A/N: I have to write a fifteen page paper today but schools almost over, then I will have the summer to work on this story, and a few other projects that have been collecting dust on my shelf. Including that dark future fic I teased several chapters back that I've been daydreaming about a lot today...
Thank you for the reviews you guys, you rock.
And a thank you to Greg for beta-ing. He surprisingly liked this chapter. Hopefully you guys feel the same...we'll see.
XVI.
There wasn't much left of the area where Ben had earlier heard gunfire when he finally arrived. He looked the place over, charred remains of suburbia littered every which direction. Dead aliens were strewn across the lawns of a few scorched homes, and when Ben approached the building, he faltered on a porch step, able to easily see charred and butchered remains of 2nd Mass fighters and civilians alike lying inside. Ben choked back his emotion, and carefully stepped away from the buildings once more. He could hear a Skitter behind him, slowly advancing, and he unsheathed a knife. It lunged for him and he spun to attack, but the crack of gunfire popped the alien's head clean off, and its limp body slumped to the ground.
Ben smeared away the ichor that had splattered across his face best he could and tilted his head to get a better view of his savior. Maggie stood down the street at the corner, a shotgun still poised in the crook of her shoulder, grim solemnity etched in her tightly drawn features. She dropped the barrel downwards and stalked towards Ben.
"Jimmy's alive," Ben blurted out the moment she was near enough he could deliver the news in a clandestine whisper. She paused and her expression softened slightly, a brief relief passing across her eyes, and Ben clarified distantly, "At least…last I saw him, he was okay. I don't know where he is now. But he wasn't lost, not in the community center anyway…he was out at the structure…with me and…"
"How are you?" Maggie interrupted, her eyes darting pointedly to the obvious injuries Ben sported. Absently, he traced his fingers over a bit of the bandaging Dr. Glass recently wrapped him up with; they were already crinkled and dirtied.
"I'm fine," Ben replied. He could hear a couple other fighters nearby, most likely a part of Maggie's unit, but asked, "Do you know where others are?"
"Not a clue. I've a lead on Weaver's location, but everyone is scattered all over the place and the enemy is overflowing every street. No one is staying anywhere long, best to keep moving to stay alive, but I'm not sure how long that'll last. Skitters have us locked in on all sides; we've got maybe a five, six block radius. We're fish, and this is a barrel," Maggie answered, then dropped her eyes and admitted, "I don't know where your brothers are."
"Matt is in a preschool with Uncle Scott and Dr. Glass and a whole bunch of kids about four blocks south of here," Ben said, "We had a few older civilians with us that broke into groups to search out others and point them back that direction. You and your friends should head there now."
"I don't know, Ben, I'd love to go protect the small children, really, but I also would – and I know the others too – would feel a lot better if we found Weaver and got his orders first," Maggie returned, anxiously toying with the trigger of her shotgun, gaze scouring the dark end of the street.
"Great. Right. Yeah," Ben murmured, scowling, as he made another attempt to listen for survivors, "Where did you think Weaver was at?"
"Last I'd heard, more east of here, but like I said, he might've moved already," Maggie said.
Ben focused on the noises coming from the east, furrowing his brow and trying to muddle through the carnage. He shook his head after several seconds.
"I can't get anything that direction…there's just too much going on," Ben grumbled, frowning and rubbing a hand over his face. It was getting increasingly harder on him to listen, he couldn't help hoping that he would hear Jimmy's voice, or some indication that the other boy left the downtown district and the mess they made of that alien structure and returned to the community center, and it crushed him every time when there was nothing.
"Listen, we'll go that direction and see if Weaver is over there, if not, we'll head to the preschool," Maggie decided, "Sound like a plan?"
"Yeah, that's fine," Ben returned, "But if you don't mind, I'm going to go the other way and keep looking for other survivors to point back towards the preschool."
"Alright, well, then we'll see you there. Good luck," Maggie said, smiling thinly and pushing on.
"Be careful," Ben replied, gave her a short nod and hurried off onto the next street and towards the nearest gunfire to which he could make out a clear direction. He slunk round the corner and cut between two houses, stumbling into the backyard and suddenly white cut across his vision.
Seated comfortably on the mid-step of the staircase, Ben could easily see Hal and his girlfriend on the living room couch locked in an intimate embrace, their mouths gnashing against one another. They sounded somewhat like livestock grazing, and they panted noisily. Every so often she would break away and giggle, and Hal would murmur something inaudible and she would laugh, and their mouths would mash together once more. Ben furrowed his brow, leaned forward on his knees and gripped his head in his hands. His ears were ringing, his mouth felt dry, like he was munching on cotton, and his tongue tasted metallic. He felt as though there was screaming nearby. He couldn't hear it; he could just feel it reverberating in his chest.
"This…isn't right," he whispered, his hands trembling. He barely heard his brother's approach, startling at the knock across his shoulder, leaning back to look the older boy in the face.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Hal demanded.
"I don't…" Ben stammered, trying to focus on his surroundings. He was at home. The television was running downstairs, evidenced by the laugh track as some sitcom. It was a Saturday night. Their mom and dad were out, dinner with the Thorsens. Matt had stayed over at a friend's house, some slumber party, birthday or something.
"Hey, dork, I asked you a question," Hal growled, slapping Ben lightly upside the head.
"Nothing," Ben snapped, absently rubbing the spot and glaring up at his brother, "I wasn't doing anything. I'm just sitting here…"
"Sitting here spying on me and Katy?" Hal surmised, folding his arms over his chest, narrowing his eyes.
"No, I was just…"
"Save it, you little pervert," Hal muttered, "It's bad enough that I have to put up with your being here to begin with…"
"I live here," Ben pointed out.
"It's Saturday night, Ben. What? You couldn't get a date, so you have to crash mine?" Hal growled.
"I live here," Ben repeated, sharply, "Why do you have to bring your date home? You couldn't just take her to the movies or something like everyone else? Instead I have to put up with you slobbering all over some girl on the couch. I sit there, you know, our sweet, innocent little brother watched cartoons on that couch this morning."
"Oh grow up, Ben," Hal groaned, yanking Ben to his feet and shoving him towards upstairs, "We were just kissing. And Matt is anything but sweet and innocent. He knows more about third base than you do, which I guess isn't really saying much. Now, don't you have some D&D something that can keep you occupied for the next three or four hours…"
"Three or four hours? That's not fair! A few of my shows are on tonight," Ben protested.
"What? Dweebs in Space?" Hal scoffed, "Seriously, television and video games is all you've got on a Saturday night? You need a life."
"You need a car," Ben muttered, and Hal flicked the back of his neck, giving him another hard shove upwards. He trudged up the stairs, grumbling under his breath as he heard Hal heading back into the living room, and then slipped into his bedroom and leaned back against the door, glaring at the slightly mussed room and frowning petulantly.
Another Saturday night of television and video games, yeah, maybe this was his life and maybe it made him happy. At least in the games he could be the hero of his own world.
Ben started towards his computer and winced, a searing pain ripping through his entire body. He cried out and nearly crumpled to the ground, placing his weight against the nearby wall for support, frowning as tiny dots of red splattered to the floor. There was the feeling again, of screaming, a thundering pulse pounding erratic rhythm in his veins, up through his feet, racing his limbs, and exploding into his head. He brought a hand up to touch his forehead and startled at the sound of his bedroom door opening. He turned round and took a few steps back; wincing against the waft of party sounds downstairs tumbling through his open door, and forced his focus on the figure standing in his doorframe.
"Cole?" Ben acknowledged, scowling and rubbing a hand over his face.
"Oh, Ben, sorry," the older boy said in return, gently closing the door and cutting off the thrall of repetitively thrumming dance music and giddy high-schoolers, "I didn't know you were in here. I was looking for a quiet place to clear my head. It's a mess downstairs."
Cole's cheeks were flush, his eyes slightly glazed, his words faintly slurred.
"Yeah…I don't know…" Ben murmured returned, shaking his head, whispering, "What Saturday is this?"
"Do you mind if I hang out in here for a bit?" Cole asked, stumbling further into the room and collapsing onto Ben's bed.
"No, it's okay," Ben said unnecessarily, it was obvious the older boy didn't care about having permission. He wandered over and took a seat next to Cole, as the details of the night became less fuzzy in his mind. Mom and dad were out of town for the week, they took Matt with them, and Hal decided to throw a party because it wasn't like Ben could throw one, "unless twenty-sided die were involved" – Hal's words. As the minutes ticked into one another, Ben began to wonder how he could ever have questioned the night. Why did he feel so out of place?
Cole slumped across the mattress, attempting to hold himself propped up but very clearly incapable. He stared up at Ben, a strangely muted expression on his face, and Ben shifted uncomfortably, his heart hammering away in his chest. For whatever reason, he had a hard time being alone with Cole ever since three years back, Cole had stayed the night and Ben walked in on the older boy in the middle of changing. Rationally, Ben knew seeing the other boy nearly naked shouldn't have made things awkward, Ben saw other boys undress every day at school in the boys' locker room, but somehow Cole was different. Maybe it was his smell, the way he moved, the way he talked, the way he looked at Ben as though he actually saw a person standing there and not just Hal's dorky little brother. Cole always made an effort to talk to Ben, greet him on arriving, ask him about his day, treat him kindly, acknowledge him, and this moment was no different than those.
Cole just came upstairs to say 'hi', nothing out of the ordinary, so why was Ben's heart racing and why did his head feel so light and warm?
"You playing your video games up here," Cole noticed, his eyes half-lidded casually strolled over Ben's computer screen, Ben's avatar standing securely in the middle of a busy town, other players chat scrolling colorfully up in a box on the bottom of the game.
"Yeah," Ben murmured, cheeks reddening in embarrassment. He started to rise, intending to turn the monitor off at least, but Cole suddenly reached out, gripped his forearm and tugged him back down to the bed.
"It's sort of funny, isn't it? How different you and Hal are."
"I guess," Ben folded his arms in his lap, shifting awkwardly. Funny wasn't a word Ben would usually attribute to his and Hal's differences. Despite their mother's assurance that they were each special in their own ways, there was really nothing funny about it.
"Sorry," Cole laughed, now resting his hand on Ben's shoulder, and smiling up, his eyes shimmering strangely, "I've been drinking."
"I can tell," Ben admitted, shrugging, "It's okay. Don't you want to get back to the party? It seems more fun than being in here."
"I like it in here," Cole confessed, sitting up best he could, given his inebriated state, "I like being with you."
"Oh," Ben mouthed, flustering and trying to focus on anything that wasn't Cole at that moment, "I like you too. Or…being with you…talking. It's nice."
"I'm glad," Cole said.
A hush fell between them, in which Ben could swear his thundering heart overwhelmed the silent void.
"It's better, that you're different than him," Cole noted, looking at Ben through glassy eyes, blurrily murmuring, "It makes you special. You're a very special person. Very special…"
Cole leaned in closer and Ben stiffened, warmth spreading through him, as he watched the older boy's inexplicable movements in stun. Before Cole was close enough, a jarring pain shuddered through Ben and he faltered back, his vision flashing a brilliant white.
"Ben?" Cole questioned, and Ben attempted to get a grip on the world again.
In the open doorway stood a figure, strange and yet familiar, a flash of blue, and then he was gone into the hallway, Ben instinctively stumbling to his feet to follow after.
"Ben…Ben wait," Cole called after, urgency rushing through Ben, if he didn't catch that boy right in that moment, in that night, he felt certain that he never would. He nearly stumbled in his sprint down the stairs and into the flurry of bodies, melding together as one, bobbing and swaying to the pulsations of horrendously loud music that thumped in his chest, little more discernible from an endlessly redundant beat. Again, that glimpse of blue, and Ben pushed his way through the crowd, his head searing in pain, his desperate yet confusing need to grab hold of that boy and shake answers from him to questions Ben didn't know, the only thing pushing him forward. He fell out of the crowd and into the backyard.
"Ben?" a grizzled voice questioned, a firm grip on Ben's shoulder. He blinked a few times, retuned his attentions to the current surroundings, some unknown backyard, the sound of battles distant and near raging all around him.
"Captain Weaver?" Ben returned, the old man smirked wryly.
"Let me guess, you're standing here staring blankly at the heavens like a worm on a hook because you've some foolhardy notion you'll bait the enemy to yourself and draw them off us," Weaver joked.
"No, sir," Ben murmured, flustering embarrassed, and taking in the tattered group around them, several civilians and bedraggled fighters, all hoisting rifles or various other weaponry most of them were hardly trained to use, "Let me guess, you're gathering our severely splintered group and hoping to make a break for it?"
"More like hoping to make a final stand," Weaver amended his expression grim.
"I never took you as the type to throw in the towel so easy, sir," Ben remarked.
"You call this easy," Weaver barked short laugh, smiling glumly, and distantly commenting with only a hint of sorrow, "And I always pegged Jimmy as the crazy one."
"Oh, no, sir, he's definitely the crazy one," Ben returned, smirking, and readily informing Weaver, "I should tell you now, sir, he didn't die in the community center during the attack. He was out at the alien structure with me, figured out how to blow the thing up, and assembled a bomb with supplies from a hardware store."
"Well, I'll be damned," Weaver whispered, suddenly appearing as though a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
"Crazy, right?" Ben prompted, and Weaver grinned.
"Okay. You win. He is the crazy one. Where is he now?"
Ben's features fell slightly, quietly answering, "I don't know. We got separated after we destroyed the alien structure."
"Okay," Weaver whispered, carefully changing the subject, "How long ago did that thing go down?"
"Few hours."
"Explains the shift in enemy troops," Weaver decided, sniffling loudly and glaring at the night sky, eyes narrowed into tiny slits, "We should probably get moving from this area soon, find cover, figure out what we're doing from there."
"There's a daycare center south of here, Uncle Scott, Dr. Glass, and a whole lot of children are all holed up there," Ben mentioned, "There were a bunch of civilians but we split into pairs to search out others of the 2nd Mass and point them that direction."
"Trying to gather everyone in one place, good thinking," Weaver said, starting to head the direction of the daycare center and motioning the others to fall in line.
"Not my thinking, but I agree, it seemed smart, sir," Ben corrected then frowned, stepping in line beside Weaver as the others naturally fell into formation around them, "Earlier I ran into a group of fighters being led around by Maggie, rather than go to the daycare center, they wanted to keep searching for you, sir."
"You trying to ask me something or just stating fact?" Weaver wondered, peering appraisingly at Ben.
"Should I go after them, let them know I found you?" Ben persisted.
"No…no, son, at least, I think not just this moment. Right now I need you to tell me what you can of the battlefield," Weaver determined.
Ben nodded, faltering in his step to focus his attention on the world at large. He parsed out the various sounds of gunfire and cries of battle, localized them in the neighborhood, then frowned and cursed, snapping back into himself. Weaver had paused at Ben's profane outburst to stare inquisitively back at him.
"Mechs. Daycare center," Ben spat out explanation before breaking into a sprint towards the building, not even bothering to see if the others were following. A thousand and one thoughts played through his mind, constantly rewinding back to Matt staring up at him with pleading eyes, begging Ben not to go away, not to leave him there, to let them just that once stay together.
…
Suburban sewers were different than urban, slimier and more stagnant. Finding an entrance wasn't too hard, but convincing everyone in the group to slink into the smelly depths took some serious persuading. Jimmy shined a flashlight every which direction attempting to get his bearings straight, Dai and Anthony and Hal hovering beside him impatiently, the others evidently restless and disgusted and more importantly, doubtful.
"I can't believe you spent two months in a place like this," Hal commented, wrinkling his nose at Jimmy, "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"I'm alive, aren't I? More than can be said of anyone else that was in Dorchester," Jimmy returned sharply, then muttering, "And, you know, Ben didn't whine once about it. How is it that you're the more immature one?"
"I'll show you immature, you little punk," Hal threatened, his tone light-hearted.
"I'd like to see you try," Jimmy scoffed.
"Hey, I got two little brothers, and a lot of practice wrestling them both at once, taking you would be a piece of cake," Hal replied.
"Oh please, I've wrestled your little brothers, too, and you're talking pre-harness Ben, post-harness I've pinned Ben more than once," Jimmy jeered, smirking.
"Yeah, that's only because he lets you pin him," Hal grumbled, commenting under his breath, "And some of us really don't need to know the finer details of your love life."
"That…well…I…" Jimmy flustered, stammering, "Fuck you, asshole."
"Now children," Anthony jokingly chastised, as Dai shook his head at them.
"Jimmy, in Dorchester, how did you find fighters from inside of the sewers?" Dai wondered, forcing the focus back to the matter at hand.
"Yeah, it's too dark and muffled down here, difficult to get any kind of status on the surface," Anthony put in, studying the corridors, hand over his nose and mouth.
"Luck, mostly," Jimmy answered, shrugging, and pushing his way to the front of the group, gesturing the others to follow. He shined his light upwards as they passed under a beam of moonlight streaming across the slick, grimy pathway, "Grates and drains are pretty frequently placed, you can climb up and usually get a good view of the street, but you can also use them to listen to sounds above. I'd hear gunfire and, sometimes if I could, head toward it and then watch out the grates…"
Jimmy trailed off; frowning as a few memories he'd hoped to forget long ago tumbled fresh into his mind.
"Sometimes there wasn't anything I could do to help," he silently confessed, quickly adding, "But if there was, I tried."
"It's in the past. Let's focus on now," Dai recommended.
"We should probably pick a destination and head towards it," Anthony suggested, "Wandering around through this muck in hopes of finding people topside seems like a poor use of our time."
"Community center," Dai decided, and received more than a few confused looks, elucidating, "We had to abandon our vehicles during the first assault, we should collect whichever ones we can."
"Grab the artillery truck, medic van, a few bikes at least," Anthony agreed, "Solid plan, but what do we do from there? We can't take them. Moving those vehicles we'll draw too much attention to ourselves. We'll never make it more than a few streets without bringing an army of Skitters crashing down on us."
"Some of us could take bikes, let the noise draw the remaining enemy, while the rest search out our people," Hal spoke up.
"Maybe we could signal the others somehow," Jimmy quietly commented.
"Maybe," Dai mused, "For now, let's just get to the community center."
The others agreed and Jimmy tugged out Weaver's compass, getting his bearings, and then leading the way through the dank corridor.
.
.
.
A/N: Right, so if you've read Falling Snow, you'll recall Cole had a major role in Ben's life in that story that will give a bit of clarity to that vision/flashback/alien-dream-message thing. Bear in mind, and I think I've said this enough times, they aren't flashbacks.
Right, we find out Maggie and Weaver are good. And also, daycare center is under attack. That didn't take long, right? These next scenes are going to breeze by, mainly because I needed to get them written and was feeling lazy. Does anyone care? Didn't think so.
Let me know what you guys thought, please. I feel like I'm writing this story for two...maybe three people right now. Which is better than none, and I'd keep writing for one, but seriously, feedback feeds the muse beast.
Reviewers: SassySavanna190, yeah, I heard about Dai's death in the show. Just another reason I can't go back to watching it. Oh well. LOL, slow motion run...ah...something tells me Jimmy would not be into that kind of gushy romantic thing. Right, yes, war. Just because Jimmy and Ben are falling madly, deeply in love, doesn't mean the aliens are going home. Never say good-bye, that seems a good rule. And see, when people tell me "see you later", I always reply "Probably...possibly...maybe...we'll see". Pisses some people off, I don't know why. Cookie97, as a matter of fact, I did miss you. No kidding, hectic, I'm sorry to hear about your uncle! But I'm glad you're back.
I'll see you guys next Sunday...if I survive the week...term papers due, Japanese oral exam on Wednesday...ugh!