At that moment, the moon began to peek through the clouds again and Stephen concentrated on the trees. “Watch for movement!” he shouted to the men around him.
The magnificent light shone over the countryside. All the men, including Stephen, stared on as the trees moved eerily, as if by their own power. With arms held overhead like twisted limbs, the creatures stepped out from hiding and began lumbering among the foliage. Stephen trembled in absolute terror and counted as best he could. He spotted at least a dozen individual creatures before the moon’s light was blocked out again. He stepped back in fear, along with the rest of the men.
Stephen raised his transmitter to his mouth. “This is Stephen Carlisse addressing everyone. We have definite contact with the creatures. They’re waiting in the woods, so remain calm, and hold your fire until you can be sure you’ll hit something. We have limited shots before we’ll need to recharge. Umm…keep a sharp eye and be ready at any moment.” Stephen paused for a moment, gasping in exhilaration. “Over,” he said, trembling.
“I counted ten sir,” one of the men nearby said.
“I saw fifteen,” said another.
“Alright men, stand fast and wait for them to make the next move.” He then looked down at his rifle, and checked the energy gauge. Five percent of his shots had been depleted. “We’re all okay for now...”
Just then, a whizzing sound passed over Stephen’s head, and was soon followed by several more - coming from all directions. The man next to Stephen screamed out in pain as he was impaled by a flying spear, dozens of which were now raining down all around them from within the wood. The spears hit several more targets, and cries of pain and terror sounded over the campground on all sides.
The moonlight returned, and Stephen caught a glimpse of one massive beast lurching forward to hurl a spear. He aimed as quickly as he could and opened fire into the woods. His heart filled with joy and triumph as he saw the creature fly backwards from the impact of an energy bolt. Although the creature now lay writhing on the ground, Stephen was shocked in that it uttered no sound of pain. Only then did he realize that he had never heard the creatures make any sound at all. However, this interest was blotted out by astonishing fear as the campground around him erupted into combat.
Rifle fire and war cries filled the air. Stephen tried as best he could to spot targets in the woods to fire upon. He could find none. Then he noticed that the men around him had not found targets either; they were merely firing out of panic and fear. Leaves and debris in the woods flew wildly into the air as the foliage was shredded by weapons fire. Stephen holstered his rifle and molded his hands around his mouth.
“Cease fire!” he screamed as loud as he could. “Pick your targets! Save your shots!”
But it was no use. The fierce sounds of warfare had drowned out Stephen’s voice as well as the sound of the spears whizzing by. It was then that Stephen realized the spears had stopped coming. Only the humans were fighting at the moment.
“Cease fire!” he shouted again. “Cease fire! Cease fire!”
Soon, the men began to lower their weapons one at a time. Gradually, they each realized that the beasts were gone.
A misty dawn came a few hours later. The sun was bright and magnified by the low-lying fog on the countryside, and the trees in the forest were dripping fresh dew from their leaves. The campground was deadly still. No one moved, and no one spoke. Only the children, who cried out of still-lingering fear, made any noise at all.
Stephen looked at the men around him as he paced over the campground. All were downhearted and afraid. They were all aware of the grim situation. They lacked sufficient men and ammunition to fight another battle like the one that had just taken place. If the creatures came back again during the night, they would all be killed. Each man with a family had returned to his tent to check on them. Each man without a family stood ready at the camp perimeter with a weapon in-hand - prepared to begin firing again at any sign of the creatures’ return.
Stephen could not see very far overtop of the all the men and women milling about the area. He felt more suited to have his head down anyways, as he walked in the general direction of Michael’s tent.
Stephen was amazed at the carnage that had ensued in just a few short minutes of battle during the night. Everywhere around him, spears were standing upright in the ground and sticking out of tents - tents into which he was afraid to look. Nearby, he saw Kirin and her medical colleagues running back and forth from bed to bed in the temporary infirmary of spare cots and folding tables. Some men were lying unconscious with wounds that Stephen recognized as coming from friendly fire during the fight. Others had spears protruding from their stomachs, backs and sides. These men were tied down to their cots by ropes, (to keep from further worsening their already deadly wounds) while nurses and doctors tried futilely to tend to them.
As he passed by the gory scene, Stephen put his rifle into its holster and reached for his transmitter. He began to send a message to Michael, but stopped himself when he saw the familiar figure of the Commander approaching from over a small rise.
Michael looked back over the rise with an expression that told of something awful behind it. He walked slowly toward Stephen.
“We won’t be able to last another night, Michael,” Stephen began. “They dealt us a pretty serious blow.”
Michael began walking beside Stephen. He motioned in the direction from which he had just come. “More serious than you think,” Michael said.
They approached the rise, and Stephen began to see further and further over its peak with each step he took. When he finally came to the top, he felt instantly weak and fell to his knees. There before him, reaching outward with dead fingers, were dozens of bodies mounted on the creatures’ poles.
“They created a large diversion over on our side and then sneaked in here to kill as many of us as they could without being detected,” Michael said. “It was planned.”
Stephen put his hand over his stomach from nausea. A countenance of sorrow filled his face as he realized that most of the bodies swaying in the morning breeze were not warriors, but rather women and children who had been murdered in their sleep. He leaned forward, fighting to contain the contents of his stomach.
5
Byron stared worriedly forward at his computer monitor, waiting for the information he had inputted to compile. With furrowed eyebrows, he began methodically gnawing on a pencil - a habit that he always indulged while working on important projects. He then looked out the window of his apartment on the southern end of the city. Byron took note of how calm the city streets seemed in the early hours before dawn. It was his favorite time to work. Byron then began wondering if indeed there was some other intelligent form of life living on the planet with them. He removed the pencil from his mouth and sat back. The computer bleeped in reply that its task was finished.
“Finally,” Byron mumbled as he began typing in commands.
When given the option to choose a date of records to view, he deliberately went straight to the last few weeks before the ship had been destroyed. Under the different headings, Byron saw one that had been the very last recording by the ship’s Commander. After telling the computer to display the information, a moment of computation passed. Then, a short plainly-expressed message flashed upon the screen:
THEY’VE FOUND THE SHIP. THEY’RE
WAITING OUTSIDE IN THE WOODS. IT’S
ONLY A MATTER OF TIME NOW,
BEFORE THEY RETURN WORD OF OUR
LOCATION.
THAT AWFUL TOWER MUST FALL…
Byron’s pencil dropped to the floor.
Morning had arrived. The Governor and his wife were eating breakfast in their apartment when a high-pitched beeping sounded from somewhere in the room. Afraid that it would wake their sleeping baby, Hedrick rushed quickly over to the jacket he had left hanging on a chair. He grabbed the transmitter from its pocket as he finished chewing his bread.
“Hedrick here,” he whispered firmly i
nto the mouthpiece. “What… who’s that…? Oh, him. Sure, put him on.”
“What is it?” asked his wife.
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “Yes?” he spoke into the mouthpiece. “…wait…slow down, man. I can’t understand you. What are you saying?”
Selene looked questioningly at her husband, who was now wearing a look of worry on his face.
He spoke loudly now. “What monsters?”
At that moment, a blinding, white beam of energy flashed briefly as it streaked down from the heavens and then impacted, shattering the earth in the northeastern section of the city. Immediately, the energy bolt sent forth a shock wave that rattled the foundations of several buildings near the place of impact, causing them to crack and collapse in unison. Thus began a growing ripple effect of high-rise buildings falling one after another. The cascade of structures flourished perpetually outward from the epicenter where the beam first struck. The families within these buildings had little time to realize what was happening before they were sealed from the light of day by tons of tumbling rubble and quickly entombed. Only some of them had time to scream.
The shock wave instantly disintegrated several unlucky colonists, who had been walking among the streets when the attack came. It scattered their dusty remains into the air above the city. After almost a dozen buildings had fallen, the shock wave began to die off into a strong wind that continued to spread well beyond the city limits. Before the shock wave had finished its disastrous toll, a massive rolling fireball had begun to spread outward from the point of impact - steadily churning within itself and growing in size.
Stephen and the rest of the rebels raced quickly to the top of the hillside. There, they stopped in horror as they saw what had happened. Although the initial explosion had already taken place, its muffled rumble was only now reaching the ears of the rebels and vibrating the ground on which they stood.
One corner of the city lay in complete rubble. A domino effect of several of the apartment buildings had just ended as they crashed deafeningly to the ground. The rippling shock wave was beginning to die down too, although it was still strong enough crack the bases of some surrounding buildings. As Stephen surveyed the catastrophe before him, one particular building caught his eye. He recognized the Governor’s apartment tower swaying gently back and forth as the remains of the shock wave tore away at its base. Consequently, most of the building’s interior structures began to crack and break apart.
The Governor stared forward in disbelief as he watched his building’s only staircase crumble away, knocking out several stories of staircase below it as well. He knew his family was trapped on their floor, and he decided they must wait the ordeal out until some form of help could arrive. He rushed quickly back into his own room where his wife sat on the bed, struggling to remain upright after each rock of the building’s weakened foundation. He watched her futilely trying to quiet the hysterical baby in her arms as it wailed pitifully in fear.
“The staircase is out,” he said. “We’ll wait until everything calms down and help can get here.”
The structure then swayed once more, and Hedrick leaned heavily against a nearby doorframe for support.
“Don’t you see what’s going to happen?!” his wife shouted angrily, with tears flowing freely down her pretty face.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Just calm down, it will be alright...”
“No!” she shouted. “This building will fall, and we’re going to die if you can’t do something about it!” She was shaking frantically now, the baby’s fears having transferred to her. “We have to get out, and we haven’t much time!” The building rocked again, and she steadied herself on the bed. “Can you not possibly be wrong once?”
He looked away.
“You must think of something now to help us!” she yelled.
Hedrick stared downward in sickening realization. He started running his fingers through his hair. His mind raced quickly, searching rapidly for an idea to get his wife and child out. However, his thinking was clouded as he realized that he had been arrogantly denying the truth ever since they had arrived on the planet, and that Michael and Stephen had done all they could to save him from his own short sight. He could not believe the degree to which he had been blinded by his own naiveté. He now hated himself for not understanding sooner that he had put everything he held dear to him in grave danger, merely on a whim. As he continued to punish himself for failing as a leader, he glanced to the corner of the room. His eyes fell directly on a pile of electrical cable that had been sitting for weeks.
Stephen breathed frantically. His heart pounded within his chest. Several long-range telescopes had been brought out from the backpacks and carts of the people. They were all set up on the hillside now, facing the city. Stephen stared through one at the spot where the beam had hit. At the same point where the shock wave had originated, the giant swell of fire began to grow, spreading quickly outward and upward among the flying dirt and debris from the first explosion.
The fireball began to comb back over the area where the buildings had fallen, incinerating the rubble and any survivors who happened to still be on the ground. From the speed and size of the fireball’s growth, Stephen could tell for certain that it would well surpass the area where the shock wave had caused its initial damage. He knew that several more casualties would manifest themselves in flames before the disaster would end.
Stephen then swung the telescope back to a view of the Governor’s building where he was puzzled to see a distinct, gray cord swaying back and forth gingerly from a window almost twenty stories high. As he adjusted the focus to eliminate some blur, Stephen watched a woman amble out onto the windowsill. He saw her attach a device to the rope, which she used to begin slowly walking down the wall step by step, with her feet directly in front of her.
When Selene Hedrick was several meters below the window, another form came out of the darkness of the room. This one was very familiar. Stephen watched the Governor step cautiously out onto the windowsill and wrap the rope once around his arm before putting his weight on it. He had not found enough material for another makeshift harness like the one he constructed for his wife.
As Stephen watched the leader of the human race scramble down the wall inch by inch, he quickly adjusted the field of vision on the telescope to create a wider view. Stephen was then concerned to see how close the fireball was to reaching the building. He guessed they would scarcely have enough time to reach the ground and flee to safety before being horribly engulfed by flames.
“Go faster!” the Governor yelled. “It sounds closer now!”
His wife nodded silently in compliance and began to descend faster than what she was comfortable with - stumbling slightly from panic. Her new necessity for focus on what she was doing forced her to take her attention away from her crying son, who was strapped firmly to her chest in a bundle.
The Governor listened carefully to the swelling rumble of the fireball that foretold of certain doom if they did not climb down faster. As he continued to scramble down the wall, he was stopped suddenly when noticed a severe fray on the cable in front of his face. At first he dismissed it, concentrating on his strides. However, when he readjusted his hold on the rope, putting his full weight back on it, the Governor was disturbed by a faint pop from one of the cable’s fibers snapping under the stress. He pulled his body back in closer to the wall and grabbed onto the wire above the tear, to relieve some of the immediate weight on the damaged section. But he knew that the lifeline could not continue supporting the weight of himself, as well as his wife and child. He watched a new slit beginning to form in the wire above his current grip. Another small snap proceeded. His face turned white, and his heart sank.
“Come on, come on, come on…” Stephen mumbled impatiently.
“What are you looking at?” Michael asked.
“The Governor and his wife. They’re trying to climb down from their window.” Stephen was then distracted to hear Micha
el shuffling through his belongings and pulling out his own telescope. Stephen returned his attention to the Governor’s escape as Michael assembled the device.
“Why did he stop?” Michael asked.
Stephen shook his head, puzzled. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
Hedrick looked down between his feet to see that his wife was almost two full stories beneath him, and that she wasn’t aware he had stopped. He closed his eyes. He was grateful that she wasn’t watching, since he didn’t want her to see what he was about to do. The once-great Governor Hedrick concentrated his stare on the frayed section of rope in front of him - making sure one final time that the rope was definitely going to break under their combined weight.
At that moment, Selene finally sensed the lack of motion from above her and paused, gazing upward to investigate. “What’s the matter?” she yelled. “Come on!”
The Governor then winced in grief from the sound of his wife’s voice, and heard another ping of the cord fibers snapping from the pressure. He slowly relaxed his fingers and let go of the line, kicking away from the wall as he fell.
Selene screamed out in horror as she watched her husband fly downward past her and then disappear in the cloud of swirling dust below. She wailed again, torn apart in grief as she realized that her life had drawn to a close. She continued to cry in unison with her panicked child until, after a few moments, she realized the intensity of the baby’s fear. She then locked off by wrapping the cord around her leg several times so that both her hands were free for her to hold the child close to herself, and then whisper comforts to him as she rocked slowly back and forth.
“Not like that…” Michael muttered as he leaned back in sorrow.
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