Chapter Fourteen - Home

Aiden had spent most of his childhood in a street where the houses were all as old as the families raised in them. His grandmother's house played home to three generations of Fords and it wasn't the only one in the block to do so.

On the corner stood Mrs Cooper's; a low roofed bungalow with a sweeping porch overgrown with ivy and creeping roses. She would sit on its steps and watch the rest of the neighborhood go by, dragging on a thin, dark brown cigarette, her fingers stained yellow. Hers was always the last house Aiden and Josh visited during Halloween, the younger boy's hand clutched in the firm hold of his cousin's. The elderly lady treated all children visiting her home as royalty, replacements for her own, grown up offspring who had left the nest years earlier and only grudgingly reappeared at Christmas. She would gift the two boys with more candy than they could carry, and ignoring their grandmother's warnings they would take the entire horde home to bed, and gorge themselves sick on it.

When Aiden was older he performed various small gardening duties for the old lady, trimming her hedges, cutting her lawn, and emptying her gutter. But it had been two years since he had last seen Mrs Cooper, and it seemed no one had taken over his chores. The porch was empty, overgrown with bramble that spilt up and over the front fence from the border. The lawn was wild and untamed, knee-high in places and riddled with moss in others. Paint was slowly peeling from the front door, baked and cracking in the summer heat.

Frowning, Aiden moved onwards down the street, making a mental note to ask his grandmother what had become of the warm, elderly lady.

Beside Mrs Cooper lived the Stuarts. Their eldest son, Nathan, had been in the same class as Aiden and before he had followed in his father's footsteps, training to become a doctor, Nathan had been good friends with Aiden. There was still a dint in the Stuart's lawn where the enthusiastic pitcher, Nathan, had ground his feet theatrically into the dirt. There were still burn marks on the white trunk of the ash tree, where the boys had pinned a Catherine Wheel several July the 4ths earlier. Mr. Stuart was known for throwing a huge barbeque every year, inviting family, friends, and neighbors, and if Ford concentrated he could still taste Mrs Stuart's baked corn on the cob, dripping with butter.

The house now stood empty. The front window was smashed and the door hung in splinters. Sat on the driveway, the large family car was covered by a layer of mulch, its paint faded, its metal rusting. Walking past the property Aiden considered a closer look, but his feet had other intentions.

Past Mr. Davenport's house, its windows and doors boarded up, its high fence battered and broken. The man had seemingly despised everybody, resentful of the fact that he was being forced to share a street with other people. People with children, and dogs, and lawnmowers. No ball or Frisbee had ever returned from the man's garden and Aiden had serious worries for his cousin Marissa's rabbit, who had disappeared under a hole in the fence and had never been seen again.

Then the Connors, another family with two daughters, one of whom Aiden had dated for several months in high school… then Mr. and Mrs Chase, an older couple with a grown up daughter…then Aiden was running, past the empty and abandoned houses, past the broken windows and peeling paint to…

Home.

Compared to other houses on the block it seemed relatively untouched. If it hadn't been for the door, left open and creaking in the wind, or the odd, dark mark marring the neat brickwork, Aiden could almost delude himself into thinking everything was normal.

It was not the same inside. A trail of clothes was strewn from the top of the stairs downwards to the hallway below, and an open suitcase lay at Aiden's feet. He recognized several t-shirts as belonging to Josh, and a skirt that had been Meredith's. Several family photos had fallen from the wall and now glass shards littered the carpet. He walked across them carefully, treading slivers into the rug, and stepped into the living room.

The place was a disaster. A bookshelf had been tipped over, its contents scattered across the floor. The glass coffee table, his grandmother's pride and joy, was shattered, what looked like blood pooling around some of the pieces. The curtains had been torn from the rails, and there were holes in the plaster of the walls. A crate sat on the sofa, filled with canned food and cereal.

Increasingly afraid, Aiden moved back out into the hallway and into the opposite room, the den. Here the furniture had been pushed back to the walls to create space on the floor. His family seemed to be in the middle of packing, boxes of food and suitcases piled unevenly against the couch.

His grandfather's car keys sat on the desk, beneath the green table lamp that had been an anniversary present from his aunt and uncle. Aiden stared at them, shivering, fighting to quell a tide of fear and panic.

He failed. Turning sharply, he left the den behind, pounding up the stairs, treading on his cousin's clothes. "Grandma? Meredith?"

Into his grandparent's bedroom, where the sheets had been torn from the bed, the mattress stripped and bare. "Grandpa?"

Out and into the room shared by Meredith and Marissa, where the wardrobe lay open and bare, hangers scattered across the floor. A bottle of shampoo had been knocked from a table and now lay in a pool of congealing goop.

His heart hammering in his chest, Aiden pushed himself off the door frame and headed past his aunt's room – in disarray – past the bathroom, where the medicine cabinet hung awkwardly from the wall, its contents in the sink – to the room he shared with Josh. Basketball posters covered one wall of the room, and the calendar of girls his grandmother had vehemently disapproved of still hung on the back of the door. A backpack lay on the bed, neatly strapped up and overfull.

"Josh?"

There was a quaver to his voice. Dragging his gaze away from the empty room, Aiden turned back to the landing and surveyed the rest of the house.

It was quiet. His home was never quiet, too full of people, of laugher and arguments and family, not pulled apart, destroyed in the midst of a desperate flight.

There was a large, circular scorch mark on the wallpaper above the stairs. Aiden stared at it for several long seconds, recognition igniting a creeping sense of dread.

A sound from outside pulled him back into the bedroom, to the window that overlooked the street. A repetitive drumming, growing in volume, the sound of armored feet against the tarmac. A dozen Jaffa marched in perfect formation down the road, staff weapons in their hands. Their leader, dressed in the strange, animal shaped helmet Aiden had only seen twice before, strode before them. His head moved to the left and right as though looking for something.

Or someone. Aiden froze, his fingers still curled around the curtain.

His last thoughts were ones of realization, of horror and despair.

Oh god, they're dead, they're all…

The leading Jaffa looked up to Aiden's window, his red eyes meeting the human's gaze, any expression hidden behind the mask.

Aiden couldn't move, his body in a state of shock, his mind bound into a crazed denial, no, no, it's not possible, it's not been that long, why did I…

He had known the threat to the Milky Way, but left the mission to defend Earth in favor of new frontiers. Leaving his family to be protected by others, that protection failing, his family enslaved or dead…

Casually the Jaffa warrior lifted his staff weapon, aiming it towards the window. In the few seconds before the trigger was pulled, Aiden thought he heard the voice of his grandmother, of the promise she had gently pressed from him.

Come home safe, Aiden.

Then a pulse of hot weapons fire took out the window, and Aiden heard nothing else for a long while.

A/N: This may be the last update until Friday, as I'm going on my hols for a few days. Sorry folks!