Alien Apocalypse: The Complete Series (Parts I-IV)

by JC Andrijeski

  He’d been one of the last who really knew how to make a good sword, at least of the smiths Jet knew of in Vancouver. If she lost it now, she had no idea how she’d ever replace it.

  Her sword even had a name. She called it Black.

  Kind of a stupid name really, unless you knew her name was Jet. That, and the handle was blackened steel wrapped in black-dyed leather grips.

  Before he died, Mishio told her that the name ‘Jet’ actually meant black in Latin, too.

  But the pack, even with her knives and her tools, she could have replaced. Really, it just showed how complacent she’d gotten, that it hadn’t even occurred to her to dump it.

  Either way, Jet was unwilling to try and fling the pack or the heavy coat off her shoulders now. The extra movement would only slow her down, make her lose her balance. The mere fact of removing the bulky weight couldn’t help her enough to make up for the ground she’d lose in trying. She needed speed, yes, but she needed those extra seconds more.

  She looked up at the tall buildings on either side.

  Some were brick, but those of course were boarded up, and most would be impossible to break into quickly enough to make her escape. Even if no one was using this particular row of warehouses as shelter, most had been contaminated during the first cullings, and there was no guarantee any particular one she chose would have an entrance to the underground.

  The truth was, she didn’t know this side of town well.

  She should have brought Anaze with her, like he wanted.

  Anaze knew this part of the city like the back of his hand, having lived here for a spell in his teens while his mother followed Richter. Anaze offered to come along with Jet to see Everest that morning, but for some reason she’d said no. It wasn’t Anaze himself; she liked his company well enough. He was one of her best friends. Most days they went trading together, or mapping out new routes in and out of the orchards so they wouldn’t be caught growing.

  He was okay with a sword too, but even better with a bow. And Anaze was a lot more into the gardening stuff than Jet ever would be. She was much more interested in finding ways to build new tunnels and structures underground...or learning how to crack the few pieces of Nirreth tech that came her way.

  So in retrospect, Jet didn’t really know why she hadn’t invited him along.

  She’d really just wanted the time alone.

  She never got a moment’s peace these days, living in the cramped, underground spaces of the longhouse, or even the wider settlement. It only got worse every year, with the dangers multiplying aboveground and more people migrating north to get away from the heat and the burgeoning Nirreth enclaves. It was part of the reason why Jet and the other builders kept trying to find ways to heighten the caves, and to grow more real plants down there.

  They knew at some point, they might not be able to leave the caves. They might need to stay down there and survive on what they had, at least for awhile.

  Not only did they have the Nirreth to worry about, but also the Richters of the world, as well as the rebels and new immigrants. In the realm of more mundane worries, the list got even longer: bad water and soil, rats and snakes and feral dogs, diseases, diseased animals wandering into the camps and poisoning the water, parasites attacking the few crops that would still grow, the occasional bout of acid rain or wind blowing poisonous gasses from the ocean.

  Jet understood why she’d wanted to be alone. With that hanging over all of their heads, people took every chance they got for a little quiet.

  Now she wished she’d made an exception for Anaze.

  Jet glanced up at the metal towers that also lined the streets.

  The brick buildings were preferable, if only because they were older and more likely to have an underground entrance, but the glass and metal structures might do in a pinch. Being inside their metal skeletons made it hard for the Nirreth to use the culling nets; they’d have to come down for her, and might not want to bother just for one skag.

  She couldn’t keep running down these alleys forever.

  The metal buildings were also infinitely easier to break into, if only because only a few of their green-tinted windows remained...the rest had been smashed to powder or knocked out by the sonic waves of the passing Nirreth ships. Those that managed to stay intact in their metal frames stared out like oddly reflective eyes, looking almost sentient.

  The Nirreth had promised to rebuild the human cities too.

  But like with the environment, Vancouver looked roughly the same as it had when she’d been born, nineteen years earlier.

  Jet was trying to decide if she should dart into the next of those rusted giants, find a place to hide in the pock-marked walls and charred furniture, when she saw a flicker of movement.

  Her eyes jerked immediately to the left.

  A light. Someone or something was signaling her.

  Jet tried to find the source with her eyes, but everything in front of her was gray and green. Even here, in the swath of old metal buildings and concrete walls, moss and mold covered every corner of the buildings and overgrown trees and plants poked through the walls. Black and rotting plant matter covered most of the street, as well, and trickling water from ceilings sagging from water damage. Broken glass scattered the curbs and streets in a few places, but most of the buildings looked like skeletons of long-dead beasts, with few of the details intact.

  Jet could just see the remnants of rooms inside one or two of the larger metal towers, but mostly all she saw was sky framed by rusted metal worn into odd shapes by sea water and rain.

  Darting down another alley to get off the wider road, she ran across another wide street and into a narrower one, paved with cobblestones. They were slippery, but the road might be too narrow for the culler ships, too.

  About a hundred yards ahead of her, the flashing light repeated.

  Whoever it was, they were following her...likely using the sewers.

  On the second set of flashes, Jet located the source. Unfortunately, reaching the opening in the ground where it originated meant breaking cover. It also meant stopping, fully visible for at least a few seconds, in one of the widest of the main thoroughfares.

  Jet wondered if maybe it was the Nirreth after all, trying to lure her into a net.

  Still running, she glimpsed a cracked doorway leading into the ground. Pale, ground-dweller fingers lifted a metal cover a bare few inches. The fingers of a skag.

  Whoever it was, they lifted the manhole cover just high enough to leave a dark, circular crack, and for her to see a pair of eyes reflecting up at her.

  She could see nothing of the face itself.

  “Over here!” a voice whispered urgently. “Quickly!”

  It sounded like a man’s voice.

  In fact, it almost sounded familiar, but Jet couldn’t be certain, not with everything else...

  It was irrelevant, anyway. She would have taken shelter from Richter himself at that point, even if it cost her more than just a few apples.

  That being said, Jet knew full well that she couldn’t trust strangers among the skags. Richter, the worst of the human bandits who regularly raided their settlements, was certainly a case in point. He seemed to view the arrival of the Nirreth as a personal business opportunity. Anaze told Jet that while his mother had run with Richter’s men, he found out that most were ex-cons and ex-military who’d survived the wars.

  Most had fought back during the first rounds of culling by the Nirreth. According to Jet’s mom, those first rounds were what had really thinned their numbers down to the bone. Since then, the Nirreth took a few, maybe every couple of months.

  Richter’s men never let go of their hatred of the Nirreth. Neither did Richter himself, if rumors could be believed. Disillusioned with their chances following that aborted war, they’d gone mercenary in the aftermath, seeming to blame the other humans for their failure as much as they did the Nirreth themselves. Richter’s men viewed the rebels with scorn, along with the skags and anyone else unfo
rtunate enough to have survived.

  The only thing they had in common with the other humans seemed to be their hatred of the Nirreth. While they seemed willing enough to raid the stores of others among their own race, they still did most of their stealing from the Nirreth holdings further south, coming north to hide and regroup, selling spoils to the highest bidder. Their real crime was the extortion-type prices they forced the skags to pay, especially for critical things like medicine and tools.

  They’d even take the odd job freeing slaves, it was said.

  For the right price, of course...and who wanted to trust their money to them?

  Anaze told Jet that if she ever ran into Richter or any of his people, she should run as fast as she could. He didn’t say it outright, but she got the impression he didn’t think females of her age were particularly safe with that lot, in particular.

  Anyway, for as far back as she could remember, Jet had been hearing from her own mother that having a common enemy still didn’t make all of the remaining humans their friends, or particularly safe. Her mother was also in the annoying habit of warning Jet almost daily that a sword would only do so much, if she was ever really threatened.

  Like Jet needed to be told.

  Still, in this case, she didn’t have the luxury to be picky.

  If help was being offered by someone human, she would take it...especially if it got her underground. When it came down to it, it was still a lot less frightening to be caught by one’s own kind than it was by the Nirreth.

  The devil you know maybe. Or maybe it’s just that some skag wasn’t likely to eat her...or to turn her into some kind of medical experiment while Jet was still breathing.

  So after a bare pause, Jet broke cover.

  She entered the main street, as there was no other way to reach that open manhole.

  Once she had, Jet threw every last ounce of speed she had left towards making it to that voice. Staring at the lifted metal cover, she felt another surge of that hope, jerking her legs even faster. The mere sight of that crack of darkness peering out of the ground felt like a lifeline, her only chance to survive.

  Nothing could be worse than being caught by the Nirreth.

  Just then, a sound echoed off the row of buildings. It was soft despite the high pitch, a bare murmur above Jet’s panting breaths, but she knew that sound. She would know it anywhere, even though until that exact moment, she’d only heard it from a distance.

  With that high, scream-like whisper overhead, came another warm flush of breeze.

  The culler was over her.

  Forgetting about her vague trepidation about who might be trying to help her out, she started running even faster for the eyes and hands of the skag she’d seen looking at her from the under the ground. Feeling the warm air wash over her a second time, this time close enough to whip her hair in stinging strands against her cheeks, Jet realized the hovercraft was descending.

  She let out a shriek, pumping her arms and legs faster.

  Her backpack and sword swung harder against her back and shoulders, in a rhythmic, swaying pattern that was probably leaving bruises by now.

  As Jet ran, the eyes watched her from the crack in the ground, white fingers holding up the metal plate. Jet noticed that the expression in those eyes looked different now. They looked worried, or maybe just like they were assessing her chances and not finding them good.

  Whoever they were, Jet agreed with them. The eyes and dim outline of a face looked too far away for what she could feel behind her.

  She barely had time to think that much when something caught hold of her foot.

  Yanking abruptly on her ankle as it climbed up her leg, the vine-like appendage jerked her backwards and up.

  Jet screamed as her feet left the paved road. She reached out with her arms, her fingers and arms splayed to grasp hold of something, anything, to keep her from leaving the earth behind her.

  There was nothing to grab hold of.

  Jet found herself being hauled backwards up into space, her leg and arms waving ineffectively in the air as she rose.

  Throughout the entire ascent, she didn’t stop screaming.

  She also didn’t stop trying to unsheath her sword.

  Jet landed hard on a metal deck. It felt as if she’d been thrown there bodily by two large men, each holding one half of her arms and her legs.

  For a long-seeming second, she sat on the ridged metal floor, panting, gripping the wall with one hand. She gripped the hilt of her sword in the other.

  The instant she could focus her eyes, blinking back the tears from the wind and her screaming as she rose in the air, Jet lurched drunkenly to her feet, holding the sword in front of her. Both of her hands gripped the hilt as soon as Jet pushed off from the wall.

  She could barely see the creature in front of her, but she heard a hiss as it backed off. She stepped towards the lit hatch door, moving sideways so that her eyes never left the tall, midnight blue-skinned shape in front of her. When she finally chanced a glance down, her heart sank. The hovercraft stood at around the fifth story of the nearest building.

  If she jumped, she’d die. And she didn’t see a ladder, or even the vine-like rope they’d used to haul her up.

  “Let me down!” she shouted, taking a step towards the creature with the sword.

  He slid gracefully back, moving with an incredible lightness for such a tall creature.

  “Let me down!” she insisted, louder. “I’ve broken no laws!

  Which wasn’t true of course. Just living underground, squatting in caves and growing their own food was technically against the law. Much less the poaching they did, or the bartering with others, including black marketeers. Really, the only way to live outside the Nirreth cities and not break the law was to work for the Nirreth directly and live in their assigned settlements, what humans called the ‘Hamster Cage.’ Even those people starved unless they cut corners.

  Jet knew that because her settlement traded with them for some of the staples they had no other way to get locally. Like rice. Flour. Even sugar on occasion.

  But the laws were just an excuse. The Nirreth must know just like Jet did that everyone broke them, pretty much every day. They picked up skags because they could.

  “Let me down!” Jet yelled again. “You have no right to keep me!”

  She tensed when the creature met her gaze with its large, black eyes. It gestured towards her, in one of the few Nirreth signs she knew.

  It was a peace gesture, an offering to parlay.

  “No,” she said. “No parley! Let me down...right now!”

  It took another step towards her, it’s three-fingered, claw-like hands held out carefully. When she didn’t move, it took another step, until it was in range of her sword.

  That time, Jet moved, swinging the sword expertly towards the creature’s upper body. The end of Black made a upward slash across the front of what would be a chest on a human. She felt the blade meet flesh somewhere near its shoulder, and sawed forward, throwing her weight forward to press it in deeper.

  The Nirreth hissed, louder and more angry-sounding.

  Grabbing the sharp end of the blade with its three-fingered claw, the Nirreth leapt backwards and to her right. The sword cut its hand of course, so it let the blade go, clutching its upper chest with its hurt hand. Jet saw a streak of color in the dark, where her blade sawed through its skin.

  Somehow the fact that their blood was red, too, made the whole thing finally seem real. She swung at it a second time, but the Nirreth moved faster, circling around her to avoid the arc of the blade. Its eyes appeared concentrated now, as they followed her sword.

  Jet adjusted to follow...

  But she hadn’t been watching its tail.

  She had just thrust the blade forward, narrowly missing its arm, when the snake-like whip caught hold of her from the other side. Wrapping around her arm, it flung Jet into the wall, smacking her head against the metal bulkhead. Stunned from the hit, she straightened, but not
before the tail uncoiled from her arm, then re-coiled around her wrist.

  Before she could even try to free herself, it jerked the blade and her body violently to the side. That time, it nearly threw her to the ground.

  She barely kept hold of the sword.

  Struggling against the muscled appendage, Jet tried to loosen its grip, wrestling first with her own arm, then trying to pry the tail off her skin. The deep-blue flesh seemed impervious to her jerks and grasping fingers. Solid muscle, even the very end of its tail was as thick as her lower arm, straining with effort under the dark-blue skin.

  Jet finally managed to twist her body sideways, gaining enough leverage and angle to use the sword on the tail itself. Before she could slash at it, however, another Nirreth approached from behind. It grasped hold of her free wrist with a three-fingered hand.

  She struggled with both of them as they tried to force her to drop the sword.

  She started backing away, towards the open hatch door, when a third Nirreth, one Jet hadn’t seen at all, emerged from the darkness of the deeper reaches of the hold. Ignoring her limbs altogether, it caught hold of the blade with another of those tails...

  ...and yanked it straight out of her fingers.

  Jet watched it go in disbelief.

  She’d never let go of her sword in a fight before. Never.

  Before she could lunge after it, the nearest one, the one whose shoulder still bled down its dark brown shirt, shoved her in the middle of her chest with one thick claw.

  It wasn’t a gentle nudge.

  Her feet left the ground as Jet flew straight backwards.

  The creature’s muscled arm propelled her so quickly, she barely knew what happened when her head and back slammed into the bulkhead a second time. That time, the blow stunned Jet for real. The backpack crushed into her back, making her gasp when it hit the bones of her spine.

  The wind knocked out of her, she leaned forward, clutching her stomach as she fought in air in ragged pants. For a few seconds, she couldn’t move at all.