Tag: survivors

The Alien Invasion Dream

It began against a scorched black and red sky. I was my current age. The sky was a backdrop as a group of us left one area, heading for a refugee site. We’d been fighting the aliens, and I’d gained experience and insights. My group was small: four. All survivors who had fought.

We arrived at the packed refugee center. An immense aerial battle was underway, with USAF fighter jets fighting invader ships. The AF seemed to be winning. Refugees cheered as invader craft went down with plumes of black smoke.

I knew better, shaking my head, warning the refugees, “It takes more than that to kill the aliens.” I’d fought the glistening white creatures. I knew how they functioned. They needed to be set afire and completely destroyed. If even a small piece survived, it would grow. As it grew, it would attempt to reconnect telepathically with other alien beings. As it grew, it would look for a host human or animal body.

I told the refugees, “We must find and destroy every piece of alien.” I described what to look for. Children rushed up. They’d seen alien pieces and stamped them with their feet. I was horrified. “Don’t stamp on them. Get your shoes off and burn them. The aliens will be clinging to your soles, and they’ll grow and take you over.”

The refugees scoffed. A young, short female survivor in my group said, “Listen to him. He knows what he’s talking about. Do what he says if you want to survive.”

Her words made the difference. The refugees believed me. I went around with people, organizing groups, making certain they had fire. We set up children to look for surviving alien pieces. They walked around in threes. When an alien was found, two stayed there to mark the place while the third went to find an adult to burn it.

The process seemed to be working. Then I saw a small alien piece come up out of the drain in a tub. Although I immediately burned it, more small pieces emerged. I burned them, too, then sent out the warning, the aliens are in the drains. They’re coming up. Check the sinks and tubs. Check everywhere there’s a drain pipe.

I found a tub where a large alien piece had already come up. Approaching it to burn it, it shot out tongue like pieces of itself, trying to hit me. I knew that if it hit me, it would take me over.

Another person said, “They’re going after you. They know you’re a threat.”

I agreed. The conclusion implied scary ramifications about intelligence and awareness of these surviving pieces. Another arrived with the intelligence that more aliens were coming up the drains. “They’re coming up everywhere. We can’t stop them.”

I entered another bathroom. A large, white alien almost filled the tub. In the middle of it was a naked toddler. The child was looking at me and smiling. I said, “The aliens have taken over that child. We need to kill it.”

Intense dream. Really shook me.

2

Just A PSA

If you can and you wish, please consider donating to one of the relief funds helping survivors in Ukraine, such as the World Central Kitchen. Cheers

2

Meet the Beatles

With snow blinding me and an icy wind using a scalpel on my face, I thought I’d made a stupid fucking mistake. Lowering my head as far as I could behind the windscreen, I kept on the throttle, hoping that I wasn’t passing the trio or that I’d run ’em over. I should’ve been on them by now. I’d seen them on the cameras at the two hundred yard marker. They were almost stopped then. Since, the snow’d come on proper. No way they’d gotten closer to the house, I was sure.

I wasn’t completely stupid, though. I’d tied a rope to the garage ‘fore I left it and another to the buggy’s rear bumper. Even if I didn’t find the three, I’d been able to get myself back to the house. This had gone past being a rescue thing, acquiring an aura of a personal goal because I was remembering the time I’d failed. I wasn’t failing again. I hadn’t fought to live and survive just to fail helpin’ others. No.

Almost running into the pole I’d planted years before as a marker helped orient me. I’d deviated from a straight line by ’bout forty feet. Turning right, I squinted against the swollen battering flurries and drove into the wind, cursing myself, the weather, the people, my humanity, and my stupidity. Then, like a chance as I was passing ’em, a blue garment flashed at me on my right.

Jesus, I was passing them. Dropping off the gas, I swerved right and swamped the buggy in a snowdrift. Righting it with a combo body-lean, wheel turn, and burst of throttle, I twisted right. The blue loomed up. I aimed right for it. As I did, I saw obscured shadows that had to be the other two.

On their knees, the blue-clad figure was waving their arms at me. Wind tortured hair around an exposed white face. A mouth yawed open below dark, hopeless eyes.

I pulled the buggy in amongst them. Between me and blue, we wrangled the other two onto the buggy’s back. One of them was such dead weight, I was leaning ninety degrees toward the certainty that they’d died. I didn’t wanna drag a dead person home, but since I didn’t know indisputably, my course was set.

With them in the buggy’s shallow bed, and blue on the buggy’s passenger side of the sole bench seat, I grabbed the rope up and hit the gas for home. It was damn slow going, as I had to keep pullin’ the rope in and adjusting my course. My speed had to be kept down lest the buggy’s bumpy ride tossed the three rescuees out.

Dusk was grabbing the land and I was frozen exhausted by the time the rope led me home. Back into the garage, I pulled the door to and closed it up, just about shutting out the cold and the shrieking wind. Blue became livelier then, gushing tearful thanks at me. The other two were in greens, grays, and blacks, pants, sweatshirts, coats, hats, and scarves, anything, I guess, to be warm and protected. Still, it seemed like scarce stuff to be wearing in that shit outside. I wondered where the hell they’d come from, why’d they’d been out there, and why’d they’d been coming my way. With blue’s help, we got the other two out of the garage and into the house.

Gasping, sniffing back snot, wiping her nose, and pushing her dirty blond hair back, blue introduced herself as Lauren. Her friends were Gwen and Shalla. Shalla proved to be the unconscious one that I thought might’ve been dead. All looked like they’d missed soap and food.

“I’m Bill,” I told ’em, not my real name, but part of the wild Bill persona I’d created for myself. Don’t know why I used it instead of my real name but it felt right. The animals had come in to see what was going on, so I thought I’d introduce them, too. “Meet the Beatles. The shy cat hanging back is Ringo, and the darker tabby is George. Their mom is the bigger tabby, Paula. The husky is John.”

“The Beatles,” Gwen said with a wan, teary smile. Dark banks shuttering her face, her head dropped forward. As she fully slumped onto the floor, Lauren did the same, like the heat was melting ’em down after being out in the cold. In seconds they seemed as unconscious as Shalla.

The animals went about sniffing the comatose new arrivals as I gaped, grappling with what I’d need to do. They were the first people I’d seen in three years, the first women I’d seen in almost four. Though I didn’t really enjoy the prospect, I had to get ’em out of those cold, wet clothes, and into the bed by the fire. Once I’d done all that, I’d have to mark my calendar, cause it was an auspicious day, the day that three female survivors met the Beatles.

I just knew it was going to change my world.

0

Cat Day

I guess, to give it a start, it began with the cat.

The rest is backdrop. Setting. Background. This started with the cat and her kittens.

They were totally unanticipated. We were starting another football season. Done in by injuries, my team had finished second, losing in the Superbowl by two stinking points the year before.

Unfortunately, I lost to iBot. He’s the housebot. Thinking I’d be funny and play against casting, iBot has the most masculine personality among the bots. I also made him the most abrasive. So losing to him sucked. iBot isn’t a gracious winner. I guess I should say, wasn’t, since we’re talking about the past.

There were twelve of us, and the eleven bots. Our league was three divisions of four teams each. You played your division opponents twice, and each team out of the other divisions once, for an eleven-game regular season. Then we had the playoffs. Eight teams with the best records squared off.

Cat Day, as iBot officially named it, was the first day of the season. I thought I could take the Lombardi that year. We were playing by the 2030 rules. I had Ben Roethlisberger at QB (my Dad, before he was killed, used to tell me I was a big Roethlisberger fan when I was young), with Franco Harris (Grand Dad’s favorite) in the backfield, Mike Webster at Center (another of Grand Dad’s recommendations) and big Gronk at TE. I’d managed to add Alan Faneca. Wide receivers were Antonio Brown with Larry Fitzgerald in the slot. It was on defense where I’d improved, managing to add Ron Woodson, replacing Sherman, along with Troy Polamalu. I’d had enough money to get the 2010 version of Troy to go along with my 2009 version of James Harrison. I was set.

I’d settled into the Immersion Deck, opening day at Heinz under a gorgeous warm fall day. The crowd was roaring, my beer was cold, and my pizza was hot. TinBot’s Bengals, with Tom Brady under center, was my opponent. TinBot had finished last the previous season. He’d given up a lot to get Brady, although it was old Brady. I expected a good game.

They’d just placed the ball at the twenty when the alarms went off. iBot immediately roared, “Game’s starting. Shut that fucking alarm off.”

Arya said, “It’s an intruder alert. We can’t just turn it off. It must be investigated.”

“You’re fucking security,” iBot said. As Arya said, “I know who I am,” iBot finished, “Get it done, bot.”

“Game pause,” I said, as the only human, and the only one for which an intruder actually mattered. “Delay the starts until the alarm is resolved.”

While every bot except Arya cursed me, I brought up the security monitors. I figured this was a false alarm or malfunction.

“Where is it, Arya?” I said.

The interior cams caught her moving across the domescape. Drones overtook her.

“Don’t know yet, boss,” she said. She carried two weapons. The drones were armed, too. I pitied any intruders Arya might find.

The security net immediately pinpointed a breach back by a drain. That worried me. As the drones closed on the grassy place beneath a big black oak tree and hovered, their cameras picked up the cat.

“A cat,” I said.

“Yeah, we all have fucking eyes,” iBot said. “Thanks for the news report, egghead”

Protecting three kittens, the cat looked unafraid and ready to fight. The kittens looked like they were just a day or two old.

Arya arrived on the scene. She had her weapons ready. “Instructions,” she said.

“Nuke ’em,” iBot said. “The game’s waiting. Kill them and let the games begin.”

“No,” I said.

I had no need for a cat and kittens. I’m not an animal lover. I have livestock but that’s because I eat real food.

But I saw no reason to kill the cats. She looked like my first girlfriend’s cat. The girlfriend was Joy. The cat was Snuffy. Snuffy was male, though.

A cat with kittens in my sanctuary sowed a shitload of questions that required answers. Besides the breach, her presence meant something was going on outside of my fortress. Plus, being in the dome was one thing, but how had even reached it was almost as critical.

Shit. I didn’t say it, but I thought it about nine times in a row. I wasn’t going to start the football season that day. Not until I knew what the hell had happened to my security and what was going outside of my fortress.

So, see, that’s the day everything changed.

On Cat Day.

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑