by Lea Tassie
"Well, Henry alias Charger, there was an alien invasion happened about three days ago. You might want to buy a radio, or a TV, and tune in, because people in America are fucking dying everywhere, and I'm guessing that, in a few days, this backwater will be a battle zone. Or you can just go on thinking I'm some shit-for-brains kook, and go bury your melon in the dirt till you get your fucking ass shot off! How much for the fuel?"
Henry couldn't help staring. Something was wrong with the guy. Probably best not to challenge him. On the other hand, he hadn't listened to the radio or the TV for days because he'd been busy with the Dodge. "It's on the house, friend, it's all good, I can see you're tired, you're welcome to crash round back." He backed away from the truck.
"Fuck, whatever. Which way to town?" The man tossed a fifty on the ground.
"Follow this road till you get to a stop sign, then go left. That takes you toward the city, but you really shouldn't drive."
The old truck surged to life.
"Hey, wait!" Henry said. "I owe you three dollars and fourteen cents!"
Dust and exhaust sprayed into the air as the man floored the gas pedal and shot out onto the road. In a moment, the truck disappeared around a curve.
Henry went into the garage and turned on the radio. There wouldn't be any news about aliens on it, but the guy had seemed too serious to be making it up. Maybe he should listen to the news sometimes anyway, even if it was never interesting.
He was stunned by what he heard. The guy had been right. America was at war. With aliens. He could barely believe it.
When seven in the morning rolled around, Henry walked to the house behind the garage. He stopped on the front step and stared at his father's field of corn before he went in. The green leaves were beautiful in the slanting early sunlight. He nodded. Yeah, there was only one thing to do.
When he looked into his dad's room, the old man was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, his gray hair sticking up in all directions.
"You feeling any better, Dad?"
Steve raised his head. "Some. Figured I should get up and at least go watch TV for a while. Haven't seen any news for days." He'd gone down with the 'flu five days ago.
"That's good. You have to look after the garage now."
His father sat up straight and stared at him. "How come? Where're you going?"
"I'm joining the army. We're at war."
"What? Are you crazy?"
"Go turn on the TV, Dad. I'm going to say goodbye to Beth." He knew she'd be back now from a week's camping trip into the mountains with her folks.
Beth was his girl. People said she was pretty, with her long, blonde hair and the ice-blue eyes, but what he liked was how gentle and sweet she acted. She always seemed to know when he needed space and she never gave him a rough time about being different.
"Hey, Charger!" she said, when she opened the door to him. "What's happening? I gotta go to work in twenty minutes."
He told her what was happening. She looked stunned.
"We got home late last night. We never even turned on the TV." A smile replaced her frown. "Are you teasing me? Was that a joke?"
"No joke," Henry said. "I'm gonna get Dal in a little while, and we'll join up. Those aliens better start running right now!"
He put his arms around her for a couple of minutes, his fingers tangled in her silken hair. Then held her away from him. "You take care, okay? I'll be back."
She put her face against his chest, then straightened. "You, too."
He didn't turn around to look back. He knew she was watching him go, that her face would be solemn and sad. He didn't want to see the sadness, didn't want it weighing on him. He didn't want to leave her, sure, but he had to go. It was wrong for these aliens to attack innocent people.
Back home, Henry shoved a few things in an overnight bag. Steve was shaved and dressed and making toast.
"You sure you should be doing this?" Steve asked.
Henry nodded. "It's okay. I'm good at math."
His dad sighed. "Yeah, I know you are." He looked like he wanted to say more, but Henry didn't give him the chance.
"I'll call Dal now and get his ass moving." Dal was short for Delaware. His folks had been halfway there for a vacation when he was born.
Dal sounded like he was barely awake. Or deep into a computer game. But that changed fast.
"Shit, you're crazy, Charger. Ain't no such thing as aliens," Dal said.
"I'm not shitting you, Dal. A bunch of aliens have picked a fight with us, and we gotta fight back. We gotta go enlist! They're calling for troops on the radio, go listen!"
"I ain't gonna go listen to no radio. God made only us humans, never nobody else. Ain't no such thing as aliens, 'cept for Mexicans," Dal said grumpily.
"Turn your goddam computer game off and go listen!" Henry snapped. Dal didn't have a clue when it came to aliens. He was one himself, come to that; his folks came from Delhi.
"Shit," Dal muttered.
Henry heard Dal's chair creak as he got up. Then he sat and waited and waited, until nearly ten minutes had gone by. Then he hung up the phone, drove the tow truck over to Dal's house, and walked into the kitchen. "What the hell, why didn't you come back to the phone?"
Dal sat sideways on a kitchen chair. His brown eyes had a stunned deer-in-the-headlights look. Henry tapped Dal's head with a finger. "Hey, you still alive in there?"
"I don't believe it, they said New York was gone, I mean just gone. The whole city just wiped out, that's like over a million people!" Dal stuttered.
"Way more than that. There are nine million, two hundred and twenty-six thousand, seven hundred and forty-nine people in New York."
Dal stared at him. "You sure about that?"
"Well, give or take a few, I guess. People never seem to stay still."
"I can't understand how so many people got killed so fast," Dal said. He looked scared. "How can we win against that kind of stuff?" He was almost whispering. "The radio guy said the army was fighting these things, and we should all join up now."
They were quiet for a moment, then Henry put his hand on Dal's shoulder and said firmly, "I'm heading back to the station. I'm gonna take wheels from the shop and put them on the Dodge, and I'm gonna ride to the army base and join up."
And, he thought, from now on I'll be Charger, not Henry. Cause that's what I'm gonna do, is charge into battle, I'm gonna move just like the Dodge. "You can stay here and die, or you can come with me. We get some guns and we fight back. Hell, maybe they'll even give us a tank. I can drive pretty good now, my dad says."
Dal looked up to meet Charger's gaze and replied, "You really think they'd give us a tank?"
"Sure, why not? They ain't gonna just let those things lay around and rust."
Dal left a note on the table for his mom and dad. Then he went back to the shop with Charger and helped him put new wheels on the Dodge.
Before they left, Charger stood back for a minute to admire the paint job on the car. He'd sprayed it purple himself, his favorite color. He gave a last-minute rub to the leather upholstery while Dal fidgeted in the background. It wasn't perfect, but fighting the aliens was more important.
>>>
Charger and Dal stayed in a motel the first night on the road and watched TV as well as having the radio on. These first days of the war sounded like pure chaos. All the newscasters were looking for answers nobody could give them. What were these things attacking all the cities? And why were they doing it? Why was so much happening all at once? While the newscasters talked, jets screamed overhead.
The television showed scenes of panic and fear as people lashed out at everyone in their way, even neighbors, as they all tried to escape the mists the invaders sprayed everywhere. In the cities, gigantic objects moved rapidly about, almost a blur to the eye. Charger couldn't tell whether they were life forms or machines, but they were deadly. At first, so one report said, the smaller aliens didn't seem to possess weapons; instead they themselves were
weapons. From their bodies, they formed solid parts that cut, slashed, hacked, and at times flashed out like bullets, cutting down human soldiers.
In spite of all that, the newscasters said these first days of the invasion had gone well. Even the President came on television saying that humans were advancing on all fronts throughout the world.
The cameras had made it to the front lines and the footage they got was amazing. The aliens looked squishy. They were squishy, obviously, but they could form into hard objects that crashed down on soldiers in the fray of battle. The reporter said at first the military found that bullets passed right through them until they formed hard parts. Then they could be shattered like broken glass. The fighting was wild at first, advance and dodge until the aliens went hard, then open up on their asses with artillery, often having to fire at point blank range.
When that newscast was over, Dal said, "Let's go hunt squishies."
It was dark and raining when they drove away from the motel, but life looked pretty exciting. Seemed right to both of them to bring a Rat Rod Dodge to the main gates of the military base and step out like young heroes looking to join the Army and go fight.
"You newbies here today got lucky; you get choices!" the old sergeant yelled. He was a large, heavyset man with a thin beard but no hair on his head. Looking at newbies standing in street clothes seemed to make his face turn redder. "Now, you can go off and fight like good little soldiers and die. Or, for a limited time only, we can make you into super-soldiers." There was a sneer in the sergeant's voice. "That's right – I said super, like Superman or Captain America. You hicks can join up and go fight super style."
Charger felt like the smile on his face was large enough that his ears were disappearing. Man, he wanted to be super! So he'd been an auto mechanic before, and he'd fixed cars, trucks, and bikes. But he didn't have to stay a mechanic. Now was his chance to be a hero. "Dal, let's do it!"
"Yeah, I know already," Dal said. "We're fighting men super style now."
Charger could feel the excitement rippling through the recruits. It seemed almost possible to smell the youthful energy. Everyone there wanted to be super, just like him.
The sergeant turned to his corporal and, with regret in his voice, said, "Take these guys to Conversions, and may God forgive me."
What the sergeant had said to the corporal didn't sink in until around day three of the conversion, when Charger found the stench of his flesh almost unbearable. He looked at the recruits, lined up like cattle. They were going through a conversion that seemed to have one goal: kill them very, very slowly and they might survive being changed into Hyborgs.
He discovered the process was exacting in its science and tremendously painful in its application. Over a period of a few days, the volunteers found their bodies growing larger in stature and thicker in muscle mass. It was hard to keep track of the combination of different medications, physical surgery, and nanotechnology being applied, but he was determined to understand what was happening to him.
At one point, his leg muscles grew so thick that the long bones in his legs had to be surgically cut in half and metal spacers added to give him a longer stride. The bones were reinforced internally with what he could only describe as concrete. The large muscle mass that formed on his arms made them almost uncontrollable. They tended to twitch and then go rock hard. The solution to this turned out to be the surgical implantation of an organic attachment that held a power source, and several micro motors surgically linked to points on his arm bones and tendons.
After a time, as flesh healed, the medics applied a metallic, living, organic body-armor to him. This thick, scaly skin, a copper color so dark it was almost black, was like that found on crocodiles, they told him. It was strong and flexible, but it made him smell like death. He was never sure which process had made his canine teeth grow larger and longer, but the image of the vampire was obvious. His heart rate was slowed and his breathing became shallow. Some of the volunteers found their cognitive abilities had dropped dramatically. Charger had always thought Dal was a bit stupid, but after the medical processes, he was often stuck for an answer to 'good morning.'
Charger's optic lobes had been enhanced to see better in the dark. This meant that a skin or shield had to be placed over the retina, giving it the appearance of a milky white surface. That surface, though, reflected not just the light, but also the faces they looked at, like a mirror. It made outsiders very uncomfortable.
He finally decided they didn't look quite like vampires, but more like really vicious undead with disfigured bodies. But they needed to eat meat and also drink blood because their bodies couldn't produce blood anymore.
Dal thought it was cool to call himself a vampire, but Charger knew they weren't vampires, just deformed. If he decided to bite someone, that person wouldn't become like him or go batty; he would just bleed.
The recruits were told that military intelligence had discovered the mist the aliens used was what killed humans, and since it was dark inside the mist, what better fighters for humanity then the undead night stalkers of myth who could see in the dark? Though once, when he happened to look into a mirror, Charger wondered if whoever designed the super-soldiers had based them on the Wendigo. His facial features were striking, though the armor covered everything else. His eyes were farther apart then they used to be. His mouth was twisted. Four fangs protruded from his mouth. He looked nothing like the young man with thick brown hair and blue eyes who had gazed back at him from the bathroom mirror the morning he left home.
"Are you still breathing?" Dal asked as Charger lay strapped to the medical bed a day or two later.
"I don't think so, least not for the last hour or so."
"How is that even possible?" Dal demanded. "Don't we need air to talk? Like to push air past our voice box, I mean?"
"Don't know," Charger replied, pulling at the straps that bound him to the table. "I don't know how aliens can exist either. Maybe we don't need air to live now." It seemed like a clever answer.
"That's just stupid," Dal protested. "I'm still breathing. And I don't understand what they're doing to us. I never heard of anything like this before and I should of because my old man was in the military once."
Charger tried to grin through the pain and concentrated on the delightful fact that volunteers for the Hyborg program received little of the basic training mandatory in most armies. "I never heard of anybody else getting stuff like this done to them either, but I'll bet it's been a military secret for years. You know, like the army always has knowledge they don't let on to ordinary civilians."
As the last boost to their prowess, they'd had their skulls enlarged surgically, to allow for the input of biomechanical enhancements to sight, hearing and thinking processes. These alterations included built-in instructions on how to fight and survive. It was great to have all that power but why couldn't they have had it before? Didn't seem fair for governments to hide stuff from the people.
As the days went by, Charger began to get used to the alterations. They felt weird but he wasn't going to worry about that. He had other things to think about, like killing the aliens who were attacking his people and his home.
Chapter 9 The Eagles land
The atmosphere was somber as the German chancellor approached the microphone at the podium. The technician behind the camera focused in tight as the well-dressed older woman with a stern expression began to speak. Though her composure denoted strength and resilience, her faltering voice betrayed fear and anguish, mixed with great sadness. Firmly clutching the top corners of the podium, she faced the camera squarely.
"Today, Germany gives to the world her most sacred possession, our sons and daughters in combat," she said. "We hope that this day will erase the mark of shame carried by many of our generations and lift that burden from our shoulders." Her fingers clenched, and her bottom lip began to tremble. A single tear slid down one cheek. "God have mercy on us all!"
She turned from the camera, and walked quickly
from the main hall to the combat ready-room filled with generals and their staff. No media followed, clamoring for further answers. This topic was not open to debate. The lone camera technician packed his camera and left the building.
In the confusion of those early days, it was a bright young German general who first realized that the aliens were landing their forces along shorelines around the world, that they were attacking with the sea at their backs and driving the world's populations, like cattle, steadily inward to the center of each continent. It was this saving moment of clarity that allowed one landlocked country to form an opposition to the invaders. The question was: would the world accept help from the German people, who had for years been stained by the paintbrush of propaganda wielded by the victors? Nevertheless, a decision had to be made. Where could they mobilize a resistance that would do the most good?
"America has the most advanced fighting force in the world today. They can win if we give them the time they need to organize," General Dieter A'Ochay said to the diplomats, politicians and military personnel huddled in a bunker far below ground level. Alternately pounding his fist on the desk and pointing to various locations on the map, he said forcefully, "We cannot spread our forces to help all, but we can stall and possibly turn the tide of war, if only briefly, so these Americans can deploy their military to defeat this catastrophe. If nothing else, we can draw the main alien forces to America so the rest of the world can regroup."
"No, no! If we fortify Germany now, we will best serve the fatherland," a balding, fat man said. He rocked back and forth in his chair, agitated by the general's demanding posture. "There are many nations around the world who could find refuge in our arms. We could save the world if we simply fortify ourselves." Sweat formed on the fat man's forehead as he realized the general's gaze was now fixed squarely on him.
The German chancellor spoke softly but her voice silenced the room. "We will go to America. We will start there, and we will also die there, as we would here. Even a well-defended landlocked country is nothing more than a coffin." The atmosphere in the room became calm. There seemed nothing further to say; the decision had been made.