In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater Page 6

  Bermea crashes through the door and hurls over to Julio.

  Kabus One walks through the door, “Two for the price of one.”

  Overhead an F-22 is hit by a Peon and falls toward the building.

  Back on the rooftop, it’s a Mexican standoff.

  “What’s your name?” Julio asks.

  “Kabus.” Kabus slowly creeps forward, “What? Is there some part of your culture where you need to know the name of your killer before you die? Because that doesn’t seem like a very American thing to do.”

  Julio doesn’t reply, but he can see they’re as intelligent as he originally thought. This isn’t some mindless vicious alien race that accidentally stumbled upon them. Maybe the human race can make it to their level in a few thousand years.

  He doesn’t contemplate the fact that this could be the end of the human race.

  Bermea hands Julio a Glock. “This is all I got.”

  This is it, Julio guesses. He snatches and racks it.

  They both run toward Kabus one, guns blazing, bullets flying off him. Kabus One charges and hits them both hard. They fly back, blood sputters from their lips.

  The F-22 crashes into the building, Julio flies off and Kabus One leaps after him.

  Halfway down, Kabus Two bursts through a window and into Kabus One. Kabus Two melts and starts to merge back into him. A piece of the plane flies from the explosion and into a bundle of trees below, Julio falls in after it. Kabus lands on his feet, still merging with his better half.

  Easier to split than it is to materialize back together. Merging like a piece of clay pushing into an already made clay figure. He leaps into the bundle—

  A squeal is heard as a piece of shrapnel from the F-22 pieces into his chest. A horrific noise erupts from Kabus’s back as his second half still tries to merge. The plane’s tail sticks out from the ground, holding Kabus up by the gut. Kabus’s body elongates, trying to form around the piece of metal. It fights to form around it, at first putting up a good fight but it pushes back into its original body trying to find somewhere to go. It slows as its efforts becomes more and more meaningless. It eventually goes quiet as his second half dies. Julio just stares at Kabus, a single tear comes out of the beast eyes.

  For a second there, Julio actually felt sorry for the damned thing. One arm bigger than the other, left leg twice as long as the other. It’s other half’s face half merged into the originals. There are two small eyes, nostrils, and a weak sliver of a mouth on his left check.

  He guesses they die just a pitifully as we do. He looks up into the trees, a red glow breaks through the canopy. He’s lucky the trees broke his fall, at least that’s what he tells himself. There is no other explanation. There’s barely a scratch on him.

  ---

  Cole looks back into the alley, the dead grunt’s brother runs away. It glances back and smirks at him.

  What the hell? Is this a fucking game to them? His comrade just died. He shouldn’t have any sympathy for them but its expression just came off as weird.

  “There’s her place!” Erin and Arnold yell. They point to a complex among many across the street. One of the tanks rolls up and the top opens. The captain climbs out. His face is stern but his eyes are telling, he’s on the edge of breaking.

  “Citizens! You need to follow us out! Los Angeles is lost.”

  “No! I need to get my wife and my friend’s kid from the building over there, can you wait?” Cole asks.

  “This is the last rally point, we’re not going to wait long to leave, you have—“

  He glances at his watch.

  “Five minutes.”

  The Bell’s apartment door is open, Cole, Erin and Arnold run in.

  “Thora!!” Erin yells. They split apart and search the place. Cole goes straight to the master bedroom. They’ll be here, they have to be. He opens the door.

  “Thora!”

  A bipedal brown skinned alien carries an unconscious Thora and baby Neil. Its triangular head stares at him. The thing stands up straight on its hind legs like a human, its body oddly gorilla-like. Its whole body is humanoid, with pecks, abs, two legs and two human-like arms holding baby Neil like a football. Its two arm like appendages hang off its back like dead things. It has two large black eyes that stare right at Cole.

  Cole remembers back, it’s him. The thing he crashed into at his accident. It drops Neil on the bed as Erin and Arnold run in.

  “Another one!” Arnold shouts. SE6 hovers up to the window. It creeps toward them.

  “Wait!” Cole yells. He wants answers, why is he here and why does he want Thora?

  For some reason, Cole knows its gender, a male. A beam of light erupts from the ship and Thora and the alien disappears into it.

  “Nooo! Wait!” Cole yells after it. It hovers back as Erin runs and grabs baby Neil.

  “Thank god…” She says embracing Neil. She starts to cry as he squeals like nothing happened, grabbing at her curls. At least she still has him. A sudden influx of gunshots and screams are heard outside.

  Outside, a grunt leaps up and grabs hold of SE6, hanging off its wing. The ship lurches backwards impossibly fast and the beast slips and falls. It grabs onto the window seal of the master bedroom.

  It pulls itself up, look inside and grins.

  Shit.

  Its arm rips through the wall like paper as its hand grabs Erin and falls out.

  “Erin!!” Arnold yells. He leaps out of the window after her, but the grunt catches him in midair. In a boom, a tank round hits the grunt in the chest. He releases Arnold and Erin slips hold of Neil.

  “Nooo!” She screams. But Arnold does the impossible. In one swift motion, he catches Neil and barrel rolls as he hits the ground hard. The grunt lands on both feet right in front of him.

  Cole looks out the hole in the wall, debris still settling around him. He has to help them. He runs out the apartment.

  Inside the tank that fired, the crew loads another round.

  “Hey! We’re firing too close to the civilians sir!” The driver says. The captain, the same one who was supposed to lead Cole and the rest to safety, has finally cracked. Sweat drips down his face.

  “It’s us or them, lieutenant. Fire another round!” he commands. The tank shakes hard.

  Outside it, a grunt lands on top. It rips off the turret and grabs and hurls the crew over the city.

  Across the street, Arnold manages to stand up, baby Neil starts to cry, his wails piercing through the battlefield. The grunt carrying Erin stands in front of him. It starts to laugh.

  “Baby…run…AHHH!” She lets out a hellish scream. The grunt clutches her in both hands, squeezes hard and pulls.

  Its monstrous hands rips her in half. Her guts splatter on Arnold. The grunt throws her remains on him, but it doesn’t knock him over. He just stares at her, his wife, the mother of their child. All that’s left of her. Splattered across the ground.

  He clutches Neil incredibly hard, staring at her with his blood stained eyes.

  His wife is dead.

  The grunt still stands in front of him but he doesn’t care. Arnold just screams.

  The grunt is hit by a tank round. He shrugs it off as a battalion of tanks roll around the corner. The rally point is lost. He points at them and his gun wraps around his arm. Huge energy rounds erupt from it and annihilates the tanks.

  Cole peeks out of the entrance of the apartment. SE6 flies overhead and hovers a mile away. Arnold just stands on the side of the street. Cole runs toward him but stops when he notices what Arnold is staring at. And what’s covering him.

  No. Erin’s head and her splattered remains on the ground.

  “Nooooo!”

  Not Erin! He falls to his knees. Not one of the only people he cared for! He was supposed to protect her, but he failed, he always fucking fails. Tears pour out his eyes. He looks up at Arnold. His face is frozen, Neil cries in his arms. The pain on his face is indescribable.

  A grunt lands in front of Cole and punts him
, he flies high into the air. He crashes on a rooftop and skids to a stop.

  He gets up to his knees without any hesitation. He’s fine. That barely hurt, it should’ve killed him. Flying two hundred feet into the air and crashing down should kill any living thing. So why is he unkillable? Every time he’s tries to kill himself he fails. Why can’t he fucking die?

  If he actually succeeded for once, maybe, just maybe, Erin could’ve survived. Maybe all of the people who have died because of him could’ve lived.

  But no, instead he’s just taking up space. Thora, Erin, Julio, nobody can survive through this hell, everybody is gone.

  He doesn’t have anything to live for anymore. He wants to end it… but he doesn’t even have the power to do that.

  “I’m sorry Erin,” he mutters. “I’m fucking useless.”

  The grunt that hit him leaps onto the rooftop, he looks amazed. He smiles and lets out a roar. It echoes throughout the entire city. Twenty grunts in a two mile radius jump onto the rooftops, surrounding him. They all lick their bloodthirsty chops.

  “We got another one!” A grunt yells.

  Another what?

  The sky is void of any friendly aircraft.

  The ships above swirl ominously overhead like a metallic tornado. The grunts creep toward him. What is he going to do? He stops himself. Why do anything? Why go on? Why continue to fight when he wants to die?

  He really doesn’t care anymore.

  He gives up.

  That many of them should hopefully be able to kill him.

  But—

  He runs and they give chase, every grunt comes for him. He runs not because he wants to but because of his instinct.

  His body moves for him and leaps between rooftops. He’s tired of this, he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, he just wants to sleep forever in oblivion.

  Without a care.

  Without an ounce of pain. Before he used to fear not existing but he doesn’t care anymore.

  A grunt closes in from behind, in front of him the rooftops end. There’s a mega highway gap before the next rooftop. An ocean of cars and tarmac between him and the other roof.

  The gap quickly closes in and he goes for it. He jumps hard and soars over the highway. It looks like he can make it. Time seems to slow as he flies through the air.

  The sudden endorphins rushing into him makes him feel alive again. Why can’t he feel like this all the time, why does he have to always feel the doubt and hate of this world? The wind rushes past him.

  An energy round hits him from afar and he falls fast from his arc. He crashes into a small building.

  A grunt walks up to the hole in the wall. Cole pushes a piece of rubble off him. The crash only dirtied him up a little. Not a single goddamn scratch. His force field wasn’t even up.

  “Dammit!” He pounds his fist to the ground, it cracks.

  Maybe it was like this for a reason, him gaining this power.

  “I’m done.”

  He’s done of this. He grips his fist, the dust around it floats in the air. Cole’s tired, tired of failing to kill himself. Tired of his loved ones dying around him, tired of feeling sorry, tired of his depression, and tired of this goddamn war.

  He stands as his watch dings.

  Sync complete.

  He shudders. He can feel it, the sudden influx of power flowing through his veins. Maybe this will save them, maybe this will save himself. From the pain, from the loneliness, from the depression. This could be the answer to save everything.

  He screams.

  A force field encases him and shoots out incredibly fast, it stops suddenly at twenty feet. Multiple one by one force shields combines to make one. The grunt it hits flings off it hard and hurls into a car.

  Dead.

  The smiles of the grunts around him disappear. The spawn of ships above swirl aggressively as Cole’s force field disappears.

  Cole can feel the amount of power that courses through him, it’s sickeningly orgasmic. All of his senses are heightened, his mind is clear. He can move the stars with this amount of power.

  He’s tired of lying to people, lying to himself, tired of failing them. SE6 still hovers ahead, impervious to the conflict around it.

  Cole knows what he has to do. He will, must save Thora, stop this war and with this power, rip open the heavens and make the gods account for their sins for what they have done. For if he can’t leave Earth at his will, someone will pay for those suffering around him.

  With this power he can challenge God himself.

  He shouldn’t have been afraid, afraid to use it. Because of this power he’s invincible.

  The grunts surround him, to him they are just ants. His body glows a bluish tint. All the grunts wait for him to make a move. He leaps up incredibly high and lands on a rooftop, the grunts do the same.

  Cole smiles.

  He races for SE6, the grunts follow, fifty ships break off and launch toward Cole. Cole runs faster than Usain Bolt on steroid-laced crack.

  One of them fires, Cole swings up and a force field comes up and deflects it back. It takes out five of their ships.

  Two grunts leap in front of him, he kicks one and it flies back, he swings his arm to the other and shoots out a projectile.

  It screams as its head is blown off.

  Another grunt leaps in front of him, the ships fire from above. He brings up his force field and it reflects it and destroys everything in his path.

  He leaps on a rooftop and sees SE6 and leaps for it. But he’s smacked down hard and flies across the roof. That actually hurt. But he shakes it off, he can’t stop now. The grunt that killed Erin lands on the other side of the roof, still covered in her blood.

  The confident look on its face is revolting. He stands right in front of SE6, it stands in his way with that fucking smirk.

  Cole doesn’t have time to think, he has to kill.

  They both stare each other down, the grunt smiles and they charge. Cole is unwavering, he’s not going to let it happen again, his hesitation.

  The grunt laughs as it runs toward him, it’s just playing around but too bad he met Cole. They both swing their fist as they collide.

  Debris kicks up as a shock wave rips out as their fist meet, ripping the buttons off of Cole’s shirt.

  The grunt’s bones crack and split as its fist stops but Cole’s keeps going. Its smirk is wiped off. Cole’s fist goes up its arm and out the back, splitting it in half like an ax into a log.

  The grunt jumps back, arm flailing, blood spurting everywhere. It spurts on Cole but he doesn’t stop.

  They bleed red just like us.

  The grunt screams as Cole grabs its other arm and rips it off.

  The grunt falls on its back. Cole jumps on top of him and wraps his bloody hands around its neck.

  He squeezes with all his might, with all his pain and suffering, with all his anger. With all his fears and problems he squeezes its neck until it snaps.

  Dead.

  He continues to squeeze, his hand submerges in its blood as he breaks the skin. Cole cries, he’s just so tired of everything.

  His tears drip into the slush that is the grunts exposed neck. He brings up his hands and looks at them, the grunts spunk drips from them. He suddenly remembers where he is.

  Cole stands, nothing approaches him.

  He tears off a piece of his shirt and wipes off the gunk. SE6 is only a few yards in front of him.

  Cole has to do this.

  He runs toward it and leaps but halts half way in mid-air.

  “What!?”

  Cole’s frozen, he struggles to move but can’t. A beam of light shoots out from SE6 and engulfs him.

  Its front turns away and shoots off into the sky. Cole is still engulfed in the light.

  “NOOO!”

  Suddenly! He’s ripped off into the sky. Cities, mountains, valleys, all zoom under him at incredibly fast speeds. He’s pulled above the clouds and flies toward SE6 which just hovers off in the distance. He a
pproaches it and slams his eyes shut as he’s about to hit.

  ---

  Bermea wakes up under a pile of rubble. He’s on the top floor of the apartment complex, the roof was torn open by the plane crash. The sun peers in.

  “Hahaa! Yes! I’m alive! Suck it, motherfuckers!” Bermea hollers. He did it, he survived. Him, Bermea! Even he didn’t think he would.

  But enough celebrating, he needs to find a way out of town. He looks around for the stairs and jumps as some rubble moves to the side of him. He sighs in relief as it turns out it was nothing, just some rubble covering a statue.

  He brushes them off and takes a closer look.

  He lurches back, it wasn’t a statue. It is a couple clutching each other in their last moments, frozen in the moment. Dust covers their dead bodies, bloody tears on their faces.

  Bermea loses his smile. He hears something, the sunlight is cut off as a shadow comes overhead.

  A monstrous looking ship, Cell, hovers down the hole. It doesn’t have a clear shape, it’s a large black oval but it’s covered in weird misshaped ridges. Hundreds of long thin black pillars stretch out from its nose.

  Bermea just stares at it, it inches closers to him. It hovers for an uncomfortable amount of time. I should try to run is his last thought. Three of the pillars shoot out and pierces Bermea. He screams as he falls limp and it hovers out, carrying his body.

  ---

  Kabus’s body is still pierced with shrapnel. It opens its eyes.

  “I’m sorry…Leif.” It mutters. A light comes down. A seven-foot tall alien projects from the light. It’s Leif.

  “It’s okay, my child,” he says in an oddly calming tone. “You shall be rewarded for your efforts.”

  It’s the same voice from the invasion warning and the same being from the beach. Leif touches Kabus and both of them disappear in light.

  6 - Jahum

  Cole opens his eyes. He’s inside a circular empty room. He falls to his knees panting. Is he in the ship? The lettering SE6 is imprinted in the middle of the floor.