In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (5 page)

A
squadron of F-22s fly overhead. They head toward the city but are intercepted
by a few Peons. Cole and the others watch from below.

In
the sky, the ships maneuver in an impossible manner. They zip and swerve like
flies, dodging the jet’s missiles and bullets like physics are its bitch,
it’s
small wings do nothing to hinder it.

They
stare up in wonder. An F-22 is hit above and comes hurtling down.

“Umm…”
Julio mutters.  

He’s
the only one who notices it.

“Move!”
He yells. They all leap out of the way as it crashes into Cole’s house and
wipes out the stragglers trying to leave the driveway.

Cole
gets up, wiping the dirt off his pants. All of his friends are getting up. The
F-22s are gone. The peons swirl hauntingly above. Cole and the others stare
back at them unsure of what to do. How can they fight that? Should they run?

An
unknown ship flies above them. It’s labeled
SE6.
It looks like a
military drop ship, except there’s no propellers lifting it. It just floats
there. The call sign looks familiar to Cole.

The
Peons finally fly down, coming his way. Cole could do something. But what? He
has seen what they can do, there’s no way in hell he’ll hit them, they’ll just
dodge it. He’s taking way too long to think.

The
Peons fire, Cole’s watch vibrates as he screams throwing up his hands. The
words
activated
projects on it. In a boom, it hits them.

The
smoke clears.

A
fine blue light shimmers through the smoke.

Cole
still stands there, arms cowering over his face, he looks out and then at his
hands, he’s fine. Everyone is fine. A force field protects them. It’s just as
blue as his energy blast, yet he can see right through it, like looking down
into a clear blue ocean from a glass bottom boat.

Another
power?
He got this!

Cole’s
watch says 73% synced. It dings and says locked on.

“I
got this!” He yells as he swings up his arms. He can do this. In a flash,
multiple energy projectiles erupt from his hands. They shoot up incredibly
fast, ripping into the peons, disintegrating them instantly. Their remains rain
down over Cole.

The
force field disappears. Cole did it, maybe he really is a super-hero. His watch
can help him lock onto targets, he just knew in the moment he could do it.

Sweat
drips off his brow. He pants, catching his breath. Not from any pain or stress,
but just from the thrill of it. He has never done anything like that before. He
could do anything.

Anything.

Lost
in his head, he forgets his surroundings. Julio, Erin and Arnold all stare at
him. SE6 flies off toward the city.

“Dude.
What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?” Julio murmurs. They all peer at Cole. He
doesn’t answer. What would he say, that his watch gave him superpowers? Even
with what they saw, he’s not going to insult their intelligence like that. He
could hardly believe it himself. If he didn’t feel that very power coursing
through his veins.

“Cole—“

A
phone rings, interrupting Erin. It’s Cole’s. It is Thora. He answers this time.

“H-hello?”
Cole asks hesitantly. He puts it on speaker.

“Cole…please
help.” She’s crying.

“Where
are you?” He yells. Erin runs up and grabs the phone.

“Where’s
Neil?!” She screams at the inanimate object.

“Erin?”

“Yeah
it’s me, girl. Please tell me Neil’s okay?”

“I’m
in the closet with him.”

The
bedroom closet door is slightly ajar. Thora holds baby Neil tight. A window
breaks in the living room as she lowers her phone. The screams and horrors from
the outside bellows in. She was smart to stay inside. She can hear some of the
screams end as their lives ceases. A disturbing sound.

She
hears something else. She and Neil aren’t alone, something is in the living
room.

Cole
and Erin’s voices echoes out from her phone. She lowers the volume and their
pleas fade away. Her heart pumps as she starts to sweat. The closet was the
best place, they probably don’t know how to use door knobs, she hoped, lying to
herself.

She
reaches to close the door. A shadow blocks the light coming in. Thora jumps
back. She grips Neil in her arms as he cries out.

Thora
screams out over the phone.

The
call ends.

Cole,
Erin, Julio and Arnold all stare at it.

“Thora,”
Cole murmurs.

Erin
tries to call again. It goes straight to voice-mail.

“Thora!”
She yells. The reality of the situation is finally hitting her, her sister is
gone and now her child. She tries again and again.

Nothing.

“No.
No. No. No! Work god damn you!!” She throws the phone and starts to break down.

She
stumbles back and Arnold grabs and comforts her. “
Shh
!
It’s
gonna
be okay,” he says. But the look of dread
on his face speaks otherwise. Erin cries in his arms. Julio and Cole stare at
his demolished phone.

What
is he going to do? With his power he could—

But
no.

He
stops that train of thought. Not against what he saw on the news and definitely
not against thousands of them. So what now?

His
house is destroyed, the remains of some of his coworkers are smeared across the
driveway and his new car is oddly untouched.

Spotless.

Nice,
maybe he can sell that to buy another million dollar house.

Erin
quietly sobs in Arnold’s arms, but Julio-

“We
have to go into the city,” Julio answers for him.

“Are-are
you fucking insane? We can’t go into that!” Cole points toward the city. The
screams have strangely died down. Maybe the invaders have finally killed them
all.

”We
have to…”

Julio
is right and Cole knows it, but to rely on him to do what he just did. He’s not
going to make that mistake, not again, for them to trust in him.

”I
can’t, how do we even know if they’re still alive?” he asks grimly. She’s
alive, he can feel it. He’s not sure if it’s a naive hope or another power of
his.

“We
have to at least try, we can do it if you’re able to do what you just did, and
you can do it again.” Julio has a stern look on his face. Cole looks at his
hands, his watch beeps.

Julio
seems so sure of him. About what he can do even though he knows nothing about
it.

A
map of downtown LA pops up. A red dot marked SE6 moves across it. It must be
the ones who gave him this power. But why?

“Cole
please…” Erin pleads; she’s just lost everything, she’ll try anything. Even if
it costs them their lives.

The
destroyed remains of what was once downtown LA lights the sky.

This
is it.

Because
of Thora and Neil, they’re going to go into a war zone and they’re going to
rely on him, to do damn near impossible things, and because of that…

And
because of that they are all going to die.

The
sky above downtown
Los Angeles pulsates between blue and red like a heartbeat. An intense air
battle rages on. The United States Air Force versus hundreds of alien ships.
Thousands of dots litter the air, Earth’s forces fall from the sky like swatted
flies.

On
the ground, Los Angeles burns, screams and gunshots echo over the city. Small
pockets of action, flashes of lights, reflect in the distance, spreading around
the city. The grunts are widening out, taking care of the few humans that are
left.

Approaching
the remains of downtown, Cole drives up a road into the city.

“Crap.”

A
military roadblock is ahead of him; the military worked fast.
Not that it
helped.
He stops and gets out of his car. He’s on the edge of downtown,
smoldering buildings border the streets.

Two
Humvees surround the barricades that block the road, nobody is around them.
Erin, Julio and Arnold get out of the car after him.

Behind
it are hundreds of dead bodies in the streets, military and civilian, with
abandoned cars strung along them. Some of them are completely mutilated, some
have giant holes ripped in them and some have no marks at all, just screams
frozen on their lifeless corpse. The ground is covered in a thin layer of
blood.

“Oh,
god.” Erin looks away in horror. The pulsating sky seem to accentuate the
blood, with every red pulse.

He’s
supposed to stop this? He stares at the footprints in the blood
, they didn’t
have a chance
. Not that he’s going to, he just needs to clear a path to the
Bells place and leave and hide in a cave somewhere.

Explosions
rock in the background. Three soldiers run up from the right. They too are
covered in blood. A man with Bermea stamped over his fatigue pocket leads them.

“What
the fuck are you doing here?” Bermea asks.

“What
the fuck are
you
doing here? The battle is that way,” Julio replies.

He
points toward the death and screams, where Bermea just ran from. Julio was a
soldier once, a good one; he doesn’t like it when somebody runs away from their
duty, no matter how crazy the mission is, and this mission is the craziest.

Protect
Earth at all cost.

Cole
wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Julio and Thora, but Cole wonders if it
wasn’t for him would’ve he still tried to save her or would he instead have
cowered away somewhere.

“Where’s
your honor?” Julio adds.

“You
asshole! What do you think this is? Huh?” Bermea shouts.

“Look
sir, we need your help, we have to get to my friend’s apartment,” Cole says
trying to diffuse the situation.
      “No! Fuck that shit, I’m not going back into
that man. I’ve never seen anything like this before. So either you can fuck off
on your own or you can follow us out of the c—“

Bermea
is cut off. Three two-story tall grunts land in front of them.

“Oh
god no…” Erin whispers. The rest stare in fear.

The
main grunt in the middle, Kabus, murmurs off some unintelligible gibberish. He
messes with a metal device on his neck. It’s time to
nut
up or shut up for Cole, but he hesitates, heart hammering in his chest.

“
Uhhh
Cole?” Julio murmurs.

Cole
swings his arms up. He can’t do this. He freezes, fear stains his face.

“Shit!
Fire, faggot!” Julio yells.

Cole
hears his heartbeat.

“Shit…”
Cole whispers, his heartbeats louder. Kabus says something again but this time
he’s speaking in what sounds like Chinese.

Cole’s
heart beats pound in his ears,
how can no one else hear it?
They seem to
sync with the pulses of the red and blue sky. One of the grunts sighs and
messes with Kabus’s neck piece.

“There
we go,” Kabus says in damn near perfect English. Cole finally understands what
the beats are. Cole’s group steps back.

It’s
his demise.

“Well,
are you going to fight or flight, pussies?” Kabus states.

Everybody
bolts. Cole, Erin and Arnold runs to the right and Julio follows the soldiers
to the left. The beast smiles. “This is going to be fun.”

They
split and go after them, Kabus goes after Julio and his group and the rest goes
after the others.

Julio
and the soldiers run toward a twelve story apartment complex. Kabus closes in
behind them.

There’s
a trash bin to Julio’s left near the wall of the complex. He leaps on it and
jumps toward a second story window. His
parkouring
skills finally paying off.

Kabus
smiles as he leaps up and splits into two halves, he molds into two miniature versions
of himself like clay. Transforming in a blindingly instant.

As
Julio crashes through the window, Kabus One follows. Kabus Two pursues the
soldiers through the first floor entrance.

The
soldiers run down the hallway, one of them turns and fires at the human sized
Kabus Two. The bullets bounce off him like rubber. They run down to the end of
the hallway, but one of the soldiers, a stocky soldier,
trails
behind them.

Bermea
jerks left and runs into the stairwell. Soldier Two runs right but stocky soldier
makes it to the end, and Kabus Two forces him through the wall like a jack
hammer forcing through a piece of paper.

Soldier
Two rushes into an apartment and into the kitchen. Kabus Two crashes through a
wall in the living room. He casually walks toward the kitchen, with a smirk on
his face.

Soldier
Two
frantically looks around and spots a pitcher of
water. Kabus Two walks around the corner as Soldier Two thinks fast and
splashes water on him.

Kabus
two pauses and then flips the hell out. He screams in terror, grabbing his face
as he falls to the ground.

No
fucking way that worked.

Soldier
two looks at his empty pitcher. Kabus Two rolls around on the floor, but his
performance would never win any rewards, he was never good at theater. The
soldier finally notices his act.
Of course it didn’t work.

Kabus
Two stops and peeks at him.

“No…”
the soldier says.

“No.”
Kabus Two stretches out his arm and his arm band lengthens out to his hand and
forms into a long barrel. The explosion rocks the building.

---

Cole,
Erin, and Arnold run down the street. Cole looks back as the two grunts close
in.

Where
the hell is Julio?
That asshole had better not be dead, god, running the
other direction.

But
Cole has other problems. Cole takes a sudden right into a small tight alley,
Erin and Arnold follow behind, but so do the grunts. Cole hoped the grunts
wouldn’t fit as the alley is only a few feet wide but they are agile fuckers.
The grunts close in to them.

Dammit,
Cole can run faster, much
much
faster, but he’s not
going to leave Erin and Arnold behind. His friends are relying on him, even if
he doesn’t rely on himself.

The
alley opens into a street. The grunt breath trails down their necks as the exit
comes close. The group runs faster, harder, fear stains their sweat covered
faces. The alley was a bad idea. One of the grunts grabs at Erin as—

They
break through the alley and into the street as the grunts hand inches toward
Erin’s neck—

Its
head is blown straight off as a tank round goes right through it. An obvious
weak spot. They come to a stop. A squadron of tanks advance up from the right.

---

Julio
burst through the apartment’s rooftop door and runs to the edge. He pauses to
catch his breath.
Goddamn it!
Cole owes him one for going into this
fucking city with him. Because of him he’s now being chased by some godforsaken
Frankenstein’s monster.

Julio
really doesn’t know what to call it, he just thought up the first supposedly
terrifying thing he can think of; that movie always scared him as a kid.

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.