by Ma West
As the battle waged, the captain would draw away, only to be pulled back again. Each time he had met the baroness was carefully examined, crossed-checked, and rewatched. What the alien was looking for was definitely connected to the woman.
The connection broke, leaving behind a tear in the captain’s mind. The pain was excruciating, radiating throughout every nerve in his head. Blackness filled both his eyes and his mind’s eye. His body curled into the fetal position, and with a sudden drop, every muscle in his body relaxed.
The alien screeched as the demon man bore down an ax upon the back of his neck. Green blood burst forth from its wound, hissing in the air as it bubbled away. The ax swiveled wildly as the alien writhed in pain. Nearly invisible with its speed, the alien sent the demon man flying through the air with a devastating kick. The alien twisted and twirled as it finally grabbed hold of his splinter of pain.
For only a moment was the alien still, but for Colonel Major, it was opportunity enough, and his weapon rang out with amazing accuracy. Three shots rang out, each one lodging into the alien’s exposed organ. A barrage of bullets blasted across the alien’s body as officer after officer emptied their clips into the beast.
The alien sauntered backward and then fell to the ground. In traditional fashion, a dog pile of officers immediately began linking together sets of cuffs to restrain the carcass, should he return to life.
The warmth was amazing, the tickle on the skin exhilarating, and the smell so intoxicating that Sasha was forced to open her eyes. Then she was forced to close them, as her mind refused to process what she had just seen. She decided that she must have been hallucinating. Her body felt warm all over, but there was an extra layer of heat along her leg, a deep penetrating warmth that seemed to massage down to the bone. Again came a most intoxicating smell, as if lavender and hickory exploded out of a chili relleno. Sasha was compelled to reopen her eyes, and again she was immediately compelled to close them.
A squeeze brought back her focus, and a gentle massage soothed her greatly. Sasha focused on sound, but she found none, as if she had gone deaf. The smell made it difficult to keep her eyes closed, and as she opened them for the third time, she was forced to acknowledge the truth of her situation. After her first alien encounter ended up in a battle to her near death, she was now at the mercy of an alien who looked like a scoop of dog food with a bunch of worms sticking out of it, and none too happy about it.
Sasha kept her eyes open, yet she still found it entirely too difficult to see. “How did you find me?” The mute vibrations of her words were the only sound. A stone was slid into the palm of her hand by a tentacle she hadn’t even noticed was there.
A voice rang out, but the sound came from within her mind: “My poor dear, we just followed the trail of death and destruction. Now tell me, how do you feel?”
Sasha closed her eyes again. “I’ll let you know when I wake up.”
A deep, penetrating blackness surrounded the captain. A void filled this thoughts, and a blankness of sensation fell across his body. For several minutes, nothing happened. Then, as if a light switch had been turned on, all of his senses returned. He was overwhelmed by the amount of sensation. The light was intensely bright, the wind intensely cold, the noise deafening, and the pain frightening.
A voice rang out in his head: “Relax, you’re in a place of healing now.” The voice was clear, but his mind was still unable or unwilling to process the overwhelming amount of sensation he was feeling. There was only one the captain could think of that could speak directly into his brain. “Lord, is that you?”
A chuckle accompanied the voice’s response: “Oh my, no, but we are all children of God. I’m a healer. We were sent here to help you recover from the Xendorian attack. Such brutal bastards, they have no respect for lower life.”
For a moment, the captain had forgotten it all—the pain, the alien, the deaths, and even Sasha. “Sasha, where is Sasha?” His body exploded in alertness as his mind finished rebooting. His ears could hear the commotion of background noises ranging from screams of pain to soothing music to beeps and hums of electronics. His nose filled with a barrage of flavors—lavender, melted plastic, laundry detergent. Each smelled distinct yet fluid as they shifted in and out.
The captain opened his eyes again, and there above him was yet another alien.
Sasha opened her eyes—no alien. With relief, she hoped that the whole thing had simply been a dream. The oozing, swirling patch of gel around her leg and ribs suggested otherwise. She tried to move her leg but found it incredibly stiff. In fact, the harder she tried to move the leg, the stiffer it became. After a few failed attempts, she gave up.
Sasha was in a hospital, a human hospital. The room looked like a typical hospital room, with two beds separated by a hanging sheet and a window overlooking another tall building across the street. A beautiful blue light radiated into the room from the outside. The TV was off, and her sense of hearing had returned. While the room itself was pretty quiet, there was a lot of activity going on in the hallways.
She examined her own physical condition and realized that her leg had shifted. This time, she wiggled her leg, only to find it willing to comply. She recognized many of the cords and devices that were hooked up to her. It was not the first time she had woken up from the fog in a hospital.
Sasha traced back her memories. How far back did the dream start? Was Emilia real? Sasha’s body was showing the signs of severe bruising, but that wasn’t a first either. The gel around her leg made her nervous, very nervous, for she had dreamt that an alien broke her leg in a horrific battle.
She turned to the side, only to find it painful throughout much of her torso. She looked under her hospital gown and found much of her body to be tightly wrapped. She wanted to jump down, wanted to start her search for her father and, if real, Emilia. Yet Sasha’s wants had finally been denied by her body, her will no longer forceful enough to overcome the pain and injury. So she lay back down and waited. She would need time to recoup the will, she would need time to adjust to the pain, and she would need time to clear her brain. With much guilt and trepidation, Sasha rested.
Keeping his eyes closed felt like the better option for the moment, yet allowing a delay in finding Sasha wasn’t acceptable. “Where is Sasha?”
Again the voice echoed deep from within the captain’s own brain: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what a Sasha is? Is it a food?”
“It’s my daughter, you idiot! Now damn it, get me someone who knows where she is, or get me on my feet so I can find her. Now!”
A new voice, a somewhat familiar voice, rang out from outside his brain. “Those are the words of the father, not a soldier. I’m fearful to make an assumption, then, that you are not part of a larger group sent here to assist us with our alien problem.” A warm hand then grabbed hold of his. “It’s ok to open your eye now, son. I promise they work again. These here doctors are more than I ever could have imagined.” The words soothed and commanded, spoken by an authority used to handling and de-escalating tense moments.
A kind smile, a curly white mustache, and a badge that read “Major” greeted the captain as he opened his eyes. “It’s good to see you still got fight in you, because we are going to need as many good men as we can find before this is over. Now, why don’t I get my men to track down your daughter while you come with me? The mayor and Mr. Cook want to see us as soon as possible. So up we go.” A gentle yet strong hand wrapped around the captain’s wrist, and with a practiced manner, Colonel Major maintained control of the conversation. “Now tell me Sasha’s last name and known location.”
Oh, God, that snoring was obnoxious. It was completely disruptive to her sleep, and it had to stop. Sasha’s body ached, pinched, and squeezed all at the same time, yet she could feel the correction, the sheer amount of healing, that had occurred in just a short nap. Her leg responded gracefully, quickly learning how to move at maximum allowable speed. The bandages across her midsection squeezed her chest, forcing her
to make concentrated breaths, and pinged with pain at every little rock underfoot.
Sasha pulled the curtain back, both hoping for and hoping against it being her father or her Emilia. Instead, it was a dark-colored white man. Deep bruises covered the front of his chest, and tubes ran in and out of the man’s side. Braces held his head and neck relatively in place, and more tubes ran into and out of his nose. The snoring was vibrating against the tubes and making an awful racket along with it.
After seeing a large burn mark in the shape of a cross, Sasha no longer had the heart to wake the man up, but the noise couldn’t continue either. Across the room, she spotted an oscillating fan but had to let it go, as a rib poked out with a punch of protest. Despite her best intentions, the man in the bed—who she was now noticing had two dark-red imprints surrounding his eyes—woke up. “The demons have come. God’s wrath is descending upon us! We must flee! We must flee!” The man’s body writhed as he pressed to escape his medical and mental prisons. Alarms buzzed and machines beeped as the man continued to struggle. “No mercy for the damned, no mercy for the damned. I must flee! No mercy for me!”
Two humans in white coats rushed into the room and helped restrain the man. A third woman in a blue outfit entered the room with a needle and, with a skilled hand, inserted it into a tube that soon flooded the drugs into the man’s body. For several more minutes, the man ranted out gibberish while the three attendants held him in place as best they could. Gradually winding down, the man started to whisper rather than scream, and mutter more than speak.
The whole sight frightened Sasha even more than her dream of fighting the alien. A chill ran through her, and the hair on her arms stood up. The woman in the blue uniform came close. “Sorry about that. I’m glad to see you’re feeling well enough to stand and even move around some. I must insist, however, that you get back in bed. You still need plenty of rest after your ordeal. I don’t care how miraculous these new doctors are.”
The woman’s response further dashed Sasha’s hopes of it all being a dream, but she still held on a little longer in fear of it all. “What happened? What’s going on?”
The woman let out a snicker. “All I know, my dear, is that a surge of patients came in like a flood. I’d never seen this hospital so overwhelmed before, and the poor victims had the most horrific injuries. We were well past overwhelmed, when all of a sudden, these scary-ass barrel monkeys showed up out of nowhere. At first we shit and pissed ourselves a little bit, but as we all stood there motionless, the monkeys sprang into action. To be honest, my first thought was that they were going to eat the patients, but no, it quickly became apparent that they were saving them, and at record speeds and with incredible accuracy. Now, my dear, how on earth,” the lady left an unusual pause, “did you end up here?”
Sasha looked at the woman. Her face was very kind but not very pretty. Sasha searched her mind but found only a headache at the end of each thought. After a hesitation, the woman came back. “My dear, why don’t we start with your name?”
It was an embarrassingly long pause, but Sasha was able to finally speak at last. “Sasha, my name is Sasha.”
The woman smiled and was about to speak when the man burst out again with renewed vigor despite the drugs. “Sasha, Sasha, I must find Sasha. That’s what he said.”
“Excuse me, but that’s what who said?” Sasha felt her heart flutter as the hope of finding her father grew.
“Mister loony tunes, here. Arrived here just ahead of you.” A large smile broke out across the nurse’s face. “Oh my, now isn’t that a miracle, the two of you ending up together?”
An instant frown broke out across Sasha’s face. “But I don’t know this man. How could, or why would, he be looking for me?”
The smile on the nurse’s face evaporated to embarrassment. “My apologies, honey, I guess it’s just coincidental. Now, why don’t you just lie back down, and I will see if I can get you some breakfast. I hear they have some MREs now, on two.” The nurse took the fan and set it up, all the while watching carefully to make sure that Sasha was able to get into bed.
Chapter 31
The Briefing
The leg and torso moved without pain, yet he couldn’t seem to lose the limp. The elder policeman escorted Captain Drexter with a practiced patience. Barking frequent commands into a headset, he spoke clearly and concisely, yet generally enough to still give his lieutenants flexibility in carrying out their tasks.
From what the captain could glean, while it was bad everywhere, he must have been in one of the worst spots. One, maybe two more alien intruders still roamed and probed the populace. It was a short walk to the command center, but at the captain’s limited speed, it felt like it took forever to get there. Luckily, the center was located in the basement, and descending stairs was no trouble at all.
The room was lit, but a severe lack of power still kept most of the monitors dark. The space buzzed with activity, but in the middle, as always, was the politician. A short black man with the most awful haircut—long and slicked back, yet short on the sides—and a well-trimmed mustache sat surrounded by a group of staffers who were talking rapidly. One man sat to the mayor’s side, but he looked disinterested as if lost in a daydream or memory.
The colonel led the captain around the ramp and down into the center pit. The mayor waved off his staffer and stood up to shake the colonel’s hand as they walked in. The mayor started a round of applause, and the room gradually caught on and joined in. “My friends, the guardians of our city, and defeaters of Goliath. These men have suffered dearly and accomplished a great deal, for which we owe them very much.”
After the round of applause had run its course, the mayor sat back down and summoned the two closer. “Captain . . . Drexter, is it? Glad to have you here with us. My name is Mayor Mandainity, but most people just call me Big M. These are very trying times, as you well know. My people have been murdered at the hands of ruthless alien bastards. Obviously they have the capability of blowing our assholes out through China, yet they do not. Why? Can you tell me this, please? Why have they taken this city, and what are they searching for? Please, what can you tell me? I immigrated to this great city when I was just a little boy, and this city took me in, and I became one of its people. Then I became its protector. Now I serve as its leader. This city is me and my people. How can the army simply do nothing?”
The captain unconsciously took a step back. “I wish I knew more. I was on my way to meet with my unit when some of your boys decided to throw me in fucking jail. I was in the jail when all of a sudden the world went bonkers, as if gravity got fucking hammered. Then these big-ass waves slammed against the wall, shit rose up from below, and corpses floated about till the fourth fucking horseman broke down the cell, probing and killing the hell out of people. Now why don’t you tell me what the hell I don’t know, starting with where the hell my daughter Sasha is?”
The mayor and the colonel exchanged glances before the colonel responded with grace. “It’s too premature to say, but there were two teen survivors from the other alien battle sight. I have a unit going over there now, to personally handle it.”
Then the mayor said, “So what I am not hearing is that you are part of a larger unit. I’m not hearing that there are federal resources pouring in from—well I wouldn’t fucking care where, you know? I am not hearing good news for us, so are you a deserter?”
The captain smiled with the news that she was alive. Of course Sasha would have found her way to the center of the battle, and “two teens” must have meant that Emilia survived also. “No, mayor, I’m a parent. Not only am I a parent—I am a parent of the most miraculous teen to ever grace this earth. I can tell you right now what happened at that other battle sight. Alien met Sasha, Sasha killed alien, and alien got in a lucky last blow.”
Big M tucked in his shirt. “Yes, my friend, but let’s hope her injuries were nothing more than just a lucky blow. She is being taken care of at the hospital. Now please help me so that you can
go to your daughter.”
Captain Drexter looked over at the colonel to receive confirmation and reassurance. “Mr. Mayor, I’m not sure what you want from me, but my primary mission in the army is the oversight of that teen girl. My place is by her side.”
The mayor started to pace back and forth, his face posed with a serious and stern look. “If my need were not so great, I would not be so insistent. I need a man who understands how a chain of freakin’ command works. I need a man who can organize chaos, plan ahead, and follow through. That uniform and rank tells me that you have those skills. My best man, my best friend, was taken by these bastards. But I’m not even sure which bastards took him. My next-best man is a useless lump of shit so caught up in the loss you could throw him off a fucking cliff.” Big M flailed his short arms about, gesturing in the direction of the man sitting behind his chair. “My next step would be to take a specialist out of their field and comfort zone. So I am drafting you to be my acting emergency manager. It will be a learn-as-you-go job. Welcome to the team. The colonel here will show you around and get you settled while I ready the transition. Nice meeting you, Captain Drexter.” Then, with a direct wave of his hand, he motioned the two men off and returned to his prior briefing.
The colonel started a conversation as they walked down a ramp. Ahead was a faintly lit room full of display monitors. “You will learn to like the mayor. Not for his personality, of course, but for his love of humanity. We ourselves had a rocky start. I found his tone and manners abrasive and insulting, yet every time a complex issue arose, he was loyal, perceptive, and understanding. Don’t worry, I think you will learn to like the team. Oh, and your daughter and her friend will be escorted shortly after they receive the final go-ahead from the doctors to be released.”