
the sky, and as we gaze upwards, we see several fighter jets zooming quickly overhead, heading into Canada.

“Maybe we should follow them?” Hank suggests.

“On foot?” My mouth drops open in shock. He wants us to walk into Canada? I don’t even have my passport on me, not that I think they’ll care about such things right now.

“Not on foot. There
’s loads of farmland out here; there must be houses and cars, too. Let’s try and find something.”

We leave the group we
’ve been left with, no one paying us any attention as we walk away. We move slowly, hindered in speed by Lisa. She hasn’t said a word since we’ve been dropped off. I worry she is going into shock. Well, okay, we’re all going into shock, yet maybe Lisa’s reaction is normal, and it’s Hank and me who are the weird ones.

From what we
’ve heard before communication became spotty, the military has deployed all of its women and men, and every fighter jet is up in the air. All their available tanks are on the roads, and no doubt, every weapon in use. I’ve heard whispers of nuclear weapons being readied, but I’m not sure if that was just talk or not. There’s no sparing anything; this is a fight to the death.

“Look, over there.” Hank points across a field to a
small cottage.

We make our way over to it slowly, nightfall beginning to cover us in darkness. I have no personal belongings on me, not even any ID or money. Will any of that matter anymore or ever again?

“Do you think we should stay here for the night?” I ask, not sure if I’ll ever be able to sleep again. I can imagine the nightmares I’ll have when I close my eyes.

“No, we should keep moving.”

“Moving where?” Lisa whispers, her voice cracking. She’s still under Hank’s arm; I don’t think he’ll be letting go of her anytime soon.

“I think we should check out what is exactly happening and find out why things are going dark.”

“What?” Lisa stops moving and Hank stills when she pulls on his arm. “You want to go looking for those things?”

“I just think we should take a look
; find out what is going on,” he says calmly back to her.

“You know
, I doubt we’ll have to wait long to find out if we just stay here,” I say as my heart rate speeds up at the thought of how close my death might be.

“I don’t want to die
,” Lisa cries, burying her head in Hank’s shoulder.

He moves the handgun to rest in the belt of his pants at his back,
passing me his rifle, which means I’m now carrying three, and then he sweeps Lisa into his arms to carry her. I’m not even sure if she’s aware that he’s carrying her, either.

We move quicker now
as I try to ignore Lisa’s tears. It’s not that I’m heartless, but I don’t want to break down, and if I let her tears affect me, then I know I will.

“Have you heard from your brother or your dad?” I ask
Hank, hoping he might have heard some new information that he hasn’t shared with us yet.

“We all said goodbye yesterday.” His voice hitches
, and I notice him blink away a stray tear. “We know that there is a good chance we won’t be getting out of this alive. Dad just told us that, if we’re going down, we’ll do it fighting and to ‘give those sons of bitches hell’.”

“Wise words.”
My body shakes at the thought of confronting one of those machines. It looked scary enough on the TV, I’m not sure how awful it’ll be in real life.

“I know my way around weapons
, and I think maybe, if we can ride out this attack, there is a way we’ll survive.” He looks over at me, his eyes begging for me to agree with him, that his belief that we might survive this isn’t just false hope.

“Yeah
, well, when you two start popping out kids, you’re on your own,” I tease, my words falling flat.

“My sister was pregnant…” Lisa moans then her sobbing intensifies. Hank glares at me, but it doesn’t have much intensity behind it. I’m pretty sure most things we say will set Lisa off
, and Hank knows that deep down.

“I’m sorry
, Lisa. I didn’t mean to upset you. We have no idea what’s going on back home. I think they’re okay.” I swallow over my lie. I fully believe that there is little chance that anyone has survived those machines. Saying that to Lisa won’t help her, though.

“Maybe if we can make it to Canada, we can see what is really going on once it goes dark. It might not be as bad as we all think
,” Hank suggests hopefully.

“And if it is bad?”
she wails.

“Then we take down as many as we can.” Hank sounds sinister
, causing a cold shiver to hit me at his words.

We move in silence then, not voicing what I’m
certain each of us are thinking. Between us, we have three handguns, three rifles and a handful each of extra ammo. We already know these things are bulletproof, so how exactly are we supposed to take them down?

Unfortunately
, we’re all about to find out what these things look like up close and personal all too soon.

Chapter 3

Mattie

The small cottage has been hiding an elderly couple easily in their seventies. They are frightened when they open the door to find us. I try to hide myself behind Hank and Lisa, not because I’m scared, but because I’m trying to hide my weapons. There have been whispers of looters and crime increasing with the lack of police presence. I think, if we had more warning of what was happening, more time than what we were given to know everything was about to end, we would have seen more of the uglier side of humankind. However, with the little warning and potential end of the world scenario, most people are in too much shock to do anything, or they’re hiding like these people.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but we need your help
,” Hank speaks calmly.

I look over his shoulder to see the old man holding a protective arm in front of his wife.

“They look tired, dear. Let them in,” the woman says kindly. When she smiles, her face scrunches up and she looks like that typical, cute, old lady type.

“We don’t want
no trouble.” He glares, although grudgingly he does move to let us pass. Well, he lets Hank and Lisa pass, but when he sees my weapons plus Hank and Lisa’s that I’m still holding, he blocks his wife and backs her up against the side wall, trying to protect her.

“I don’t mean you any harm
. These are just what we were given to fight those things attacking us,” I explain, looking to Hank for guidance.

Should I put my weapons on the floor and step away from them? Even though I don’t want to have anything to do with fighting an alien race attacking us with guns that are most likely useless, I also can’t bring myself to give up the weapons. They’re our only
defence, even if we have seen that bullets have no affect over them.

“That’s actually why we’re here
, we’re heading into Canada to find out why their communications went down and what exactly is happening over there, but we need transport. We saw your cottage and wondered if you might have a vehicle we could borrow.” Hank smiles sincerely at the couple. He’s always the charmer.

“I don’t have no
—”

“We have a pickup truck out the back. It’s fully gassed
,” the old woman speaks up, cutting her husband off.

“That is
my
truck, I refuse to—”

“We don’t need it anymore. We agreed to spend our last days here together, in our home where we brought up Jacob. We promised that we’d sit by his tree and not leave him alone. We don’t need that awful sounding and polluting thing here.”

The husband turns around to stare at his wife. While they communicate silently to each other, I feel like we’re intruding on a moment.

“Fine, take it. Just promise me you’ll take care of her.” The old man
moves his hands to his back pocket, taking his keys out. He removes the correct one off the chain and hands it to Hank, his eyes moving back over to me as if afraid I might try something now that he’s given us what we want.

The old lady steps around her husband, staring at Lisa in concern. “Do you have any supplies with you? Vancouver is over a couple hours’ drive from here and it’s getting late. You all look so tired
. We have a spare room you could—”

“
Vivian…”

“Thank you, but we really should be on our way before…” Hank trails off and we all pause to take in his unsaid words.

Before the machines attack America and we’re all dead.

“At least take some food and water with you.”

“That is for us,” the old man hisses.

“We will be fine, but thank you for the offer
, and thank you for the use of your car. I assure you we will take care of it for you.” Hank nods his head in a gesture of thanks to them.

We walk back outside and pile into the front seat of the three-seat pickup
when Vivian rushes after us carrying a small bag.

“Just in case
,” she offers as her husband glares first at the bag then us. He wraps his arm around his wife’s shoulder and watches as Hank drives us away from the small cottage, finding us a dirt road heading in the direction of a main road.

“That was really a generous lady. I hope
they… I hope…” Lisa’s voice falters, and since Hank has two hands on the wheel driving, she moves her head to my shoulder and cries.

“They’re going to be okay
. I have a good feeling,” I try to assure her. “They looked like they’ve been married for a while. What do you think they meant about the tree and Jacob?” I ask, trying to move her away from thoughts of death.

“I saw a photo hanging up of them looking a lot younger with a kid. He was sitting on a swing tied to a branch and they were standing
on either side of him. I saw a few other photos, but the kid never aged past ten or eleven. I assume he must have passed away,” Hank explains.

I sigh
. So much for getting the topic away from death.

“I always thought I’d have children
.” Lisa shifts her head to the side of my shoulder. “I wanted to have five kids.”

“Five!” Hank gasps
, and I smile because I know how much he cares for her. I think deep down both of them know that they have feelings for each other and have probably pictured their lives together once they get over being too chicken to admit it to each other. Five kids obviously hasn’t factored into Hank’s fantasy.

“Yes. I had a big family growing up
, and it was wonderful.” Lisa sniffles. I can already tell the direction of her thoughts are about to move to her family. Definite heartache territory.

“How about you
, Hank? How many kids were you planning?” I quickly ask.

“I thought two would be plenty.” He turns and looks at
Lisa, maybe considering that big family with her. I feel horrible because, with the world ending, they won’t get to experience it now.

“How about you
, Mattie? I’ve never seen you go on a date with someone more than once. Did you think you’d ever settle down and have a family?” Lisa asks, moving off my shoulder so she can see me properly.

“I don’t know. I wanted to just focus on my career. Guys just get in the way of that
,” I state, having believed that fully up until this moment. If the world hadn’t been ending, I still wouldn’t have cared about guys or a future with them, but now that I won’t ever get the chance to marry or have children? Yeah, now I’m angry that the choice has been taken away from me—from everyone.

“They don’t have to get in your way; they could have been a fun distraction from training and studying. I never thought I’d be the fun one in a friendship group. Back home…”
She sighs, but then surprises me by not breaking down on us. “Back home I was the boring one. I loved staying in with my family, loved school work.”

“Well
, you’re both boring compared to me. You’re just lucky I decided to be your friend and up your cool factor.” Hank takes his eyes off the road to give us a quick wink to show he’s only kidding.

“We’re
lucky
you
decided
to be our friend?” Lisa snorts, and I share a quick glance with Hank. It’s the closest thing to a laugh we’ve heard since news of the invasion broke. “I remember a very different story. Do you remember that night, Mattie?”

I smile at her, remembering it well. “Yes, you dragged me to some stupid frat party, and before we even got in the door
, I tripped over some large lump who was chucking his guts up.”

“Yeah, and then when we tried to get someone to help him
, he grabbed my leg and begged me not to tell anyone because—”

“Shut up!” Hank hisses, attempting to place his hand over her mouth while keeping his other hand on the wheel.

“Because he had only drunk two beers and he didn’t want the guys to make fun of him,” I finish off, too far away from him for retaliation in any way.

Lisa pushes his hand away and keeps talking. “Yep, and then he tried to stand up and his pants fell down because the reason he’d gone outside in the first place was to take a piss.” Lisa giggles.

“Now who was that guy? Surely not
cool
-man Hank over here.” I tap my chin, pretending to think really hard about that night.

“Hmm
, I’m not sure, Mattie. How about the second night we spoke to Hank? I think I can remember that one. It was after a basketball match, and that guy John told us how to get out a back way to avoid the large crowd dispersing
very
slowly.”

“Oh
, yeah. We ended up in the guy’s locker room where Hank was whining because his teammates had taken away his clothes after his shower.”

“You know John set that up, right?” Hank mutters
, annoyed.

“I do know you were so shocked when we walked in that you dropped your towel right in front of us.” Lisa reddens as she recalls the memory.

“Yeah, I was quick to turn around, but you took a little longer to move.” I nudge Lisa with my elbow and wink at her.

“I was in shock
. I mean, he was hard!” Lisa gasps.

“Stop!
Stop
talking!” Hank quickly brakes along the road, the headlights still shining in front of us as he hides his face in his hands.

“
Ew, I didn’t need to know that!” I wince because now I have that mental image in my head. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d been quick. As soon as I saw him in a towel, I’d started to turn, so by the time the towel fell, I didn’t actually glimpse a thing, and I never felt the need to ask Lisa for any details on Hank’s anatomy.

“Well
, it was huge! How was I not supposed to look at it?” Lisa sounds innocent, but when I look at her, I can tell she is nervous. She glances at Hank and he lifts his head away from his hands to stare at her.

“Huge?” He smiles now
. I feel like I’m about to really not like being stuck in this car with them.

“Well
, yeah, massive even.”

“Oh
, God,” I whine, putting my hand over the door handle, ready to bolt if they take this now flirting conversation any other place I don’t want to know about.

“You know I was only hard because I saw you walk in. I’m always turned on when I’m close to you. You’re
—”

I open the door and jump out, shutting it closed behind me
, thankfully missing out on anything else they’re saying.

Unbelievable.
It’s the end of the world, we’re heading into a potential warzone with the scariest and weirdest looking machines in the existence of the world, and they’re flirting?

They pick
now
to admit their feelings! Although, I suppose now is as good a time as any. I’ve never felt like a third wheel before, yet now I get to spend my last days on earth watching those two love birds flirt, kiss, and God, I hope not anything worse.

I take a short walk, glancing at the darkened sky above and
imagining myself back home. I think about my parents, remembering their laugher as they cooked dinner together. Every night without fail they prepared dinner together. It was their time to spend with each other and they both loved food. They loved making it, and in my dad’s case, eating a lot of it. He wasn’t as fussy about what he ate, but Mum’s a health nut, and she’d always make sure every day we ate enough fruit and vegetables. It worked for my sports diet to eat healthy, so I never minded. I know Hannah had a secret stash of chocolate in her top drawer, though.

I smile
, remembering the night we had a food fight. It started with me accidently flinging my mashed potatoes off my spoon. They’d landed directly in Hannah’s face. I knew she was furious. We all froze for a second and I waited for her tantrum. We’d already been fighting for days, so my own defences rose, ready to be just as angry as she was feeling. Some days, I had genuinely hated my sister.

Dad saw our faces and it was only a split second later that he threw a handful of peas at M
um. She’d been shocked, too, but when I giggled, she quickly retaliated and threw back her own portion of mashed potatoes straight into his face, hitting his eyes.

Hannah started laughing then
, and we all got straight into it. It felt like it went on for hours, however it must have only been minutes later that we ran out of ammo. We were all covered in food and laughing so hard. My stomach hurt the next day from laughing so much. I’d only been nine; Hannah was seven. Two years difference isn’t a long time, but for us, it had always been forever. We were so different from each other, and now she might be gone forever.

I move around the front of the truck, my eyes staying away from any windows where I might see something I can never un-see. Hank
has left the headlights on, helping me to notice a black haze in front of the truck. The sky is darkening overhead, but this feels different. There is definitely a wall of black haze in front of us.

The sound of a door opening draws me back towards the car
where Lisa steps out, patting her hair down at the back. Her lips are slightly swollen and her eyes are dazed. It’s obvious her and Hank have just been making out in the car.