“The professor is in fine form this morning,” he whispered, trying to help her focus on something else. She sniffled and he realized that she was crying.
Michael came down the aisle holding a processional cross, clutching the pole tightly. Two girls from his school followed behind him, holding large candles. Jerome entered next, with a bible hefted high over his head. Father Bob entered last, wearing a green robe.
“Listen to the lyrics, Red,” Elizabeth said as Professor Linkletter continued to sing. “It’s like they were written especially for these times.”
Father Bob made his way to the front of the church to face everyone. He made the sign of the cross in the air and said, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“And with your spirit,” the congregation answered.
One of the service garage doors suddenly swung upward, and a long shadow fell across the congregation. The man who had interrupted the service stood there with sunlight pouring in behind him through the door. Red’s eyes struggled to adjust to the intrusion. He realized it was Nate, dripping with sweat, gasping.
“Last Haven is under attack!” Nate struggled to catch his breath, but managed to pant out, “Survivors are streaming into town as I speak!”
Red stood to attention. “Who’s attacking them?”
“You’re not gonna believe this. Aliens, and not the kind from Mexico!” Some people giggled, but the members of the council looked alarmed. As far as Red was concerned, Nate couldn’t have come at a better time. He crumpled up his speech and tossed it to the floor.
“Nate, you idiot, how dare you interrupt church for one of your silly pranks,” Farmer Morningside said from the back row.
“Go home, Nate.” An old man said. “We don’t need your kind of trouble.”
“For God’s sake, you’re in church,” a woman said. “Quit lying.”
“This is no prank, no lie! One of the UFOs landed near Last Haven a few hours ago. You all know the ones I’m talking about; you’ve all seen them! Green aliens came out of it and are killing everybody in sight.” Nate said. “If you don’t believe me, come outside and take a look for yourselves.”
“General Moore warned us about this,” Elizabeth turned to face the congregation, wagging a scolding finger at the council members in attendance. “But none of you would listen.”
“We better take a look,” Father Bob said, exchanging a frightened look with Red and Elizabeth. “Everybody outside.”
The crowd followed Nate outside to look in the direction of Last Haven. Pulses of blue and red light illuminated the horizon over the neighboring town, while plumes of black smoke striated the blue sky.
“That’s just ol’ Buck doing some back burning,” Farmer Morningside said crankily.
A man from Last Haven stumbled up the road toward the town square, and several men rushed out to help. They carried him fireman-style into the center of the crowd. His skin was hanging in ribbons off half his face. Wicked burns covered the left side of his body. People quickly got Doc, who elbowed his way through the crowd, ordering them to bring him to his office.
“Monsters came out of the sky,” the man moaned, clutching Doc’s shirt. “And we can’t stop them.”
Suddenly a whiz of air swept through the crowd.
Two noiseless silver machines, resembling jet-skis, but much sleeker, skimmed over the ground on cushions of air. One rider’s round head was topped with a thick mop of dandelion-yellow hair. The other’s bald skull was covered with something that looked like dimples on a golf ball. Jaws dropped, and people hugged their children protectively to their sides.
The alien drivers, tall and green, steered their hovercrafts around the people, then tore through the center of the gathering, forcing everyone to scatter. The bald alien raised a shiny rod. Red raised his black .38 in response, shooting both of the aliens—one between the eyes, the other in the temple. They fell dead at the feet of the screaming crowd, now panicked into clustering back together again for protection.
“Why did you do that?” Blanche demanded to know. “We don’t even know what they wanted.”
“I know what they wanted,” Red said. “And that’s why they’re dead.”
“Oh, boy,” Farmer Morningside took off his hat. His hands shook as he swiped his sweaty forehead with a red bandana. “That black fella knew what he was talking about.”
The Wakelands stepped in.
“These creatures are not human,” Red said to the villagers, still goggling at the corpses at their feet. “They’re Celeruns, members of an ancient alien race whose goal is to rid the universe of all species except their own.”
People stared down at the ground where the large green creatures had fallen. Nobody moved or spoke as they tried to absorb the implications.
“The world’s governments have known about them a very long time.” Elizabeth took over the narration. “But those governments did too little, too late, to stop the threat. Now the burden falls on us, but my husband has a plan.”
All eyes turned to Red, warily and fearfully. He nodded, and picked up with Elizabeth’s prompt.
“The Celeruns thought that the shock-value of their mere presence would be enough to shatter Hewego into disorganized panic.” The people in the crowd were hugging each other. Some were crying. Those who weren’t looking at the dead aliens in horrid fascination, watched Red instead, absorbing his every word. “But Hewego is stronger than that because we are prepared.”
“This can’t be happening.” A woman clutched her cheeks and began to weep. Frantic talking erupted through the crowd. Red had lost his audience.
Doc tugged at a dead alien’s face as if he thought it might be a mask. When he couldn’t get it off, he opened the creature’s mouth, and aimed the little flashlight he always carried into the now-exposed cavity; what he glimpsed within left him visibly shaken. The crowd held its breath, waiting for his verdict.
“This body is not human,” Doc announced. “Or even animal. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
Some bystanders dared to touch the corpses, recoiling in fear when convinced of a new reality.
“First, the plague, and now this,” a crotchety old woman complained. “What’s next?”
Red shouted over the chaos. “We cannot fight the Celeruns with muscles and guns, but there is another option. We must leave Hewego this very day. A place of refuge awaits us.”
“You want us to run away?” Elwood Albright stubbornly stood his ground. “Hewego is all I have! I will not go!”
A cry rose up, people shaking their fists defiantly. “Stand and fight for Hewego!”
“Your valor is commendable,” Red said, trying to be the voice of reason. “But you don’t understand what you’re up against.”
“And you do?” someone from the crowd challenged.
“The U.S. military couldn’t defeat these aliens—the Celeruns. Other worlds more advanced than our own surrendered to them. What chance do you think Hewego has?” That got everyone’s attention.
“How do you know this stuff?” People demanded to know.
“A stranger came to town…do you remember Hank from the Christmas party?”
“You mean the nut on the radio?” Blanche asked.
“Yes. Turns out that he’s a high-ranking general from the U.S. government, and he told us about the Celeruns. Apparently, they’ve been studying Earth a very long time, and they’re the ones that sent the plague.”
“Is this true?” rippled the murmur across the growing crowd. Most of the council was present by now. They verified everything Red was saying, and worked to keep everyone calm, which only seemed to anger the crowd further.
“How long has the council known about this? Why are you only telling us now?”
Veronica joined Red at the center of the gathering. “It’s not Red’s fault. He’s the only one that took the general seriously.”
“Not just me,” Red said. “My wife did, and Father Bob at
least gave the general’s story serious consideration.”
“Well, the rest of us didn’t,” Veronica said. “We wouldn’t listen because we thought that General Moore was mentally disturbed. On behalf of the council, we sincerely regret our mistake.”
The crowd roared and surged forward.
Red pulled Elizabeth and Michael close, thinking they were going to be mobbed, but other people in the crowd reacted by barring the way, protecting friends and neighbors, restoring the peace.
“If you will listen,” Red said. “We’ll tell you what we know, but it’s precious little.”
The council members took turns relaying what they knew about the situation. All the while, Red kept glancing over his shoulder, waiting for more aliens on hovercrafts. When the council was finished, arguments broke out amongst the people until Red gave a long sharp whistle.
“Quiet!” he ordered. “There will be time for finger pointing later. You can string up the council later. But if we don’t move now, there will be no later.”
“What do we do, Mayor Wakeland? Where will we go?” the crowd asked.
“I’m glad you asked.”
..............................
First, Red formed teams to knock on doors and make sure everybody was notified of the imminent evacuation. No one was allowed to bring anything other than water, weapons, pets, one change of clothing and a day’s worth of food. For the most part, everyone cooperated, but a few resistors had to be forcibly evacuated. Next, they met at the Wakelands’ house, where Elizabeth was waiting in the lead car. Red had originally intended to take the rear, but that part of the plan changed when more stragglers arrived from Last Haven.
If there were more survivors still to come from Last Haven, someone would need to bring them into the evacuation plan right away, and lead them to the bunker. On the other hand, if Last Haven was overrun with Celeruns, as the stragglers described it to be, for humans to enter the town would be suicide.
Red decided someone needed to stay behind to to wait for stragglers from Last Haven. Other than Elizabeth, he was the only other one who knew where the bunker was and how to enter it, so that person had to be him.
In less than an hour, Red had hugged his wife, son, and dog good-bye, and the Wakelands’ property was emptied of half its vehicles. He waited around, checking the road between Last Haven and Hewego, hoping for survivors. So far about a hundred had escaped, but not by the road. They had come by way of the fields, and woods, avoiding the main roads. He gave them directions to catch Elizabeth’s caravan.
He kept glancing at his watch. “I’ll give it another twenty minutes just to be sure there aren’t any more…”
His heart thumped, thinking about the distance he had to make up to catch up with the rest of the town. Also, the dead Celeruns’ friends could show up at any second.
Father Bob had the cloaking device. By now the physical town was no longer under its protection. He went into the house to grab Miss Buttercup and the snapshot of his first family. The first one to come to hand was the one taken on that last trip to Cedar Point. Kay was holding a giant pink bear Red had won for her at the sharpshooting range. The kids were making bunny ears with their fingers behind one another’s heads. That day was one of his fondest memories. Sliding the photograph into his front pocket, he went outside for the Corvette.
Red was angry to find Nate reclining on its hood as if he didn’t have a care in the world. The stupid kid was supposed to be on the way to the safety of the bunker with the rest of town.
“It’s just you and me, Bossman.” Nate grinned. “Mind if I drive?”
Chapter 16
Nate pressed a button on the Corvette’s CD player. Hell’s Bells rang out of the speakers. The electric guitar took over, and as the drum began to thump, Red and Nate nodded to the beat in sync. For a moment Red felt free, like a normal guy taking a ride with a pal.
The rowdy music pushed Nate’s foot to the floor. Red clutched the dash as the speedometer approached 150 mph.
“Who taught you how to drive?” he asked as Nate took a corner too fast, tires squealing.
“While you were busy being mayor, I was drag racing every weekend. In case you didn’t know it, I’m the undefeated champion of both Hewego and Last Haven.”
Outside the window, Red began to notice patches of cleared ground—fields prepped for planting. “That’s strange,” he commented. “There are so few survivors, why would someone plant so much? Besides, it’s the wrong time of year.” A couple of the fields were already full of knee-high cornstalks. “Knee high by the Fourth of July,” he repeated the old farmers’ saying out loud. “It’s September.”
“It’s probably not corn,” Nate offered. “Wrong shade of green.”
Nate was right, it was probably some other crop. He returned to a more interesting topic.
“How did you kids find enough gas to drag race every weekend?”
“It’s not that hard if you know where to look. And you’re the one that taught me where to look, Bossman.”
All the warning lights on the dash suddenly blinked on and off. The sound system went in and out. Red peered over at the dashboard, extending his charisma into the engine, but Nate seemed more interested in what was going on in the rearview mirror.
“Uh-oh, Bossman,” he announced. “We have company.”
Red took a glance backward. A line of silver hovercrafts followed, about a quarter of a mile behind them. He counted twenty-two in all. A semi-automatic sat on the seat next to him, but he was more comfortable with his .38. He slid it from his shoulder holster and leaned out of the passenger side window. He craned his neck to get a good look at the sky—popcorn clouds high in the atmosphere and clear blue everywhere else.
“They’re behind us,” Nate said, pushing the accelerator. “Not up there.”
“I had to be sure,” Red pulled his head into the car. “We wouldn’t last a minute against air power.”
“They weren’t expecting a town the size of Hewego to get mobile so fast,” Nate said. “They probably didn’t expect a chase.”
“That’s what I was banking on.” Red repositioned himself in the window, waiting until the aliens got closer. Technically, they were within range of his .38 already, if they were on a tranquil shooting range, but the jolting of the Corvette’s stiff sports suspension was throwing off his aim.
“We’re at war with space aliens.” Nate, always the thrill-seeker, seemed almost giddy. “Surreal, Bossman, surreal.”
It was eerie how the hovercrafts made no sound, like big cats hunting gazelle out in the Serengeti. Four were speeding up, getting closer to the Corvette, while the rest of them kept their distance.
“I wonder why they’re not shooting?” Red said.
“Funny you should ask that,” Nate replied. “Because I was wondering the same thing about you. What ever happened to shoot now and ask questions later?”
The kid had a point.
Red aimed and shot the closest Celerun in the forehead. The hovercraft flipped as its driver fell sideways onto the road, spilling yellow goo over the ground.
The other three Celeruns returned fire. Blue and red stripes of light buzzed toward the Corvette, but arced harmlessly to the ground, vanishing into the pavement before the shots of light reached the car.
“I can’t believe it.” Red slapped the car door in joyous disbelief. “Their weapons have a shorter range than ours do!”
“I’m pretty sure it’s because of me,” Nate said. “I’m sending out electricity bursts in hopes it might interfere with their weapons.”
“You can do that?”
“I’m amazing.”
“What if you short out the car?
“Didn’t think of that,” Nate said. “Should I stop?”
“No. The plastic steering wheel must be insulating you from the metal.”
Nate let out a whoop.
The general had explained that landing the mother ship was a huge endeavor. Celerun resources wou
ld be limited as the mother ship descended to earth. That had to be the explanation as to why the aliens weren’t being as aggressive, but he wasn’t about to dampen Nate’s fun.
Red squinted one eye, aimed, and shot another Celerun. “May you burn in alien hell!” he hollered over the wind, watching his latest victim splatter over the asphalt.
The Celeruns decreased their speed to stay out of range, but continued to pursue. Nate let up on the accelerator.
“Now what, Bossman?”
“Turn off of the highway.”
Nate didn’t see the huge pothole until the last second, making it impossible to avoid. Red felt a tremendous jolt. Hubcaps flew off and the car spun out of control. When it finally came to a stop, the Corvette faced the opposite direction. Nate floored it and charged straight into the oncoming Celeruns.
The hovercrafts tilted hard to avoid the onslaught. Several cracked against each other, sending their occupants skidding over the ground. Viscous yellow blood splattered on the back windows of the Corvette. Red picked up the semi-automatic and loaded a magazine.
Beams of red and blue whizzed past the car.
“Swerve!”
A blast of heat enveloped the car. Its body and hubcaps were gone. Rubber peeled from the wheels. The rims sparked down the highway until an axle broke away. Red closed his eyes, shielded his face with his arms. Nate let out a scream.
He expected to die right there, but the car came to a bumpy halt. Now there was nothing between them and the ground except the seats. Aliens were coming at them from every side. Red raised the semi-automatic and shot off several rounds, tearing a path through the aliens. Nate was already up and running to the cover of the ditch.
Red followed, turning and shooting as he ran toward the ditch. He stumbled down the steep ditch into a rivulet of marshy water at the bottom. Tall grass and cattails at the bottom created a thick shag carpet to hide in.
Celeruns jogged along the top of the bank. Red receded deeper into the thick foliage. He found Nate crouched in a couple of feet of water, cussing and panting. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” Nate said sotto voce. “I can’t believe this is happening. Oh, shit.”
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