by Tom Lewis
“Why? What is it?”
“Just let me see it,” Paige said, brushing Trish’s hair back. She looked behind Trish’s left ear, probed her finger around. Then turned to her right ear. There were no bumps. “You don’t have one,” she said.
“Have one what?” Trish asked, brushing her matted hair back over her ears.
“They’re these implant things they’re putting in us.”
“That’s what’s making everyone kill each other?”
“Yeah,” Paige nodded.
“Do you know what’s happening?” Trish asked.
Paige shrugged. “I think we’re being taken over.”
“By those things in the ships?”
Paige nodded. “Are you alone?”
Trish nodded. “My friends were afraid to come with me. We got attacked yesterday.”
“Where are they?” Paige asked.
“Down in the tunnels,” Trish replied. “It’s where we stay."
“The train tunnels?”
“It’s the old ones they don’t use anymore. People leave us alone down there.”
“You don’t have a home?” Paige asked.
Trish just shook her head.
“Were you in the tunnels when all this happened?” Paige asked.
“I guess. We were going to the Mission for food, and everything was destroyed.”
“What about your friends,” Paige continued, “are any of them acting crazy?”
“No. I mean, not like everyone else in the city.”
Paige thought for a moment. “Those things must not know about the tunnels.”
“They’re really hard to find,” Trish added, “unless you know where to look. They don’t use them anymore for the trains.”
Suddenly there was a crash in the store. Shelves being knocked over. Paige and Trish freeze.
Then a shout came from the store. “I know you’re in here, little girl.”
Paige took a quick peek over the counter, ducked back down. One of the guards was searching the aisles.
“Don’t make me have to find you,” the guard continued, in that taunting voice.
Trish choked back a shriek. “He’s one of them,” she whispered.
“I know,” Paige nodded.
Suddenly machine gun fire ripped through the store, splintering the wooden counter and shelves.
“Shit. They know we’re here,” Paige whispered.
“What do we do?” Trish asked, her eyes wide in terror.
Paige looked around the shelves, her mind racing a million miles a second. Then she had a thought. She reached onto the shelf, and grabbed a bottle. She turned to Trish. “I’m gonna crawl outside, and hide behind a shelf. When you see me nod, I want you to throw this bottle down the last aisle.”
Trish just stared.
“Do you understand?”
Trish nodded.
Paige unslung her machine gun, then crawled as quietly as possible through the door, and rolled behind a row of shelves. She glanced back at Trish, watching from the pharmacy door. Paige gave her the nod.
Trish tossed the bottle down the last aisle. It clanged off several shelves. Instantly the guard bolted over to the aisle, firing off a burst of shots.
That’s when Paige sprang from the behind the shelves, firing off a burst at the guard. The rounds nailed him in the chest, knocking him off his feet.
Paige turned to Trish. “Trish, grab my backpack. We need to go.”
Trish bolted out the pharmacy door, with the backpack draped over her back. Paige hopped to her feet, and the two girls raced for the back exit.
Suddenly more guards stormed in the front entrance. “What were those shots?” one of them hollered. “Mike?” Then they spotted the girls sprinting for the exit. “Go! They’re heading out back!”
Paige and Trish barreled out the bay door, and onto the loading dock. Paige hopped up, grabbed the cord on the bay door, and hauled it down. Then they hopped down from the loading dock, and ran to her bike. “Here, get on the handle bars,” Paige said, sliding the backpack on her back.
Paige steadied the bike as Trish climbed on. Luckily she couldn’t have weighed more than seventy pounds. Paige pumped hard on the pedals, and managed to get the bike moving. Seconds later, bullets riddled through the bay door. Paige took a glance back as they reached the end of the alley, then she turned onto the street, and pedaled off.
***
Paige raced in the door to the lobby of the hotel where she’d left Chad. The cabinet she’d braced against the window lay on its side.
Chad was gone.
“Chad!” Paige whispered frantically, hurrying across the room to the corner where she’d left him. The bow lay there, along with Chad’s backpack and several arrows, but no Chad.
Trish slipped in the door behind her, taking in the decayed room. “This is where you left your friend?” she asked.
Paige nodded, sinking down on the floor beside the backpack.
“Did he leave?” Trish asked.
Paige just shook her head. “He had a knife wound in his leg.”
Trish nodded, piecing it together. “I think they took him.”
Paige glanced back at her. “The guards?”
“Yeah,” Trish nodded. “I saw them taking away people earlier.”
“Then we need to find him,” insisted Paige, rising to her feet and heading for the door.
“Wait. We can’t do it now,” added Trish. “The sun’s going to be up soon.”
Paige stopped at the door. She took a deep breath, then punched the door as hard as she could.
Trish reached over, and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll help you look for him. But we should leave this place.”
Paige turned to her.
“They know about this place, now. So they might be back,” Trish added. “We should go to my place.”
Suddenly there was a loud rumbling from outside. The entire building shook. Tiles and plaster fell from the ceiling, and cracks spread down the walls.
The girls stumbled outside, where a bright glow lit up the night sky. Thick beams of blueish light, like tornadoes of fire, pulsed down from the ships to the ground. These beams pulverized everything beneath them. And they weren’t just reducing buildings to rubble; they were obliterating everything into dust.
The radius of destruction spread, engulfing block after block, and leaving nothing of the old city behind.
Trish grabbed Paige’s hand, and tugged on it. “We need to go,” she mumbled, looking up at Paige with fear filled eyes.
Paige nodded, barely able to take her eyes off of the enormity of the destruction. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Tunnels
The devastation continued in the distance as Trish and Paige raced up to the entrance to the tunnels. It was in an old bunker, hidden behind mounds of rubble in the middle of a vast field.
“It’s right over there,” Trish offered, as she led them through the rubble. A heavy rusted metal door was fixed to the outside of the concrete bunker.
Trish rushed over to the door, and drug it open. The old hinges groaned with years of rust.
“They’re down there,” Trish continued, nodding through the entry. “This was the old maintenance entrance.”
Paige stared through the open door. Inside were rungs mounted onto the wall of a long chute, burrowed deep into the ground.
***
Trish scampered down the rungs with an ease that years of practice had instilled. Paige was a bit more cautious, following shortly behind. At the bottom, the chute opened up into the tunnels.
The tunnels resembled more of an enormous mine shaft, carved deep through layers of solid rock. Lights strung from wires dangling along the ceiling provided what little illumination there was. A generator humming a hundred yards down the tracks provided the power.
“You guys have power,” Paige commented, staring up at the lights.
Trish nodded. “One of the guys at the Mission hooked us u
p with a generator.”
“This must be deep enough that the circuits didn’t get fried,” Paige added.
“Is that what happened up there?” Trish asked.
“Yeah,” Paige nodded. “So maybe that means the force field can’t reach this deep either.”
Trish shot her a confused look. “What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s like this shield or something around the entire city. It vaporizes anything it touches.”
“Woah,” was Trish’s response. “Come with me, and I’ll show you the camp.”
Trish took Paige’s hand, and led her a little ways down the tracks. Up ahead, two homeless boys watched them approach. The younger of the two boys was Randy, who couldn’t have been more than eight. But it was the older of the two that caught Paige’s attention, although she would never admit it. He was a strong, good looking boy named Drew, who looked to be about Chad’s age.
Drew approached them with a smile. “Hey, squirrel,” he addressed Trish, “we were getting worried about you. What’s going on up there?”
“Those things are destroying the whole city,” Trish replied. “It’s like they’re using these laser beams to wipe out everything.”
Then he turned his attention to Paige, whose homeless rebel look couldn’t completely mask the really pretty girl hidden there. “Who’s she,” he asked, addressing the question to Trish out of courtesy.
“This is my friend, Paige,” Trish responded, tugging on Paige’s shirt. “She helped me escape.”
“Hi. Drew,” he said, extending his hand.
“Hey,” she replied, surprised to find herself trying not to blush.
“She’s trying to find her friend,” Trish added. “Do you think you can help us?”
“What happened to him,” Drew asked.
“We think the soldiers took him,” Paige replied. “He had a really bad knife wound in his leg, so he wouldn’t have left on his own.”
Trish jumped back in. “She has some antibiotics she needs to give him.”
“Then we definitely need to find him,” Drew said, nodding to Trish, and then to Paige. “But we’re gonna need to wait till that stops,” he added, pointing to the rumbling coming from above.
“Wait. Seriously? You guys will help?” Paige asked, caught completely off guard by Drew’s offer.
“We’ll do what we can,” he offered. “You should get some rest.”
“Here. You can sleep next to me,” Trish said, taking Paige’s hand and tugging at it.
Paige turned back to Drew. “Thank you,” she said, still blown away by the offer.
“Don’t mention it,” he smiled.
Trish drug Paige over to where Randy sat reading comics. “Hey, Randy, this is my friend, Paige. Can she use your other blanket?”
Randy looked up from his comics long enough to hand Paige his other blanket.
“Thanks, Randy,” Paige said, but he was back in comic land.
Paige unrolled the blanket next to Trish’s, then plopped down on it. Not the coziest thing in the world, but it beat the floor of the hotel she had stayed in.
“I’m sure your friend’s okay,” Trish offered, laying down on her blanket beside Paige.
“I hope so,” Paige remarked.
“No, I’m being serious,” Trish continued. “If they wanted to kill him, they would have just done it.”
Paige thought about this for a moment. It made sense. She shot Trish a smile. “Thanks, Trish.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A New World
The starting pistol fired! Paige and four other girls launched off the starting blocks, and sped off down the track.
It was a warm spring afternoon, as the girls sprinted around the dirt track circling the football field. Paige was the smallest of the five, and clearly outmatched by her taller, more experienced competitors. But she poured her heart into every step.
As they sprinted across the finish line, Paige came in last. It wasn’t by much, maybe an arm’s length, but it was still a loss. And the look on her face said it all. She was devastated, as she slowly paced the track to cool down. She’d let everyone down. Herself. Her team. And Brad.
She wandered over to the bench on the sidelines, and plopped down. She just sat there, staring at the dirt.
A little ways behind her, but well within earshot, three of her teammates were grumbling. The loudest, and most obnoxious of them was Becky, a tall, athletic junior.
“Why do we even bother,” Becky grumbled to her friends. “We’re never gonna win with her on the team.”
“If you’ve got something to say, Becky, just say it,” Paige grumbled.
“Fine,” Becky replied, now addressing Paige. “Why don’t you just quit, so the rest of us can actually win.”
Paige rose to her feet, and headed over to the girls. Becky was about six inches taller than Paige, but Paige wasn’t going to break eye contact.
“Just go,” Becky continued, glaring down at Paige, “put on your makeup with the rest of the Barbies, or whatever it is you do, and let the rest of us win for a change.”
“Ease up on her,” a girl named Tina stepped in, “Paige is trying.”
“Really?” Becky shot back at Tina, “then how is it that we’ve lost every meet this year.” Becky then turned her venom back on Paige. “The only reason you’re even on the team, is because coach likes your brother.”
Paige had had enough. She just shook her head, and started to walk away. But Becky couldn’t just drop it.
“Seriously,” she hollered back at Paige, “why should the rest of us have to suffer, just because your brother’s popular.”
That was the final straw. Paige spun around, stormed back to Becky, and punched her in the face. Becky fell over backwards onto the dirt.
“Fuck you!” Paige shouted down at her.
“O’Connor!” came a shout from the principal standing down the sidelines.
Paige glanced at him, then turned and stormed off towards the lockers.
“O’Connor, get back here!” the principal hollered at her.
Paige just ignored him, and headed off.
***
“Hey, Paige. Wake up.” Paige’s eyes inched open, to find Trish hovering over her. The young girl gently shook her. “Are you awake yet?”
Paige slowly sat up on her elbows. Between the damp tunnel air, thin blanket, and cold stone floor, she’d barely gotten any sleep.
“Sort of,” Paige groaned.
“Good,” replied Trish. “You gotta come see this.”
***
Paige followed Trish out the bunker door, and into the surrounding rubble and field. The sky was a dull overcast gray, but it still took a second for her eyes to adjust. And when they did, she thought for a moment she was still dreaming.
Los Angeles had been completely wiped away, as if it had never existed, and in its place stood the most bizarre “city” she could have ever imagined.
At once alien, it also combined elements that felt familiar. Massive stone monuments and pyramids towered into the sky, with ornate decorations carved in their sides. Statues, and monoliths. It was massive, this new city which had been constructed from nothing overnight. But despite a suggestion of ancient Egyptian architecture in many of the forms, there was nothing human behind its design and construction.
“You sleep okay,” Drew asked, standing nearby with Randy, “cause things just got a lot weirder.”
Paige could only manage a nod, completely spellbound at this new creation she was seeing. It was impossible, and yet there it was.
“It was like this when we woke up,” said Trish, tapping her on the arm.
“What do you think’s going on,” asked Randy.
“I don’t know, kiddo,” Drew replied, patting the young boy on the back. “But I’d like to know who it’s for. Us, or them,” he added, nodding to the ominous spaceships hovering above the new cityscape.
Suddenly the air crackled with static, and a brisk wind sent dust b
illowing across the terrain. The sky lit up with Tesla sparks, streaking across it like bolts of lightning.
Then an image appeared in the sky, massive enough to see from miles away. Wavy at first, it soon focused into the holographic projection of something vaguely resembling a man’s face. But it clearly wasn’t a man, or even anything living. It was being generated by whatever those things were in the ships.
And it was ghoulish, Paige noted with a shudder, with black, intense eyes that stared down from a disturbingly oval-shaped face, and shaved head.
“Inhabitants of the world,” the apparition’s deep voice began resonating across the valley, “what you’ve witnessed over the past week is the return of what your ancestors called The Watchers.”
Trish pressed herself against Paige, taking her hand, as the voice continued, “Ever since man first crawled forth from the primordial pits at the dawn of time, our race has watched you digress ever closer to your own extinction.”
The projected holographic image flashed to scenes of wars, and riots. Famine, and pestilence. “And now, with your species perched on the precipice of your own doom, we saw the need to intervene.”
The image then flashed to scenes of serene vistas and landscapes. “This isn’t the end of humanity, but rather a new beginning. Under our guidance, mankind has been given a second chance. The opportunity to build a world free from the conflicts and ideologies that have divided you.”
The image then flashed back to the ghoulish oval-shaped face, with those intense black eyes, and shaved head. “You’ll be provided with food and housing. In return, you’ll be expected to serve. While we mean your species no further harm, any disobedience will be met with your annihilation.”
At that, the projected image dissolved away, leaving Paige and the others staring at the sky.
***
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re telling the truth,” commented Trish, who Paige was coming to realize was ever the optimist. “I mean, they did promise us food, and a place to stay.”
“They killed my friend and brother,” Paige grunted, shoving the last of her stuff into her backpack. “That makes them my enemy.”