by Chris Hechtl
“Depends,” he said with an answering smile.
“I don't like the sound of that,” Trina said, looking at her siblings. She backed up a half step but ran into a table behind her just like her mother had earlier.
“Me neither,” Tori said. “I know it's not good when one of them get's that look. When both of them do at the same time?” She shook her head. “Oh... no, oh no,” she said, backing away as their parents turned on the kids. “No, no...” She fell back and tripped on a planter and went down. Shane scooped Trina up under one arm and then started tickling both girls into giggling hysterics.
“Nicky,” Jen crooned, fingers curled into claws. “Come here my boy, mama's got something for you...”
“Stay away from me,” he said backing away, voice shaky with suppressed laughter. He stuttered trying not to laugh. He turned to run but Jayne just so happened to “accidentally on purpose” cut him off. Jen smirked as she caught up to him and started to tickle him.
Instinctively his arms went to his sides. He writhed laughing, his mother knew all his weak spots. Jayne smiled, watching the play. She looked around to the others, smiling a little at the looks. A few more people were starting to relax, spines releasing. One couple even exchanged looks. “Don't even think about it,” the wife growled to the husband slapping him on his arm. His smile if anything widened. She blushed a deep red and turned away.
Shane swung Trina and Tori up on his shoulders and then looked at Jen. “I've got my two, what do you say we hang them by their feet and torture their toes with a feather?” he asked. Both girls shrieked and squirmed. Tori's flip flop came off and Jayne came over to oblige.
“Oh, I'll help since you've got your hands full,” she said. The girl started snorting and giggling. Finally things calmed down and the kids were released. They looked a little pouty but the adults could tell they had enjoyed it. A little mischief went a long ways to getting things to seem like they were returning to normal.
After Jen and the kids left Jayne looked at Bob. Bob was trying to look annoyed by the interruption. She poked him. He blocked her second poke. “Hey,” she said. He looked at her. “The world didn't end folks,” she said, pitching her voice so others around them could hear. “They are still kids. They deserve a little fun, a little bit of their childhood that we can give them. Don't knock them for it,” she said, looking around.
A few of the adults nodded. A few were just looking on. “We need to remember that. I for one am not going to give up my way of life, my...” she shrugged helplessly and set her shoulders. “I'm going to live damn it,” she said firmly, eyes flashing. “So are they. So are you. We're going to take back our world and make it safe again for our kids. One day at a time.”
She turned without a backward glance and walked off to the people murmuring softly behind her. Bob thought about it for a moment and then nodded. He went off to find his own family. He'd been rough on his son earlier in the morning. A hug was in order.
...*...*...*...*...
“So what are you doing back so early anyway?” Jen asked a bit later. He smiled a little at the twins out maneuvering their brother with the soccer ball and sat back.
“This morning's houses went off without a hitch but this afternoon the first area had been hit by a fire and the second had another group already working on it.”
“Oh?”
“Not ours I might add. So, when things got a little heated I pulled my people back. We had a couple of close calls with a herd of hell boars and I decided to call it a day. Its supposed to rain tonight I think, so it’s just as well.”
“Herd of...”
“Hell boar. I think that's what someone called them. Nasty things. Did you see the herds forming?”
“No,” she said, turning her attention on him. She rested her head on her arm, her free hand tracing circles. “What about them?”
“I saw a herd this morning. I... it was almost Terran in the way they were. Scratching, I mean...”
“Everyone gets an itch you know...”
“Yeah, but some of the behaviors. Remember that time we went to Africa before the kids were born?” he asked. She nodded. “Like that. Heads swinging, head butting...” he said, voice trailing off.
“You mean display behavior?” she asked amused. He nodded. “Full on male sparing? Over females?” she mused. He nodded again as her eyes grew distant. “Um...”
“There were even predators under cars and in the shade watching them. Tails swishing at flies... it'd be Africa if they weren't alien and in the middle of a small city,” he said.
“Give it a couple more months and it will be,” she said. The alien plants were taking root everywhere. They were growing like wild fire.
“I even saw a calf being born. One of the Direhorses. And some feeding behavior.”
She grimaced. “Damn, I wish I'd been there to see it,” she said.
“Me too honey,” he said. “But I did think of you,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a sim card. “Next best thing,” he said.
“Ah, you do bring interesting gifts honey,” she said taking the card and kissing him on the cheek. “Wait! You said born? So soon?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my god,” he murmured, eyes huge. He wasn't sure why. When she didn't say anything for a little while he cleared his throat.
“So, you were planting today?” he asked. He'd seen the planting area when they had played with the kids.
She blinked, coming back to the here and now. “Test farm. I'm pulling the plants from inside the mall and replacing them with farm plants. We can use the inside of the mall as a starter greenhouse along with the ones we build. Once the plants get a head start we'll transplant them to larger pots inside or outside.”
“Ah,” he said with a nod.
“They've already been plumped so that makes it easy. The water falls haven't been used in years so we can figure out something to use there, maybe peas on trestles or something. I'm not sure yet. We need plants that grow fast and give off a lot of food. A lot of bang for our buck Eric said. I've got a crew of plumbers and people with green thumbs adding baskets and window boxes everywhere. We're going to need the food soon.”
“That we will,” he said. He caught the sight of Trina maneuvering around Nick to score and then she started dancing. Nicky scowled blackly but grudgingly nodded. The nod turned into a sigh of disgust as Trina kissed him on the cheek. He wiped at the cheek with an aggrieved air. His sister smirked at him.
“I think our son needs some back up,” she said.
“Hmmmm...” he said nestling closer to her. “Go play ball with the kids or cuddle with my beautiful wife.”
“You forgot highly intelligent and... Wait, beautiful? What happened to gorgeous?” she demanded mockingly. He chuckled at her mock outrage just as they felt a drip. He looked up as she held out a hand. A fat droplet hit him on the cheek. “I ah, unless you want to play in the rain...”
“No, I think singing in the cold rain is for people who are asking to get sick. Come on,” she heaved a sigh as she got up and pulled on his arm. People around the area were looking up at the sky as well. Some began to hustle, finishing their projects and moving things they didn't want to get wet inside. The awnings around the parking lot suddenly got very crowded.
“Let's go,” she said as he got up and waved to the kids.
“Wipe your feet people!” a woman said irritably at the entrance.
...*...*...*...*...
They heard about a woman who had found a bunch of alien whales in her pool. She never saw the predators under the tree that killed her. Her kids were inside and saw the entire thing from the window. One of them had filmed the entire incident.
Other stories of animals in pools and such were in the news or being passed around by people who were coming in. The crews out gathering things reported finding alien water animals in pools. Some were dead. Most didn't look that good. A few of the Nessie things had gotten out of a pool and humped-walked until they
had died. Predators were feasting on them. The water was fouled now, unusable for anything except watering plants.
Jen mused that the aliens had either died because of the chemicals in the water, or if on land due to either lack of water or from the crushing weight of their own bodies on soil. “They just weren't made to be on land,” she said to herself.
“Well, some of them at any rate,” Jayne corrected her, pointing to a sketch of a Nessie thing, something someone had labeled an Eborsk after a monster in an old 80's movie. It had front legs like a turtle. It was definitely made to move on land. At least partially. That was something to consider. Later.
...*...*...*...*...
Ursilla scowled at the stream of people on the freeway. They'd passed on ramps and even off ramps that were choked with people. Three, no four days since the invasion and people were still trying to get out of the area. She hadn't known that many people still lived in the area. “Where the hell do they think they're going?” Some kid in the back asked.
“I dunno. Out of here. Anywhere but here. Flight reflex.”
“It's not better there than here!” Torres said shaking her head in disgust. Torres was shaping up to be a good leader. She'd run Ursilla and the others through a quick training course to get them familiar with each other and what they needed to do. So far so good.
“You know that, we know that, but they aren't thinking. Flight reflex like I said. Terror. I hate to see what the night will bring.”
“By now you'd think they'd know better.” Most of the roads and freeways were parking lots. Those that were out right now were either on foot, bicycle, or motorbike of some sort. A few were even riding horses.
“It's instinctive. They lost hope or lost resources so they are trying to find better grounds. But they aren't thinking ahead, they aren't planning, they are just reacting,” Cody said sadly.
“Something has to be done,” Torres said.
“You want to go out there and tell them to go home?” he asked.
“Standing in front of a mob of lemmings isn't exactly something I woke up in the morning and decided was a good idea to do boss lady,” she said.
“Good way of getting shot,” he said in understanding. “Still, we better have some people out watching for blow back when the predators come out to hunt.”
“Lovely,” she sighed.
“Exactly. I think I'm going to call this scavenger session. Pull everyone in and get them settled. We may have an all hands on deck situation tonight if things get out of control,” Shane said over the radio net.
“You mean the mob?”
“I mean the aliens chasing the mob and the mob leading them to our doorstep,” he said.
She eyed him for a moment and then sighed in disgust. “That's all we need. Ringing the dinner bell.” He was sitting in his truck across the way. He shrugged.
“Exactly.”
...*...*...*...*...
When night fall neared many started to realize being out in the dark wasn't a good idea and started to look for shelter. As the sun began to set some of the people ran into aliens using some of the shelters they had headed to. Screams and shots echoed through the air, making everyone look up and more than one person was put on edge. Soon they could hear reports of people as they ran for cover. “They are finding aliens where they think its safe and die or are chased out,” Julio said.
“Yeah, unfortunately,” Shane said.
“We going to do something about it Jefe?” Julio asked.
“We are. I've got a couple of crews out guiding them to safety, but I'm not going to stick my neck out for lemmings. I've got a family counting on me to keep my head.”
“Damn man, that's cold.”
“It's the way the world is nowadays. Get used to it. They were stupid enough to do this. Damn it, not one of them thought about what they were doing. Reacting, not planning. They didn't think. What they were putting their families through, the risk. No. Those that we can save, we will. The rest... The rest are on their own. Unfortunately.” He shook his head and walked away. Some made it to the mall and were taken in at the mall and other bases.
Chapter 17
The next day they were off at dawn. They broke into groups that had been organized in the evening before. The militia had three goals, protect harvesters, rescue people and kill as many aliens as possible.
The day before had been a good day to train the teams. Torres' squad and Wayne's were going to be used as search and rescue squads for a while. Mateo had some of the combat vets with his. Each of the squads would form the nucleus of larger platoon sized groups that would take an area and work through it.
The harvesters broke into three sub groups and attached themselves to the militia. One led by Deputy Wayne and Torres to find survivors and guide them to mall. A tall lanky woman named TJ handled them. She had a good head on her shoulders. She assigned a twenty something kid named Bobby to Shane.
Shane and the others led the second set of teams to get food, weapons and ammo. Ross took the lead of the teams that were sent out to get materials for the mall from home improvement stores and construction sites. Every day they trained after clearing the buildings in the morning.
Mateo Hernandez led a final group of military veterans who spent the morning scouting for aliens and working on their coordination. The plan was to strike them later in the day and learn from the experience. Then pass on what they learned to the others.
The heat hit by ten a.m. as usual, it wasn't the sticky humidity of the Southern United States but it quickly topped a hundred degrees before eleven a.m. It was so bad some knocked off for a siesta. Jayne, Jen, Bob, and Shane sensed the slowdown and were annoyed but couldn't do anything about it. They couldn't push traumatized people too hard for fear of a mutiny.
Scouts reported that during the night the aliens had again attacked cell towers and the remaining power grid. Jen was not sure if it was to destroy communications or what the purpose was. After the first few days they would hopefully have realized that the heat signatures were not food. Apparently that was a little too much to ask for.
They found lots of bodies of small aliens in the electric grid, dangling from wires like garish piñatas. One group of people with a couple of IT people Gabe assigned them headed over to the Canyon Springs Plaza and managed to fix the cell tower by cannibalizing parts from other towers and equipment. Just to be on the safe side they set it up to shut down an hour before dark.
Walt dug into the many projects that were cropping up. Sears was turned into a machine shop. Its garages were used to armor cars and to fabricate metal pieces for the defenses. Some of the vehicles were starting to look like something from a Mad Max movie now.
Now that they'd had a few days of practice Jayne and Sheila had got better at organizing the looting. They used forklifts and semi-trucks to strip stores as quickly as possible in a carefully coordinated ballet. A trickle of people came in, then a torrent. As the teams moved in they alerted the people there and most of the survivors helped as they moved out to the safety and comfort of the mall.
Apparently the animals hadn't caught onto the fact that there was food inside the stores. The predators were hunting, albeit ineffectively. Unfortunately they were attacking at night and they were so hard to kill that it allowed them time to hone their skills. And they were indeed growing. Terrified people were telling stories of creatures that were doubling or even tripling in size overnight.
Jen had Sheila delegate a couple of teens to do a census again every night. They were amazed by the results that came back. According to the kids figures the mall population had doubled in size from four thousand to eight thousand overnight. And it was still climbing.
The scouts reported that the alien animals were abandoning industrial areas with a lot of cement and street lights. They favored the wooded areas. The Edgemont area was heavily populated for obvious reasons.
Shane spotted vulture things on street lamps. They were the same aliens that had been in the Lowes sto
re before Art had figured out how to lock them out with a one way door. Some people shot at them; they left squawking, then turned and pooped on them. The poop had an incredible stench and could burn skin. He called it in, telling people to avoid the damn things. “Anyone who gets shit on gets to stay outside or gets a bath with a Brillo pad.”
At the mall castle people set up additional solar panels, rain collection systems and even solar water heaters when they came in. The teams had good crews now, they had the system down. Walt spun off a crew of people to make water containers and to fill them up before the water was turned off. So far they had been lucky there, but they weren't sure how long their luck would last.
Meat and food materials that had been frozen but were now thawed were either cooked right away or fed to the dogs and other animals. Jayne had them stockpile goods, not sure what to do with it all.
Bob noted a guy studying the building, rubbing his chin and frowning. The guy looked familiar. It took him a moment to mentally remove the rumpled shorts and T shirt and scruffy day old beard and substitute a suit and white hard hat. When he did he smiled.
“Dale?” he called, waving to the man. The man turned in place and then smiled. “You're alive!” Bob said with a grin.
Dale was an architect. While most architects specialized in one market or another Dale had a tendency to dabble. Many also preferred to set themselves up with a given theme. Be it modern, industrial, or other. The fun thing about working with Dale was the challenge. The man loved to play with all sorts of styles and never repeated himself. He also loved cutting edge tech if he could get his hands on it. It could be a headache but the final product was proof of the man's vision... or insanity.
“How's it going Bob,” Dale said, coming over and clasping his hand. Bob smacked him on the shoulder.
“Damn man, you are a sight for sore eyes!” he said. “Did Wanda...”
“She's okay,” Dale said, waving. Bob turned and spotted the woman, gravid with child sitting in the shadows.