I opened the door to the coffee shop, quickly spotting Blair nursing a coffee at a table in the corner. The Starbucks was surprisingly void of customers for this time in the morning. Regardless, it would be empty soon enough.
"Morning," Blair greeted me with a smile, taking a sip of her coffee. I saw with pride that her backpack was sitting next to her, looking considerably fuller than when I had given it to her the previous night. "Want a coffee? It's on me."
"No time," I replied, still a bit tense. Seeing the comet coming down had been a shock, but I had conditioned myself to avoid panic at all costs. Reason and a clear head were key to survival. "We have to go, now."
There was commotion in the street, and we both turned to look out the window. On the sidewalks people were pointing and chattering to each other. Some cars had even stopped in the street; the cars behind them were the ones causing all the noise. Blair looked up at me, worry creeping up behind her eyes. "Grey?" she asked slowly. "What's going on out there?"
"Come look for yourself," I replied, already knowing what I would see. I started towards the door; Blair grabbed her coffee and her backpack and followed me out. Once we were clear of the building it was plain to see what all of the commotion was about. An enormous plume of smoke was rising from downtown, lit up occasionally by flashes of fire.
"Oh my god," Blair whispered, staring at it with wide eyes.
"The heat rays are already working," I muttered, not surprised at all. Considering how far our own technology had come, I expected theirs had leapt forward as well. Suddenly a thought struck me, and I paled. "Mom and Dad," I gasped. "Blair, Mom and Dad are still downtown! They'll believe me now, we have to go get them!" I took off down the street towards the pillar of smoke.
Blair looked away from the horrific sight, yelling, "Are you crazy? Grey, wait!" She started running after me, and I slowed down just enough so as not to lose her as we sprinted through the alleys.
Soon enough the amount of people going the other way greatly increased as panic started spreading. I pushed and shoved my way through the flood, muttering apologies as I went. Blair held onto my backpack so as not to lose me. Suddenly, it all stopped. No more people. Just hastily abandoned buildings and wailing car alarms. We had reached downtown.
"Grey," Blair muttered, still clutching my backpack tightly. "This seems dangerous. Maybe your parents already got out. You saw all those people, nobody in their right mind would stay here, so let's…"
"No," I said calmly.
"What?" Blair looked surprised.
"I said no. Their building is right at the center of downtown, they could be trapped or hurt." My voice remained relatively composed, but regardless my hands were shaking. There was a large difference between preparing for an invasion and experiencing one. And somehow, I hadn't expected my parents to be in harm's way.
"I… I guess so…" Blair said, her voice shaking. I wouldn't admit it, but I was pretty scared too.
"Come on," I whispered, and dragged her into the shadow of a building. Now focused on the job at hand all of my research kicked in, survival tips playing through my mind like a song on repeat. Keeping close to the empty buildings we snuck quietly into the heart of downtown.
The silence was eerie. It was not complete: there were dogs barking and alarms sounding. But there were no people, the only time I had ever seen the city streets so empty. Even at night this part of town was alive, so this just felt… wrong.
Suddenly, the sound of something large could be heard from the street in front of us. Fast-paced thumping seemed to make the entire road shudder; and without a doubt it was coming closer. "Hide!" I gasped, and pulled Blair into the nearest open door with me. It was a local restaurant, and we moved past food forgotten to crouch underneath a window. By some miracle Blair still had her coffee, and she raised it to her lips with shaking hands. The thumping grew closer, and I waited with a mix of anticipation and fear; for to be proved right meant the destruction of us all.
I didn't have to wait long to see it: the first tripod. Snippets of eyewitness accounts from the original event came back to me: "Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground?" I could now. The tripod was like nothing I'd ever seen, like a strange animal turned machine. Metal moved as if it were flesh and blood, it's three legs hurrying it along at an impossible pace and it's glittering tentacles moving about as if tasting the very air. The entire contraption moved fluidly, like it was swimming through the air rather than walking upon the street. The top of it would swivel occasionally, scanning its domain. It was too tall to see it in its entirety, but from the glances I took I could see the heat ray snaking up behind its back, flexible and ready to fire.
Blair was seeing the same things I was, though I'm sure she understood them even less. At the moment she was biting a tightly clenched fist to keep from screaming, terror pulsing in her wide eyes. She held onto her coffee with an unyielding grip, as if it were her last lifeline. I held my breath as the tripod passed, wondering how sensitive their sound sensors were and hoping they hadn't invented a way to detect heat sources. I had a theory about that, but now wasn't really the time.
Within the course of a minute the Martian machine had passed us, and after two we could no longer hear the thumping of its legs. I let out a breath in relief and sagged against the wall, closing my eyes. Blair, on the other hand, was on the verge of panic.
"Grey," she hissed, nudging my shoulder. "Grey you were right I'm so sorry oh god did you see that thing it was like nothing I Grey are you listening we have to get out of here!"
"I'm listening," I calmly replied, keeping my voice down just in case. Opening my eyes and sitting up I took Blair by the shoulders, attempting to calm her down. "Listen, Blair." She stopped muttering and looked me in the eyes. "That was a tripod, one of the Martian's machines. I'm sure they have very advanced technology on their side, so we have to stay quiet and collected from now on, okay?" My cousin nodded nervously, glancing anxiously from me to the window. "Now I need to make sure that my parents are okay, so we have three more blocks to go. I need you to follow my lead and stay close to the buildings. Can you do that?"
Blair drew in a shaky breath, but replied, "Yes."
I nodded affirmatively a couple of times, trying to look more confident than I felt. "Come on," I whispered, and we moved out into the street once again. By now even the dogs had been silenced one way or another, but my ears still strained against the silence. The loud metallic thumping we had heard was the only way of predicting an approaching tripod; fortunately, there was no sound of the kind echoing through nearby streets.
We slunk against the buildings, moving stealthily from shadow to shadow. Blair walked on tiptoe behind me, a protective hand on my backpack. I counted the blocks as we went: one as we went past Illinois Ave, two as we arrived at… Main…
I stopped at the corner, unable to believe my eyes. With a sharp intake of breath I heard Blair walk up next to me; I didn't look over at her. Something else held my attention.
In front of me stood a mass of rubble and smoking wreckage, surrounding a circular crater spanning the length of the next two blocks. Blair and I stood at the very edge; the road not three feet in front of us ran with cracks before practically disintegrating into the sloping edge of the crater. And in the very center, at the very site of my parents' office building, stood an enormous, smoking cylinder of smooth metal. Around it swarmed smaller machines, about the size of vans but on legs, which seemed to be disassembling the fallen ship and building tripods in a rapid fashion.
My ears began to ring as the truth sunk in. My head swam, and my vision began to blur. Hardly feeling, I sluggishly turned around and began running back where we came from. Dimly I heard Blair yell after me, as if from the other side of a long tunnel. I felt detached, uncomprehending, like my body was working without me. Inside I was floundering, thoughts cycling through my mind in a constant stream.
Not them not them oh god not them not them not them…
After what seemed like an eternity I tripped over an edge, the pain of the concrete scraping my hands drawing me back into my body. I stayed on the ground, feeling for the first time the tears coursing down my cheeks. Staggering to my knees I crawled to a nearby bush, throwing up as my entire form began to shake. I felt gentle hands slowly removing my backpack, setting it to the side and rubbing my back soothingly.
"Shh," Blair's gentle, kind voice said softly. "Shh, Blair, it's okay honey, it's okay." She repeated this as I wiped my mouth and began to sob, curling into her. She ran her fingers through my tangled, matted hair, enveloping me in a warm embrace. "Everything will be okay."
It wasn't true, but I still felt better just hearing her say it. Just feeling gentle hands, knowing that despite what had just happened I still wasn't alone. I still had somebody who loved me, who looked out for me. Somebody who probably was in pain as well, but who would put that aside to care for me. And for the first time in a while, I let all of my feelings come out.
After a few minutes the sobs had quieted to hiccups, and eventually my cheeks dried. Blair removed her hands from my hair and looked down at me with a sad little smile. I wiped my eyes and detached myself from her, sitting back on my knees. "My parents are dead," I said quietly, finally putting into words what had been tearing me to pieces.
Blair's face immediately crumpled in agony and pity. "We don't know that!" she protested, almost desperately. "There were thousands of people in that crowd, we could have missed them, they could be looking-"
"Blair," I interrupted her quietly, my voice controlled and devoid of emotion. Every feeling I had seemed to have been washed away with the tears. "The cylinder fell directly on top of their building. You saw the wreckage, there is no possible way they could have gotten out in time. At least… at least their death was a quick one."
"Don't say that!" Blair exclaimed, her fists clenching and unclenching as she struggled between anguish and anger. "Don't! Just… don't." She closed her eyes and worked to compose herself. With a sigh she opened them and stood up, taking a look around. "Now where are we?" she wondered. Evidently I had run us into a part of the city unknown to her.
I stood up as well, absentmindedly brushing my cut-up hands on my jeans. Wincing a bit from the sharp pain that shot through them, I stuck them in my jacket pockets and tried to focus on the matter at hand. From what I could tell we had gone west, towards the outer edge of the city. A few more blocks of businesses and we would be in the suburbs. I turned to look at the building behind me. It was a movie theater, though it looked completely deserted at the moment. Money had even been left at the ticket booths.
Note to self: collect money when Blair isn't looking I thought. One man's panic was another's profit, after all. My train of thought was interrupted, however, by a familiar shake in the ground and the distant sound of thumping. "A tripod's coming, come on!" I exclaimed, and after snatching up my bag Blair and I ran into the theater. We went past the exposed lobby and into the interior hallway, where I watched the light coming from the entrance warily.
But before the shadow of the tripod crossed it, I heard the door to the theater behind me creak slowly open.