by Maxey, Phil
“Fiona, maybe take it easy for the next few days?” Said Zach.
“I’m fine, who’s helping.” Said Fiona disappearing through the basement doorway. Cal and Michael followed her back down into the basement.
“Might be an idea to pull the truck and pickup as close to the side of the house as possible.” Said Brad to Zach.
“Sounds good, I’ll just take a quick look around if that’s ok and get right on that.’ Said Zach, walking up the main stairs to the second floor.
“You weren’t joking about these rooms,” Said Ray, looking into a room with a double bed, dresser and shelves. “It was a shame leaving the penthouse but this will do nicely.” Ray sat on the end of the bed.
“You and Jacob get to share again.” Said Zach with a smile.
“Maybe I’ll take the floor.” Said Ray dejected.
Zach had a quick look in the other rooms and then went downstairs to move the vehicles and help the others with the supplies.
Dee walked into one of the rooms at the back of the house and put his backpack on the single bed. It wasn’t a large room and even in the gloom it reminded him of his own room back home. Looking around it he saw there were a few black and white pictures on the walls, one of which was of a man in uniform, Dee wasn’t sure if it was Brad or maybe his father. Dee knew he should unpack but still didn’t feel completely safe to do so. He thought to himself maybe he will just keep his stuff in his backpack for now. Standing up he looked out the window just managing to see through a small gap in one of the wooden planks. In the large garden at the back a wind turbine stood proud in the center of a large rectangular area part sand part grass, the blades turning at a slow but constant pace. Beyond that was a single story workshop area, which enveloped the garden on two sides to the west and north. Small and dirty windows were staggered along a stretch of it and on top it was covered by a series of solar panels. Various thick looking cables ran across from the turbine and solar panels into the workshop.
“Dee, you hungry?” Drifted up the stairs from who Dee thought was Michael. Leaving his backpack he ran to the top of the stairs and shouted in the direction he thought it came from, and then walked down into the hallway.
“Watch out Dee.” Said Cal as he walked past holding three boxes, placing them down near the front door.
“Where’s Brad?” Said Dee.
“Showing Abbey all the tech.” Said Cal. Dee followed him back down into the basement where Abbey and Brad were talking.
“I’ve got a number of short wave receivers, some good old ones and a few more of the portable types,” Said Brad pointing at part of the table with some metal boxes on it. “Everything connects to the broadcast antennae on the roof. All the signals I get I funnel through the computers so I can control everything with software. There’s no Internet of course but these babies” Brad turned and put his hand on a small rack of server boxes. “Still make me feel connected.”
“How do you power it all?” Said Abbey, as Cal, Michael and Zach all walked through the open steel door with arms filled with boxes.
“I’ve got three lithium-ion home batteries, two outback and one in here. To actually generate the power I use whatever I can, got a wind turbine out back, and my workshop is covered in solar panels. I’ve also got two gasoline generators, and plenty of gas to last me…well a long time. Foods a bigger problem then power, and water is a bigger problem than food.” Said Brad.
“Most of the stores we have seen have been well stocked with both still.” Said Abbey with an enquiring tone.
“The problem isn’t the availability of it, it’s getting it with the E.L.F’s around,” Said Brad. “You see all the E.L.F’s I know of are carnivores, and seeing most of the earth’s animals evolved into something which was hard to kill, humans became the easy option. Because of that it was the big population centers which drew most of the E.L.F’s, even a small city like Roswell.” Abbey swallowed hard. “Don’t worry young lady we are quite safe in here. Please sit down, take it all for a spin Zach tells me you are quite the computer wizard.”
“Yeah she’s great with computers!” Said Dee speaking up from the bottom of the stairs.
“Dee, come and take a look at all this cool stuff.” Said Abbey beckoning him over.
“Mr. Crenshaw…” Dee started to say.
“Call me Brad.”
“Can I charge my computer tablet anywhere? I miss playing games…I know it’s dumb with all that’s happened.” Said Dee looking guilty.
“Not dumb at all, we all need to remember what our lives were like, sure have you got the right cable for it? If so you can plug it into any these ports.” Said Brad. Dee’s face lit up and he ran up the stairs.
“I’ll be right back.” Shouted Dee.
CHAPTER 26
The group all sat in the candle lit living room, on various chairs and a sofa eating a stew that Michael had made. Fiona looked at the black stained hole that was the fireplace.
“Nothing more I would like to do than get that fire burning, but the smoke would literally be a smoke signal to our canine friends and whatever else is out there.” Said Brad, Fiona gave an accepting smile and carried on eating. Silence fell upon everyone as they eagerly chucked down the stew. “So you guys were all locked up until recently?” Ray choked a bit on his food.
“Not me, I served the good people of Baldo New Mexico for twenty years.” Said Jacob.
“You’re a cop?” Said Brad.
“Sheriff” Said Jacob.
“I see, I just mention it because it’s remarkable to me that the world ended and most of you had no idea.” Brad looked around the group. “I’m not sure if that was for the better or worse.”
“From what we learned, I’m thinking for the better,” Said Zach. Brad nodded.
“So what do you know?” Said Brad. Zach and Abbey took turns telling Brad what they had learned over the previous forty-eight hours. “So you know part of the story, but you don’t know how it all played out with the people and the military?” The group shook their heads in the negative. “I had been running a weekly internet radio show called ‘Roswell Central’, which was basically me trying to put out into the world what the government were really up to.” Said Brad, Fiona shifted in her chair. “Yeah I know what you are thinking, I’m one of tin-hat brigade.”
“Pretty much.” Said Ray. Abbey shot him a frown.
“No, no it’s ok, I’m used to it. My father worked as a contractor on the nearby airbase, and on his death bed…which was 1987 he told me some things, as well as leaving me a bunch of official papers which he found shall we say when he was working on the base during the fifties and sixties. The only stipulation he gave me was that our family name should never be associated with those papers.”
“Aliens right?” Said Michael in an enthusiastic tone “No, I’m not making fun, everyone knows the little guys from another planet crashed near here.”
“Well that’s the thing, the papers my father gave me mentioned nothing about aliens, what they did mention however was advanced propulsion systems, the kind that you can travel to other planets with. It was a prototype that crashed near here.’
“So no aliens?” Said Michael disappointedly.
“Oh there are definitely aliens…” Said Brad.
“I knew it.” Said Michael punching the air.
“Just none that crashed at Roswell that I’m aware of,” Said Brad smiling “But back to more important matters, anyway I got these papers and it opened my eyes to what was really going on in the so called secret government. Back then I just broadcast my ‘show’ to a few on the Ham radio, then the Internet happened and the rest as they say is history. I was receiving reports from other conspiracy theorists around the world at the end last year, reports which nobody was taking seriously, at least not officially.”
“Do you think the CIA, DOD knew what was happening?” Said Fiona trying to keep her tone neutral.
“Undoubtedly.” Said Brad.
“So why di
dn’t they get the government to act sooner?” Said Cal.
“My sources told me that what happened was a result of a black project that got out of hand, and the other branches of the secret services wanted to shut it down without anyone the wiser. Avoid embarrassment and all that. Problem is they waited too long.” Brad paused then continued. “Even when it hit the mainstream, the whole situation was ridiculed with the press putting it all down to chemicals in the water or some such nonsense. But the governments largely ignored it until the first waves of attacks happened back in February. First one was in southern Spain, a small town was attacked by an E.L.F which they said used to be a locust, but had become these two to three-foot long flying spiked insects that attacked as a swarm, imagine flying piranhas and you get the picture, anyway most of the town was wiped out, women, children there was no difference to the creatures attacking them. After that the world sat up and took notice but more and more attacks were happening globally and the frequency of attacks was increasing weekly. The simpler life forms that changed first, took out a lot of the more complex un-evolved life forms before they themselves evolved, which in turn took out a lot of the simpler evolved life forms, it was complete chaos. All life on this planet had been thrown back into the melting pot.”
“So what you’re saying is that man went from being at the top of the food chain to the bottom in a matter of a few months.” Said Jacob putting his bowl down.
“Yes...” Said Brad with a sigh. “The scientists got together in May in Geneva…”
“We read about that.” Said Abbey.
“Yeah, all the brightest minds humanity had to offer, and the conclusion they came to was there’s nothing they could do to stop it. Something had effected the genome of most of the animal life and they said to reverse it would be impossible because it would mean genetically mutating all those creatures back to their original state, which not only did they not have the technology to do, but with all the creatures out there running wild they didn’t have the means to do either. So the message to all humanity was try to survive and kill as many of the E.L.F’s as possible, essentially ending all animal life on the planet for humanities survival. That didn’t go down so well with some folk.” One of the candles flickered and died making the light in the room even dimmer. Brad got up grabbed another candle from a box, lit it and sat back down again. “Then came the dumbest idea in our history, and when I say ‘our’ I mean mankind’s. The decision was taken to create huge camps all around the world, which would defend as much of humanity as possible. Like you mentioned, there were five created in the United States, two in the UK, twelve across mainland Europe etc. It varied but each one could hold around fourteen million people. And covered forty or so miles square…” Brad went to continue but could see Zach was about to say something.
“My math’s has never been that great, but last I heard the population of this country was around three hundred million, five times…” Said Zach, Brad interrupted.
“Meant a whole lot of people were left outside the camps.”
“Jesus” Said Ray.
“How did they decide who got into a camp and who was left outside?” Said Abbey looking anxious.
“They supposedly used a raffle system, random selection and all that, but the rich and powerful all somehow managed to ‘win’ and get in, not that it helped them any.” Said Brad.
“What do you mean?” Said Abbey.
“That brings me back to the ‘dumb’ part, I mentioned some of this to Zach earlier, all of the E.L.F’s at least the ones I’m aware of are carnivores, they go to where the most meat is. By putting everyone in one place, they just up a huge sign saying…” Said Brad, Fiona interrupted.
“Yeah we get it.”
“But you said these areas were well defended?” Said Zach.
“They were, latest state of the art weaponry, each camp had it’s own runway, underground storage facility, factories and a hundred and ten-foot high wall running the entire length of the perimeter, with manned and automated machine gun posts. Some were even built into mountains. Wait I’ll show you…” Said Brad standing and walking down to the basement and returning with a few pieces of paper with faded images on them. “This one is Portland.” Brad handed Zach an aerial image of a huge complex, made up of newly built multistory houses laid out in a grid formation, intermingled with larger buildings. There were also rows and rows of tanks and other military vehicles. Zach found it hard to believe it was only forty miles square in size, as the grid seemed to run on forever. Lower down in the image was a huge concrete wall with pill boxes two thirds of the height, roughly every fifty yards. In front of the wall was a ditch similar in depth as the wall was high. The whole scene to Zach looked like a futuristic medieval castle.
“And that wasn’t enough defense?” Said Zach. Handing the images to Cal.
“The problem was they had no idea what they were up against, all of this weaponry was designed to fight humans, not creatures that had evolved million years in a few months.”
“Yeah but we put those canines down with the M4s?” Said Zach.
“That we did, but that was one type of E.L.F and maybe ten we were up against. Don’t get me wrong, I watched those canine fucks take out…well kill a lot of the people in this town, but these camps attracted thousands of E.L.F’s, made up of hundreds of different types of creature, with many different kinds of capabilities.” Said Brad.
“Capabilities?” Said Jacob.
“Ultimately this is what did for those camps. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told by the guys holding out in the other camps. Think of all the abilities that some animals had, for example echolocation in bats, these critters could find objects roughly seventeen meters ahead of them, now make that a hundred meters, and make the bat itself the size of a man with a twenty-foot wing span. And then there’s the other stuff…” Said Brad looking down and looking every bit his fifty-three years.
“More?” Said Fiona.
“I have multiple reports, of E.L.F’s showing signs of advanced thinking, some of the attacks on the camps by more than one E.L.F showed strategic planning. There have also been signs of these things forming social groups, I’ve not seen any hard evidence of that myself but it has to be a possibility. It’s one thing if the nine-foot high creature with claws is a mindless beast, it’s a whole other kind of scary if it looks you in the eye and knows who you are.” Said Brad.
Different members of the group shook their heads, lost in their own thoughts, and everyone seemed to sigh at almost the same time.
“So basically it’s the end of the world. I knew it would happen.” Said Ray.
“You said you had contact with the remaining two camps? They are surviving?” Said Zach.
“Barely, Portland is in a worst state than Austin, they are down to maybe twenty thousand people, I give them maybe a few weeks. If it wasn’t for the nukes I doubt there would be any humans left alive on this planet, and that even includes all of you.”
“We heard they were dropped on hotspots?” Said Abbey.
“’Hotspots’ meant camps, unfortunately. Those particular camps were overrun, and then the E.L.F’s attracted more of their kind, it couldn’t of been an easy decision but it might of saved the human race, at least given us all some more time.” Said Brad. Abbey noticed Dee’s head was down, with his knees up against his face, she put her arm on his shoulder.
“Question is, what do we do now?” Said Cal. Before anyone could answer Abbey interjected.
“Dee, you must be tired, maybe now’s a good time to get some rest?” He solemnly nodded, slowly got up and walked upstairs.
Zach’s expression was one of deep thought. “Can’t the Portland people get to Austin?”
“Twenty thousand people across the country? Even without the E.L.F’s that wouldn’t work,” Said Brad “It’s just bad luck that the two remaining camps are the furthest apart.”
“An airlift?”
“They don’t have the fuel anymore.�
�� Replied Brad.
“Did they try chemical or biological weapons against the E.L.F’s?” Said Fiona the words rushing out of her mouth.
“They tried both at various locations across the planet, sometimes it worked, sometimes it had no effect, there were just too many E.L.F’s to take out.” Said Brad. Silence enveloped the living room once again, the candles almost making their own noise.
“Austin is surviving?” Said Abbey, but before Brad could answer Zach spoke.
“What about people who were left outside the camps, do you have any contact with anyone?” Brad looked at Abbey first.
“Austin is holding it’s own, they started with the lowest population, that might of helped their cause, and they have a large underground complex, also for some reason they haven’t been attacked by huge numbers of E.L.F’s like the other camps were. As for people outside, well there are small pockets of survivors dotted around, mostly keeping their heads down, that’s pretty much how I’ve survived, I used to be off the governments grid, now I’m off the E.L.F’s grid.” He smiled at these last few words. “Cal, is it?” Cal nodded. “You asked what do we do now? Well that’s up to you and your friends, I’m doing ok here, I’ve got supplies to last a few years. If you’re thinking of fighting back? There is no fighting back, there’s just not being one of those bastards meal today, or tomorrow or the day after.” Brad got up “Anyone want a drink? I’ve got some whiskey and spirits around here somewhere. I don’t usually drink, but then I don’t usually have guests.”
“I’ll have a shot.” Said Ray. Brad indicated to the others.
“Sure, whatever spirits you got.” Said Fiona.
“Same here.” Said Abbey.
“Yup” Said Michael. Zach, Cal and Jacob shook their heads. Brad picked up a candle and disappeared into the gloom of the other half of the house.
“So what’s the plan?” Said Jacob in a steady tone of voice. Brad could be heard opening and closing cupboards, muttering to himself.