It’s cold.
A bitter chill that seeps through to the very core. An alien, hostile cold that creeps, like smoke, through his clothes and the pores of his skin to wrap his soul in ice.
His back is warm, weighted down with a limp form. A sickly wet rolled down his spine soaking his uniform that left it clinging to his back. The warmth is not pleasant and certainly not welcome. He knows that if he stops the warmth will go and a chill that has nothing to do with the weather will leak into his spine and that frightens him too. So he walks.
He steps over a head that has been savagely torn from a body. He stares into the empty sockets as he passes. The eyes have been torn out, the flesh savagely raked. Around him are bodies. Ripped and torn. Body armour of the strongest design punctured like aluminium and ripped apart like wet paper. The ground, the white sand that they had encountered and marvelled over, is stained with the blood and innards of the hundreds, maybe thousands of men and women. Small tributaries of crimson creep and flow through channels in the sand to form rivers and pools of blood.
Mixed with the human remains are blobs of thick black fluid. Like crude oil it floats on the gruesome rivers, congealing and damming them. It sat on the white sand akin to clay dropped from height.
With the blood are the limbs, human and alien alike, and the bodies. There are men he knows, although he can’t find them. He doesn’t want to look for them. There are the alien forms, stinking carcasses of weird beasts and oddly delicate fibrous tissue that flaps and rides the wind.
He tries not to breathe too deeply. Mixed with the metallic tang of blood and the stench of human waste is a sweet and repellent odour of alien meat warming in the rising suns. Where the alien’s died in groups the smell is so strong that he must go around: the smell can so overpower that it’s like the air is being sucked from his lungs
He shifts the weight on his shoulders and moves steadily, walking with deliberate steps placed in the few gaps, without thought. To think now could send him from teetering on the abyss to plunging into the darkness of its depths. As far as he can see across the plain there are bodies, far in the distance he can see the remains of some vehicles, but who’s he cannot tell.
The armoured machines have given him a landmark though, something to strive towards. A goal to be achieved. He finds a purpose to his steps and walks faster, splashing through puddles of blood and stomping innards underfoot. He slips in alien gore but does not fall.
A tank. Closer now. He can see that the armoured side has been rent by some giant claw and the black blood has been sprayed along the flanks as it ground monstrosities under its treads. He walks closer to the devastated amour, slower now. Afraid of what may be still around but the battlefield is quiet, not even wind blows to break the leaden silence. His steps seem louder now. The sand clings to his boots and it shifts and whispers with every tread. His breathing is laboured and hoarse and comes out in deep, billowed breaths.
The tank. An abrahms, Australian markings. The giant claw has torn clean through the armour. He walks around the armoured vehicle, checking, making sure that it’s safe. That nothing hides nearby.
It seems safe.
With a groan, that is unnaturally loud in the still, he places the soldier he has carried since the fighting stopped onto a clear section of soft sand. He falls to his knees and looks over the soldier. The uniform of the wounded man is American; the name on his shirt says ‘Goodman’. He checks Goodman’s pulse. It is weak under his fingers, the American’s breath is slow and laboured and tiny bubbles of pink froth form at his lips that burst as they appear. He hasn’t long and there is nothing to do for him.
He stands and looks around himself; the American is safe for now though he won’t live long. He sighs; when Goodman dies he may be the only living human on this planet. Surely there were other survivors; not everyone could have perished in the fighting. There had to have been some organisation to the fighting somewhere; somewhere where unit cohesion had not fallen apart under the onslaught. He climbs onto the tank and perches on the turret; the 120mm gun has been bent by some great strength. He picks up a 12.5 casing; one of hundreds littered around the hull, and twirls it between his fingers. He stares out at rolling hills of bodies and gore, not seeing but planning. Australian headquarters was back the way he came. He had not seen it but the Australians were situated on the right flank, the British and Germans on the left with the American and Israelis’ in the centre. These made up the bulk of the forces present. There were other nations in smaller numbers mingled in between the larger contingents. It was planned as a worldwide event, an international convergence to this alien world to explore and study. The Earth finally brought together by the greatest discovery ever.
It had bought hope, and to many the thought of peace.
And it ended here, like this. A landscape of ravaged humanity
There are binoculars near the .50cal machine gun, untouched by the carnage barring one tiny drop of blood. He lifts them, smearing the red stain, and scans the surrounds. He looks to the north, what they had figured to be north; the American HQ was that way with the Israeli HQ further afield.
He stops.
Something has popped, not far from him. He cannot see through the bodies, but he can hear something shifting, the sand moving and then the pop, like a balloon bursting in another room. He stills his breath and stops twirling the casing. Motionless. His blood creeps through his veins as a chill hand grips his spine.
The pop. A slide and a shifting of sand catches his eye. He daren’t move his head to see. Sweat tickles his eyelashes, stings his eyes. A wind blows rattling the shell casings and sending them tumbling musically down the hull to the sand where they land with soft thuds and tiny clicks as they strike each other.
There. It’s the size of his head, seems bigger from the corner of his eye. With deliberate care he turns to the beast and sees a pink form like a bath sponge tinged with bright vermillion, zebra like stripes, a glistening muscular foot pulses over the sand moving the creature with a slow, steady slide.
To his right another muffled pop and then one in front. More of the pink sponge slugs appear. Emerging from the under the ground, sliding across the sand with a dry hiss of their foot. A pore opens on the first slugs back with that muffled pop and a thin, pink feeler emerges, trailing in the sand. It touches a blood stain and comes to life, seeking, probing the ground. It touches Goodman’s boot and recoils then inches forwards again, feeling his boot, his pants leg, upwards to his hand in his lap. It touches bare skin and neither Goodman nor he move. The probe caresses the bare skin and then slowly twines around the wrist the slug following sedately behind. The pink mass crawls over Goodman’s leg and stops at the entwined hand. Thick saliva issues from the creature’s mouth over the exposed hand and then the creature starts to feed.
He watches it for a while. He wonders if he should stop it. He should check if Goodman still lives. He can’t move. He turns away, its better not to watch.
He decides not to fear this particular alien, it’s slow, a carrion feeder, he’s sure. And they’re not interested in the tank. Each alien finger that probes the metal recoils quickly and doesn’t venture forth again. More pops, more slugs. They feast on the dead. Slow and eager they eat man and alien, indiscriminate in their appetite. He ignores them and turns back to the landscape, to the north. There’s smoke curling in the wind, as if a plane has moved through it. He watches, curious and then stands for a better look. He can see no more standing up and decides that he must get closer.
There is a Hilux nearby. He had not noticed it before. The vehicle is empty, splashed with blood, the engine is missing, torn free and tossed like rubbish on the ground nearby. He’ll have to walk.
There is an F88 near the commander’s compartment in the hull. He grabs it, checks the magazine and then his own that are still in his webbing. He has water, he has a weapon and now he has a purpose. Ignoring the striped aliens he jumps from the tank. They shrink away from his movements and he walks, north, to the smoke.
He walks for an hour, the sun here, burns cold and travels slow. No watch or clock has ever worked properly since the first humans arrived here. He checks his instinctively. Every dot on its LCD face is flashing. He drops his hand and walks on.
There is a change here. The bodies are more widely spaced. Less human remains and the sand has been churned over. Great craters dot the landscape and glinting in the suns are heat blasted shards of glass. He stoops and lifts one; it’s blackened and smoky with grains of white sand stuck to it. He drops it. Artillery or armour fire struck here. In the heaped piles of sand he can see thick black stains and a coil of alien’s innards at the bottom of one hole. The beast’s had been caught in the open here and a heavy price had been taken from them.
A victory.
There were few of them on his side of the line. If any. He remembers little of the fighting. At some stage he had lost his rifle. But he had fired it. He had. He had tried to fight them off. He does remember a smaller alien. A mass of claws with midnight black skin that glistened like wet leather. They had charged the lines out of the dark. Leaping and clawing at men, tearing at their faces. He had shot it. The 5.56mm rounds had torn into its body. Blasting chunks free. It reminded him of putting fire crackers into jelly when he was a kid. Sticky masses of meat had flown free and the creature had flopped to the ground where he had blasted it again before turning and...He doesn’t remember what happened after that. There was some screaming, horrid, shrill howls and wet tearing noises. He had fallen, gotten up.
Someone laughed. He spins, the rifle raised to his shoulder. He sights over the scope. There it is again; three distinct laughs followed by a hoot. He scrambles over a craters edge and slides into the hole, his boots hit alien gore that is like glue and he stumbles and nearly curses.
Laugh/hoot. Louder. Closer.
Slowly. Careful not to disturb the slightest thing, he raises himself and peers over the edge. Nothing. Sun blasted white sand heaved into unnatural craters.
Laugh/hoot. Behind him. Close. He grits his teeth together and forces his lips shut to still his racing breathes. He closes his eyes as he feels the beast inches from his back. He readies himself for the death blow. For the shear of alien claws that will rake down his back. Open his spine to the alien environment. He counts to ten, it makes the waiting easier.
Laugh/hoot. Right near his ear. He has to know. He turns; opens his eyes. There is nothing there. He looks all around with frantic turns, the rifle jammed into his shoulder so hard it hurts. He releases a shuddering sigh as he starts to relax.
Laugh/hoot. The sand ten metres away moves, lifts as something passes underneath. He raises the rifle again, his finger hard on the trigger, he makes himself relax. He straightens his finger, places it on the trigger guard and runs.
He may have run north. He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t checked when he started moving and hadn’t stopped when he was in full flight. He runs until his legs can carry him no further. He stumbles, rights himself and then stumbles again, falling face first into the sand. He flips himself onto his back and chokes on every breath as he tucks the rifle under his chin and desperately searches for signs of pursuit.
The landscape behind him is bare. He drops his arms and the rifle and reaches for a water bottle, unscrews the lid and drinks deeply. A wind chills the water that drips on his chin. He lowers the bottle and looks about himself. He knows this place. This is Omar’s Oasis, one of the few spots where there are trees and close to the American lines. He stands, secures his water bottle and retrieves his rifle. Within arm’s reach is a tree. What they had figured passed for a tree here. He didn’t even see it. The trunk is grey, soft and fleshy. The branches are wide and flat with thick leaves that leak a milky substance when broken. He smiles and leans his back against the trunk. He runs his hand down his face, slight stubble tickles his palm. He slides his back down the trunk and rests on his backside.
He sleeps.
Laugh/hoot.
His eyes open. All senses alert. It is dark, the white sand shines in the light of a strange moon giving the landscape a dull grey appearance, cut by shadows from the oasis. He curses himself and slowly stands.
A long bass note echoes across the landscape. Laugh/hoot answers. The bass note comes again, rising in pitch before ending.
He ducks low. Calm. He scans his surrounds but sees nothing. He moves with soft, deliberately placed steps. “The Walk” the army calls it. The F88 out in front of him. The safety is on. He thumbs it off and steps from the shadows of the trees.
Bass moan. Laugh/hoot. The night is coming alive.
In the distance half hidden by dunes there are buildings. The American headquarters. Silently he steals his way towards them. The buildings here lie in devastation. There is blood and death and despair. He becomes lost in the shadows as he moves past the war torn structures. From an alley way he looks out into a courtyard filled with neatly parked Army HMMWV’s. The vehicles looked untouched by alien hands and he wonders on the chances of getting one started and making his way to the portal. It isn’t far from here. The Americans had been charged with the portals defence.
Yet they had failed in their defence. So had the aliens passed through? What awaits him on the other side?
Bass moans. Laugh/hoot and now a high pitched scream. Like a woman’s voice yet with an alien tone that shivers his spine.
He ducks back into the shadows and creeps through an open door. Stairs to his left. He goes up, hugging the wall, “Walks” along the corridor and finds an open door that he slips through. Wide windows look down on the courtyard. He goes to them and looks down.
Laugh/hoot muted by the glass.
The scream and then movement, beyond the hummers.
Them. The aliens.
The first one out is tall, he recognises it. He has seen it before. In the half light it is muted colours but in the bright of the day it is garish yellows and pinks. Delicate and like a flower. It walks on stalks with long tentacles waving about it, first one way and the other as if they were willow branches at the mercy of the wind. There is no obvious head, just a crown of soft, feathery petals. It moves with purpose out into the car park. The willow branch tentacles feel their way over a windscreen of the closest hummer and with boneless strength shatters the bullet resistant glass.
He remembers seeing this beast in the light of day. During the fight. Picking up screaming soldiers and tearing them apart with the limitless might that it possesses. He forces his breath to slow and looks into the darkness that it had appeared from.
Another appeared. A brute of a beast. It is a quadruped that walks on its knuckles with front claws that are long and curved like sickles, folded underneath. It has shorter hind legs like an alien hyena with a flat face and wide, toothy mouth. There is flabby appearance to it, rolls of skin, and as he watches, it stops to preen itself like a cat.
The beast is the length of the vehicles it strides past. Yet unlike the flower creature it ignores the military machines, content to preen itself. Another appears and it issues out the female scream.
His skin crawls at the sound and he thinks that he has spent too long looking from this spot and decides to relocate.
“Two, this is five. Targets in sight.”
He spins, rifle at his soldier and scans the room for the voice. On the floor, not far from him, a red light winks on.
“This is lead. Get closer and prepare to engage.” The voice is garbled. A whisper hiding under white noise.
He scrambles forward and snatches up the radio. He thumbs the set and speaks his name and position down the microphone.
There is no reply. He tries again. And again. Nothing. He shakes the radio and then peers over the edge. The radio is silent and nothing but aliens moved below. He starts to move and then hears rifle fire. He races back to his position and looks over the edge.
He can see the soldiers now. They pour from between the hummers, M4’s blazing. They move in two’s, fire and manoeuvre. One fires, one moves. They aim at the hyena beasts and tear one asunder under the hail of lead. The flower moves silently and snatches at a soldier. There is a scream as a tentacle wraps around the soldiers shin. It is a woman. She panics as another tentacle wraps around her thigh.
The aim turns to the flower. Bullets tear into it. Puncture the flesh of the alien yet it retains the strength to snap the woman’s leg at the knee and twist it, wrenching it free. The woman wails in agony. Another tentacle seeks the woman and seizes her around neck and shoulder. It squeezes, crushing her lungs and snapping her ribs with ease. Blood spew’s from her mouth, rains to the ground from her torn body. The flower twists her, wrenches her back and forth and then rips her carcass apart and drops it to the tarmac.
Bullets still tear at its flesh and a grenade flashes at the base of its stalks, the detonation rattles the windows and flings alien legs for metres around. The flower falls, as silent in its death throes as the woman had been vocal.
He looks around the fighting. The other hyena beast is dead, slumped over two cars; its weight has crushed in the roofs. Two more flowers appear and he can hear muffled orders being shouted and then from the far side of the car park came the jelly flesh beasts, like the one he had killed, their wet leather flesh shining in the moonlight. A score or more of them race over the hummers, dive in amongst the soldiers. Claws flashing, tearing, they call to each other as they stand over the ravaged remains of their victims. Low bass moans to mark a fallen enemy and then they sprang off seeking more flesh to rip, more lives to end.
Rifles bark and jelly flesh flies. A soldier mounts a .50 cal and adds its thunder to the rage below. He doesn’t see the flower alien. No one does and it grips the gunner around his face and yanks him downwards over the side of the fighting vehicle. His back cracks as his legs tangle in the manhole. The flower twists and tugs at him, unhurried to free its prey. He comes free with a flailing of lifeless limbs and the alien tears him apart.
Laugh/hoot. It is distinct over the fighting. The jelly fleshes stop and retreat. He hears someone shouting orders. A regroup is called, check ammo. He lifts his rifle and moves towards the door, the people down there have an upper hand and they can use an extra gun.
Laugh/hoot.
It stops him. He goes to the window, slowly, fearing that sound.
Laugh/hoot.
“Keep alert,” the radio hisses. “Don’t bunch up. Garson, check the fifty on that vehicle.”
It all seems so normal to him. He knows that there is nothing normal here. The voice over the static gives the alien world a brief humanity. He keys the mike again and tries to contact the soldiers below. They can’t hear him.
Laugh/hoot.
Below him the soldiers mill, checking in all direction for the source of the sound.
Laugh/hoot.
So close. The field falls silent. It is over so quickly. The ground heaves. Tarmac cracks, vehicles slide and roll. There are screams and shouts and then the ground collapses and in an explosion of white sand half the soldiers vanish. Cohesion is lost, the men panic and flee. Something flies from the crater. It strikes a soldier in the back and he falls instantly dead. The creature, a white worm, angrily flails at the ground, two hard pincers on its tail impale into the man’s buttocks and the worm is able to find purchase on the body; it coils on the carcass and sits. Other worms fly from the hole. There are panicked shouts and un-aimed rifle fire.
A soldier runs towards his building. Right towards the window where he watches from. He looks down and sees panic etched into a hard face. A worm hits him on the shoulder and there is whoosh of air and the soldier’s chest and neck vanished into the worm’s gullet. His head twists as the flesh tears, his right arm is flung upwards in response to the tightening of the soft tissue. And then he falls, dead in less than a second.
Someone runs past, screams and blasts the worm. He sees blonde hair under the helmet, a ponytail come loose. She screams as a worm thuds into the side of a hummer and dodges over it. She fires blindly behind her and then discards her rifle.
He thumps the glass. She stops; sees him and searches for a door. The window at the end of the building explodes and the one next to it and then the next one. He dives to the floor as a thick appendage slides through the windows, raining glass over him and the tarmac below. It tears walls, lifts desks and rains carnage down on the building as it swings in again and again. Is it seeking him? He doesn’t care to find out. He dive/rolls and makes for the door that is no longer there. Iron walls tear like paper as it reaches in again. He goes prone, feels the rush of air as it passes over him and then he is on his feet, running for an exit. The floor collapses, pitches forty five degrees and flings him out of a shattered window frame into the darkness beyond. He comes to his feet, staggers and disappears into the black.
Laugh/hoot. The tarmac falls quiet. The battlefield loses its voice.
Laugh/hoot.
He doesn’t know where he is. It is dark and quiet and for a brief few minutes it is safe. He hears a scuff of boots and ragged breathing and then the female soldier comes around the corner straight into him. She starts and he clamps his hand over her mouth. She recognises the touch and relaxes in his grip. Her wide eyes stare at him with fear laid like a tomb behind them. She hugs him, squeezes him, seeking his touch and the comfort that another human can offer. He reciprocates and holds her to him. She is cold, his breath mists in the air. The temperature is falling. She pulls back and looks about her and then slides to the ground. He follows her down. She rests her head on his shoulder and he takes her hand, slides her cold fingers in amongst his. They rest.
Morning brings a cold sun to a world full of death. He wakes alone. He looks about himself and sees her standing at the corner peering around the edge. She senses him move and turns with a finger raised to her lips. Her face is streaked with blood.
Flowers walked amongst the hummers. She points to a hummer close by, miraculously untouched by alien or debris. She points to him, her and the vehicle. He looks to the flowers and then nods. If they stay they will be found. He mimes starting the engine. She nods. He frowns, but she seems confident and he trusts her.
She holds up one finger, two. On the third they run for the car. He is an Australian he runs to the left of the car thinking it is the passenger side. He is greeted by a steering wheel. He pulls open the door and dives in. The woman is scrambling onto the roof making for the vehicles .50 cal weapon. He fiddles with the ignition finds the keys already in the car and starts the engine. The hummer roars to life. The .50cal clacks as a round is charged. He stamps the clutch. Curses and hits the accelerator, gears ground as he confuses the pedals again, the engine whines and then roars and the car bucks forward and kicks up a wave of sand as it speeds across the courtyard.
The flowers see them and pursue. They are lazy, unhurried beasts and they make little progress to them. The heavy machine gun spits fury at the aliens and the soldier is screaming in rage as she fires.
Flowers appear in front of them. The engine purrs like a content kitten. The .50 bucks and bellows. A flower takes fire, ruptured tentacles fly, shredded petals lift in the wind and drift through the air.
He yells and tramps the accelerator to the floor as a flower steps into his path. He calls a warning and then hits it. The hummer bucks with the hit, takes the impact and leaves the ground. There is a yelp from the woman and he whoops with delight. The path is clear. The flowers are too slow. He laughs and turns. The female soldier is sitting in the back seat her shoulders stained red as blood drains from the ruined stump of her neck. He turns forward biting back the emotion that brews through his body. He doesn’t slow.
He drives north, to the portal. The spot is marked by a stand of poles tipped with red flags that hang limp. A communications array has been set up here but that is now on the ground in a tangle of twisted wires and metal. A communications trailer has been torn off its axles and dashed onto the ground. He pulls to a stop by the remains of the trailer.
The portal is gone.
He steps from the car and stares hopelessly at the marker poles. He leans against the hummer’s front, still stained with alien flower blood.
Laugh/hoot.
He closes his eyes.
Laugh/hoot.
He mounts the vehicle. Primes the .50cal.
Laugh/hoot.
