This is going to be the first of three stories. This first one is heavily human tilted with an OC. (I see that face you just made there.) But I ask that you give the story a chance. I've been using this story as a way to learn good writing techniques and story plotlines, etc. It feels like it's been an uphill battle for me so far but I'm slowly learning as my Beta Reader beats me over the head consistently with her clue-by-four.
Speaking of my Beta - I would like to put out a HUGE thank you to Vivienne Grainger for helping me and not giving up on me when I'm sure I was being particularly dense. I'd also like to thank Gixxer Pilot for their encouragement and thoughts on this story too!
So, please give this a read and review. Reviews feed the muse and make me a better writer in the end.
(Warning: This chapter contains a scene or two that some may find disturbing or graphic. (Since these scenes are few and far between throughout the story, I did not feel it necessary to make this story M rated since the scenes are non-sexual in nature.) I will place warnings on any following chapters that may have similar content.)
"Mal?" came a hushed voice from the doorway.
She felt her brain begin to engage as Mal realized someone was whispering her name.
"This had better be good, Mark," she grumbled, cracking an eye open. She saw the light of a lantern filling the doorway outside the room she had taken refuge in to catch a few hours of much needed sleep. It cast strange shadows on the walls and illuminated the face of her "historian."
Lifting her head from the pillow, she slipped a hand out from under her covers, and fumbled for the pocket watch that sat on top of her pack. Squinting at it, she saw she'd been asleep for only an hour.
With a sigh, she buried her face in the coat-turned-pillow with a stifled groan.
"Sorry, Mal, but I think you should take a look at what I found," he said, a touch of hesitation in his voice.
She turned on her side and managed to extract herself from a tangle of blankets as she sat up. Her feet, still laced into her boots, crunched on bits of concrete and broken glass.
After a moment, Mal heaved herself to a standing position and staggered her way towards the door. Mark, wisely choosing not to say anything else, led her down the hallway to another room that was filled with file cabinets and shelves full of dusty boxes.
Dominating the center of the room was a large drafting table covered with several unrolled blueprints, a map of Arizona laid out on top. "I think I found something quite interesting, right about…here," Mark said as he moved over to the map, thrusting his finger down on a spot. "It might even be worth checking out."
Mal leaned over the map to see what he was pointing at, but then backed her head away a little to focus her eyes. She stifled a mental curse at herself and the tumble she'd taken down a hillside a few weeks back that caused her to break her only pair of glasses.
"What am I looking at, Mark?" she asked, her pale eyes flicking upward to search out his face.
He pushed a manila folder at her across the top of the map. "Here's the information that was filed on the site. It's a ways north, almost on the border of Utah and New Mexico but according to the schematics – they're about twenty years old - there's an underground water supply and permits were filed for hydro-turbine power generators to be built to supply power to a small township to the north-east." There was an excitement in his voice and she watched as he clasped his hands together as if he were trying to keep a tight rein on his exuberance, and failing.
Mal straightened and looked at Mark, "And this means…what to me?" she asked. She had an idea forming in the back of her brain but she wanted to see where Mark's logic would take them first.
"Well, if the power station is still operational, we would have access to a source of energy that can't be tampered with since its underground, thus untraceable. We could tap into it for our own uses. Plus the underground water supply would be unspoiled by anything topside." Mark shifted restlessly; anxious for her to approve of his find.
She looked up towards his face for a long moment then picked the thick folder up off the table. Opening it, she turned her attention to it as she slowly flipped through a few of the pages, pretending to read what was there.
"Not bad. Let me read through more of this tomorrow after I've had some sleep. First, we'd need to find out if anyone knows anything about hydro-whatsit generators because I sure as hell don't," she said, snapping the folder shut and tucking it under her arm.
"Keep this under wraps for now. If it looks promising on paper and we can find someone with the basic knowledge we need, we'll send a scouting party out to look at the place. See what other information you can dig up for me, and find another location in the meantime."
Mark nodded with that stupid grin on his face. His sandy blond hair had flopped forward and was hanging down in his eyes.
Mal sighed, "Get Tracy to give you a haircut. I'm going back to bed." With that, she turned on her heel and left.
Mal didn't bother with a light on the return trip. It was only forty-two steps down the hallway to get from one room to the other.
She slumped back down onto her makeshift bed before tossing the file onto the floor next to her backpack. Reaching over, she lifted the blankets up and slid back under them, finding they had gone cold in her absence. The hour of sleep she'd had was just enough to take the edge off, but not enough to make up for the sleep she'd lost in the past few days.
She'd been doing so well to get to sleep the first time. She sighed.
Laying in the dark in her underground room, she found the silence deafening. Memories resurfaced into that silence, and old wounds proved they had yet to fade. Sighing again, she flipped over onto her back and stared upward.
Once she had settled, thousands of tiny memory snapshots began to flick past behind her eyes, like a video on fast forward.
The last of the tribe had just managed to get here under the radar earlier this evening, in what they'd come to call "den moves." After their first successful migration two years ago, someone had joked that the whole operation had reminded them of the TV show "Meerkat Manor" from Animal Planet, where den moves were depicted as being both difficult and dangerous. The name stuck.
A move required days of preparation and packing once a new den area was secured. They would begin to move the group a section at a time until all seventy-three of them were under cover in their new surroundings.
At one time, they'd numbered almost a hundred.
Mal threw off her covers with a grunt of frustration and sat up. What she really wanted to throw off was the memories that last thought conjured.
Groping for her pack, she reached inside and found the full flask of bourbon Chris had insisted she take earlier that night. Unscrewing the cap, she put it to her lips, tipped it back, and felt the amber colored liquid burn a slow path down her throat as she swallowed. While she was on duty, which was twenty-four, seven, three sixty-five, Mal couldn't afford to consume anything that might alter her reaction time or judgment.
But right now, she had the down time, she had the booze, and she needed the sleep.
As she let the precious liquid settle in the pit of her empty stomach, she grimaced. She had been the last one to the new den. The previous forty-eight hours had found her making the three trips to escort everyone and their gear from their last location to this one. By the time she arrived with the last group, sure that nothing and no one got left behind, work on the new site had already begun. That would keep everyone except the Watchers inside for a day or two, and that meant Mal could finally sleep.
Mal took another swig, grimaced as it went down, and screwed the cap back on before burying the flask in the bottom of her bag. She sat there for some time, elbows on her knees, one hand absently fiddling with the end of her long braid, head hanging a little.
As she waited for the booze to dull things enough for her to get back to sleep, her thoughts turned to the night it all ended almost three years before. The night that everyone's life either ended or changed was one of her most vivid and unforgettable memories…one that still haunted her dreams.
She had been waiting tables, working a double shift at the Los Portales Café and Gas Station on a highway forty miles outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico that night…
.
.
.
"What'll it be, stranger?" she asked the trucker, sitting at the counter. She'd seen him in here a few times over the last six months. He always flirted with her and he tipped well.
"Well hello, Miss South Dakota. You gonna leave this life behind and run away with me?" he teased.
Mal snorted, "Tempting…but no. Now what can I get you?" He gave her a mock wounded look then rattled off his order.
The chimes on the front door sounded and Mal looked up as a couple came in. She had on short heels and the uniform of a middle-class business woman. Now the purse however, that was a sight. Leopard print and huge. There should have been a law against things that ugly.
The man with her was dressed in business casual and seemed a few years older. Maybe putting up with her bad taste in fashion had drained the youth from him.
Writing down the last of the trucker's order, she smiled. "All right, I'll get your order in." She poured him a cup of coffee and set it in front of him.
The drunk at the end of the counter waved a hand at the TV in the corner, "Turn it up, will ya," he slurred. "I can' 'ear."
With a sigh, Mal grabbed the remote and hit the volume button a few times. "Happy?" she snarked. He didn't respond.
She set the remote back down before grabbing up a few menus and moved over to the Ugly Purse Lady, putting on a pleasant smile. "Good evening. I'm Mal and I'll be your waitress. Can I start you off with something to drink this evening?" she asked as she handed the couple their menus.
The woman immediately opened her menu and began looking, "Oh Charley, I don't think there's anything in here I can eat," she whined. She set down her menu, turned to her purse and began digging around in it.
From what Mal could see, she looked like she might have everything from lipstick to the Crown Jewels in there. The lady finally came up with some little booklet that looked like it was from an expensive diet plan "as seen on TV." She flipped through it as the man rolled his eyes heavenward.
"I'll have coffee and a glass of water. She'll just have water for now, okay?" said the man, giving his companion an exasperated look. "Come back in a few minutes to take our order."
"All right," said Mal, giving the woman another look before leaving the table. She passed the other waitress and rolled her eyes. Marsha giggled a little as she went behind the counter to put in the order she'd just taken from another trucker Mal vaguely recognized.
It had been a busy day. This late in the evening, just past ten, it was finally slowing down. There hadn't been a cloud in the sky all day, and the weather had been nice enough to draw travelers and sight-seers to this out-of-the-way eatery on a little-used highway.
Brodie, their cook, was in the back, humming to himself as he scurried along, fixing up an order, laying out the next and doing his best to keep up with the flow of things.
A distant noise caught the edge of Mal's attention. It soon resolved into a low rumble from outside, but the highway had been busy with truck traffic all day. Maybe it was some hot-rod with glass pipes, or a deep bass thumping away on an expensive sound system.
Mal walked past a drunk at a booth and poured coffee in his cup, though he looked passed out in his seat, head down on the table. "Wake up, Luke," she said quietly, "or I'll have to ask you to leave."
The man grunted and sat up, looking slightly scruffy. He took his cup and drained half of the hot liquid before setting it back down.
"I don't know how you can stand to drink it that hot," she said.
As he looked up at her with a smirk, Mal simply sighed and shook her head, and looked into his cup, ready to refill it. There liquid was rippling away from the edges.
That was when Mal noticed that the rumble hadn't quit and was growing louder. Soon the cup began to vibrate, followed by the low buzz and clatter of plates clinking against each other and hard surfaces.
Turning her head, she looked out through the windows that surrounded the café. Her gaze froze to the east. White light blossomed out of the desert in the direction of Albuquerque.
Dazed, Mal didn't even realize the coffee pot had slipped from her fingers to crash loudly on the floor. Startled, several of the patrons stared at her then looked in the direction she was facing.
The room filled with gasps of surprise and the sounds of chairs scraping as people left their tables to stare out the window.
"What is that?"
"Oh my God!"
"What's going on?"
Then the electricity went out, causing Marsha to let out a stifled scream. Brodie cursed somewhere in the kitchen and stomped out to see what the commotion was.
"Dammit, Charley, my cell phone just died. I can't even get it to turn on. Did you charge it?" whined Ugly Purse Lady.
"Mine's dead too," said the trucker who had flirted with Mal earlier.
No one moved, transfixed by the blue-white light before them as it began to spread outward, away from the city.
Suddenly, it felt as if someone else had stepped into Mal's body.
Grabbing Brodie by the hand, Mal hollered, "Brodie! Hey, Brodie! Dammit! Start barking orders! Get them downstairs, into the freezer!"
"What?"
"Everybody! Freezer! Now!" she shouted to him. She let go of him and pulled the two truckers nearest her towards the door leading to the freezer.
"You heard her. Everyone…Downstairs. In the freezer, now!" he bellowed as he turned, and put his massive arms outward as if trying to herd them like sheep towards the back of the café.
"My purse!" Ugly Purse Lady cried, dashing away from Charley's side.
"Leave it!" Mal heard him yell after her.
"I can't! It's got all my things in it!" she shouted as Charley broke away from the group and made a dash for her. She dove into the booth to retrieve the awful thing, only to knock it to the floor, scattering items under the table.
Mal had no more attention to pay to them as she got to the stairs ahead of everyone else, still dragging the two truckers with her. Hurrying to the bottom, she dashed across the short space to the freezer, her hands out in front of her, finding the door when her fingers slammed into the cold steel.
"This way!" she said urgently, her hands sliding along it to find the handle and wrench it open. "Come on!" she shouted, feeling the panic rise up in her throat, trying to choke her.
She felt them shuffling past her. She touched, pushed, guided, did everything she could to convey people into the freezer.
Finally she smelled Brodie's greasy apron, then felt his big hand grip her arm. "Inside," he panted.
With that, there was no time left. The expanding blue-white blossom from Albuquerque lit up the cellar. She felt Brodie put a hand between her shoulder blades as he slammed the door behind them.
The roar that followed a split second later shook the building to its foundation. Food fell off the shelves to land on the seventeen hapless individuals crammed into the freezer as they struggled to fight down panic in the dark, with the world shaking around them.
.
.
.
In that freezer, she'd heard Luke mumbling to himself as he began to go through DT's, random but fervent prayers, men and women alike weeping. The smell of body odor – seventeen people in a freezer! - and urine: someone, several someones in fact had pissed themselves in fright.
Mal could remember it all. She always would.
They stayed where they were for twelve long hours. When they made their way out, at the back door they found a small pile of animal bones and a dog collar. Mal thought it might have been the dog that used to hang around, begging for scraps.
Silence hung over the seventeen survivors, as if speaking might make the nightmare before them real.
They made their way around to the front of the café to the gas station only to find what appeared to be a family of five outside of their car. They could only assume that they were family, though, since what remained were two large skulls, three smaller ones, bones, and clothes.
Startling above all else was how barren the landscape was, for as far as the eye could see in any direction. All forms of plant life that formerly grew along the road and around the café were completely gone.
Inside the café, there was no usable food left anywhere above ground. Everything that had once been edible was reduced to piles of dust.
They found two piles of bones and dust near the dropped handbag. There proved to be nothing in the bag worth dying for…except perhaps the hope that its owner would need it and its contents when this was all over.
But there wasn't going to be an "over."
Fleeing the café, the group discovered that the devastating effects of that blue-white light reached over fifty miles farther west. Once past that boundary, biological life began to appear again, weakly at first; growing stronger the farther they got from Albuquerque.
Days later, as their little group began searching for survivors; they came to understand that there was no more "America."
That memory was another that would be branded into her brain for all time, a memory that explained how everything had gone horribly wrong.
.
.
.
"Do you think those jets that flew over earlier were Air Force?" asked Mike, the truck driver that had flirted with Mal only a few days before.
"Not ours," Brodie growled as they walked cautiously past the outskirts of Grants, New Mexico. "They didn't have the right markings on the underside."
Mike simply rolled his eyes at Brodie but said nothing else.
After they'd gotten several blocks into town, Mal whispered, "Guys, something's wrong. Where are all the people? Even if they were hiding in their houses, wouldn't we have been challenged by now?"
Brodie nodded but said nothing as they scurried between the meager spots of cover, everyone doing their best to keep hidden and watch for signs of life.
The sound of a jet passing closely overhead made them all look up from the shelter of a grove of trees.
What came next sounded like metal squealing as it was ripped apart and the massive grinding of multiple gears, followed by the ground vibrating as something heavy landed. A high pitched squealing noise with bass undertones rang out from a few blocks away.
A second set of sounds, different in pitch, responded to the first. It sounded like someone had logged into an old fashioned modem with the resounding squelches and squeals, tossed about with feral sounding growls and clicking noises. It made Mal's skin crawl.
"What the hell was that?" whispered one of the men with them.
"I don't know," responded Mal quietly, "But I think we should get below ground somehow."
They looked at her like she was nuts but she paid them no mind. Near the sidewalk was a sewer grate. On top of it was a concrete slab with a manhole cover over it. "Get the crowbar over there and shift the cover aside. We need to get in there quickly and get that lid back on. We can see through sewer grates without being spotted," she offered.
Brodie shook his head, "And if someone or something spots us, we're sitting ducks."
"We're sitting ducks up here and we'll be spotted for sure. At least down there, we've got a chance to see what's really going on, maybe without being seen." She looked from one to another until finally she got nods all around, though Brodie just scowled at her as he nodded.
It was quick work to get the lid off. They'd had several good spring rains this year and it must have cleaned trash out fairly recently. With a grinding of metal, the lid was shifted back into place.
Using a compass, Brodie got them pointed in the direction where they'd heard the noises. It didn't take long before the sound of heavy footfalls was combined with the earlier bizarre voice-noise.
Before any of their crew could get into place to look out the street gutters, human screams rang through the still air above them. There was a scramble as the ten of them found a way to see what was going on.
Mal was lifted so she could peek out through one of the grates. Held within massive cage structures were hundreds of people, all ages from babes to the elderly, from people who looked like they'd been ripped right out of their hospital beds to school children straight from the classroom. Guarding them were mechanized creatures and towering metal men. A flash of a purple emblem across the chest of one solidified the thought in her stunned mind.
Decepticons.
Mal, along with almost anyone else in the United States knew what that symbol on these beings' chests stood for. Like everyone else, she'd heard the rumors about the Autobots and the Decepticons; had watched the Battle of Chicago live on television ten years before.
But none of that had taken place in her back yard, and the Autobots had taken care of the Decepticons, cleaned up the mess, left the world safe. She didn't pay much attention once the hub-bub had died down. She had other things to worry about, like working double shifts just to stay afloat.
But here stood multiple Decepticons, having rounded up the citizens of this town. They were acting as if they were now in control. Where had they come from? Where were the Autobots?
She watched in horror as several of the 'cons, almost human-sized, began pulling people out one by one, scanning them with a strange light. The humans were pushed into one of two containers.
Within moments, Mal saw the difference between the two. The healthy, strong, able-bodied were all shoved into one; the rest – the aged, the infirm, and dear God the children and infants – in the other.
Women screamed as their babies were torn from their arms. The elderly held on to these young children, trying to comfort them as they wailed. Men fought against these creatures and were either knocked out or, in one case, shot on the spot, body left lying in the middle of the street.
Mal forced herself not to look away. Someone should bear witness to what was being done.
When the sorting was complete, several of the Decepticons transformed into flying ships, took to the air, extended grappling hooks, and caught the bars of the cage with the able-bodied in it. Screaming people clinging to the bars of their prison, the Decepticons and their captives dwindled into the sky.
The remaining 'cons looked to the last cage. One walked over to the door, towering two stories over the humans. "Now comes the fun part," it said, in perfect idiomatic English. "We're going to let you out. If you can escape us, we'll let you go free. If not, we'll have had our fun. And you..." It trailed off, and grinned.
It was fear and resignation, not determination, that showed on the faces of those that remained as the door to their cage was ripped off.
Some were kicked and thrown around, screaming, used like a sports ball by the Decepticons. Others, mostly those too young, too old, or too infirm to run, were torn apart. Many were used as target practice, shot with weapons that turned the fleeing humans into nothing more than piles of bones and dust.
Finally, unable to watch any longer, Mal lowered herself and she huddled against the far wall of the storm drain, hands pressed against her eyes.
The smell of vomit filled her nose, mingling with the scent of blood and torn flesh that drifted down through the sewer grate above. She needed to move but her shaking legs wouldn't respond. The sound of someone screaming right next to one of the sewer grates made her heart slam to a stop in her chest and she jerked to her feet, stumbling back the way they had come, pushing on those in front of her to make them move all the faster.
The trek back to the vehicles and the seven people who had stayed behind was silent, grimly, shatteringly silent.
"What did you find?" Marsha asked, and Mal only shook her head. She found enough words to croak, "Let's go. Let's just go."
They found and pillaged a gas station, hiding their vehicles in the repair bays, taking every edible substance they could find, and most of the automotive supplies as well. When the others protested the theft, the story of what they had seen came out, in jerking, stuttered, choppy sentences.
There they spent the next two days until they went back to Grants to see what was left. They helped themselves to supplies there, since there was no one left in the town to stop them from taking what they needed, and no one to use it in their stead.
Since that day, they kept out of sight as much as possible. The Decepticons had sensors and they'd learned the hard way that electronics were to be avoided at all costs.
They lived off what was left behind, breaking into houses and businesses for supplies: the dead, frequently encountered as piles of bones or worse, had no use for what kept them alive.
They even picked up a few stragglers here and there.
They'd managed to stay hidden and on the move for almost two months before the stress began to take its toll.
.
.
.
The night after they'd narrowly escaped notice for the third time, sighting a Decepticon on a ridge before it saw them, Mal woke to the sound of quiet sobs. She got up and moved to the far edge of the group, locating the one in trouble. To her surprise, it was the tough old cook from the diner.
"Brodie?" she'd called out to him softly, squatting down to face him. "Brodie? What's wrong?" Slowly she reached out and put her hand on his upper arm.
"Nothing," came a strangled voice from under his blanket. "Nothing."
"Brodie. Come on. Talk to me."
He pulled back the blankets back far enough to stare at her. "You remember the first time we saw them? You remember what they did to those people, those children, and the babies? You remember their screams?"
Mal swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat. "I'll never forget, Brodie."
"You remember the second time? You remember how, when we ran, Claire just couldn't go any faster? You remember what they did to her when they caught up to her? You remember her screams?" She could see his hands shaking as they gripped the blanket.
"I can't, Brodie. I can't. You know that," she said, feeling bile rise again in her throat. She couldn't afford to throw up. They hadn't enough food as it was.
"How some of them screamed as they melted. Holy shit, I'll never be free of that." Brodie propped himself up on his elbow and rubbed his face with his free hand. Before Mal could respond, he reached out and caught Mal's forearm. "But you know what's worst, Mal?"
"Brodie," she said, trying to keep the calm in her voice, "don't do this to yourself."
"What's worst is knowin' that I'm right back in the middle of the war, Mal. This is war. And this ain't any war where honor's at stake. This is life or death, Mal. Period."
"Don't you think I know that, Brodie?" she asked, while trying to keep her voice down as tears welled up in her eyes. "I think about it, every minute of every day."
The fires of insanity died out of his eyes. He dropped his hand from her forearm and said, very calmly, "I don't wanna live through another war. I never truly left Vietnam…it was…I don't wanna go through that ever again."
And with that, he had laid back down and pulled the blankets over his head. The conversation was over.
He was calm, efficient, and as bossy as hell the next day, just as always.
That night, he'd excused himself from the small campfire they'd dared to light, walked a short distance from the group, and put a bullet through his brain.
They didn't bother to bury him. With self-preservation in mind, they'd doused the campfire and quickly moved from the area for fear that the shot might attract the attention of any Decepticon in the area. The coyotes would take care of his remains.
Several days later, Marsha had a nervous breakdown and began screaming hysterically. One of the truck drivers managed to knock her out to keep her quiet; they couldn't take the chance of being discovered. But she didn't seem right after that. She talked to herself, shied away from anyone that came near her, and began silently weeping at the drop of a hat. They woke one morning, several days after her breakdown, to find her bedroll empty. Mal spent several hours looking for her but there had been no trace.
After that, Mal had been truly alone.
Finally, the booze began to kick in, and the memories to fade. Mal sighed, stretched out and absently reached up to pull the blankets off the back of the couch. She snuggled down into her only remaining comfort, and begged a God she no longer believed in that her sleep would be dreamless.
TBC -