Afraid of the Dark

by Chris Hechtl

  “We make our own. They aren't as good as military issue... and they are in limited supply, but we do have a few. Once the round is inside the body, usually by hitting it with a diamond tipped round, it goes off, tearing the beast apart from the inside out. We're keeping most in reserve to allow the teams to get the bugs out and to build up a supply.”

  “Smart.”

  “The good news is that the successive generations of aliens don't have this armor,” a scientist said. “We've noted that some of the, I guess second or third generation animals?” he asked. “Fourth or fifth maybe? They are easier to kill.”

  “Why?” the Colonel asked.

  “They lack the crystal substance. Also their fullerene layer is thinner and it doesn't seem to cover their entire plate.”

  “Again, why?” the Colonel asked patiently.

  “We don't know,” a scientist said slowly.

  “I'm thinking, and this is an educated guess,” Jen said cocking her head. “I'm thinking that the aliens lack something in their diet. Some of them may be picking it up by eating their native species, but not enough to fully replace what they lack.”

  “Ah,” a scientist said. “A worthy hypothesis.”

  “True,” another said. “We can look into that.”

  “Please do. I'd like to know if I'm right or not. I think we'll find that the aliens that eat a diet of alien plants or alien prey species that eat the alien plants have a higher concentration of armor and consequently are harder to kill. Those that, well...”

  “Prefer a Terran diet,” the Colonel said dryly.

  “Yes, them, they will, I guess you could say be suffering from a form of malnutrition.”

  “I wonder if they have other problems with their diet?” a scientist mused. “A form of scurvy that we haven't identified yet?”

  “We've identified that the herbivores do not like citrus. I'll explain that later,” Jen interjected.

  “And this is all good how?” the Colonel asked ignoring Jen's interjection.

  “If we can identify the substances they need we can deny it. Which makes them...?”

  “Weaker.”

  “I was going to say easier to kill. Weaker possibly.”

  “All right. Let's go with that. I'll have my people looking into the round issue. I'd like to see if diamond tipped rounds would make a difference or not.”

  “Colonel, do you have any plans for a .22 RPG round?” Jen asked.

  “Um...”

  “Kyle our armory expert asked. He has blanks to fire it, but he was wondering if you had some tank killer rounds that might be adapted.”

  “I'll ah, I'll look into it,” he said making a note.

  “Thank you. Since we've got a lot of small caliber weapons that can't do the job, he thought of re-tasking some of them.”

  “Ah,” the Colonel said.

  “How?” a scientist asked.

  The Colonel looked a little irritated but then shrugged. He was dealing with civilians, so he should know they might not know his field. “Take a rifle or pistol. Preferably a rifle. Load it with a blank cartridge. Stick an RPG stick down the barrel. The tip has the explosives in it. You point and shoot it like a normal rifle. When the blank goes off it acts as the propellant to send the grenade down range to the target.”

  “Ah.”

  “We've got a lot of .22 rounds but not a lot of rockets,” Jen explained. “Or warheads for that matter. We do have some highly motivated people who are willing to set up a production line. If those people at Red Jacket survived, Kyle said to give them a call.”

  “I'll look into it,” the Colonel said with a small smile as he tapped at his mouth and rocked from side to side.

  “Thank you sir,” Jen said with a nod. She felt her hands shaking a bit. She took a sip of her tea and grimaced. Cold.

  “Why don't we break for today? I'll look into these things and see what I can come up with. I suggest each of you brief your people and see if what they can come up with as well,” the Colonel said.

  The scientists nodded and one by one cut the link. Jen reached to cut the link but the Colonel cleared his throat. She looked back at the camera. “Ma'am. Are you all right?” he asked.

  She sighed. “I'm doing the best I can Colonel. We all are. I know my time is limited but I want to help. I need to help.”

  “I...I'd like to thank you. For everything you've done. You've been an incredible asset to your country. No, your species. I wish...” he shrugged helplessly. Apparently he had gotten word of her condition.

  “I know,” she said. “Life, Colonel. We take what we can and hold onto it for as long as we can. I'll keep fighting. You do the same. Where there is life there is hope.”

  “Thank you ma'am.” He saluted her. She smiled beautifully. His heart seemed to spasm a little. She was so pale, so wan. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken in. He knew that look. Dreaded it. “God bless,” he murmured and cut the circuit.

  Jen sighed and sat back, closing her eyes and relaxing. These meetings were becoming more and more interesting, but more and more taxing on her every day. She wasn't sure how much longer she could deal with it. She knew she had to, for her children's sake. They needed a... they needed a future. At least hope for a brighter future. The sun had to come up from this dark nightmare sometime.

  Chapter 57

  Despite several months of treatment with what was available Jen was bedridden most of the time. The chemo drugs had wasted her away. It was hard for her to eat. She tried to rally, tried to get people to help. Many did so to keep her happy. Others did it in her honor.

  Winter storms were late but they were finally making a positive impact. The aliens had enjoyed the rains, and it had helped add water to the nearly dried up lakes and ponds. However the major impact was on the mall and other enclaves. Bob's crew had done a great job preparing for the rains, channeling as much as they could catch into basins and cisterns for later use. Some of the excess had been channeled into the moats. With the trickle they were getting from the pipes it was enough to not only top off the moat at the mall but also at every other enclave that had a moat.

  Jesse nodded to a crew as she watched the class working with the bank of CNC machines. That had been a stroke of luck, to find and purchase them from another enclave back in May.

  The generators that they were turning out had really made the difference. People everywhere wanted food and weapons of course, but having electrical power was a major plus. The aliens really didn't like getting jolted.

  Sears, the warehouse stores and Target were turning into major machine shops for the inland area. She was proud of her people. Right now they were the only ones in the Inland Empire, hell, the entire state who were actually building anything!

  She had to hand it to Shane and his wife. They had really gotten them off their asses and doing something. Their entire sector of Moreno Valley was mostly cleared of aliens. Mostly. They still bred like wild fire and the vacuum left them room to expand into, but Hernandez and the others were right there to stomp them out the next day.

  They were currently talking about rigging death traps and channeling some of the herbivores into them. Nothing with overt weapons, just primitive weapons. They were almost back to when their ancient ancestors had been forced to take down mastodons with rocks or by driving them off cliffs.

  What Todd wanted to do was nuts. He had suggested channeling the aliens into a section of freeway with a stopper on one end. The stopper would be a wall of spikes and whirling blades and bulldozers. Just drive the animals into it and then mulch them. She shook her head.

  She wasn't sure if it would work. From the sound of it probably not. Then again she wasn't out there every day dealing with the damn things. What she didn't want though was for them to do it near them or anyone else. The alien predators and scavengers would be all over the slaughter. They'd have to torch the remains to keep them from feeding on them. Maybe they could soak them and wait for the predators and scavengers to come calling before
they struck the match? She grinned evilly. Hmmm... Not a bad idea, she'd have to pass that along.

  Ten months. Ten long grueling sometimes terrifying months. Hell, damn near eleven, they were about to enter August in two days! It was actually a mild summer, it hadn't hit triple digits more than once or twice, which was a relief. The air conditioning in the mall and other buildings made it bearable. Still, ten months of hell for anyone else.

  She nodded to a group of kids taking a safety tour of the machine shops. One of the kids had a grin on his face. She nodded to the boy. She'd seen him earlier that morning, his mother had been gushing about today being his birthday. For some they didn't think of it as a big deal. For others though, every birthday, every day was an achievement.

  The boss was filling Jen's shoes, or at least trying to. He wasn't her though; he didn't have her light cool touch. Jen could get you to feel like a million bucks with a smile and a nod. Like all they had done was worth it; and all she was asking was something minor and incidental. She missed Jen, the lady had a way of making you smile, of making you just buckle down and try harder after she had a talk with you. She was always understanding and would listen. She sighed. Damn. Cancer. Leukemia. Whatever. Damn.

  No one in the mall was a genetic match for her. They had wanted to try another bone graft, to see if it would help stave off the leukemia. Doc had posted the request for people to be checked on the web. The lines had gone on for hours. Everyone had given it a shot, and was downright heartbroken that there wasn't a match. Damn.

  She nodded to someone she knew and hid a sigh as she moved off. She had a lot to do before she had to check in with Walt.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Shane tried hard to throttle his temper as he listened to one person after another come up with ideas along the same theme. He knew they wanted to do something, many were eager now to keep the progress they had established going with sheer momentum. But some of their ideas were downright wrong. Some were dangerous in the extreme.

  “Look folks, I know you're all tired of hand to mouth living. I get that. We all do. The daily grind was getting to us all, that's why we have the gathers, to let off steam. But let me point out a few things here,” Shane said looking over the group of people. They were debating the establishment of an economy and moving away from the current established model back to a free society. Debate had been going back and forth for nearly a week, sometimes hot and heavy.

  He smiled a tight lipped smile and pointed to the screen behind him. “One, it’s illegal for anyone in this country to print money. It’s illegal to use any form of currency other than American dollars here. That's a big problem. So was inflation and figuring out what everything should cost now. Currently as you all know the banking system is fried, and no one is trying to get it back up. We're all a bit busy trying to stay alive,” he said.

  A few nodded at that. He plowed on. “Two, we can't move very far ahead with our food supply. With the supplemental air drops and the food we're growing we've got about three months?” he asked looking at Jayne and Eric. They both nodded. “Okay three months food. If we sell food then people who have money will start hoarding it. That'll cause no end of headaches right there,” he said. A few nodded.

  “Third, we have no idea on what sort of structure to pay people for their services and materials. The old model just doesn't apply folks. It just doesn't.” He held up his hands as he saw more than one scowling face. Many belonged to people who had cushy jobs pushing paperwork or in his eyes doing stuff that really wasn't necessary to survival.

  “Seriously folks, can you put a price on a bullet?” he asked. “On the person trained to fight? The men and women who spend their days defending you? Are they as valuable as oh say someone who does paperwork? What about Jerry here and the doctors? Our court system? How do we value that now that things are changed? Without essential services that our utility folks provide we'd be in the dark, without power, heat, or water! How do we put a price on that?” he asked pacing.

  There was a growing muttering and he turned. The crowd slowly hushed. He rested his hands on the podium and leaned forward. “How do we pay our teachers, pay Walt and his crew for making and keeping things working? These are some of the major problems this idea is creating. What if someone doesn't want to do their old job because the pay sucks?” he asked. He smiled as more than one person raised their hands.

  “Yeah, see?” he asked spreading his hands apart. “A lot of people don't like what they are doing. They want to get back to what they were doing before. That's another aspect of this problem. They don't like doing menial tasks. I've got a secret for you,” he said leaning forward again. “No one else does either. But they have to get done anyway. Someone has to suck it up and do the dirty job no one else can lower themselves to do.” He looked around; more than one face was looking at him stonily. He snorted. They all knew he pitched right in if he had the spare time. So did most of the council.

  “You don't like it, they don't. So if you don't like it, learn. Learn to do something else that is needed. Or apply to work or live in one of our satellite locations. We're spreading out folks. Jobs are going everywhere.” A few people nodded. The murmuring began again. A few people looked annoyed, others were indifferent.

  He waited for it to die out, but when they didn't settle right away he took a sip from his cup and then set it down and glanced at Jayne. She cocked her head and then shrugged.

  It was true, they had nearly finished the outer curtain wall in most of Towngate. The Home Base group or whatever they called themselves were setting up and settling in. Trade with the other warehouses was up. They had even expanded the MAFB basing around the utilities.

  The teams were mostly finished with Moreno Valley. They were going back to dozer a few places or pick over a few areas that had been only lightly touched by them or by other enclaves.

  They had lost a few people to the damn zombie worms. He had a strict burn the area to the ground mentality when it came to the damn things. Fortunately they had the resources to put the fire out before it got too far out of hand.

  The farms were only supplying a quarter of what they needed so the teams were ranging out into Riverside, Perris, Mead Valley, and other areas for harvesting. They steered clear of anyone who was in the area and hostile. Most opened up when they offered to trade.

  “Okay folks, I tell you what. We can set up a poll.” He waited for the discussion to die down. When it did he continued. “We've got a suggestion site, you all know about that. You know we're opening more positions every day. I suggest you check those, make some comments, talk with people on the boards, and then go to the polls.”

  “What polls?” a voice in the crowd asked. He turned and then smiled a little. Apparently it was another noob in the crowd.

  “What polls?” he asked amused. “We've got polls on the local web. The mall Intranet. You can vote for various things, I believe recently we've started a poll on the menu?” he asked looking at Jayne who nodded. He turned back to the assembly. “We've also got various polls on different subjects that are under discussion. But, I'll have Gabe or someone in IT set up polls for this economy. Should we do it, how we should implement it, when, and who should be paid what. Getting the money to do the payments is another point we all overlooked.”

  A few people suddenly looked thoughtful. He nodded. “That's right. If we start paying people for their services we have to start charging for services to keep up. Charging for food, for medical services, for defense, for utilities... think about it folks. I'm not for or against a free economy.” He spread his hands apart. “What I am saying is we need to ease into it. To do that we need to work out our timing and work on more space.”

  “When is that?” a voice asked querulously. “When you say it’s okay?” it demanded. He cocked his head.

  “I think we can all agree that when things lighten up and we're no longer crammed in here things will be different. The problem is this invasion, this emergency hasn't gone away
. Nor will it go away,” he sighed. “We've had to adjust to a medieval style of living. Castle and all that,” he waved his hands to indicate the building around them. “Some things take time to adjust to.”

  Doctor Phillips stood and came over. He touched Shane's arm. Shane glanced at him and nodded. “I yield the floor to Doctor Phillips our resident lead biologist and life sciences professor.”

  “Thank you,” the professor said nodding politely. He turned to the crowd. “I am the best person to talk to you about the alien invasion. What I can compare the combat to is to what our species has gone through before.”

  “We've been invaded before?” some heckler asked and then laughed.

  “In a manner of speaking yes,” the doctor said simply, adjusting his glasses by pushing them back to the bridge of his nose with his index finger. When that didn't work he took them off and wiped one lens as people talked. There was a lot of rankling going on. Not a whole lot of scoffing, but everyone sounded confused.

  “Kane toad. The brown rat. Snake fish. Boa constrictor. Asian carp. Do any of these animals ring a bell?” he asked putting his glasses back on. The room quieted. He nodded. “Each of these was an invasive species to an established ecology. And look how well we fought them?” he asked shaking his head. “Now we have an entirely new threat. An entire invading ecosystem. It’s not localized to one continent or region, it’s worldwide. Worldwide folks. To completely eradicate the aliens we'd have to well...” he shrugged as he glanced over his shoulder to the other council members and then back to the waiting assembly.

  “In my honest opinion in order to get rid of them we'd have to glass the entire planet and start over. Even then we couldn't be sure we got them all.”

  The room went into an uproar at that announcement. He looked at Shane in appeal. Shane puckered his lips. Damn it the mob should have known this. Apparently knowing it as an individual was a bit different than actually admitting it publicly. The admission was a bitter pill to swallow. There was no going back to the way life was. It was as simple as that.