Day of Reckoning

by Isaiah Lee

  Six fighter jets were spotted on the opposite side of the nest. As they flew over the target, each fighter released a payload of bombs. Fire erupted from the blackish-blue surface; the patrolling ships took no notice of the attackers. They circled the shape. As the fireball cleared, energy beams began to reach from the patrolling ships down to the shape in the ground.

  About a quarter mile away, the convoy rolled to a stop. The helicopters hovered at a safe distance, forming a half-moon shape around one side of the target. Soldiers began to unload from the APCs and trucks. Thousands of soldiers stood at the ready, expecting another army of foot soldiers to emerge as they had in Asheville.

  Only, the army of foot soldiers never came.

  The fleet of interstellar fighter ships never came.

  There were only five circling ships – a little larger than the typical fighter but still smaller than the troop transports seen in other places – and the circular shape in the ground. It almost appeared to be buried in the ground. Partially, anyway. It didn’t appear to have crash-landed as several others had.

  As the smoke faded from the explosions, Neil’s eyes widened. The nest suffered absolutely no damage. Unlike the other ships, which were susceptible to modern weaponry, this larger ship appeared to be invulnerable.

  Neil began trying to formulate a plan on how to breach the structure when something began to happen. The change was slow at first, but there was something happening.

  The circling ships began to hover in place above the structure. As they did, the energy beams disappeared. What few buildings remained around the nest began to rattle and collapse. Dust began to billow upward from around the ship.

  Then the ship itself began to rise.

  That’s when they saw it. This was no ship. This was a gargantuan creature of a size unlike anything that had ever walked the Earth before. It was over three-hundred feet across in diameter. As it rose, a short, stocky body appeared, followed by two legs and four tentacles for arms. Each tentacle was nearly as long as its body was across. Four glowing orange eyes were arranged in a two-by-two pattern, with two underneath the others, and were directly in the center of the creature’s body.

  Its eyes turned toward the army standing in front of it and it emitted a screeching noise that nearly burst eardrums at their distance. James pulled a radio from its position beside him and spoke clearly and quickly. “Load up! Get back in your vehicles!”

  The creature swung its tentacles wildly in the air. At its current position, it would only take a couple of steps for it to be in range of the foot soldiers.

  “Aim for the eyes!” Jason called out.

  James relayed the message. “Aim for the eyes. The top is invulnerable. Aim for the eyes!”

  The creature swung a tentacle outward and connected with a helicopter that had ventured too close. It swatted the chopper with ease, like a man swatting a gnat. It used two of its other tentacles to cover its eyes just as a volley of missiles shot toward the creature.

  They struck the creature’s tentacles; it recoiled slightly from the impact but otherwise appeared unharmed.

  Fifteen fighter jets arrived and joined the original six; they flew in formation around the creature as they launched missiles at its legs. The creature buckled from the force of the blows but it never lost its footing.

  The two free tentacles lashed out again; one caught a fighter jet mid-flight and instantly crushed it to an explosive pulp. The other struck the tail of a fighter jet, sending the craft spiraling toward the Earth. The pilot and co-pilot both ejected, but neither managed to open the chute fully before slamming into the unforgiving rubble of a building below.

  Tanks began firing, centering their shots toward the tentacles covering the creature’s eyes. Thick, green liquid began oozing from wounds on the tentacles. It moved closer, one massive step at a time, to the resistance forces.

  As the fluid poured from the creature’s wounds, the five ships surrounding the creature shot their energy beams toward the wounds. The oozing slowed, then stopped outright.

  “They’re healing that thing!” Karen yelled.

  James redirected the firepower to the five satellite ships. They began taking fire as missiles slammed into them and machine guns were directed toward them. One of the ships started glowing green, the same color as the energy beam. It was attempting to heal itself.

  The effort proved futile as the craft exploded and chunks of the strange metal began to rain to the Earth.

  “Hell yeah!” Karen said excitedly.

  Jason nodded, although nobody was looking at him to see the movement. “If we can knock out the other four ships, that creature can be destroyed.”

  The creature swung its two free tentacles again. One was just barely in range enough to crush a tank. It lifted its massive tentacle to reveal the pancaked vehicle. The other connected with a helicopter. It exploded upon contact with the limb; pieces of the fuselage slammed into a nearby chopper. The Chinook began to spiral out of control, the rear rotor having been irreparably damaged. It crashed to the ground in a massive fireball, killing every person on board.

  The fighter jets came in for another volley, downing two more of the healer ships.

  The alien stopped swinging its tentacles as its body reared back. It uncovered its eyes long enough for them glow brighter, almost too bright to look at. Then, before firepower could be redirected at the exposed blobs, the creature let out another screech. Four orange beams projected from its eyes, effectively destroying anything they touched.

  They cut through several buildings before slicing through the squadron of tanks and APCs. Anything the beam touched immediately disintegrated from the highly concentrated energy burst. A total of seventeen tanks and eleven APCs were obliterated from the beams.

  The beams visibly weakened as the creature closed its massive eyes. Its energy was spent, but only temporarily. If it had time to gather its strength back, it would most definitely attack in this fashion again.

  President Neil yelled into the radio again, giving the remainder of his forces orders. The APCs were to immediately fall back to a safe distance. They didn’t provide enough firepower to justify putting that many lives in danger. All other troop transports had already retreated to a safe distance once the creature emerged from its position on the ground.

  Second, the fighter jets were to sweep back in and attack the last two healer ships. All other forces were to target the tentacles that returned to guarding the creature’s eyes. It was doubtful that all damage done could be repaired as fast as it was done.

  Within seconds, both healers were targeted and destroyed.

  The tanks and helicopters began firing on the creature’s tentacles again. It wailed in pain as the green fluid oozed from its wounds again. The caustic fluid splashed onto the ground by the gallon.

  The landscape was fiery now; smoke was thick and began to make visibility difficult. Much of the city had been destroyed before this battle. What remained was freshly alight and burned quickly on the clear, breezy winter day.

  The two free tentacles waved wildly through the air as the creature continued its slow walk toward the resistance army. It swatted two more helicopters from the air with one as it slammed the other onto another tank.

  The F-22 Raptors looped back around and loosed another volley of missiles into the creature. One of the tentacles covering its eyes was severed completely; the other was damaged so badly that control was lost. It fell to the ground and hung limp from the creature’s body, bouncing along as the creature moved.

  An ear-splitting screech permeated the air. The creature was badly hurt and was beginning to panic. Its eyes began to glow that sickening orange as they had done before.

  The second its eyes were uncovered, the incessant machine gun fire and missile explosions tore through the gelatinous membranes of two of the eyes. Orange fluid burst from the creature’s face and poured onto the ground below. It didn’t appear the fluid was corrosive. Instead, the orange fluid was ext
remely flammable.

  Fire consumed the creature’s legs as its eye-goo splashed to the burning ruins at its feet. It stumbled on otherwise sturdy legs, trying to avoid the flames licking at its body. Another volley of missiles destroyed the other two eyes. More flammable goo produced higher and hotter flames.

  As the creature wavered again, the remaining F-22 Raptors swooped in for the death blow.

  Chapter 44

  A barrage of missiles struck the enormous creature in its right leg. It buckled and began to fall. The massive, round cranium crashed into a row of burned-out shops. Dust and debris filled the air as the creature came to rest in a position similar to how it was found.

  The legs, tentacles, and body were protected by the impenetrable dome that was the creature’s head. Cheers sounded through the ranks but were short lived.

  A sort of energy wave began to pulsate from the creature’s head. It was similar to heat waves radiating off a car on a hot summer day. They were invisible save for ripples in the air. The ground began to shake as vibrations pulsed from the downed creature.

  Green energy suddenly burst from the creature’s head, creating a cylindrical beam that extended directly up through the atmosphere. Clouds began to form around the beam as the sky started to swirl. Clouds became dense and dark; on an otherwise clear day, a tornado of sorts had formed with an energy beam at its epicenter. Instead of hopping around and causing havoc, the windstorm and energy beam kept their cranial position.

  “What’s going on?” Karen asked.

  “I have no clue,” Jason admitted. He was nearly shaking as he watched the horrifying sight in front of him. “But it can’t be good.”

  As suddenly as the beam had appeared, it stopped. The pulsating vibrations in the ground stopped, as did the nearly invisible waves generating from the blackish surface. Clouds began to fade.

  The creature was motionless and silent. “Did it die?” Karen squirmed in her uncomfortable seat, her body aching from being crammed in the armored vehicle so long. The smell of burning monster flesh permeated the space and made her want to vomit. She had to focus extremely hard while she fought the urge to keep her stomach’s contents intact.

  Nobody answered her. She looked around the personnel carrier, scanning faces for an answer to her question. Just as she was about to ask again, Karen got a glimpse out at the scene.

  Over a hundred enemy ships descended from the sky in the area where the beam had pierced the atmosphere. It had been a homing beacon; reinforcements easily saw the beam pointing outward from the surface and began pouring out of the cloudy sky. The distress signal was picked up thousands of miles away, summoning all nearby forces.

  Having been caught off guard, a dozen attack choppers were attacked and exploded where they hovered. The rest of the helicopters began evasive maneuvers, managing to narrowly evade a volley of blasts from their attackers.

  Another squadron of healer ships began to surround the damaged creature on the ground. Green energy beams shot outward to the creature; oozing wounds began to heal and clot.

  Somewhere in the fracas, two alien transport ships slipped in, uncloaked, and began unloading foot soldiers. Over a thousand enemy soldiers emerged out of the transport ships; they flooded the broken, burning streets and buildings. They opened fire on the tanks, trucks, and APCs full of soldiers. Three trucks immediately caught fire and exploded, killing everyone on board.

  James thought for a split second. He watched as his soldiers died. He watched as the squadron of helicopters was being decimated more each second. Finally, he spoke into his radio. “All foot soldiers: unload and face the enemy on the ground, face to face. Choppers: focus attention on…”

  He was cut off. An explosion threw the personnel carrier onto its side so hard that everyone inside was knocked over. Bodies banged and slammed around the confined space.

  Karen’s face smashed against… something. She could not tell what it was. She only knew that she tasted the coppery tinge of fresh blood pouring from her nose. Her vision was obscured as the precious liquid oozed from her forehead. It was luck that she hadn’t bitten her tongue in half from the impact; she spat globs of blood onto the wall of the APC. She lay on her hands and knees, her head spinning and her ears ringing. To say she was disoriented was most surely an understatement.

  Jason began to come to as his eyes slowly opened. They darted back and forth, inspecting his surroundings. A man to his left – whose body lay in such a way that he couldn’t see the man’s face – was bleeding profusely from a laceration to his throat.

  Each time the man’s heart beat, blood spurted from the opening; much of the blood rained down onto Jason’s trapped body. As the seconds ticked by, the spray lessened until it could barely be called a trickle. Jason noticed a seam above the man where a plate of steel had been peeled back as easily as a child ripping off a scab; a chunk of the man’s neck hung unnaturally from the makeshift shiv.

  Jason’s gaze listed lazily to where Karen held her broken face. Blood dripped from between her fingers. He tried to call out but found he had no strength to make a sound. Little more than a puff of air and a whimper escaped his lungs.

  Through the opening in the steel armor, the battle raged. Fire seemed to engulf everything as bombs rained death from above. Another shock wave rocked the wreckage; Jason knew the first step had to be escaping the broken tomb in which they were trapped.

  He rallied all his remaining strength to push the fallen soldier off of his own body. He had little leverage in his current position. As Karen wiped the blood from her face, she saw Jason struggled under the dead weight. She began tugging on the corpse as he pushed. Slowly, the mass thumped to the floor. Karen helped pull Jason to a sitting position.

  That was when Jason saw who the corpse had been.

  President James Neil.

  Karen gasped at the recognition. She opened her mouth to say something but found no words. Her breath hitched and she began to sob.

  Jason noticed smoke beginning to engulf the personnel carrier. It was on fire. He crawled on his knees over to the roof hatch and fought with the mechanism. Finally, the stubborn hatch squealed open. “This thing is on fire! We’ve got to go!”

  He tugged at Karen, who still sat in shock at their friend’s death, and nearly dragged her through the opening.

  An alien spaceship zipped past above their heads as Jason and Karen gained their freedom from the burning vehicle. In close pursuit of the craft was a fighter jet. It maneuvered with ease, twisted and turning as the alien craft attempted to evade its pursuer. Finding a clear shot, the fighter began firing its rotary canon. The finality of the following explosion did little to encourage Jason as he pulled Karen behind him.

  An alien soldier seemed to materialize out of nowhere in front of the pair as they ran. It held its weapon up and steadied its aim as the APC from which they had escaped exploded. Shrapnel was launched in all directions as the armor disintegrated. The shockwave from the blast knocked Karen and Jason both to the ground. A chunk of shrapnel impaled the alien foot soldier; it fell to the ground, writhing in pain. It gripped the shrapnel with its tentacles and attempted to pull it free, but the attempt proved futile. Green, corrosive liquid oozed from around the wound. The alien’s eyes appeared to glaze over as its life faded and its body thudded to the ground

  Above, the small fleet of healing ships circled the monster as it waved its tentacles around wildly. Although its vision was gone, the creature’s strength appeared to have been rejuvenated along with its once-limp tentacles. It swept a tentacle along the ground, reaching several hundred feet in an arc around its body. Human and Qspolian ground soldiers alike were crushed by the blow. Bodies flew through the air, tumbling and crashing into ruined buildings and what little vegetation remained along the ground.

  Jason scanned the area around them. To the left and behind them was the enormous creature with its disc-shaped head and three remaining deadly tentacles. Directly in front of the pair, bullets and energy blas
ts crossed back and forth as humans and aliens alike battled for the complete genocide of the other race. Downtown Greenville, which only a few weeks before had thrived with culture and prosperity, had been leveled.

  The hospital was totally demolished. Sections of the multi-story, multi-structure campus were so devastated that it was impossible to tell what had previously been there. Chunks of concrete and steel structure were scattered around the ruins, offering plenty of protection from enemy fire while also attesting to the total annihilation that was the end-goal of the invading Qspolian forces. Nothing was sacred, nothing was safe from the wrath of the creatures.

  Jason decided on a course of action. He and Karen began running toward the two opposing forces. There was a gap between two buildings where they could slip, hopefully unseen, back to a more protected position. He spoke into James’s radio – not like the man needed it now, in his current state of health – and gave his orders.

  They ran as fast as they could toward the opening in the buildings. If they could just make it to there, unscathed and un-murdered, they could work their way to the top of the office building and maybe better assess the battlefield.

  Neither Jason nor Karen had time to arm themselves when they escaped the APC; the only weapon between them was a single 9mm handgun that Jason stuffed into his sock earlier in the day. There were two fully-loaded magazines in his pocket. At best, he had about forty-five shots between the loaded pistol and extras.

  He pulled the 9mm from its position in his sock and held it in front of him. He held it in similar fashion to various police officers and mercenaries he had seen on television. The pistol was in his right hand, the left offering support, pointed toward the ground as they ran.

  They reached cover near the proposed entryway and dove behind the protection of a blown-out Jeep Wrangler. It was burnt-black now with specks of grey peeking out in various places. None of the enemy forces seemed to spot them during their evacuation attempt.

  Jason nodded to Karen. “You ready?”