In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater

by J Alex McCarthy

  “This is Cari—“

  She’s cut short when the sky flashes again with a piercing screech, screams echo in the distance. The sky flashes again and again as more screams ring out. The flashes stop and the sky glows a deep red.

  It’s the color of her lipstick, the color of blood. It paints the skyscrapers as if they were drenched in blood, everything loses its color.

  The structure starts to shake.

  “Hey Carissa! Fuck the story we have to get the hell out of here!” John yells. But he still records despite himself, the cameraman inside him betrays his instincts.

  “What’s happening?” Carissa asks herself. She wants to run but she can’t. She’s never felt fear like this. She visibly shakes. The structure starts to move. John steps back, camera still pointing.

  Carissa’s heart beats fast, her chest heaving up and down. The middle of the structure splits open, sliced down the middle like a hot knife to a melon and a white light shines out as it fully opens.

  A two-story tall, brown-skinned humanoid walks out, it is shaped like a human with a lean muscular body, a slightly horizontal shaped head and two holes for a nose. It wears gray tights covering from its thighs to its chest and has a metal neck and arm brace.

  It’s called a Grunt, the basic soldiers of the Serephin army, the lowest class units.

  Everybody stares at it, only a few people start to run. It creeps toward Carissa and bends over and studies her.

  “Carissa,” John whispers, still capturing the moment.

  Carissa’s frozen in fear, trembling, pissing herself. Tonight was supposed to be a good night. It wraps its over-sized hands around her and lifts her up.

  “Carissa!” John yells. The grunt sniffs her.

  Carissa could’ve been something big, head reporter, anchorwoman, hell she could’ve even been a respected White House reporter. The grunt bites into her and rips off her top half.

  If today wasn’t the end of the world.

  John screams, dropping the camera as he runs. The police fires at it, the bullets bounce off its skin. It swings down and sends them flying in the air. The camera points toward the sky as the grunt lets out a thunderous roar.

  The sky turns white again, hundreds of spheres and spaceships descend onto the city.

  A war cry.

  The bloodbath has begun.

  …

  At Cole’s party, everybody screams as they watch the news. But Erin’s scream is the loudest, the blood drains out of her face. She just watched her sister get ripped apart on live television.

  Julio runs to the window and looks outside.

  “It’s real!!”

  Outside, downtown gets annihilated. Thousands of ships descend onto the city, like locusts to a meal.

  “My baby!” Erin screams, Thora is close to downtown. The party guests run for the door. Cole runs for the backyard.

  “Wait, Cole!” Arnold yells. Arnold, Erin, and Julio frantically run after him.

  Outside, Cole looks out to the city. The sky is dark again, the ships, Peons, have already destroyed downtown, believable, seeing how there are thousands of them. Why did he run out here? The black metallic cloud expands out, coming toward him.

  Peons, the bulk of the Serephin fleet, small compared to their other ships but twice as big as an F-15. It’s black ant like head and oval shaped body swarm enemies in the thousands, overwhelming and suppressing them by the numbers. Sadly for us, a single one of them can take on Earth’s best fighters.

  A squadron of F-22s fly overhead. They head toward the city but are intercepted by a few Peons. Cole and the others watch from below.

  In the sky, the ships maneuver in an impossible manner. They zip and swerve like flies, dodging the jet’s missiles and bullets like physics are its bitch, it’s small wings do nothing to hinder it.

  They stare up in wonder. An F-22 is hit above and comes hurtling down.

  “Umm…” Julio mutters.

  He’s the only one who notices it.

  “Move!” He yells. They all leap out of the way as it crashes into Cole’s house and wipes out the stragglers trying to leave the driveway.

  Cole gets up, wiping the dirt off his pants. All of his friends are getting up. The F-22s are gone. The peons swirl hauntingly above. Cole and the others stare back at them unsure of what to do. How can they fight that? Should they run?

  An unknown ship flies above them. It’s labeled SE6. It looks like a military drop ship, except there’s no propellers lifting it. It just floats there. The call sign looks familiar to Cole.

  The Peons finally fly down, coming his way. Cole could do something. But what? He has seen what they can do, there’s no way in hell he’ll hit them, they’ll just dodge it. He’s taking way too long to think.

  The Peons fire, Cole’s watch vibrates as he screams throwing up his hands. The words activated projects on it. In a boom, it hits them.

  The smoke clears.

  A fine blue light shimmers through the smoke.

  Cole still stands there, arms cowering over his face, he looks out and then at his hands, he’s fine. Everyone is fine. A force field protects them. It’s just as blue as his energy blast, yet he can see right through it, like looking down into a clear blue ocean from a glass bottom boat.

  Another power? He got this!

  Cole’s watch says 73% synced. It dings and says locked on.

  “I got this!” He yells as he swings up his arms. He can do this. In a flash, multiple energy projectiles erupt from his hands. They shoot up incredibly fast, ripping into the peons, disintegrating them instantly. Their remains rain down over Cole.

  The force field disappears. Cole did it, maybe he really is a super-hero. His watch can help him lock onto targets, he just knew in the moment he could do it.

  Sweat drips off his brow. He pants, catching his breath. Not from any pain or stress, but just from the thrill of it. He has never done anything like that before. He could do anything.

  Anything.

  Lost in his head, he forgets his surroundings. Julio, Erin and Arnold all stare at him. SE6 flies off toward the city.

  “Dude. What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?” Julio murmurs. They all peer at Cole. He doesn’t answer. What would he say, that his watch gave him superpowers? Even with what they saw, he’s not going to insult their intelligence like that. He could hardly believe it himself. If he didn’t feel that very power coursing through his veins.

  “Cole—“

  A phone rings, interrupting Erin. It’s Cole’s. It is Thora. He answers this time.

  “H-hello?” Cole asks hesitantly. He puts it on speaker.

  “Cole…please help.” She’s crying.

  “Where are you?” He yells. Erin runs up and grabs the phone.

  “Where’s Neil?!” She screams at the inanimate object.

  “Erin?”

  “Yeah it’s me, girl. Please tell me Neil’s okay?”

  “I’m in the closet with him.”

  The bedroom closet door is slightly ajar. Thora holds baby Neil tight. A window breaks in the living room as she lowers her phone. The screams and horrors from the outside bellows in. She was smart to stay inside. She can hear some of the screams end as their lives ceases. A disturbing sound.

  She hears something else. She and Neil aren’t alone, something is in the living room.

  Cole and Erin’s voices echoes out from her phone. She lowers the volume and their pleas fade away. Her heart pumps as she starts to sweat. The closet was the best place, they probably don’t know how to use door knobs, she hoped, lying to herself.

  She reaches to close the door. A shadow blocks the light coming in. Thora jumps back. She grips Neil in her arms as he cries out.

  Thora screams out over the phone.

  The call ends.

  Cole, Erin, Julio and Arnold all stare at it.

  “Thora,” Cole murmurs.

  Erin tries to call again. It goes straight to voice-mail.

  “Thora!” She yells. The rea
lity of the situation is finally hitting her, her sister is gone and now her child. She tries again and again.

  Nothing.

  “No. No. No. No! Work god damn you!!” She throws the phone and starts to break down.

  She stumbles back and Arnold grabs and comforts her. “Shh! It’s gonna be okay,” he says. But the look of dread on his face speaks otherwise. Erin cries in his arms. Julio and Cole stare at his demolished phone.

  What is he going to do? With his power he could—

  But no.

  He stops that train of thought. Not against what he saw on the news and definitely not against thousands of them. So what now?

  His house is destroyed, the remains of some of his coworkers are smeared across the driveway and his new car is oddly untouched.

  Spotless.

  Nice, maybe he can sell that to buy another million dollar house.

  Erin quietly sobs in Arnold’s arms, but Julio-

  “We have to go into the city,” Julio answers for him.

  “Are-are you fucking insane? We can’t go into that!” Cole points toward the city. The screams have strangely died down. Maybe the invaders have finally killed them all.

  ”We have to…”

  Julio is right and Cole knows it, but to rely on him to do what he just did. He’s not going to make that mistake, not again, for them to trust in him.

  ”I can’t, how do we even know if they’re still alive?” he asks grimly. She’s alive, he can feel it. He’s not sure if it’s a naive hope or another power of his.

  “We have to at least try, we can do it if you’re able to do what you just did, and you can do it again.” Julio has a stern look on his face. Cole looks at his hands, his watch beeps.

  Julio seems so sure of him. About what he can do even though he knows nothing about it.

  A map of downtown LA pops up. A red dot marked SE6 moves across it. It must be the ones who gave him this power. But why?

  “Cole please…” Erin pleads; she’s just lost everything, she’ll try anything. Even if it costs them their lives.

  The destroyed remains of what was once downtown LA lights the sky.

  This is it.

  Because of Thora and Neil, they’re going to go into a war zone and they’re going to rely on him, to do damn near impossible things, and because of that…

  And because of that they are all going to die.

  5 - Us vs Them

  The sky above downtown Los Angeles pulsates between blue and red like a heartbeat. An intense air battle rages on. The United States Air Force versus hundreds of alien ships. Thousands of dots litter the air, Earth’s forces fall from the sky like swatted flies.

  On the ground, Los Angeles burns, screams and gunshots echo over the city. Small pockets of action, flashes of lights, reflect in the distance, spreading around the city. The grunts are widening out, taking care of the few humans that are left.

  Approaching the remains of downtown, Cole drives up a road into the city.

  “Crap.”

  A military roadblock is ahead of him; the military worked fast. Not that it helped. He stops and gets out of his car. He’s on the edge of downtown, smoldering buildings border the streets.

  Two Humvees surround the barricades that block the road, nobody is around them. Erin, Julio and Arnold get out of the car after him.

  Behind it are hundreds of dead bodies in the streets, military and civilian, with abandoned cars strung along them. Some of them are completely mutilated, some have giant holes ripped in them and some have no marks at all, just screams frozen on their lifeless corpse. The ground is covered in a thin layer of blood.

  “Oh, god.” Erin looks away in horror. The pulsating sky seem to accentuate the blood, with every red pulse.

  He’s supposed to stop this? He stares at the footprints in the blood, they didn’t have a chance. Not that he’s going to, he just needs to clear a path to the Bells place and leave and hide in a cave somewhere.

  Explosions rock in the background. Three soldiers run up from the right. They too are covered in blood. A man with Bermea stamped over his fatigue pocket leads them.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Bermea asks.

  “What the fuck are you doing here? The battle is that way,” Julio replies.

  He points toward the death and screams, where Bermea just ran from. Julio was a soldier once, a good one; he doesn’t like it when somebody runs away from their duty, no matter how crazy the mission is, and this mission is the craziest.

  Protect Earth at all cost.

  Cole wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Julio and Thora, but Cole wonders if it wasn’t for him would’ve he still tried to save her or would he instead have cowered away somewhere.

  “Where’s your honor?” Julio adds.

  “You asshole! What do you think this is? Huh?” Bermea shouts.

  “Look sir, we need your help, we have to get to my friend’s apartment,” Cole says trying to diffuse the situation.

  “No! Fuck that shit, I’m not going back into that man. I’ve never seen anything like this before. So either you can fuck off on your own or you can follow us out of the c—“

  Bermea is cut off. Three two-story tall grunts land in front of them.

  “Oh god no…” Erin whispers. The rest stare in fear.

  The main grunt in the middle, Kabus, murmurs off some unintelligible gibberish. He messes with a metal device on his neck. It’s time to nut up or shut up for Cole, but he hesitates, heart hammering in his chest.

  “Uhhh Cole?” Julio murmurs.

  Cole swings his arms up. He can’t do this. He freezes, fear stains his face.

  “Shit! Fire, faggot!” Julio yells.

  Cole hears his heartbeat.

  “Shit…” Cole whispers, his heartbeats louder. Kabus says something again but this time he’s speaking in what sounds like Chinese.

  Cole’s heart beats pound in his ears, how can no one else hear it? They seem to sync with the pulses of the red and blue sky. One of the grunts sighs and messes with Kabus’s neck piece.

  “There we go,” Kabus says in damn near perfect English. Cole finally understands what the beats are. Cole’s group steps back.

  It’s his demise.

  “Well, are you going to fight or flight, pussies?” Kabus states.

  Everybody bolts. Cole, Erin and Arnold runs to the right and Julio follows the soldiers to the left. The beast smiles. “This is going to be fun.”

  They split and go after them, Kabus goes after Julio and his group and the rest goes after the others.

  Julio and the soldiers run toward a twelve story apartment complex. Kabus closes in behind them.

  There’s a trash bin to Julio’s left near the wall of the complex. He leaps on it and jumps toward a second story window. His parkouring skills finally paying off.

  Kabus smiles as he leaps up and splits into two halves, he molds into two miniature versions of himself like clay. Transforming in a blindingly instant.

  As Julio crashes through the window, Kabus One follows. Kabus Two pursues the soldiers through the first floor entrance.

  The soldiers run down the hallway, one of them turns and fires at the human sized Kabus Two. The bullets bounce off him like rubber. They run down to the end of the hallway, but one of the soldiers, a stocky soldier, trails behind them.

  Bermea jerks left and runs into the stairwell. Soldier Two runs right but stocky soldier makes it to the end, and Kabus Two forces him through the wall like a jack hammer forcing through a piece of paper.

  Soldier Two rushes into an apartment and into the kitchen. Kabus Two crashes through a wall in the living room. He casually walks toward the kitchen, with a smirk on his face.

  Soldier Two frantically looks around and spots a pitcher of water. Kabus Two walks around the corner as Soldier Two thinks fast and splashes water on him.

  Kabus two pauses and then flips the hell out. He screams in terror, grabbing his face as he falls to the ground.


  No fucking way that worked.

  Soldier two looks at his empty pitcher. Kabus Two rolls around on the floor, but his performance would never win any rewards, he was never good at theater. The soldier finally notices his act. Of course it didn’t work.

  Kabus Two stops and peeks at him.

  “No…” the soldier says.

  “No.” Kabus Two stretches out his arm and his arm band lengthens out to his hand and forms into a long barrel. The explosion rocks the building.

  ---

  Cole, Erin, and Arnold run down the street. Cole looks back as the two grunts close in.

  Where the hell is Julio? That asshole had better not be dead, god, running the other direction.

  But Cole has other problems. Cole takes a sudden right into a small tight alley, Erin and Arnold follow behind, but so do the grunts. Cole hoped the grunts wouldn’t fit as the alley is only a few feet wide but they are agile fuckers. The grunts close in to them.

  Dammit, Cole can run faster, much much faster, but he’s not going to leave Erin and Arnold behind. His friends are relying on him, even if he doesn’t rely on himself.

  The alley opens into a street. The grunt breath trails down their necks as the exit comes close. The group runs faster, harder, fear stains their sweat covered faces. The alley was a bad idea. One of the grunts grabs at Erin as—

  They break through the alley and into the street as the grunts hand inches toward Erin’s neck—

  Its head is blown straight off as a tank round goes right through it. An obvious weak spot. They come to a stop. A squadron of tanks advance up from the right.

  ---

  Julio burst through the apartment’s rooftop door and runs to the edge. He pauses to catch his breath. Goddamn it! Cole owes him one for going into this fucking city with him. Because of him he’s now being chased by some godforsaken Frankenstein’s monster.

  Julio really doesn’t know what to call it, he just thought up the first supposedly terrifying thing he can think of; that movie always scared him as a kid.