by Chris Lowry
Copyright 2017
Grand Ozarks Media
All rights reserved
BEACH HEAD
Their dad woke them up in the middle of the night. He busted into the room shouting and cursing, light from the hallway laying a slash across the floor between two twin beds pressed against each wall.
His boots clomped on the hardwood as he pounded in and kicked the footboards.
“Jake,” his gravelly voice was laced with fear. “Mark get up.”
Jake Russel was sixteen years old with a long lanky body made for basketball and reaching stuff on the top shelf.
While he didn't mind helping for the stuff kept up high, he detested basketball and dreamed of being a quarterback on the football team. Jake knew with his height he could see over the offensive line and pick out any receiver with ease. The problem was in throwing the ball.
He sucked.
He rolled out of bed and plopped two giant size sixteen feet on the cold floor.
“What is it?”
“Emergency,” his dad dropped his voice to a whisper and shook his younger brother Mark awake.
“Mark, wake up. You boys get dressed and get downstairs quick.”
The whisper scared Jake more than the rough entry into the room. He was used to his Dad yelling, especially at him, but when things got quiet Jake knew some serious crap was going down.
He slipped into a worn pair of jeans and put on fur lined moccasins he wore for house shoes.
“Up Mark,” he yelled. “Get up.”
Mark had always been a heavy sleeper and waking him in the middle of the night was like trying to steer the Titanic away from an iceberg, slow and laborious.
Jake kept a squirt gun on the nightstand for mornings when his brother was especially slow and deployed the use now. Two quick pulls of the trigger sent streams of water up one nostril and across the forehead of his thirteen year old sibling and earned Jake a squeal of protest.
“Dad said come on,” Jake grunted.
The communication between the boys often employed grunts, and when that proved ineffective devolved into punches, kicks and noogies.
Even though Jake was taller, he was loathe to admit Mark's thick fingered hands were masterful at the noogie delivery.
“Move it,” he grunted again and slipped into a flannel shirt.
Mark swung his legs over the side of the bed and slipped a tee shirt on with his pajama pants. He felt around for his slippers as he watched his brother walk out and debated laying his head down again.
A trickle of water dripped down his nose and he decided he didn't want to face that again. He could only find one shoe so he skipped them and padded down the wooden steps on bare feet.
His Dad sat at the plank table in the kitchen a fresh brewed pot of coffee on the table. He gripped a huge mug in calloused hands so tight that it made his large walnut sized knuckles pop out.
Dad was a huge bear of a man, as tall as Jake but built thick like Mark.
Each boy pulled a distinctive attribute from their father in the looks department. Jake with his height and eyes, Mark with his girth and heavy brow.
Both were as stubborn as their old man which led to some really impressive stand off's around the house his father built. It had been easier when Mom was around, but she took off three years ago with a travelling salesman and lived now somewhere near Vegas.
The television glowed blue on the wall in the kitchen, the sound turned down. It was tuned to a science fiction movie, which Mark found weird because he knew his Dad loved the History Channel and pretty much nothing else.
He plopped into a seat across from Jake and looked at the clock on the wall. Two in the morning.
“What's going on Dad?” Jake asked as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.
He poured two large dollops of creamer into the cup and stirred it with his finger.
Dad nodded toward the television and unmuted it.
“The East Coast is under siege and reports are coming in that the West Coast is under attack as well. The Lick offensive has moved from Mars and reached Earth. This station will stay with you reporting to keep you informed-”
The television clicked over to static as an explosion rippled through the news station.
Dad reached up and flipped to the next station.
“Reporting live from Miami where the first Lick ship entered the atmosphere ten minutes ago. So far their smaller aircraft have remained inside the battleship, but our experts tell us- wait. Something is falling from the ship?”
The camera moved up in a shaky zoom and locked onto the image of a black blur that dropped from the belly of the ship.
It struggled to keep up and keep in focus and when it finally did, the image coalesced into what looked like a bomb.
It landed with a concussive thud outside of the camera's view and as it panned back onto the reporter, she screamed as a wave of flames rolled across her and blotted out the image.
That station too grayed out to a static wall.
Dad hit mute again.
“It's been happening over and over,” he said. “I've been turning channels and watching it.”
His voice trembled and he took a sip of coffee in a shaking hand.
“London,” he continued. “Paris. New York. All the East Coast they're saying. All the West Coast too.”
“Are they near us Dad?” Jake asked.
“Chicago. St. Louis. New Orleans,” said Dad. “At least as far as I can tell. They keep knocking out stations.”
“What about the internet?” Mark slid out of his seat and grabbed a tablet off the charger on the kitchen counter.
He deftly glided through site after site, live feeds reporting panic and mayhem when he could find them.
“What are we going to do?” Jake asked. “Are they coming here?”
Dad nodded.
“I want you boys to get up to the cabin,” he said.
“All of us you mean,” Mark set the tablet down.
“Get upstairs and get dressed. Get some winter things together and I'm going to pack up the pantry. We're going to hole up in the cabin until we can figure out what's going on.”
“We know what's going on Dad,” Jake stared across his coffee cup at his father. “The Licks have won on Mars which means they wiped out the Space Force. If they're taking our major cities we're being invaded.”
“Yup,” Dad sighed and drained the last of his coffee.
He poured the rest of the pot into his mug and went through the motions of making another pot.
Aliens invading earth.
He never thought he'd see the day. If they were going to pack up and run, he'd need more coffee before the night was done.
CHAPTER TWO
Dad pulled the truck through the yard and close to the back porch. He sent Mark and Jake upstairs to fill their duffel bags with warm clothes while he grabbed every bag he could find and shoved all the food from their pantry into them.
When the boys came downstairs, he had them begin loading the back of the truck. Jake grabbed extra blankets from the linen closet while Mark went into the garage to grab their sleeping bags. They had bedding at the cabin but Dad insisted they have more since he wasn't sure how long they would stay.
While the boys loaded the last of the gear, Dad unlocked his gun cabinet and took out the two rifles, a shotgun and a pistol. He swept the ammunition into a backpack and cinched it shut.
“Jake,” Dad said. “Grab a couple of books to read.”
“Dad I don't want to read,” Jake sighed.
His father had tried for years to get him into the habit of reading but it had never stuck.
Jake preferred to be more active, and play games on his Playstation
than stick his nose between bits of dead tree with print on it.
“I grabbed a shelf full,” Mark piped in.
“Suck up,” Jake muttered.
Mark was as much of a book lover as his Dad, and kept a couple of shelves in their room with material to be read.
“There won't be tv or games to occupy you up there. son,” his Dad reminded him. “Do as I say.”
Jake shuffled upstairs and grabbed a copy of THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN and THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO off the shelf. He needed to read those for school anyway.
At the last moment, he stuck a well worn copy of a science fiction thriller EPOCH into his backpack as well and trudged back downstairs.
Mark and Jake watched their Dad do a quick inventory in his head as he scanned the kitchen and living room.
He looked through the open door at the truck.
“Hey Dad?”
“Yes Mark?”
“How are we going to keep up with the news if we won't have tv?”
Dad snapped his finger and stepped to the bureau near the front door.
He dug out a large radio with a handle on the side.
“Good thinking Mark.”
“Thanks Dad?” Mark was unsure what he did.
“Let's roll,” Dad led them out of the kitchen door. He locked it behind them and took a long look at the house before he slid in behind the wheel. He wasn't sure when they would be back, maybe after a winter in the woods, maybe never.
This home was something he built for his ex-wife, a place where they could raise their kids in a small town and teach small town values like the ones he grew up with.
But she left him for another man and ever since, it just felt like a house.
A house he might never see again.
He dropped the truck in gear and slowly pulled away, unsure how he felt about that.
The cabin was forty miles away in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.
He knew the Interstate was going to be packed with individuals like himself trying to get clear of the city, any city.
The best bet would be to take one of the smaller two lane highways but that presented its own set of problems. Still it would be better to take the chance on a traffic jam on a scenic byway than get trapped in crush of what was left of humanity on the Interstate. It might add a few hours to what was supposed to be a short trip, but was a much better price to pay.
CHAPTER THREE
Dad turned right onto a side street and cut away from town to take the highway North. He would have to cut east and then north again in a zig zag pattern, but at least this part of the road was clear.
He kept practicing gratitude for five miles when they hit the roadblock.
It wasn't a traffic jam as he feared but something worse. Two sand colored Humvees straddled the road, with two more on either side of the grass creating a wall that forced them to stop. Soldiers in the back of the Humvees on the side swung mounted .50 caliber machine guns toward the cab of the truck.
“Dad?” Jake whispered.
“You boys don't move,” said Dad.
They were behind a sedan full of couple and a young baby. As they watched, a soldier dragged them out of the doors while another searched the car.
Dad slipped the truck into reverse.
“Hang on to something,” he grunted.
Three soldiers ran up beside the truck from a hiding place in the woods their rifles aimed inside the cab.
“Don't you move!” the lead soldier screamed. “Put it in gear now!”
Dad popped the gearshift up in park and lifted both of his hands. Jake and Mark followed his example.
“Out of the truck!” the soldier shouted.
“Out on my side,” Dad said in a soft voice.
He opened the door and stepped out. The soldier shoved him back toward the woods as Jake and Mark joined him.
“What do we do?”
One of the soldier's peered into the truck bed and his face split into a maniacal grin.
“Jackpot boys!”
The others inspected the food, weapons and gear piled into the back of the truck while the soldier who screamed at them advanced on them with his weapon drawn.
“We are commandeering your truck,” he informed Dad.
“You can't do that!” Jake shouted.
The gun tracked in his direction, but Dad stepped in front of the boy and blocked him.
“Just don't hurt the boys,” he said.
The soldier glared over the barrel of his rifle, then lowered it slightly.
“Keys,” he demanded.
“In it.”
“Get moving,” the soldier motioned them back toward town.
“But Dad,” Jake snorted.
Dad grabbed Mark and Jake by the arm and led them away from the roadblock.
“What are we going to do?” Mark whimpered.
The man from the sedan shoved one of the soldiers away from his car.
The .50 cals swung his way but there was no need. One of the others lifted his rifle and sent two shots into the man, his body flopping backwards into the ditch. His wife screamed.
Dad rushed the boys as fast as they could walk.
“Whatever they say,” Dad said.
After a couple of hundred yards, he pulled them into a jog and led them back toward the street that turned to their house. He stopped on the corner and did a quick assessment. The roads were still empty as people absorbed the news in their homes, but that wouldn't last for long.
“We still need to hurry,” he said to Jake.
“What about those soldiers?” Jake glared back in the direction they had ran.
“If the soldiers are turning into robbers, they've lost central command structure.”
“Murderers too,” Mark added.
“And murder,” sighed Dad. “They took our rifles and supplies.”
He ran one of his hands across his eyes.
“We need to get to the cabin,” he said after a moment. “I can see now that it's more important than ever to hide out while we figure out the next step.”
“But Dad they shouldn't get away with it.”
“I know son. But they will. They're better armed and willing to kill.
That gives them an advantage.”
“We could fight back.”
“No,” said Dad. “We're going to hide out in the cabin. We're not fighting anyone. Not soldiers, not aliens, not each other. Okay? You have to listen to me and do as I say.”
“Okay Dad,” Jake deflated. “But it’s still not right.”
“It’s not. Alright this is what we need to do. Jake, your friend Tommy. Go wake him up and get him to take you to the cabin. Bring his family too so he'll go. Make sure you clean out their food and supplies, just like we did, but take a different road. You watch for any military roadblocks or anything that looks out of the ordinary. If you see that, turn around and go a different way. Got it?”
“What are we going to do?” Mark asked.
“You're going with him.”
“But Dad?”
“I'm going back to the house to get the rest of the rifles so we have protection. I'll use one of your bikes to make it to the cabin.”
“Is it a good idea to break us up Dad?” Jake asked. “You could go to
Tommy's with us, and we could drive back here.”
“We'll get more done if we split up. I'll be halfway to the cabin by the time you boys get there.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Jake sat up in his cot and wiped his eyes. He glared around the almost empty barracks sat up in a rough hewn cabin in the woods and blinked back the memories.
He had been dreaming about his dad, and his brother.
Back at the beginning.
Back before the world died.
He glanced over at the empty set of bunkbeds against the wall.
Patrol was still out.
Otherwise, two of his fellow rebels would be sleeping and Jake would be in a shallow foxhole, manni
ng a .50 cal aimed at the only dirt road that led to the cabin.
He swung his feet over the edge of the cot and stood up.