Veezee: The Invasion
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Ed Halloran pulled the old restroom trick on the blue alien again. He figured it was probably for the last time since the aliens are very intelligent. He’d have to come up with something else the next time he needed to get away from his personally assigned slime.
Then Ed, along with Marilee Sharp and Richie Taylor, went to Needles to check out reports that a few citizens were returning to the abandoned city. They found some of those returnees in a large shopping mall near Highway 40. When Ed and his lieutenants found them, they were gathered around a large wallscreen at the front of a store.
One man in the group noticed Ed approaching. “What’s going on? What are you all doing here?” Ed asked.
“We’re watching a news bulletin,” said the man.
“No, I mean what are you doing back in Needles? This place hasn’t been cleared for reoccupation.”
“Look, Mister! I live here. I own a house. Besides, nobody told me to leave in the first place. I just left when I thought Needles was going to be wiped out.”
“Maybe you weren’t told to leave but it has been made pretty clear that it’s too dangerous for people to stay this close to the rocket fleet.”
The fellow was becoming somewhat annoyed at Ed. “Hey, it’s better here than everywhere else now, since the aliens moved out all over the country! This is the only place they aren’t!”
Ed was a bit irked. “It’s not the aliens—it’s the rockets. They’re full of toxic fuel and some of it has already leaked. A fire would make another toxic cloud. We’re going to clear this place again and this time we’ll have to put up barricades.”
“Ed!” yelled Marilee. There was enough urgency in her voice that it brought Ed’s attention the video screen.
“What is it?” he asked.
“This commentator—he says Ms. Sisk just announced that we have to build voice translators for all the aliens in the world.”
“Huh?” Ed started listening to the commentator telling how the nation would have to commit about twenty percent of its budget to building the devices and that it was going to require both increased taxes and a longer workweek for the average citizen. The commentator said instant polls initially showed high resistance to the scheme all around the world, but that opposition was quickly waning as the sages warned that not providing translators would probably push Veezee into battle with humans. Besides that, Ed knew there was an implied threat of forced sensitivity training for citizens who didn’t comply voluntarily. “They’ve gone too far now,” said Ed. “Whether it shows in the polls or not, this is going to build resentment!”
Then Ed had his lieutenants get the group’s attention and Richie Taylor announced that they would all have to leave Needles and the surrounding area because of the government’s edict. “We will be back tomorrow,” said Taylor. “We expect all of you to be gone by then. If you can’t go because you don’t have a place, stop at the Assistance Office at Camp Kingman.”
When the crowd began to murmur, Taylor warned them that stronger measures would be used. “If we have to, we’ll install a repeller ring around the whole city.”
As they drove back to Kingman on Highway 40, they were all surprised by the amount of traffic on the highway, most of which was going toward Needles.
“I think we’re going to have trouble keeping people out,” said Marilee. “I’ll bet most of those people are going back to Needles.”
“Yeah, they will,” said Richie. “I might as well see the transport people about the repeller as soon as we get back.”
“No. Don’t do that,” said Ed. “We’ll warn them it’s dangerous but I won’t be a party to driving folks from their homes.”
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It was pretty much the same all over—private resentment and public support. People confided only in friends they trusted. It wasn’t just the voice translator issue, either. Just about everybody feared and despised aliens and nobody wanted the smelly intruders in their neighborhood. They feared saying as much to strangers, nor would they indicate their true feelings to the Poll Channel of PNN. Fear consumed the American spirit.
Fear bred secrecy and that is why no agency of the government or the army knew about the resistance groups at first. It is also why each resistance group felt very much alone, because none of the groups knew about any of the others.
One of these groups established a base in deep east Texas, in a national park known as The Big Thicket. The park was rare virgin forest, with brush so thick that humans could hardly make their way to its interior and baggy, shuffling aliens certainly could not. They called themselves the Rabbles because it sounded a lot like rebels, even though they weren’t completely certain just who they rebelled against. They weren’t even sure they could properly be called rebels if they only fought against the invaders, the Veezee.
The Rabbles were organized and led by a Houston businessman, Jamal Jefferson. The group included Jefferson’s three sons and one daughter and a few of his business associates, as well as several friends of the younger Jeffersons.