Day of the Tentacle
"So one of the ships snagged your car?"
"Well, it wasn't really my car, but yes."
"And you saw the mouth. As in, the actual mouth?"
"Least I think it was a mouth."
"And you used a Molotov cocktail to destroy it from the inside."
"Yep."
"…huh."
'Huh.' That was all Ray said. As he and Michelle sat in the ruins of Houston, as thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, that was the only word that Ray Ferrier uttered. Not that he owed her a response, she supposed. But still, the tale of narrowly escaping death at the hands of aliens, both in the sky and on the ground…she'd have liked to think that it would elicit a bit more of a reaction.
"Well, anyway," Ray said. He got to his feet. "We should get moving."
Michelle nodded and rose to her feet as well. She slowly began to follow Ray down the street, the ruins of mankind all around them. It hadn't started like this, apparently. The aliens had used their gas to kill most of the people, but when the survivors started fighting back. Well, this had happened.
"How's the family?"
"Hmm? Oh, they're fine. Boston's pretty safe right now."
"From Boston to Houston. Come a long way."
"I got them to safety," Ray said. Michelle noted that his pace picked up a little. "That's all I could do."
She didn't have an answer to that. And if she did, she suspected that Ray wouldn't appreciate hearing it.
Thunder and lightning continued their battle in the sky. And thus the rain came down, as the sky wept.
"Shit."
That was all Ray could say. And Michelle reflected on what he'd told her. He'd been with his children in Bayonne when the invasion had started. By some miracle, he'd managed to get himself and his children to Boston. And then, despite all that, he'd left. The east of the United States was doing well (New York notwithstanding), while the southwest…wasn't. She wanted to ask why he'd left. Why, after surviving so much, after keeping his children safe, he'd left them all for one of the most dangerous places in the country. Wanted to ask, but didn't. Not just for his own sake, but for hers as well. The knowledge that she had nearly headed to Baton Rouge. To run, just like she always had. From Ben, from Howard, from life, the universe, and everything.
"Ray?" she asked. "Why are you here?"
Life, the universe, and everything, were now staring in shock as she asked the question anyway. And Ray glanced at her.
"I mean, you were with your family. Why come to Houston?"
"They needed people with military experience."
"You're a soldier?"
"No. But I did blow up a tripod from the inside."
Michelle paused, before saying, "oh." Not going so far to say "oh, so that's why you didn't care about the Molotov cocktail, because you did the same thing," but she figured that "oh" would do just fine.
"It was a grenade," he said. "Useless against the shields from the outside, but inside…well…" He pulled down his cap, and she suspected it wasn't to protect him from the rain. "Even rats in a cage can bite pretty bad."
"But we're not rats."
"We're animals in a maze hunted by squid monsters. Sounds about right to me."
Michelle didn't answer. Rats. Mazes. She was again reminded of Howard. Bennett. The bunker. Memories that she was beginning to suspect would stay with her longer than those of monsters of the more literal kind.
So they kept walking. Houston. She reflected that Howard had talked about satellites, how they he'd received warning of the invasion. Fitting, she supposed, that she was in the city that featured the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Centre. NASA's administration centre. Mankind's beacon to the stars, only for the stars to run them off the road, and drag them kicking and screaming down into the dark. She let out a chuckle.
"What?" Ray asked.
"Nothing," she murmured. "Nothing."
Ray said nothing. Howard would have questioned her. Howard would have taken one more step to the edge of sanity. And…she paused in her step. Maybe she was walking at the precipice herself. Alien invasions. Monsters. The whole damn world. Maybe she'd died on the road. Maybe this was Hell, and angels from above were giving the damned even more flak.
But she kept walking. Even as the rain came down. As the heavens unleashed more on mankind.
It was all she could do.
A/N
So, is it just me, or do Michelle and Ray go through similar experiences? In the midst of an alien invasion, both end up in an underground environment (bunker/basement) run by a demented man with a survivor complex, end up murdering said man, reach the surface, end up being snagged by an alien tentacle, then use a grenade/Molotov cocktail to destroy it from the inside.
Stretching things a bit of course, but drabbled this up as a result.