Prologue
My life had been a relatively happy life. Sure my parents fought, and I fought with them, but it was better than it is now. I mean, come on, what parents don't fight with their kids?... Err... What kids don't fight with their parents?
When they invaded, I was too young to remember, but it was also really hard to tell, they aren't like the little green guys you see in movies. They act so human! Soon, terminal patients were walking out of hospitals, my parents, along with everyone else, thought it was a miracle. My parents never suspected anything out of the ordinary, and neither did I, until I was ten, when my life was turned upside down.
When I was ten, my father had gone on a "business trip." Two weeks later he had come back, but he wasn't alone. He was not really my father, he had the body of my father, he looked like my father, he sounded like my father, but he was not my father. My father was dead and I accepted that.
I had suspected something strange was happening when my friends started acting weird. A week before my dad went on the "business trip", my best friend Kayla had started acting weird, well not exactly acting weird, more like I had a gut deep feeling, one of the ones that never lie to you, that something was wrong. She still acted like my friend Kayla, but I just knew she was different. We had been like twins, insepreable, thinking a lot alike, and it was sometimes like we could read each other's thoughts, we even completed each other's sentences. But the second it happened to Kayla, I knew, deep down in me, that something happend and that she was no longer my fun loving soul sister.
They had a strange silver gleam in their eyes, that's how you could tell the difference from a human and one of them. The silver gleam was actually the alien in the people's brains. They also had a pink scar on the back of their neck where they were inserted. I had heard one guy in our town raving and ranting about aliens invading and how they'd taken over while my parents had been in the grocery store. I had snuck out to go to the book store across the street to listen to what the man had to say. My parents had come out of the grocery store and put the groceries in the car before they noticed me listening to the raving man about alien invasions, then they picked me up faster than a seal swims from a shark and threw me in the car. I heard the man say "Get yourself hidden kid, or they'll get you." over the roar of the engine. His name had been Greg, and I knew that what he had been saying about the aliens made sense about why my friend and soul sister was acting strange and why I had a very off feeling about her. I had wished it wasn't true, but I knew it was deep down in me.
So when my dad, or rather, my dad's body, came back from the "business trip", with that silver gleam in his eye, I knew what he was and knew I had to get out of there, fast. I packed what I could, which wasn't a lot because I was so tiny, and decided how I was going to get out of there. My best friend had been Changed, my dad was Changed, and I was sure that my mom was, if not already, Changed. I couldn't stay there and lose myself, I wouldn't do that. I snuck out through a hole in my closet that dropped into the crawl space under the house that neither of my parents knew about, mostly because I'd made the hole when I was eight. I hid there as Seekers searched the house for me and heard when they took my Mom. My father told her to go with his "co-workers" and that he'd grab me and we'd all go to his office building for a party. Of course my Mom believed him and got into the SUV with two female's. They drove away and I knew that they were going to Change my mom. I stiffled my sob so I wouldn't get found. My father and several others continued to search all over my house, inside and out. When all of them went inside,it had been dark for at least two hours, I decided it was safe to leave then and crawled out from under the house and I disappeared into the night.
I ran for the forest that was just behind my house and I heard the Seekers trying to run after me, but I was fast and I had the coyote trail memorized, I had had a fort and a swimming hole out in the middle of the woods and I knew exactly where the trail was, they didn't. I manuvered the trees and everything better then they did and soon I was gone, leaving them far behind, lost and confused. I stayed in the wild from then on, civilization no longer a safe place. When I got so hungry I thought I couldn't go on, I would watch a house far away from other houses, in the middle of nowhere if I could find one, for a long time, and then, when the monsters who lived there left, go into their house, all the food and water and luxury items I could ask for. It only took ten minutes. It was all very fast, and very secretive. I never once had gotten anywhere close to being caught.
There had been a time, my very first raid, when I saw a seven year old in the home I was raiding and thought she might be human. I knew I was taking a risk, but I told her I was human and that I'd help her escape from the parasites. Then she started to scream. I knew then she was a parasite herself and I acted on instinct. I grabbed the heavy candlestick on the table I was standing next to and hit her in the head. Hard. I had never hit anyone in my life, ever. She immedietly fell to the floor, and blood started seeping around her head, soaking her beautiful platinum blonde hair, turning it a bright, sicking, crimsion color. I wanted to be sick. I barely managed to keep myself upright and keep hold of my bag as I ran from the house, but not before I grabbed the phone that had been sitting on the table and dialed 911, knowing when nobody said anything they would have to send someone out immedietly and then someone could help the poor girl. I was sobbing uncontrolablly, tears blinding me as I ran far from the house I had just raided, and the girl who I could have possibly killed. Once I had ran until I couldn't run anymore, I stopped and caught my breath. I heard, far, far off in the distance, sirens, and hoped, again, that I hadn't killed her. Even though they had taken my family and my friends away from me, I still didn't want them to die. Just leave the planet.
Basically all it comes down to is: It was hard. Not just because I was always cold, hungry, thirsty, and uncomfortable, but because everyone I knew, family, friends, everyone, was gone. They were dead. Only the parasites that live in their bodies remain. It's horrible and, when I have long enough, I think of them. How I'll never get to hear Grandma say 'Merry Christmas' to me again, never tell Momma that I really did take a cookie from the cookie jar, and tell Kayla that she's the bestest friend anyone could ask for and that I love her with all my heart. They were gone and they would never know how much I loved them. I also felt horrible guilt for what I had done to that little parasite. I felt horribly guilty and wished I hadn't acted so rashly and struck her. It hurt and I cried all the time. But soon I learned to deal with the grief that seemed to consume me, and the guilt that I lived and they did not. I had to learn to be strong and to control my emotions, so I worked on not crying when I got hurt or felt bad or angry or sad. Or missed everyone I loved. Soon the only tears that fell were when I got very, very pissed. My constant fear of being captured cancled out almost all of my grief and guilt, after the first few months, which helped a little.
I traveled through the southern United States alone, sticking close to Oklahoma, my old home state, but soon I lost track of where I was and what state I was in. Nothing was important except not getting caught, and getting food and water in me. Everything was horrible and hard and unfair, and the constant fear of being caught left me few oppurtunities to linger on my dwelling sadness and aloness.
Loneliness hurt almost as bad as the fear of being found.