Sadir thought of his children as they started their raid. He prayed they would grow and have a peaceful life, one where they’d never have to do something like this just to survive.
Brad couldn’t sleep. He looked over at the woman on the inflatable mattress, curled up with the large, orange cat. She’d cried herself to sleep again. The others were getting pretty annoyed with her. Everyone had to work. That was the rule. If you wanted to live in New Queen Anne, you had to work. Everyone was afraid and overwhelmed. But they still worked. That meant fishing, foraging, tilling, or building.
Bea did none of those.
Ostensibly she was a nurse, and she would “work” if someone needed healing. But that was a joke. They had four doctors already in their group. Actually, all of them were dentists. They’d been on the same flight as Bea and Brad, all coming back from the Bahamas. They’d all been stranded together at the Atlanta airport for hours because of the snowstorm, and they’d arrived home in Seattle ten hours late. All of them had been standing in the parking garage just before it happened, waiting for their Ubers to take them home. That crazy man had started setting cars on fire, causing them all to flee outside into the cold.
It’d happened so fast. The police had the man in handcuffs, and he’d been fighting them. He’d been screaming at the cops in a weird language. Brad was filming the whole thing on his phone. It was the most entertaining shit that’d happened to him since he’d talked a drunk Bea into posting that picture on her Instagram.
But then the world ended, leaving just him and Bea and the four dentists standing there surrounded by rubble. The cops and crazy homeless guy had gotten caught up by the edge of the parking garage. There’d been an entrance to the dungeon or whatever it was called pretty close nearby, but Bea had been screaming. He stayed with her.
He regretted it. He used to make so much fun of her cuck boyfriend. She walked all over the dude, and he didn’t do shit. Brad had been moderately impressed when the guy had grown some balls and finally dumped her after she posted the picture. But then Bea flipped the fuck out and demanded they leave the resort early. They’d been paid up for another four days, but she wouldn’t stop crying. Her bitch friends pretty much pushed the two of them out of the suite.
So they went home.
I should’ve stayed, he thought. If he was going to be stuck in an alien invasion apocalypse, it would’ve at least been in better weather.
But that wasn’t his real regret. Oh no.
I should’ve gone into that dungeon.
When he couldn’t sleep, which was never now, he thought of that giant, welcoming hole into the ground. He’d wanted to go in so bad. He didn’t know what was in there, but it had to be better than this. He hated that he missed his chance at glory.
I am a king, he thought. I am a king.
A guy that worked on the tarmac had found them. Tarik. He’d been driving an electric cart thing with a bed, and they’d all piled on, routing through people’s suitcases for warm clothing. They’d spent that first night huddled in a pile of clothes watching all the lights descending like falling stars. And then… nothing. They were ignored by the invaders. Spacecraft came and went all day every day. They even saw them, sometimes, walking about in groups on the surface. There were different kinds and sizes.
But the aliens simply didn’t acknowledge the presence of the humans. They were dismissed as irrelevant. A thing to be avoided, like a pile of dogshit in the road.
After a week of camping at the remnants of the airport, hiding and afraid, the small group decided to seek out other people and supplies. They trekked their way to the city where they found the burgeoning community of New Queen Anne. Now, over a month later, they remained. The invaders continued to leave them alone. What Brad had assumed was going to be a temporary camp was shaping up to be their new permanent home. They were constructing wood buildings. Once the weather improved, they’d plant crops.
Bea whimpered in her sleep. The large cat was wrapped around her head. The thing had already shredded their first inflatable mattress. Brad didn’t care what Bea said, if the damn thing ruined anything else in the tent, he was out of here. And if she complained about it, she was gone, too. He was getting sick of just doing everything she wanted. It was embarrassing.
His eyes focused on the cat. It wasn’t even Bea’s cat, but some stray.
Bea had insisted on returning to her old apartment, trying to look for that fucking weird cat of hers that always howled and scratched at him. Never mind the thing had its own damn room in the apartment. Never mind it never left that cat tree by the window. It was dead along with everybody else in the world. Brad knew exactly what they were going to find, but he’d taken her anyway just to shut her up.
The apartment was a hole in the ground just like every other building in the area. Some of the items remained. The trees. Most of the light poles and signs. A few random vehicles. There was a scooter they could possibly use, but it had a parking enforcement boot on it.
The first thing they’d noticed was the decomposed and rancid human head just sitting there on the ground. Bea had vomited and started crying all over again.
They were about to leave, but then Brad noticed the cat sitting in the tree. No fucking way, he thought, but only for a moment. This was a different cat than the one Bea was looking for. The thing was skin and bones, and for a moment Brad thought it was literally frozen on the tree branch. But then it let out a loud, deep meow, and it jumped to the ground and started rubbing against their legs.
Bea, already crying, scooped the thing right up and started sobbing even louder. “Ferdinand! You asshole. You stupid little asshole!” She clutched onto the cat and sobbed and refused to let go.
“You know this cat?” Brad asked. “How?”
She didn’t answer right away. She just hummed to herself while she rocked back and forth. She’d been doing that a lot lately. It was fucking weird. She was cracking up. Finally, she said, “He’s my neighbor’s cat. His name is Gravy Boat, but he used to come to the window and try to get in when Princess was in heat.” She stuck her face dangerously close to the cat’s “You wanted to fuck my girl, didn’t you? You wanted to get in and ruin her.” The cat, who’d been purring, suddenly hissed and scratched her face. She didn’t even seem to notice. “I called him Ferdinand before I found out his real name. I would say, ‘Go away, Ferdinand,’ and he’d yowl and scratch at the window. Princess would hiss and spit at him. She knew he was no good.” Bea looked Brad straight in the eye. She had blood running down her face. “She was a lot smarter than me.” She turned her face back to the cat. “I tried to get animal control to get him, but they could never find him.”
“Well, he seems to be doing okay out here on his own. We better get back…”
The angry look from Bea shut that down right away.
So the thing came back with them. The cat was half feral, and it did not like being brushed or petted too much. But every night when the rations were distributed it was back in the tent sitting next to Bea while she dropped a little bit of her fish onto the floor for it to eat.
At night, she’d sit there in the dark and hug the cat until it yowled and scratched at her to let it go. She had cuts all up her arms and face from the monster. It’d eventually settle on the mattress next to her. She would stroke its yellow and orange fur and sing softly to the cat in that weird voice.
“Good boy, good boy, you’re a good boy, Ferdinand. You’re no Gravy Boat. Oh no, oh no. I’d take it all back and let you in. I’d do it all over again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ferdinand. I should have let you in.”
She’d sing some variant of that bizarre song until she fell asleep. Brad envied her ability to sleep. He sat now in their lone plastic chair, chewing on a scavenged candy bar. He fantasized about the mysterious dungeon. I am a king.
Riiiiip!
He stared at the knife, uncomprehending as it pierced through the tarp wall of the tent and started to cut downward.
&nb
sp; “Hey!” he called. “Who’s there? That’s my goddamned tent!”
He jumped to his feet. He grabbed the crowbar he kept by the real tent flap. His heart started to thrash as the two figures appeared through the hole in the wall, both of them holding strange, nerf-like guns.
It was a tall, octopus-faced dude and a gray alien wearing a fur coat. This second one looked like one of those Roswell aliens with the head shaped like a guitar pick and the black, bug-like eyes. He was short, maybe four feet tall.
The octopus pointed the weapon directly at Brad and was about to fire when its chest exploded, filling the tent with green gore. The tall, menacing alien slumped over. Gravy Boat jumped from the bed, and Bea sat up, confused. Brad dropped the crowbar. Everyone stopped, including the gray alien. All eyes were on the octopus alien with the hole in its chest.
Bea started to scream. Gravy Boat bolted, running between the alien’s legs and disappearing out into the night. Two tents over, those four little shits started barking their heads off. People began to shout.
The alien guy stopped, holding his hands up in the air in the now-confirmed-to-be-universal gesture of “I surrender.” It started babbling in that strange, alien language Brad and everybody else had been able to understand at first, but now they couldn’t anymore.
The alien started to turn to face the exit, but he cast one glance at Bea and stopped dead all over again. His gray skin flushed, suddenly turning a shade of purple. He dropped the alien weapon and slowly lowered his arms.
“B… B… Beatrice?” he asked in heavily accented speech. It sounded like a question.
Bea stopped screaming. They stared at each other, both of them with their mouths agape.
What the fuck was going on?
A new figure emerged. She stuck her head in the tent, looking about before stepping fully inside. It was a woman. A human. Sort of. She was Asian, but she looked odd. Anorexic with her eyes too close together. She wore a skintight, black bodysuit and held onto what looked like a pump-action shotgun, which she placed firmly against the alien dude’s back. He raised his hands back into the air.
Those dogs aren’t barking anymore, Brad thought. It’d gone completely silent out there. That wasn’t good.
The woman said something in the alien language, and the Roswell guy answered. Bea rushed over to Brad, who put an arm around her. He eyed the alien pistol that the dead octopus had dropped. I’m going to go for it. I am a king.
“Miss Beatrice,” the woman said. She still spoke in the alien language, but now a translation came out from a hidden speaker in her clothes. The words mixed in with the alien speak, making it a little hard to understand. “My name is Lexis. I apologize for the inconvenience, but Syndicate security is on its way. You are being hunted. I am here to take you to safety.”
Brad barely heard this. He was laser focused on the gun on the ground. I can do this. I’m going for it. I am the king.
I am the goddamned king.
“I got her,” Lexis said into the communicator. A floating image of her boss appeared over the screen. “Killed a sac pirate. Captured another. I suggest we make it look like he turned on his partner. Shot him right in the back. He’s a null, so they’ll buy it. Oh, I also had to shoot a human. Bea’s partner. He’s still alive. He tried to get to the pirate’s flechette. I’d call him brave, but he’s crying like a little girl. He’s going to bleed out in a few minutes if I don’t intervene.”
“What about the cat?” asked Odette.
“He’s knocked out with the rest of the settlement. The thing is fast. He almost got away. Security will arrive in three minutes. The first responders are on our payroll, but a supervisor will want to come down for this one. I’m guessing we have twenty minutes at most. Do you want me to bring the cat? Also, I can wipe the whole town if you want.”
Odette thought for a moment. “Any witnesses?”
“Just the ones I mentioned. The null, Beatrice, the human I shot, and the cat.”
“Okay. Here’s what we do. We’re not going to vaporize the town. Leave the null alive and plant the weapon like you suggested, but let the human expire. Put the cat in a bounty cube and leave him there. Shoot the null with the flechette gun. Maybe in the leg. Then drop it on the human. We’ll have our security guys clean the scene up so it looks like the whole fight was over the cat, and nothing else.”
“The null will talk,” Lexis said. “He’ll be facing multiple charges.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Odette. “I’ll get a message to him after he’s arrested. We’ll buy out his warrant. That’ll guarantee his cooperation. I’ll have one of the security guys sneak the cat over to Borant. Let him collect the walk-on bounty. How’s Beatrice taking this?”
“I, uh, had to knock her out and then stick her in a cube. She’s a little freaked out about the whole thing. I don’t think she’s all there. She has scratches all over her face.”
Odette nodded. “When she wakes up, make sure you tell her that I can’t wait to meet her. And reassure her that we won’t be selling her to Borant. Tell her we have a much better use for her.”
Lexis laughed. Her scanner beeped, indicating a security shuttle was about to land. “So, I guess it worked out for everybody.” She looked down at the dead sac. She thought of the poor cat, and what they were going to do to him. She shuddered. “Well, almost everybody.”
Odette grunted. “We can’t all have happy endings. Now get to work.”
Woohoo!
You did it! You read another one! It’s almost like we’re dating. Pretty soon we’ll be introducing each other to our parents and fighting about me eating shredded cheese directly from the bag at 3 a.m..
Four books written. Wow. Book five is well underway with plenty of chaos and mayhem, but it’s not quite done yet. As such, I don’t have an exact date to give you, nor do I have a secret title to give to you just yet. Don’t worry. It won’t be too long. If you sign up for my mailing list or follow me on Amazon or on Facebook, you’ll know as soon as I put the preorder link up.
Let’s talk about reviews. It’s kinda important. I know, I know, I beg you guys for reviews every time. But reviews are super important. Without reviews, Toby the pug will starve to death, and he needs to eat like five or six meals a day. So please, please leave a review. Thanks so much!
About the Author
Matt Dinniman is a writer and artist from Gig Harbor, WA. When he isn’t attending cat shows, wrangling dogs, feeding turtles, playing bass in a punk/metal band, or writing books about acid-spitting chinchillas, he designs cat-themed greeting cards and decorations. If you’ve ever walked into a Target or an IKEA or a Home Goods, looked at the weird wall art they have for sale there, and thought to yourself, who buys this crap? The answer is, “Not nearly as many people as Matt would like.” So please buy all his books. (Or his art!)
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Also by Matt Dinniman
Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon (Horror LitRPG!)
Dominion of Blades Series (LitRPG!)
The Shivered Sky Series (Angels vs demons!)
The Grinding (A horror novel!)
Trailer Park Fairy Tales (Short stories! One of them even won a fancy award!)
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The Gate of the Feral Gods Page 55