Fatal Reaction, Battle of the Hunted

by M A Hollstein

“Grrrr!” Two glowing eyes zeroed in on him as a Scourge crashed into the living room.

  Jumping, Bill tried to grab the cupboard opening. Instead, his fingers grazed the flashlight, which rolled across the entrance of the cupboard and then disappeared into the crawlspace leaving him in the dark. Bill leaped again. This time his fingers caught hold of the crawlspace floor. With all his strength, Bill tried to pull himself up, and his feet kicked over the stool. He could hear it crash to the floor.

  Grunting, while trying to heave himself up, his arms conked out on him, refusing to lift his body weight. Kicking his legs as hard as he could, the toe of his work boot made contact with the alien’s face as it lunged at him. He couldn’t see the creature only hear it. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of its glowing eyes.

  Hand over hand; Bill tried to get a better grip on the crawlspace opening when his fingertips felt the ray gun. The alien snarled and went for another attack as Bill grabbed the gun. He let go of the crawlspace, landing on the couch. The butt of the gun hit his chest hard as he fell, sending a pulse of bright blue light into the alien’s shoulder, lighting up the room.

  The Scourge shrieked in pain but didn’t disintegrate like the alien of The Order. Instead, its body seemed to absorb the ray. Bill quickly rolled onto his side and got to his feet as the alien lunged at him again.

  For a second time, he blasted the gun, smacking it against his shoulder. Another blue bolt of light, shot out of the gun, hitting the Scourge in the stomach. It shrieked while flying backward and crashing into the wall.

  Shooting once more in the same direction, the blue light lit up the room, and Bill was surprised to see that the Scourge agilely leaped to the side, avoiding the next hit. The ray hit an armchair in the corner of the room and flames leaped to life.

  Bill was mortified. He no longer needed to worry about the fire in the canyon spreading to the apartments. He just set them on fire himself.

  The alien hissed and then charged at him.

  Sending another bolt of electric light, to try to keep the alien at bay, Bill raced for the butcher knife he’d left on the end table. The ray gun obviously wasn’t enough to kill the bastard. All it did was slow it down a bit while pissing him off even more.

  Attacking, the Scourge leaped into the air as Bill fired off a stream of what looked like lightning bolts into the alien’s midsection. He could see dagger-like claws and razor-sharp teeth as the bright blue blast, along with the fire spreading to the carpet, lit up the room.

  With Bill’s other hand, he jabbed the butcher knife right through the alien’s jaw as his mouth came in for the kill. The weight of the alien’s body knocked Bill over, the Scourge landing directly on top of him. He could feel a thick wet substance on his neck, that he figured was probably the alien’s blood, as he pushed the heavy body off of him and scrambled out from underneath.

  Bill crawled across the floor until his hands found the mountain of books, and then the bookshelf that was blocking the door. Grabbing the bookshelf, Bill managed to pull it out of the way, even though his sciatic nerve was wreaking havoc and his shoulder was beyond sore from firing the ray gun. Scorching pain radiated down his leg.

  Feeling for the doorknob, Bill was happy when he found it. Coughing due to the thick smoke filling up the apartment, he opened the door. Fluorescent light from the outdoor security lamp flooded the apartment. Morbid curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to see the Scourge up close to know what he’d been dealing with before leaving the body to burn. Bill looked at his hand and noticed the substance he’d wiped away from his neck was a greenish black.

  Sneering, Bill limped over to where the Scourge lie on the living room floor. The alien was covered from head to toe in what appeared to be protective clothing. Its face mask had fallen off. Bill wondered if it’d fallen off when he’d kicked the thing in the face with his work boot.

  The Scourge had two slits in its face where humans had noses. Its skin was thick, wrinkly and leathery. Bill couldn’t tell the color of the skin in the lighting. Possibly gray or a drab olive green.

  Kneeling next to the creature, he grabbed the handle of the butcher knife that was sticking out from beneath the Scourge’s jaw. It was covered with a thick sticky substance. Bill tried to ignore his sudden impulse of wanting to throw up. He coughed and blinked hard. Smoke stung his eyes.

  The blade of the knife appeared to have jutted upward through the creature’s mouth, palate, and into its brain.

  If it has a brain?

  With a hard pull, Bill slid the knife out from the alien’s cranium. It made a wet, squishing sound as it emerged from the jaw. Holding up the knife, Bill examined the greenish black goo dripping from the blade when he heard it.

  Clink! Clink!

  “What the hell?” Bill stumbled backward nearly dropping the knife, and landed hard on his rear end. Another sharp pain shot down his leg from his lower back.

  The alien clinked its dagger-like claws together on its right hand, and its eyes popped open.

  Unable to believe what he was witnessing, Bill scurried backward, trying to get to his feet. His body wasn’t cooperating with him. He had to roll onto all fours and then hoist himself onto his feet.

  Head tilting to the side, the Scourge’s golden eyes, zeroed in on him. The black pupils elongated. Glaring, the eyes eventually became slits. Thick greenish black goo dripped from its lips and chin as a deep rumbling filled its chest.

  Bill eyed the door, and without hesitation, he made a run for it. The Scourge grabbed hold of his ankle causing him to slip and fall on top of the pile of books. He screamed out in agony as the blades sliced through his jeans and into his skin.

  When he fell, he’d dropped both the ray gun and the butcher knife. The knife was out of reach, but the gun was close. Grabbing the ray gun, he flipped onto his back. Feeling the blades searing his ankle, he bashed the gun hard against his shoulder, which was now sore as hell from all the times he’d fired it.

  The blast shot up into the ceiling fan suspended from the high ceiling. The flower shaped glass lampshades over the bulbs beneath the fan, shattered, sprinkling glass. Two of the wooden blades lit up, and one fell to the floor landing on top of the alien’s stomach. Startled, the Scourge let go of his grasp on Bill’s ankle and screeched at the top of its lungs. It’s clothing immediately went up in flames.

  Scurrying to the front door on all fours, Bill crawled over the books. Once outside, he kicked the books out of the way and slammed the door shut as the Scourge crashed into it on the other side. He needed to find Amanda.

  Chapter 8

  Curled up in a ball, Kylie hugged her knees close to her chest to try to keep warm. Her teeth began to chatter, and she clenched them together so hard that her jaw ached. She was in a dark, cold room that felt more like a freezer with several other girls. It was so dark; she could barely see. Every once in a while, the room would light up a deep blue or purple because the walls would emit a weird subtle light. Around her, she could hear sobbing. All female.

  “Hey,” she heard a familiar voice. This time it was male. Surprised, Kylie looked up and blinked hard. A low blue light lit up the room for a second and disappeared. She could barely make out a dark silhouette kneeling down in front of her.

  “Do I know you?” she whispered.

  “It’s me, Ethan,” he said. “From school. I saw them bring you in here. I recognized your hair.”

  Kylie hated her unruly hair. It was thick, dark brown and wiry. When it was humid, she looked like a giant puffball. She was half African American and half German. She inherited her mother’s kinky hair. Even though her mother’s hair had always looked beautiful and tame, her own hair did not.

  “Ethan?” Kylie asked, grabbing her hair and twisting it to calm down the puffiness. Her voice sounded distant and strange as if it didn’t belong to her.

  “Yes,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

  Kylie nodded, even though she knew he couldn’t see her. “Where ar
e we?”

  “On a ship, I think.”

  “The… the alien ship? The scary one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are they gonna do to us?”

  “I don’t know. So far, it’s all girls here. Seven, and then me.”

  Kylie swallowed hard wondering what the aliens wanted with them.

  “I’m going to try to escape. You with me?”

  Kylie nodded again and then cleared her throat. “Yes.”

  “Okay. The next time they come in here, we’ll make a run for it.”

  “If we’re on a ship, how do we get out?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Are we in the sky?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t just stay here doing nothing.”

  “Yeah,” Kylie agreed. As frightened as she was with the idea of trying to escape, she was even more frightened by the idea of staying put. She had no idea of what the aliens intentions were for them, and she didn’t want to find out. Whatever they had planned was far scarier than the idea of dying while trying to escape.

  “I’ve seen two types of aliens.”

  “Two?”

  “There are ones that kind of float… and ones that don’t. Both have their bodies covered. Sometimes their eyes aren’t… and they glow…”

  “Like the infected?”

  “Yeah, except they sort of look reptilian. Reminds me of the dinosaurs’ eyes in Jurassic Park.”

  “Like the one that brought me here,” Kylie said, her voice barely a whisper. “Its eyes were creepy and glowed.”

  A crackling sound and little sparks of blue and white light, similar to static electricity, snapped and popped at the other end of the room.

  The muscles in Kylie’s back and neck tensed as two alien creatures entered the dark room through the electric force field. Their glowing yellow eyes peered out from shadowed faces. Kylie could just make out their hulking form due to the sparks of light.

  The room filled with deep rumbling growls resonating from the aliens. One of the women panicked and screamed, as she scooted as far back as she could go in the room. The other women were quiet except for the sounds of muffled sniffling.

  One of the aliens made a round, walking the circumference of the room. Kylie couldn’t help but observe the creature. The other alien stayed near the popping and crackling lights. She wondered if the light was some kind of force field. It emitted a low buzzing that felt weird in her ears.

  The alien walking around the room made a second round before stopping. It stopped in front of one of the women. Kylie couldn’t see what it was doing. She squinted trying to get a better look. The alien stroked the woman’s blond hair, and she shrieked.

  Angered, the creature struck the woman in the face. Kylie could hear the alien’s hand making contact. The woman screamed again and tried to crawl away from it. Clutching her hair, the alien pulled as the woman screamed some more. Several of the other women began to cry and panic.

  “Stop!” Kylie yelled, jumping to her feet. “Leave her alone!”

  The alien let go of the woman and spun around. Its glowing eyes focused on hers. The black pupil elongated as it growled. Taking a few large strides, it was now less than a foot away from her. Kylie refused to back down.

  Even though the alien was a great deal taller than her, when it stooped down, its face was close enough to her that she could smell the putrid stench of rotting flesh and decay on the creature’s breath. The warmth of the creature’s breath tingled her forehead.

  “Kylie!” Ethan had swooped in front of her, trying to protect her from the alien.

  Bam! A large, powerful arm, swung at him, smacking him upside the head with such force that Ethan stumbled to the ground.

  “Ethan!” Kylie screamed, quickly kneeling down next to him, crying. “Ethan, are you okay?”

  Blood dripped from the side of his head and down his cheek.

  “Yeah,” he said, seeing stars. Blinking hard, he tried to focus.

  Turning around, the alien joined the other one near the force field. Within seconds, they vanished from the room.

  ***

  Susan had just finished having a meeting with the President of the United States. They had enough provisions to last them anywhere from six months to a year if they properly rationed food and water. However, Susan wasn’t sure that’d be enough time for the Scourge to become discouraged and leave the planet. Even if there weren’t enough humans for them to feast on, there were still enough animals on the planet to sustain them while they bred new full bred humans.

  The Scourge were not an intelligent race. They were driven by their need to feed and vicious to the core. They’d wipe out a planet without giving it a second thought. It was the half-breeds that were genetically more Scourge, than The Order, which were dangerous. They had the appetite of the Scourge and the intelligence of The Order. They were the ones that’d set up breeding camps on their planet hundreds of Earth years ago. Eventually though, they had too many mishaps due to interbreeding and disease, that the food source eventually ran dry. Scourge did not devour half-breeds. The two planets; that of the Scourge, and that of The Order have become barren.

  Since Susan knew how the Scourge operated, she knew that the intelligent Scourge half-breeds would wrangle up the untainted, fertile humans and set up a breeding camp. All the humans that were not breedable, but untainted would be eaten on the spot. The rest of them, the infected and the half-breeds that identified genetically with The Order, would either be exterminated or used as slave labor.

  The President was a very stubborn man. Susan did her best to explain the situation, but he wouldn’t listen to her. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, he did. But he refused to listen to her concerns regarding the boy. Susan wanted to move Benjamin away from the compound. The psychic link he had with the Scourge worried her. The President wants to keep the boy until they find a cure for the virus they’d unleashed to the outside world. He wants a cure to be developed within the next six months, if not sooner, to be able to inoculate the untainted humans before re-entering the outside world. Susan agreed that an inoculation was important, but what good would it do them if the boy alerted the Scourge of their underground shelter. The President underestimated the resourcefulness of the Scourge. Even though he took Susan seriously, and even though he didn’t doubt the threat they were up against was more than evil, he was willing to take the risk in order to find a cure. The President stated that either way, they’d be dead. They might as well utilize the boy, and their time in hiding, to create a cure. There was no proof that the Scourge could locate the boy. Only speculation.

  Walking down the hall towards Benjamin’s room, Susan’s mind raced. Again, she wondered if the Scourge would be able to locate their underground bunker due to the telepathic connection he had with them. If the Scourge were to find them, that would be the end. The end of everything. The President was confident that the bunker was impenetrable even if the Scourge did know where they were and that the alien threat would soon pass. Susan was not so confident. If anything, she was the opposite of confident. She knew the Scourge, and she knew the Scourge half-breeds. She’d seen it first-hand on her own planet where they were technically advanced in comparison. The humans didn’t stand a chance. If the Scourge were to locate their hiding place, then they’d all surely die a horrendous death whether it was to be eaten, thrown into slavery, or into a breeding camp. All of the above, led to death or wishing to die.

  The door to Benjamin’s room flung open and Liam rushed out. Screaming could be heard from inside the room. It echoed out into the hallway. Susan hurried down the hall towards him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked while entering the room, not waiting for Liam to answer.

  “He appears to be in pain,” Liam said. “I don’t know what’s happening to him. It was sudden.”

  The boy’s back arched. He struggled against his restraints as he screamed again.

  “Benjamin,” Susan said
standing at his bedside, “are you in pain? Where does it hurt?”

  “Ahhhhhh!” the little boy bellowed. His eyes were wide-open and golden yellow as if the virus was inflicting him. Susan examined his face. There was no sign of distortion from hives. That’s when she noticed something red creeping up the side of his neck.

  “What’s this?” she asked, grabbing hold of the collar of Benjamin’s shirt.

  “I don’t know,” Liam said. “That wasn’t there before.” He’d been watching over the boy while Susan was in a meeting with the president. “Looks like a rash… or a burn...”

  “A burn? How would he have burned himself?”

  Baffled, Liam shook his head.

  Lifting the boy’s shirt, Susan stared at him, puzzled. What appeared to be third-degree burns were appearing all over his chest. Liam was correct.

  “Get some cold compresses. See if we have any salve to apply to the burns. Quick!”

  Liam hurried from the room. Susan looked at the two-way mirror and shrugged. She knew the few chosen, uninfected human doctors and scientists on the other side of the mirror were observing the boy from where it was safe. Only she and Liam had direct contact with Benjamin to keep the virus from spreading to the uninfected humans.

  “What’s causing these burns?” she asked, thinking out loud. Blisters were now forming right before her eyes. She watched as the burns began to spread to the boy’s arms and legs. She wondered if the connection between the boy and the Scourge was powerful enough to hurt him physically as well as mentally. She’d never encountered anything like this before.

  “Ahhhh!” Benjamin screamed.

  “Benjamin,” Susan asked, keeping her voice calm. “What’s happening to you? Do you know what’s hurting you? What’s causing this?”

  Tears escaped the boy’s eyes. He scrunched up his face and cried, “I want my dad! I want…. Dad!”

  “Benjamin,” Susan said, “I’ll get you your father. What’s burning you? I can’t help you unless I know what’s hurting you.”

  The little boy screamed again and burst into hysterics.