Tuesday, 5:29 A.M. - Carrizozo, New Mexico
Cal awoke to what he thought was the TV. He heard shouts, screams, and gunshots, all quiet, as if they came from far off. When he remembered that he had shut off the TV before going to sleep, he sprung out of bed, threw open his window, and looked outside.
At first he saw nothing. It was just his neighborhood, empty as it always was this early in the morning.The shouts were coming closer. Soon, Cal saw a group of men running, turning the corner into his block. When he looked closer, he noticed a detail that filled his blood with adrenalin: they were all carrying guns.
Moments later, the object of the group's flight came into view. A gargantuan, biped beast, at least as tall as his house, with terrifying claws and a round head tipped with an open jaw, it was the perfect specimen for Barney's description of a garg. It raised its hands, producing a stream of fire that flowed from its body, cutting down every one of the men in their path. The garg roared; Cal's adrenal glands pumped harder. A dog came running out of a nearby house and barked at the monster. The garg growled, and with another wave of fire, incinerated the dog and sent several nearby cars flying into the house, knocking it to the ground. The wave moved on, burning trees, denting cars, and shattering windows in its wake.
Cal's bedroom window shattered in his face. He scrambled away, through his bedroom door and into the upstairs hallway. He turned his head towards his parents' room, and as he did so, noticed that the bedroom was empty. He climbed down the stairs, shouting, "Mom? Dad?"
Suddenly, the front of the house exploded, and his mom's jeep came crashing into the house. The garg growled, and for the first time Cal realized how loud and deep the growl was close-up.
"Oh, shit." He turned abruptly, falling on his own rubber legs but recovering quickly. He flew down the hall, threw open the back door, dashed through the backyard, and leaped over the fence, all the while praying that the monster did not catch sight of him.
He ducked into a dog house and waited. A few minutes later, he heard another crash, but it was much farther off. He got out of the dog house, climbed back over the fence, and walked into his front yard. The garg was nowhere to be seen.
Cal heard a scream, but it didn't sound human. He turned, and saw a group of three headcrabs, three live headcrabs, crawling his way. He stared at them with curiosity, Suddenly the nearest of them jumped, and what a jump! The headcrab cleared the distance between the group and Cal in a heartbeat, giving Cal just enough time to save his face by turning his head and getting a nick in his ear. He fled to the house before any of them could come in for a second attack, but the headcrabs were already crawling his way. He grabbed for whatever weapon he could find, coming up with a yard-long piece of wood from the wall destroyed by the thrown jeep.
When the first headcrab attacked, Cal swung the stick like a baseball bat, knocking the beast down in midair. He stabbed it in the mouth to make sure it was dead; he heard a sickening squish within, and the end of the stick came out dark green. When the others were nearby, he did the same to them, only on the third headcrab, he missed the first time, and it left a cut in his left arm. He turned and beat the headcrab until it was motionless.
He stood like that for several moments, breathing heavily. He became aware that the neighborhood was no longer quite, that there were screams, gunshots, and crashes coming from every direction.
He went to the group of men, laying dead in the middle of the road. Their bodies were burned, but their weapons seemed intact. He picked up a shotgun and a pistol, and took ammunition from the others. As he did so, he turned one man's body over.
It was his father.
He fell backwards, putting his hand to his mouth to prevent a pain-filled scream. His father's burned body lay burned before his eyes. This time, unlike when his friends were killed, he did cry. He let the tears stream down his face to ease the pain, but they did not do so. For fifteen minutes, he did not move.
At last, a gurgling sound from down the road was brought to his attention. He quickly wiped away his tears and aimed his shotgun at the source of the sound. There, he saw a "vortigaunt," as Barney called it, already building up its electrical attack. Cal threw himself to the ground. His face struck the hard, black asphalt as a bolt of seething electrical energy passed overhead. He turned and scrambled away as the vortigaunt prepared for another attack. He hid behind a nearby SUV, and moments later, the vortigaunt's electrical attack blew out the windows and stripped away the roof.
Cal rolled out of his hiding place, aimed the shotgun, and fired. His aim was true; the vortigaunt fell with a final death gurgle.
When he heard similar gurgles pop up from around the neighborhood, as well as reverberating thumps of the garg's footsteps, he realized that the shotgun's report had attracted more aliens to his block.
I can't stay here, he thought grimly, climbing into the SUV through the shattered window. Greg had taught him how to hotwire a car once; Cal hoped he could still remember how to do it.
The first of the vortigaunts came sauntering around the street corner, and Cal's stomach tied up in a knot. Fortunately, it didn't seem to see him, but it appeared to be on the trail of a scent. Could it be him?
No, Cal thought. There are dozens of other people on this block. It could be any one of them.
Cal suddenly realized that, aside from the group of running men, he hadn't seen anyone else. How could they not wake up from all the noise?
As he thought over it, the vortigaunt was joined by several of its companions. Then, while he was still fiddling with the wires, a creature that fit Barney's description of a houndeye came playfully around the corner, dancing around the vortigaunts, who swat at it in annoyance. The houndeye stopped darting about, and seemed to be looking at something. Cal realized that it was he.
The roofless, windowless SUV sputtered to life. Cal got in the driver's seat and put it in drive, just as the houndeye came dashing his way. The vortigaunts didn't seem to notice, yet.
Cal did a U-turn, running over the lawn of the owner and nearly knocking over the mailbox. Cal saw the houndeye running towards him but didn't turn around for one simple reason: he saw the garg in his rear view mirror.
Cal was thrown forward, then bounced upward twice as he ran over the beast. This time the vortigaunts took notice. They lined up along the road, as if forming a roadblock, and began charging their electric attacks. Cal swerved the SUV at the last minute, watched as three bolts of bright energy streamed past, inches from the driver's seat door. He stepped on the gas, easily passing fifty miles an hour. The vortigaunts were starting to charge their attacks again, but it was too late. Cal ran over two of them, turned the corner with a screech, and was gone.
He sped down the road, aware that a vehicle he had stolen minutes ago already had shattered windows and a shattered windshield, a crumpled fender and hood, and a missing roof. If he ran down any more monsters, his vehicle would likely be unable to drive. But if it came to that, he would have no choice. He had to leave town, but there was something he had to do first.
As he drove, Cal realized that the neighborhood was much worse than he had thought at first. Fences were knocked down. Windows were shattered. Blood, both human and alien, was splattered all over the sidewalks. Cars were overturned, and a few actually looked like they had exploded. More than once, Cal witnessed a human corpse, still in its pajamas, laying face down on the street, its back torn open.
Suddenly, a group of five houndeyes dashed across the street, but they were thankfully far enough for Cal not to worry about running over. They ran into an open door of a house of a kid that Cal knew all too well: Alex.
Cal turned, becoming worried for a moment that the SUV would actually flip over, and parked on Alex's lawn, a few feet from the open door. He leaped out of the absent roof, loading his shotgun in the process, and went in.
When he entered the living room, he discovered that Alex apparently had the situation under control. He created a barricade out of an overturned sofa and was crouched behind it, popping off paintballs at the aliens that kept coming in, attracted by the noise. Alex's paintball gun was a powerful one, and at close range, it did the job. Cal watched as Alex shot one of the houndeyes in the eye, bursting it and entering its brain, when it fell to the ground, dead. Cal raised his shotgun and took care of the others.
When all the aliens were dead, Cal approached the sofa and helped Alex to his feet. Alex was trembling, as did Cal when he first encountered the aliens.
"You all right?" Cal asked.
Alex nodded. "Considering," he mumbled. Then louder, "What the fuck is happening? I mean, one thing I was dreaming about being with two women, and the next, I wake up to monsters shooting electricity through my neighbor's chest!"
"Where are your parents?" Cal said suddenly.
Alex frowned. "I don't know," he said. "When I woke up, they were gone, and a few of those things were wandering around in here." He pointed to the carcass of a vortigaunt; it, like the houndeye, had taken a paintball through the eye.
"Same here," said Cal. He beckoned to Alex, and the two made their way to Cal's truck. "It's like we woke up in an apocalyptic war zone. But you know what the scary part is?"
"What?" said Alex, taking Cal's shotgun and riding shotgun.
"It feels like the war is almost over."
Tuesday, 5:40 A.M.- Carrizozo Police Department, Carrizozo, New Mexico
Things were looking far differently at the heart of the city. The streets were full of gargs, bullsquids, grunts and vortigaunts, all of which were cutting down citizens, wrecking cars, and devastating the city itself. A block from the police department, a man sat wedged into a corner of a building, firing a revolver at the beasts, before a garg whacked him with a streetlight, dashing his brains out onto the sidewalk.
Inside, Alfonso and the remaining police officers had barricaded themselves inside, shooting any alien that attacked. Already, three of their own lay dead.
Alfonso remembered it vividly. It began an hour ago; he had been working late, of course, on the case of the strange creature that had made its home out of a piece of the road outside the city. While he was sitting at his desk, he heard steady, repetitive thumping, like an excited dog's tail hitting carpet. When he stepped outside to look, he saw a dark shape against the sleeping city. When he looked closer, there were more shapes behind it. Hundreds more. Before he knew it, the city had become a war zone, and the unwitting townsfolk, hardly soldiers awake, were sitting ducks when awoken suddenly.
A group of seven vortigaunts were running down the street when they noticed the officers inside the station. They simultaneously charged their electric attacks, but the officers only had time to gun down five of them before the attacks were released. The first came through the last glass window and struck an overturned desk, destroying it and the officer who hid behind it. The second destroyed a part of the wall, and clipped another desk. Charlie, who was hiding behind it, gave a cry, and scrunched up his body to fit behind the remaining part of the desk. He reached across the blood-stained, glass covered floor to an officer's corpse, felt around his belt, and grabbed the radio.
A sound like buzzing insects filled the air, and a flying object burrowed into Charlie's outreached arm and came bursting in a fountain of blood through the other side. He screamed, but this scream only attracted more of the alien insects. Alfonso watched as half a dozen or so pierced his body, leaving behind holes through which blood oozed out, soaking Charlie's uniform and the carpet beneath.
Alfonso looked up from behind his desk, and saw a grunt, who was shooting insects at the officers. He emptied five cartridges into the beast before it fell with a thud.
Another officer had taken Charlie's example, and was grabbing for his own radio. "All units!" he said, shouting over the screams and explosions that came from outside. "All units! Come in! Code red! All units report to..."
"Shut up and shoot!" Alfonso shouted.
The officer ignored him, and continued rambling into the radio. "This is a code red," he said. "Officers down, shots fired, backup needed. All units..."
"All units?" Alfonso screamed, reloading his shotgun. He motioned with the shotgun to the city outside. "There's your fucking units!"
Outside, an officer was running wildly down the street, striking at a headcrab that clung to his skull. He ran until a grunt shot five bees through his chest. He fell stiffly to the ground, while the headcrab released him and hopped away. Nearby, a police car, sirens wailing, was swerving and speeding at well above seventy miles an hour, until a garg jabbed at it with one tremendous claw. The strike shattered the driver's side window and knocked out the driver. The car continued speeding, heading straight for the police station.
"Look out!" Alfonso screamed.
He and the two others leaped out of the way. The police car came crashing into the building, taking down whatever was left of the front wall, smashed the desk barriers, and pummeled into the offices behind. When it stopped, only the back bumper and lights were sticking out, and the car was overturned.
"Evac!" Alfonso shouted.
The officers didn't seem to comprehend, until they saw Alfonso leaping out onto the sidewalk outside. The police car exploded violently, and half of the police station was destroyed instantly. The other half was left to burn.
Alfonso scampered down the sidewalk to the compound at the side, where all the police cars were parked. Along the way, he shot two headcrabs and a mawman. He burst into the compound, tried the first car he saw, found it locked, turned to the sidewalk, saw two grunts fast approaching, and shot off the door handle. As he hopped into the front seat, he finally got a hold of his keys, thrust them into the ignition, and started the car. He sped out of the compound, breaking the left headlight on another car's bumper in the process, entered the street, and headed west, towards the city limits, at ninety miles per hour.
Tuesday, 5:46 A.M.- Carrizozo, New Mexico
"Holy shit, look at this place!"
Alex had his head out the window, watching the downtown area grow closer, and the level of chaos grow higher. The aliens were everywhere, busy wreaking havoc on the small town, killing the occasional survivor of their previous carnage, and attacking speeding cars.
"Better get your head back in here, Alex," Cal said. "Or one of those headcrabs are gonna make breakfast out of it."
Alex drew closer in, aiming his shotgun instead through the broken windshield. Thankfully, most of the creatures had not noticed their coming yet. But they both knew that wouldn't last long.
"Watch out!" Alex shouted.
A vortigaunt had suddenly appeared in the road, and was charging its electrical attack. Cal swerved, hitting the sidewalk and nearly losing the left mirror to the passing walls.
"Don't just sit there, shoot!" Cal cried.
Alex turned a full 180 degrees and fired, striking the vortigaunt in the chest moments before its electrical attack would be unleashed.
"This is it," Cal said. "The police station is around this... shit."
Cal turned the corner sharply, allowing himself and Alex a clear view of the police station. It was engulfed in flames. Cal drove the SUV nearer to it.
"What are you doing?" Alex shouted. "You're taking us into the goddamned fray!"
"I have to get that Barney guy," Cal said calmly.
Alex looked at him, then at the police station, then back at him. "Are you kidding?" he said. "That guy is fucking barbecue. Look!"
"The cells are in the back. The fire might not have reached him yet. Now, hang on. We're going to do some more crazy driving."
Cal turned the vehicle into the police station, driving through fire walls and smashing down glowing pieces of wood, while Alex screamed and held his hands over his head. Cal didn't stop until the SUV had made it through the burning part of the building and came to a stop against the far wall with a bump. Cal was right; the jail cells were not on fire, although the place was already heavy with smoke. He leapt out of the vehicle and began searching the cells.
"Here he is!" Cal shouted. Barney Calhoun lay unconscious on the floor near the bars; he had apparently been trying to get out.
"Here, I'll shoot out the lock," Alex said, loading the shotgun.
"No!" Cal said. "We'll need the ammo. You go find some keys, I'll ready our escape route."
Alex nodded and took off. Cal turned, hopped back into the SUV, and put it in reverse. He backed up until he was almost at the heart of the fire. He put it in drive, exhaled loudly, and pushed down on the gas.
He didn't go too fast for his own personal safety, but it was fast enough for the air bag to pop out in his face, and for a section of the wall level with the bumper to break. He tried putting it in reverse again, but the car wouldn't go. Instead, he got out, pushed the SUV back, and began clearing away bricks to make a good-sized escape route.
Alex came running with a set of keys. He unlocked Barney's cell, and the two of them dragged Barney out through the escape hole. They dragged him until they were a good distance from the police station. Cal turned and looked at the hole in the wall, where thin streams of smoke were flowing out into the early dawn sky. Next to him, Alex was coughing forcefully.
"Should... we... try and... get the other... inmates?" Alex wheezed.
A report sounded from within, and the wall above the hole broke outwards. The SUV had exploded. Cal shook his head sadly.
The two broke into the police car compound, only to find an alien grunt inside. They hid behind a car, taking shots at the brute, and returning quickly to their hiding space to avoid the "bees" the brute shot at them. Four rounds later, the alien grunt fell. Cal and Alex broke into a nearby police car, ignoring the alarm that wailed. Cal quickly hotwired the car, placed Barney in the back and Alex in the front, and then drove off.