I
The wind that blew across the land carried tales of despair. In a voice of morbid sounds and wailing that came from hell itself. The rain that fell burned their skin that was still tender even after eleven months. Despite, mayhap even in defiance, of the burning they kept on a steady course. Their destination was that important. The journey was hard as always since the city had been in ruin. The reminisces of old gigantic buildings stood like testaments to past Gods. Like most Gods though they were fallen.
He, the elder brother, thought back to when the world had life and light. He remembered when all of these good, not perfect, but good people thought that ruin would come from communism, terrorism or a God. Yet oddly enough, it came as Nostradamus predicted centuries ago, “From Above.”
They, the Sheiar, swooped down as the world searched for the terrorists responsible for bringing down the towers in this very same city of New York. The Sheiar attacked the Middle East first, destroying most of the planet’s armed forces in one attack. This was all possible while the occupation of Afghanistan was under way. Onto the Middle East and southern Asia they deployed a chemical weapon that broke down living tissue. Horribly the cellular chemicals would split into their most basic forms of matter.
He thought back to how the world banded together to save the planet Earth and lost. Idiotically we used nuclear weaponry that ultimately harmed only us. That day his brother and him had been evacuating people, mainly children. They were on the island side of the tunnel when the shock wave from our own missiles leveled most of New England.
Everybody was knocked to his or her feet when it happened. Fortunately the water came before the fire. The shock wave was a visible thing like a wave of violent fire sent from God to crumble every thing in its path. Immediately the tunnel in front of their van crumbled killing hundreds. The boiling liquid and vapor burned everyone terribly, yet the two brothers and several others survived.
For the first six months they had avoided the Sheiar slave captors and the human marauders with several near misses. All of this had to be waded through along with the bleakest of nuclear winters.
Then one fateful day his brother happened to come across a Sheiar soldier trapped under a collapsed section of the subways. They took the injured soldier to the ‘bunker.’ The bunker was the place where the two brothers and five other cops had been held up since the bombs fell. There were about 19 people living in the under ground warehouse. The others were all civilians whom had survived by some miracle or another in these dark times. Most miraculous of all was that one of them was a very brilliant doctor named Doctor. Thomas Butchy. He was as small as he was brilliant and twice as burned. From the very first day he always helped as many people as possible and the entire ‘community’ loved him for that.
When the injured Sheiar soldier was brought to the doctor, inspiration struck him. For four months he worked arduously on it. Reluctantly he kept the little grey bastard alive the whole time, well until he was done. That day ruffle four months after the alien’s capture Doctor Butchy called for the people of their community to gather quickly. His burns — now pink ruff scars — pulled tightly on his face. The now 35 people of their community worried deeply for the drained doctor as he explained briefly a chemical formula. Slowly all the peoples eyes widened as the good Doctor pulled a syringe filled with a maroon liquid from his blackened lab coat. As soon as he injected the grey its effects became visible. Its almond shaped eyes sharpened and he jumped hard against the restraints. A snarl came to the small straight line that was its mouth. A strange and for the moment indefinable noise resonated into the minds of these resilient yet badly burned survivors. The sound, which was not all noise for the Sheiar were slightly telepathic, assaulted them all. Defiantly the crowd cheered for this horrid wail as the grey body darkened and its skin began to shrivel.
With a look of triumph in his eyes the Doctor grabbed the arm of the dead thing. A loud pang echoed through the room as the whole body disintegrated.
“We will all be Typhoid Marys,” the Doctor said. “It will not harm us...only them,” he screamed raising his arm. “Let’s save the world!”
The crowd cheered as they lined up to infect themselves with the harmless (to humans) virus.
That was nearly two hours ago and now our seven cops are on their mission.
II
The brothers’ job was to infect the biggest watering hole left in New York, the Madison Square Gardens Sports Arena. Most of the streets were caved-in mine fields after the subways were destroyed, but the two managed quickly, thanks to their excitement. The cold rain and wind made their tender skin burn but that was something all had begun to get used to.
On their way back to the bunker however, while traversing the hellish terrain once known as Wall Street, the two were attacked by Sheiar slave ships. The pair of technological monsters was sleekly black and shaped like ravens in flight. They swooped down on the two with an amazing amount of agility while firing laser-pulse cannons. Seconds before they impacted with the ground they pulled their noses from the dive like an eagle through a lake.
He looked towards his brother who already was falling through the rotten ruins that once was the most influential street in the world. With pure desperation he reached for his younger brother but already the infinite darkness had him. Horror filled eyes watched as the evilness that the aliens brought here swallowed his brother.
Rage engulfed the man as he looked towards the mechanical demons hovering above him.
“Yes, this is going to be the most influential street again.” He said, raising his arms in a passive gesture. The black ships each fired an energy pulse that encased him. Just before he lost consciousness he had an amusing thought: SURPRISE!
Copyright © 2003 by Eric Z Fox