Children of the After: The Complete Series

by Jeremy Laszlo

  Jack tried to picture the things the man was saying. The world as he had known it, a living and thriving world filled with billions of humans would have stopped in an instant, nearly completely destroyed. All of the technology they had developed and relied on for day to day life was gone. No wonder there were so few people. How many had gone up in the flames of their homes or cars? His head spun, but still he tried to listen.

  “By gone, we thought killed, but we looked. Everywhere we went was destruction. Sure, metal buildings like this, with little to burn still stood. Concrete or brick buildings still stood, but everything else was a ruin. But we didn’t find the dead. At least not near so many as we should have. It is as if they were spirited away in the initial attack. But it didn’t make sense. Why take our people and destroy all that we have worked for? One or the other, sure, but why both? Then the first wave came. They were brutal creatures, filled with rage, and hunger. They are there,” he said, pointing back the way Jack and his companions had come to the first row of cages. “There were so many, and they destroyed everything. We fought for weeks, expending our ammunition as numbers on both sides dwindled. We thought we had them. We were winning. And then, finally, we thought we had won. They stopped coming. Then came the next wave. They were bigger, meaner, faster, and stronger than the previous. More deadly. And they weren’t alone. They came with cage row three,” he pointed again. “But we were lucky. They fought each other just as much as they fought us. All of our numbers fell again. Scientifically, I knew that if something didn’t change we would pass the tipping point where humans would no longer be able to recover even if we did survive.”

  Jack watched Dr. Darvski pause as if to reflect on what he was saying. He shook his head, his shoulders sagging even more if possible, but then he continued again.

  “The next wave didn’t last more than a few days. They couldn’t survive the atmosphere, or radiation levels, or something about our planet. They grew ill within hours and were dead in a day or two. Then came the ones you saw last night. Three different species of them. One after the other. They are hard to fight, especially now that we don’t have ammo. We are forced to fight hand to hand and to be honest they are superior in a fight like this. They don’t have the analytical mind like we have, but they have a hive mentality. They communicate with each other instantaneously, and can better coordinate their attacks and movements. Fortunately they don’t attack to destroy us, only for food. They dwindle our numbers from time to time until they move on, but we have learned to deal with them. The next several waves were what really caught us off guard.”

  Jack tried to process all of the information as fast as Darvski was giving it, but his head was swimming. The people were gone, and many had died, but more were just missing? How was that possible? Had the aliens taken them? If so, then what for? Why did the invasion come in several different waves of different species? What could possibly be worse than giant insects carrying off your friends for food? The questions just kept piling up, and there was nothing for him to do but keep listening.

  * * * * *

  Sam fought to keep her mind clear. Though she wanted nothing more than to interrupt again and again, she defied the urge when it arose. A lot had already been said. The invasion had happened. People had been taken and the world as they knew it had been destroyed. She was learning what had happened, and if she could keep her own mouth shut she just might get all the answers to her questions. All she had to do was be quiet. She could do this.

  “After the dust settled with the insect humanoids, we thought it was over again. Things seemed safe. Weeks passed without a single attack or incident. We began venturing out more and more, and reports came in that gatherings of people were being found all over the place. Chicago. Detroit. Memphis. You name it. Our scouts reported finding people here and there and some began joining with our own group here, only they weren’t really people. Some people that were spotted had strange hands and eyes, though from a distance no one could tell, and again the fighting began. These things were trying to take over the few remaining places we still had left standing. They wanted our shelters, and again we had to fight to hold on to what was ours. Thankfully these fights didn’t last too long. Both sides just stopped fighting and secluded themselves from one another. We haven’t seen any of those in a while,” the scientist said pointing back to the human-like things in the cages.

  “They weren’t it, though. It still wasn’t over. Next they sent a wave of their best infiltrators yet. Just like humans. I mean just like us. The next wave looked, walked, moved, and thought like us. We could barely tell them apart. Their eyes’ color was a little off, more metallic, and their big toe was jointed different. Like a thumb. Aside from that their only obstacle to crossing behind our lines was communication. Even though they couldn’t talk like us, some of them managed to get into human camps. Before you knew it, the word got out and Grant ordered everyone in the resistance to line up. We all had to take our shoes off. Even me.”

  Sam watched Darvski pause, as his eyes crossed over each of them to the cages beyond. Looking over his shoulder he turned back to Cole, who still stood silently behind him.

  “Cole, why don’t you run along and bring me that big brute of a boy… What’s his name?”

  “Tom?” Cole questioned.

  “Yeah, that’s him. Thank you.”

  Off Cole went without a word, and Sam watched him vanish between the cages before turning back to Dr. Darvski.

  “Let me tell you. You have to understand,” the good scientist began again. “We were all afraid. Terrified. And there we were, all lined up, out there, right here in front of the hangers. Grant lined us all up and ordered we take off our shoes, so we did. Most of us anyhow. Those who didn’t got put down right there where they stood. We caught two of them that day. Two of the pretenders right here in our own camp, pretending to be human. Grant had them put down too, which looking back is a shame, cause I have never gotten to study one. Not yet at least. But you see? Even through those tough times, I knew there was work that had to be done so I started running tests on the creatures. Grant had them captured for me, so that I could learn their weaknesses, and I did, but I learned so much more. I know you have probably heard that I am off my rocker. That I have a few screws loose. Ya know, crazy. But I assure you that my tests are not wrong. I have run DNA scans on every specimen in this room and hundreds more, and the results are confounding. I’ll try and explain it as best I can. You are all familiar with chimpanzees, right?”

  “Yes,” Sam said, as she watched Jack and Will both nod.

  “Good, then it might interest you to know that chimps and humans have virtually the same DNA. Mathematically they are about one percent different. One percent. We both come from a common ancestor, and though our DNA is very similar, we are vastly different. Do you understand what I am saying?” Darvski asked again, waiting for their nods.

  “Some of the invading aliens I have tested have DNA that is less than a third of a single percent different than ours, meaning that they are more closely related to us than chimps. So if our evolution deviated from that of chimps some five million years ago, then our evolution from what is in these cages branched off much later than that. We are related to these beings, and closely so. I know, you must be thinking, but how is this possible? It sounds too crazy to be true, but hear me out.

  For our DNA to be so similar, we have to have a common ancestor. That fact alone leaves us with only two possibilities. One, either we originated somewhere other than earth and were brought here millions of years ago, or two, that these creatures were taken from here millions of years ago and have now been returned. Which brings me to my theories,” Darvski said with a smile, as he waved down the aisle to Cole and Tom who had both returned.

  “I believe that a long time ago, these creatures already existed on this planet and were taken away from our planet by whoever flies those ships up there,” he said, looking up as if into the sky. “Then, for whatever reason, they bro
ught them back. This would explain all the strange artwork left by ancient people. Many strange images of man-like creatures exist all over the world left by ancient cultures, and until now no real reason ever existed for those images.

  Another explanation is that these people are in fact humans that the aliens took up into their ships, and altered their DNA before returning them to us, one wave after another. Perhaps they are performing experiments of their own. The equipment I have is not sophisticated enough to give me evidence if this was the case. Nor am I certain I would be able to detect it under ideal circumstances.

  Finally, the last theory I have is that at one point in our evolution a number of our people were abducted and allowed to evolve separately from us, and now they are being returned. Keep in mind, children, that these are only theories. And now, you may ask your questions.”

  Sam stood awestruck for several seconds. Crazy? Yes. But plausible too, given no evidence to the contrary. Could they actually be related to all the things in the cages around them? If what he said about chimps and humans was accurate, which she had to assume it was, it seemed totally possible. If chimps were so vastly different from humans yet they had nearly identical DNA, who’s to say that these new creatures couldn’t be much the same? She certainly wasn’t in a position to argue the matter.

  Still, she was still trying to process the information when Jack started to talk.

  * * * * *

  Will stood with his mouth open listening to all that Dr. Darvski said. To him it sounded an awful lot like Planet of the Apes. Kind of. All this talk about evolution and aliens and stuff made his head hurt, and for the first time, he realized that his head had been hurting for days, asthma attack or not. Regardless of the pain in his head, however, he had just one question and he intended to ask it, but Jack managed to open his mouth first.

  “If they are, or were an ancestor or relative of ours, then where did they go and where did they come from?” Jack asked.

  “That’s a good question, my boy, but I am afraid I don’t have an answer. Like I said, we couldn’t even detect their ships so we don’t even know what direction they approached earth from. But some scientists have speculated that mathematically speaking, there have to be thousands, maybe even as high as millions of planets with intelligent life out there in the universe. Though we consider ourselves intelligent, there might be races who evolved billions of years before ours and have become so advanced that to them we look like wild animals or even insects. I would assume that one of those races is responsible for those ships up there in the sky.”

  “Are the ships still here?” Sam asked.

  Again Will was forced to wait to ask his question.

  “No one can say for certain. It is a bit of a Schrodinger’s cat, in that so long as we cannot prove that they are or are not still up there, they can, and have to be both.”

  “What?” Sam asked, cocking her head to one side.

  “Sorry,” Darvski apologized. “I mean that if we can’t see them, our best bet is to assume they are still there.”

  “That makes sense,” Sam replied.

  Finally, seeing his chance, Will looked up to the man who was filthy and stinky but seemed very smart.

  “If lots of people were taken away, and not turned into these monsters, are they still alive?” Will asked, thinking that perhaps even if Chicago and Europe were both destroyed, maybe Mom and Dad were still out there somewhere, wherever the aliens had put them.

  He looked at the scientist expectantly and he could see the man was thinking, working to word his answer in a way that Will would understand.

  “It is another paradox, I’m afraid. But I will tell you this. It is certainly possible that every person who vanished is still alive.”

  The scientist grinned and Will grinned right back. That was all he needed to know. To heck with all the chimp this, alien that mumbo jumbo. It was possible that even if Mom and Dad weren’t out here somewhere looking for him, then he could still hope to find them somewhere if he could find the right place to look. People didn’t just vanish.

  “Which leads me to one last thing,” Darvski interrupted Will’s line of thoughts. “If the aliens are still out there, then it is likely they aren’t finished with us yet. And if they aren’t finished then it is likely that a new wave of attacks or infiltrations is due at any time, and being that the last few waves have gotten creepily more and more humanoid, and you are obviously in the company of our enemy, then there is only one thing to do. Tom, Grab the blonde.”

  Tammy screamed. Something wholly unexpected from a girl who couldn’t talk. Spinning around, Will watched as thick arms wrapped around her arms and torso lifting her off the ground, as Tom’s face peered down at him from over her shoulder.

  * * * * *

  Tammy couldn’t help herself, no matter how foreign her voice sounded after all this time. Yanked back and up, she was caught totally off guard, clenched tightly with her arms stuck to her sides. She was defenseless.

  “Cole,” said the Darvski fellow. “Take off its shoes.”

  Tammy tried to kick out, but it was useless, Tom just squeezed her tighter, making her ribs hurt as she struggled for breath. In seconds her shoes were removed and the socks with them as she was forced to look upon the faces of those she had considered friends. Shock. Disbelief. Pain. These were the things their expressions showed her, and no matter how she wanted to cry out that she was their friend, she couldn’t. There was nothing she could do. They could now see her for what she was. It didn’t matter anymore who she was. She wasn’t like them. She didn’t belong here.

  “You three don’t move either,” said Darvski. “For all we know, you three might be the next wave of invaders, so much like us that we can’t even tell. All of you will undergo tests and if you are what you say you are then you will be welcome to stay. If not… Well, that’s another story.”

  Tammy was hauled backwards as Jack, Samantha, and Will watched on, all of them with torn emotions on their faces. Behind her a metal creaking sound came before she was tossed bodily into one of the empty cages. Bashing her shoulder and elbow on the steel floor of the cage she cried out in pain, her eyes tearing as she pulled herself up and scooted herself back and away from the door. Ahead of her, Tom slammed the steel-barred door closed with a smile, before snapping a padlock into place upon it. Sobbing, she watched as he walked down the aisle to open yet another cage.

  “You three can share a cage. I’ll be around shortly to take some samples.”

  Tammy watched through bleary eyes as her three friends, whom she had betrayed, were stripped of their packs and weapons and led into the cage further down the row. It was all her fault they were being locked up. She hadn’t intended to hurt them in any way, but she had lied to them. Had she been honest, maybe things would have been different, but all she had ever seen between her people and humans was fighting and pain. She didn’t want to fight them. It was senseless. They could all get along and she had proven it. That didn’t matter now though. It didn’t matter what happened to her, so long as they didn’t hate her for not telling them the truth. But they would hate her. Humans hated her kind.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jack couldn’t believe it. He had thought she was hot, or at least cute. But she wasn’t even human. He didn’t know how he should feel, but somehow he felt betrayed and hurt. Not only was she not human, but she did have a voice. Why hadn’t she talked before now? She knew their language. She had written it. Maybe she wanted their pity, using it as a trick to gain their trust. Yet here they were all locked into a cage because of her. Pulling Sam and Will into his arms, he looked over their heads at the girl who wasn’t even a girl and sneered at her. How could she lie to them all that time? The cage door slammed closed behind him.

  “You kids just relax and I’ll be back to draw some blood and take a hair sample momentarily. Cole, you take Tom and go report back to Grant that he was right, the little blonde is an alien. I’ll begin tests on her immediately.”
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  Without a word both Cole and Tom turned and disappeared back down the aisle between the rows of cages where Jack and his siblings had only come a half an hour before. Though he was angry, Jack forced himself to think rationally. If the scientist could be trusted, then he, Sam, and Will would be released soon, no worse for wear, minus some hair and blood. He couldn’t be mad at Darvski or Grant or anyone else for that matter for wanting to keep their people safe. It made sense. The only person to blame was Tammy, if that even was her name. What were the chances of an alien being named Tammy? It was ridiculous.

  It didn’t make any sense. If they were at war and hated each other, then why save Jack and his siblings from the ape creatures in the first place? Then Jack was smacked right in the face with a revelation. He was a moron and a jerk. She had saved them. Saved them. Tammy had risked her own life to save theirs by bringing them into her hiding place. Just an hour ago she had saved Will’s life again, not giving in when a supposed doctor had given up. Tammy wasn’t an enemy, and this was precisely why she had hidden her identity from them. So she wouldn’t be judged because of her race. There it was. A battle that had been fought in the US and around the world for centuries.