Matt climbed to his feet and approached the body cautiously, his weapon raised. He kicked its leg.
No movement.
He knelt down and rolled the body over, studying the strange markings and design of its hounskull-shaped helmet, which somehow seemed to absorb the light around it, not reflect it. A puff of vapor hissed out from underneath the frontal-plate as Matt slowly lifted it. The vapor curled up into his face, the strong acetic odor reminding him of vinegar. A shocked gasp escaped Matt’s mouth when he saw what was inside the armored exo-suit.
It was human.
But no human looked like that.
Its rigid jawline was slightly more pronounced than normal, with high cheekbones that were deathly gaunt, giving the appearance of someone already at death’s door. Its skin tone was cadaver-gray, bordering on semi-translucent in some areas, with a tangle of sinewy muscles stretched thinly across its neckline.
Matt stood, his frown deepening as he struggled to process what he was actually looking at. It looked human, but somehow it wasn’t. It also looked sick. From what Matt had witnessed so far, these beings possessed incredibly frightening technology, but for the most part, they were as fragile, if not more fragile than humans. That thought caused Matt to wonder if these troops were some type of first wave. Expendable grunts thrown onto the surface of a planet in order to test the inhabitant’s initial defense capabilities. He parked any further exploration of that theory at the back of his mind, refocusing his attention to the more immediate task at hand; survival.
He turned to see Joel standing by the bedroom door, eyes vacantly staring at the dead alien entity. Matt saw the fear in his face had now turned into resignation. The lack of food, water, and post-shock fatigue were starting to take their toll on him. “What is it?” he asked.
Matt couldn’t provide much of an answer. “I don’t know. Come on, we need to get moving before more of them turn up.”
Joel turned and headed for the front door.
Matt gave one last look at the dead being, catching sight of the felled weapon that rested a few feet from it. He secured his own rifle, then gingerly picked it up and examined it.
It was some type of Gauss coilgun, slightly more heavy than his own weapon. The hand rested inside a small indent, and there was no visible trigger or conventional firing mechanism. The weapon also seemed to be molded from a hard, polycarbonate material or resin that resembled polished bone in texture.
Matt turned to the partially destroyed wall behind him. This weapon, however it worked, definitely packed a wallop. He decided he was going to keep it. At least until he made it back home.
Of course, that was assuming he still had a home.
Ten
Matt came tearing out of the cottage, heading for the parked pick-up truck in the driveway.
Joel reached it and did a double-take when he saw Matt was now wielding the alien rifle.
Matt pulled out the set of keys he had snagged from the burly man and began testing them, fumbling his way through each one. None of them seemed to work. Matt huffed in frustration, stepped back and used the butt of the coilgun to smash the driver-side door’s window.
Kssssh!
Glass popped loudly and shattered. Matt reached in, flipped the emergency safety release, then yanked the door open. The second he hopped into the driver’s seat, he spotted the personalized fingerprint ignition button. He had to stop himself from screaming with rage.
BWHAAAAAAM!
A trombone-like bellow sounded from somewhere beyond the cottage, followed by a mechanical crunching and snapping of wood. Something big and heavy was trudging towards the cottage.
“Um…” Joel muttered, his voice pinched with fear. “I think that spider thing is ba—“
“I know.”
“You might wanna hurry the fuck up, man.”
“Damn truck’s got fingerprint ignition. We’re gonna have to go it on foot.”
“Nah, I can hack these,” said Joel. “Let me sit there.”
Matt slid out of the driver’s seat and Joel hopped in. He leaned over and popped the glove-box, rummaging around until he pulled out a small first-aid kit. “You’re gonna have to buy me some time.”
“How much time?”
“Five-minutes.”
“You’ve got two.” Matt moved to the rear of the truck, resting his newfound weapon on the edge of the tailgate, swiveling the elongated muzzle left-to-right, waiting with bated breath for this unearthly target to appear through the tree-line. The snapping of branches was getting louder with each passing second. Voices could also be heard.
Joel pried out a pair of field-scissors from the med-kit and jammed them into a small plastic panel behind the steering wheel that housed the ignition system. He wiggled the tip of scissors in until it popped off. A tangle of thin wires bulged from the exposed circuit-board as he got to work bypassing the engine’s authentication protocols.
Back outside, Matt spotted a bruising shape lurching through the trees, noxious smoke vortexing the air as it emerged into his line of sight. Indeed, it was the same arachnid-shaped vehicle they had spotted earlier on the highway. Joel was right, the damn thing had been following them the entire time. “ETA?” Matt yelled out.
“When I’m done,” barked Joel from the driver-seat, furiously snipping wires and twisting them together in a Hail Mary effort to get the engine started. Then, it spluttered with an electronic fizzle. “Oh, shit— I think I nearly got it!”
“Nearly ain’t good enough, Joel.”
“Another minute!”
Matt braced himself into a prone position, lowering his eye-line to the area of the weapon he thought housed the rear-sight. The moment he did that, a strange rectile holograph appeared over his right eye, imparting all manner of information he had no chance in hell of ever deciphering. However, he’d been around firearms long enough to know this was some type of smart-targeting system. All he had to do now was figure out how to fire the goddamn thing.
When he spotted several blips of dark movement appear behind the clanking machine that was emerging from the woods, his index finger earnestly began searching for a trigger of some kind. Matt remembered the being he killed inside the cottage also had five human-like digits, so this weapon felt quite ergonomic to hold. And when he found a small indent at the base of the beveled handguard, the weapon suddenly belched blue fire. Oddly, the recoil was almost non-existent.
Matt’s burst of plasma flayed the tree-line, rendering one of the beings into a cloud of ash.
The shot instantly alerted the rest of the squad. The huge machine whirled around to face Matt’s position and began trudging towards the cottage. The other alien foot-soldiers wasted no time firing on Matt’s position.
Matt ducked under a barrage of incoming fire, muzzle flashes of neon-blue strobing the hazy air. When a mound of earth erupted inches from the vehicle, an explosion of dirt sprayed Matt’s face like shrapnel. He spun around and screamed at Joel. “How fucking long?!”
Vrrrrooooom!
The truck’s engine roared to life. Joel revved the pedal.
Vroom-vroom-vrooooooom!
Rails of plasma streamed over Matt’s head as he continued returning fire on the advancing unit, punching into a line of soldiers that were pushing from the left flank. He kept firing, edging back along the chassis of the truck to the open driver-side door.
When he spotted the long metal snout attached to the front of the spider-shaped tank begin to glow white-hot, he knew they only had a few seconds before that thing fired on them.
“Move!” Matt screamed at Joel, who scurried over to the passenger-side seat. Matt threw his rifle and the alien coilgun into the back and leaped into the driver’s seat. Without even bothering to close his door, he floored the truck, tires spewing fountains of gravel and dirt before gaining traction.
Fswappp-KA-BOOOOM!
The truck fish-tailed down the driveway as a concussive streak of plasma exploded right where they were parked a nanoseco
nd earlier. A ripple of flame washed over the fleeing vehicle, the sheer-force of the blast made the ground tremor, almost causing Matt to lose control of the wheel.
He glanced in the rear-view to see thick gouts of fire mushrooming into the sky. Another second and the truck would have been vaporized. But they were not clear from danger. Far from it. “Hold on!” he screamed.
Matt yanked the wheel hard and the truck swerved off the dirt road, rocketing down into a shallow ravine. No time for seat-belts, Joel gripped the dash with white knuckles as the truck rollicked over the uneven terrain. They could hear things above them, strange mechanical swooshing noises. Matt just hoped that unit had not called for air reinforcements. He suddenly swerved to avoid a large tree, forging a new path through a mottle of thick underbrush.
Through the shuddering windshield, he could just make out another dirt road below them. With a little luck, this would lead them closer to town. With a whole lotta luck, they could escape the pursuing invaders and continue on undetected.
Eleven
Matt and Joel entered the outskirts of Frankfort. It was as if they were traveling through the weird and lurid landscape of another world. Even with their windows up, it was hard to breathe. They struggled to see more than twenty feet in any direction as the truck navigated through the claustrophobic smoke and dust, passing empty stores and deserted cars that littered the streets.
Joel thought he spied the partially-shredded wing of an airplane jutting out from behind a destroyed building, flames raging uncontrollably in the distance.
There were no sirens in the air, or in the debris-laden streets. It was as if a large swathe of the population had just vanished in unison, including law enforcement and rescue services. There was also zero sign of any military response. No troops, tanks, or jet fighters streaking across the skies. Nothing.
Matt veered around a crashed news van lying on its side, its buckled antenna extended across the street. Scattered around it were the remains of the crew. Some bodies looked as if they had been fused together from immense blasts of heat. Sludgy puddles of human by-product bubbled away like hot tar underneath their twisted appendages.
When Matt spotted an abandoned police patrol car on the side of a curb, still intact, he stopped the truck and turned to Joel - who had not uttered a single word for the past hour. “You gonna be OK?”
Joel turned to him, his complexion was still ashen. “Why, where are you going?”
Matt motioned to the abandoned patrol car across the street. “I gotta try and find a way home. I also need to see if I can reach anyone in my department.”
Joel turned to face forward and continued staring at the carnage before him. A moment of stunned silence passed until he responded. “I’m never going to be OK, man. Not after this day.”
Matt reached over and grabbed his rifle from the back-seat, leaving the alien gun. “I gotta go…” He then cracked open the driver-side door, turning to Joel once again, marshaling all his strength to climb out of the vehicle. He was terrified of what new horrors might await him out there. “Listen, you drive outta here, Joel. You hear me? Go be with your family. You run into any problems, use that weapon in the back seat.”
Joel gave a hollow scoff. “Look out there, man. There ain’t no one left.”
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“Neither do you.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But I have to try. And so do you.”
As Matt got out of the truck, Joel turned to him. “Good luck.”
“You too.” They shared a final look at each other, and this time, something passed between them. They were still strangers, perhaps even still enemies, but they had shared something neither would forget for as long as they lived.
Joel watched as Matt turned and hurried across the street to the deserted KPD patrol car, its red and blue siren still flashing silently through the diffused light.
Matt hopped into the driver’s seat and tried the radio. He was greeted with a blast of static. He sat there listening, running through the various frequencies he was familiar with.
And then, something broke through the wall of static for a brief second. A cacophony of panicked, crackly voices could be heard. Dozens and dozens, all talking at the same time. They sounded military, although it was impossible to tell one voice from another, or what was being said.
He switched back over to the usual police bands and once again hit static. Then, he turned the volume down and took off the shield that was draped around his neck, waving it in front of a small panel next to the steering column. Once his Officer ID was verified, the engine kicked over. Before Matt drove off, he glanced at the pick-up truck.
Joel was still sitting in stunned silence, his shell-shocked face barely visible through the grimy windsheild.
Matt felt an urge to go over and drag the kid out of the vehicle, but he thought otherwise. He needed to get home, and assuming Karen was still alive, she would be beside herself with fear and worry. Matt threw the patrol car into gear and peeled away from the curb.
Before he reached an intersection at the end of the street, his eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror.
He was pleased to see that Joel had performed a U-turn and was now heading away in the opposite direction they originally came from, the truck growing smaller and smaller in Matt’s mirror.
Matt turned his eyes back to the road ahead, noticing a lone shaft of sunlight that had managed to penetrate the smoky gloom that blanketed the town. As he drove, he muttered a small prayer to himself. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”
As Matt’s vehicle pushed deeper into the heart of Frankfort, he never caught sight of the alien battleship that was sitting in the cloud bank above, like some insidious edifice of a long-forgotten race. Its enormity and scale were difficult to comprehend. The dull-black metallic underbelly seemed to bristle with anticipation.
Make no mistake, the invasion had begun. But the war was yet to come.
The fight for mankind’s future continues in book 1 of The Earth Epsilon Wars, The Emissary…
Thank you for reading
I hope you enjoyed The Invasion. Your opinion is important, so please take a moment to leave a short review on Good Reads. A quick star-rating can make a big difference. It will also help other like-minded readers discover my books. There’s a lot of free books out there, so I’m very grateful you chose mine. Thanks again.
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Cheers,
Terrance
Also by Terrance Mulloy
The Earth Epsilon Wars
Book 0: The Invasion
Book 1: The Emissary
Book 2: The Defector
Book 3: The Revered (Coming Soon)
Book 4: The Soldier (Coming Soon)
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Upcoming Books - 2019/2020
Enigma
Alien Prison Ship
The Solar Warden Saga
The Halfworld Chronicles
About the Author
Terrance resides in Queensland, Australia, with his wife and a Staffordshire terrier named Clifford. When he's not fending off mobs of radioactive Kangaroos, he can usually be found lurking around his office, conjuring his next book.
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To receive news on upcoming book releases and exclusive free content, sign up to Terrance’s private (and spam-free) newsletter.
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Terrance loves hearing from readers. You can chat with him directly on Facebook Messenger.
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You can also follow and connect with him at:
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