They came for our dead

by Robert E Dudley II

  I turned the car down the freeway and got off at the next exit. Rather than leading to a city of any sort, the paved road only headed through some small, stony hills. I did find a red, wooden, two-story house, and there were no cars there, nor any sign of activity.

  I parked in front of it, then got out and hurried to kick in the front door, breaking the ornate glass with the ivy design on it. With shotgun in hand, I ascended the stairs and took a private tour of the bedrooms and bathroom. Evidently, a family lived there, because I found children’s rooms full of toys, painted in bright colors, the walls adorned with happy cartoon characters. Downstairs, the house was silent and empty, with no dead bodies to climb over.

  I dragged Brian up the stairs, cursing myself for not choosing a one-level home. He was all dead weight, his body just a mass of corruption. I decided he deserved to spend his last day in the master bedroom, on a comfortable, king-sized mattress. The closets were open, the doors practically off their hinges, revealing various clothing and women’s shoes, strewn about carelessly.

  I dropped him on the bed and stopped to catch my breath before I worked to make him comfortable. I placed two pillows behind his head, took his shoes off, and held my breath till the odor dissipated.

  I took my time walking to the car to gather the things he loved: his cigarettes, Pepsi, and canned olives. I spread them out on the comforter around him, lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth. He was still unconscious, but I hoped he would smell the mentholated, filtered smoke, and it might give him at least a small bit of pleasure before he took his last breath.

  I knew I was delaying the inevitable, yet I could not help it, for the two of us had been through a lot together. Finally, after a few moments that felt like an eternity, I removed the .5 from its holster. Tears rolled down my face as I nervously clicked off the safety. I had never killed anyone, had not even come close in my many years. Now, I was standing just a few feet from a man I knew, a helpless, lonely, elderly man, with the barrel of a gun pointed at his head.

  A week, I told myself. Just do this, and this time next week, I’ll be with the others. Perhaps they have a plan. Maybe we can all head out to the coast and find that island Brian and I were looking for. Who knows? Maybe there are even other people out there somewhere, looking for us just like we’re looking for them. The population was so small and the stores still so overstuffed with supplies that the remnant of humanity could live on Earth for many years, long enough to plant new gardens, to fill the ponds with new fish, and to breed and raise more livestock if any could be found. It’s more hope than I had yesterday, I told myself, much more.

  Still, as I looked down at Brian’s nearly lifeless body splayed out in front of me, it was difficult to do the one thing I had to do. I could not leave him there to suffer and die alone a few days later. I could not condemn him to wake up and discover he was in an unfamiliar room, surrounded by NASCAR posters and white, gauzy curtains that were not his own, catching the breeze of the blustery but warm fall day. I realized in that moment that I was being selfish; all that time, I’d kept him alive for myself, because I was frightened I would have no one else, and he had suffered terribly for it.

  The gun was an inch from his head now, the hammer pulled back.

  Brian’s head rolled to one side, and his tongue hung out of his mouth.

  I have to. I have to do this...don’t I?

  Crash!

  The noise came from a distance, and the house began to shake. Dust rained down from the ceiling, and the chest of drawers began to rock on its wooden feet. The planks in the floor beneath us began to split and buckle.

  In a panic, I ran to the stairwell that led down to the front door I had smashed in. When I did, I saw it, an alien, standing in the doorway and staring up at me. Its large, armored body tore the doorframe apart, and I reflexively emptied the .45 clip into the thing. I couldn’t miss, not from that close, but the shots were ineffective; the bullets didn’t even strike the creature and only disappeared in thin air as soon as they neared it.

  The alien had to bend over to enter, because its head almost scraped the ceiling. It bounded up the stairs with its long legs, easily taking them two or even three at a time. Confidently and powerfully, it brushed me back somehow, without even touching me. Power emanated from every pore of it, and the floor nearly gave way from its massive weight.

  I followed it into the room where Brian slept and quickly picked the shotgun up. Before I even realized what was happening, I was violently thrown against the back wall, near Brian’s head. I wanted to run, to get away from it and its otherworldliness, but I was held in place by some force, unable to move, save for the rising of the hairs on the back of my neck as I stared at the creature that was only a few feet away. I was face to face with a harbinger of death, of destruction, a slayer of my race, both dead and alive. What is it here? What does it want? I wondered. I tried to turn my face from it, but I could not.

  Suddenly, Brian’s unconscious body levitated from the bed and hung in the air. When the alien returned its gaze to me, I was lifted as well, floating next to Brian, just hanging in midair, motionless and helpless and stunned like some sort of unwilling magician’s assistant. I tried to kick, to move so I could fight or flee, but I could do neither.

  Noiselessly, the thing turned and walked back down the steps, dragging us behind it like two helium balloons, without any strings attached. Brian’s limp body banged against the door on the way down, and his wounds and infected limb began to bleed and leak again, spilling body fluids from his broken, swollen flesh. I heard him whimper, for he awoke when the agony of the impact against his sour body reached him through his unconsciousness, rousing him. I watched as bits of dead flesh dropped off him and fell to the floor below us in rotted, bloody clumps.

  Outside, as we hovered just inches above the gravel road that led to the house, the illuminated color in the alien’s armor changed. Our car was a dozen feet away. A line of light emitted from the thing, dancing on the ground under our feet before it slowly moved up our bodies. I felt nothing different as it bathed us with that mysterious light; it was neither warm nor cold and only offered slight pressure as its ethereal beams played through us. I feared it was some sort of alien trickery to turn us into slaves, to make us subservient to our invaders. I closed my eyes when the light reached my head, determined to will away any mind control it tried to use on me, but I felt nothing except the power of it leaving my body.

  When I could finally bear to open my eyes after that, the light was gone. My body felt as if I’d been dropped into a vat of warm, bubbling water, like a Jacuzzi. I felt good, invigorated, as if I’d enjoyed a week of uninterrupted, restorative sleep and was just crawling out of a warm bed. I felt strong, whole again. When I looked over at Brian, he grinned at me as his head lolled to one side, and I actually tried to smile back.

  In an instant, we were moving again, in tow behind the monster. We passed the car and carried on, moving to the grassy field in the back of the house. A rift suddenly opened in the sky above us there, its black maw crackling with power. Farther up, a saucer whirled in the air, and the alien raised one of its armored arms and looked up at the vessel. It drew near to the rift, and the strength of that tear in the cosmos seemed to shout at me. Somehow, it felt loud, not as a volume I heard with my ears but rather one I sensed with every nerve of my body. Then, before I had time to blink again, the alien stepped into the rift, pulling us in with it.

  There was only silence as I lay, facedown, in some sort of field. Amber and green waves of grass danced as a slight breeze teased them, and a song seemed to be playing in my head. There were no lyrics but only a melody, one I had never heard before. When I jerked my head to the side, drool fell from my mouth and splashed on the ground. Where am I? How did I… What am I doing here? The questions were futile, though, because I could not remember.

  I saw a tree stump nearby and crawled to it, my body racked with weakness, demanding rest. I needed to move, but my muscles and bon
es, eager for respite, fought me. I could not remember where I was. It was all so confusing, and I was disoriented, as if my mind was far behind my body somewhere, fighting to catch up. I coughed and cleared my throat, then found the strength to roll over. I lay there on my back, trying to catch my breath, but when I stared up at the sky, I realized it was all wrong. It was not blue or gray but a color I’d never seen before. The clouds, just misshapen bands of azure, moved slowly over me.

  I sat up and grabbed some soil with my hands. It was rich, grainy nodules of green. I threw the dirt down and lifted my hands to my nose for a sniff. The earth smelled volcanic and burnt. When I was close enough, I pulled at the stump and eased up on my legs, to a standing position. The music in my head was louder now, dizzying me. I grabbed my head and felt the ground move under my feet, and I closed my eyes till that feeling past. “Stop!” I said aloud, but the symphony in my head continued, seemingly growing louder every second. I opened my eyes again and took in my surroundings. I was in a wide open field, a supposedly endless expanse of waist-high foliage. There were no leaves on the grass, just two or three circular growths on each frond, full of deep violet veins.

  Weakly, I turned and saw Brian’s body near me, lying in an indentation in the grass. I was sure he was dead, because he was perfectly still. As I looked at him, though, something stirred in me, a memory of what we’d gone through.

  It all came back to me like a nightmare, a traumatic horror film that wouldn’t leave my memory: the alien attack, the dead being summoned back to Earth, and greenish-yellow slime oozing out of Brian’s swollen, bloodied arm. I was sure there was no way his weakened body could have survived it all, and while a sadness tickled my emotions for a moment at the loss of yet another friend, I was glad I was not the one who ultimately had to end his life with a pull of that .45 trigger.

  The alien was twenty or so feet beyond him, its great armored body facing away from me, lying on its left side, still and unmoving. I didn’t understand that. Surely the thing is used to traveling vast distances, I pondered. It isn’t as if space travel should give it a case of the bends. In fact, I could not imagine the things it had seen in its lifetime, could not fathom its experiences. Surely a little jump through a black hole wouldn’t bother it, I thought, yet there it was, as still and lifeless as the decrepit human beside it.

  Nevertheless, I knew it was my one chance to put some distance between us. I rapidly patted myself down, searching for my trusty pistol, but it was not there. I was happy to feel the handle of the knife still snugly stashed at my side though. I pulled it and smiled at the comforting sound of serrated blade being freed from its sheath. I ran to the alien, gripping the weapon with both hands, ready to slide the sharp point in any vulnerable place in its armor, eager to thrust the blade into its cruel head and put an end to it once and for all.

  As I passed, I was shocked to see movement coming from Brian, his arms slowly reaching up so he could touch his face. What was even more amazing was that his limb and his hand were almost normal, the gangrene gone and the red, swollen tissue quickly repairing itself. That would have given me pause, but there was too much going on. The music was shouting, so loud I was surprised it did not wake them both up. Even louder, though, was the anger welling in me. I was so intent on revenge that even Brian’s miraculous healing did not concern me in that moment. Even if that alien performed some miraculous surgery on my traveling companion, it was too little, too late.

  The alien lay in its impervious armor. I could feel its strength, but its great mind seemed dormant. It breathed and took in air, and its undersized forearms moved over its body. The glowing armor and the highly intelligent mind that ran the thing seemed to be on shut down, glitching out, as if the difficult journey to wherever we were had forced a reboot. Hell, I don’t know what’s going on with the overgrown cockroach, I thought, but I had to take the opportunity to put an end to it.

  I reached out and, with great caution, ran my hands over the length of its body, looking for a weakness, a fault, a crack. When I found none, I searched the tall grass, pushing it aside. I hoped to discover a rock, a makeshift hammer to pound on the hilt of the knife pommel. I scrabbled through the fields, overturning and moving huge swaths of vegetation aside, digging into the sulfuric soil. As I did, small gashes appeared in the skin of my hands, courtesy of the sharp blades of grass or something in the dirt. I did not care about those small injuries, for I was too focused on striking back, of taking my one chance while our enemy lay before me, helpless. I planned to make good use of every advantage I had against the advanced species, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief when my sore hand finally grasped a large hunk of dark, glassy rock.

  As if in protest, the music grew to a crescendo. It made no sense and had no rhythm or beat; it was just loud chords crashing down on me, trying to shatter my resolve. No matter, I thought, as I placed the carbon steel blade against what I was sure was the alien’s spinal cord, if it had one at all. I raised the shiny rock and pounded down with all my might, again and again. The force field could not defend its owner, but still, my measly knife did nothing.

  “Peter…” said a voice, quiet and calm, cutting through the music, the chaotic, disharmonious concert in my mind. “Don’t. Not now. Just put the rock down and come back here.” The words did not waft into my ears from the air; they were spoken entirely into my head. That was one thing I was sure of.

  I turned and saw Brian sitting up, his head and shoulders just above the grass, shining with health.

  With a perfectly healed arm, he removed his glasses and flung them into the weeds several feet away. “Won’t need those anymore,” he silently said, his mouth never moving but his message far louder than the music that haunted me.

  “Bullshit,” I said aloud, not willing to squander my one chance. I smashed the rock into the knife and struck it again and again. With each downward blow, I thought of a casualty that stung my heart: my wife, my children, my father and mother, all my dead relatives who’d been brought back as those corrupted beasts, and Isabella and Dennis. After several attempts, the gray carbon tip sheared off, and the rock slipped, banging painfully into my hand. Cursing, I threw it and the useless blade away. I looked down and realized, much to my chagrin and dismay, that I had not even made the slightest dent in that armor, not even a chink.

  Frustrated and enraged, I got up and backed away from the alien and moved next to Brian. When I knelt down beside him, I could only marvel at his newly restored health. Gone was all the gangrene, and he was not demanding a death stick for his nicotine addiction. He seemed more coherent, younger and more alert, yet I had no idea how I knew that just by looking at him. What the…? I thought as I clearly read his condition, as if I was a well-trained physician and psychiatrist. How is any of this possible? I had somehow assessed the alien’s damaged armor as well, and now I was giving Brian a physical.

  He smiled and looked at his hands, pink and plump and smooth, and he wiggled his fingers around, no longer swollen and pained.

  “What the hell happened to us? Where the hell are we?” I asked.

  Brian looked up and then reached into his pockets to withdraw the several crumpled cigarette packets that had been there for quite some time. “Don’t need these anymore either,” his words flowed into my mind again. “It doesn’t look like we’re on Earth anymore, prob’ly not even in the same time. The sun is different, the atmosphere just…odd.”

  “How are you doing that?” I asked audibly.

  “Doin’ what?”

  “Putting the words in my mind. I know we aren’t on Earth anymore, by the way. While you were out, almost dead, that alien dragged us through the rift.”

  “I just… Well, suddenly, I can send you my thoughts, telepathy or something,” he replied. “It’s just easier than talkin’ somehow.”

  “Do you hear that music, that loud melody? There is no form to it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before, but it hasn’t stopped since I got here, and it’s driving me nuts,
” I said, clasping my hands over my ears as if that might stop it.

  He looked entirely different without his glasses, and I was used to seeing him with wounds, claw marks, rips, and tears that were no longer there. There were only healed, pink scars, and his entire body seemed to glisten with vitality. “You try it.”

  “Try what?”

  “Put words in my mind,” he suggested, grinning at me and enjoying the moment. He seemed to know something I didn’t, as if he was in on some inside joke and couldn’t wait to share the punchline. Not only that, but one thing the alien did not correct was his ego; he loved proving that his mind was, once again, sharper than mine.

  “Okay…” I thought. “Can you hear me now?” I asked, even though I already knew he could, because I somehow felt that the message had been received.

  He grinned again and nodded. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “So what do we do next?” I communicated to him, secretly thrilled with that new ability.

  He pointed at the alien. “For starters, let’s get away from that thing and go on a little tour, see what else is here. We had to be brought here for a reason. I don’t imagine this is their home world. It feels entirely like something else.”

  I had to agree with Brian on that point. I assumed the alien world would be fully constructed and civilized, with straight lines and perfect angles, towering buildings made of that same glimmering metal they used for their saucers. I was certain they were an ancient race, far older than humans, and they were advanced enough to figure out space travel, if not how to move between time and dimensions. It didn’t make sense that a race like that would live in such a barren area, with nothing but those strange weeds everywhere we looked.