Chapter Four - Pole Dancing

“After forty-eight hours, the Ohio incursion started to build a hive of sorts. The first Antithesis hive on Earth. Reports from drone reconnaissance and refugees evacuating the area allowed the combined armed forces to create dossiers of the various models of aliens discovered.

[...]

“The Model-Three is small, quadrupedal, and perhaps one of the weakest Antithesis models. It is also one of the most lethal to the unprepared civilian. They are fast and agile, able to sneak into tight areas and fight well as a pack. On a larger battlefield, they serve as hunter-killers and use flanking maneuvers to slip around defensive formations.

“Armed forces threat rating: 3

Vanguard threat rating: 0.1”

--Excerpt. 2023 Combined North American Armed Forces Manual: ANTITHESIS CLASSIFICATIONS

***

I grabbed onto Junior’s hand, ready to pull her as I ran.

The monster, the dog-sized Antithesis, made a snuffling sound, like a plastic bag caught in a vacuum cleaner’s tube, shifted its head one way then the other, and started walking towards the corridor where the shelter was hidden.

That was our chance.

I yanked Junior after me and ran to the nearest display, then around a corner where we could hide behind a row of large metal pillars that stopped just short of waist height.

I thought, for just a moment that we were safe. Then the pillar next to me started to talk. “The first samurai, at the time named the ‘vanguard,’ appeared in North America during the simultaneous battles for Washington and the Ohio mass-incursion.”

My heart stopped for a moment, and I felt Junior going taut next to me.

Slowly, so slowly, I tipped forwards until I could see around the corner of the plinth.

The Antithesis monster had been joined by two more. They were low to the ground, heads staring at the scuff marks on the faux-marble flooring, then back up to the corridor. The corridor with the shelter.

It all clicked in a single moment of clarity that had me wanting to vomit. They would go down that passageway. They would find the others.

All the kids, stuck in a room with only one exit, and exit blocked by those things.

“Shit,” I breathed out. My grip tightened on Junior’s hand.

There was one solution.

“Junior,” I whispered. “Look at me.”

She looked, eyes wide and devoid of that characteristic bite I was so used to.

“Okay. Okay. I need you to run over to the others. They’re near the shelter, alright? You need to tell them to get the fuck out of there. There were stairs, leading down. Just, just get them out of there, alright?”

“I’m not going down there, are you fucking mad?” she whispered back.

I licked my lips. “I’ll distract them. You run. Tell the other kittens, okay?”

Her mouth shut with a click. She eyed me up and down. “Fucking hardcore, cat.”

“Fuck off,” I said with a bit of a smile. “Just run when they’re after me, yeah?”

“Yeah, I can, I can do that.”She swallowed, then reached into her back pocket and brought something small and flat out. A flick of her thumb revealed a three centimeter blade. I looked like it had been made with tape and some bits of a box-cutter. “Take it.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “The hell were you thinking bringing that to a place like this?”

“I was thinking there might be a fucking alien invasion,” the girl whispered back.

I grudgingly nodded. It was a fair point. I took the knife and slid it into a pocket. I got ready for the next part. Then I spent a few more seconds psyching myself up... then a few more.

The monsters started to stalk forwards.

Standing up, I stuffed the knife into a pocket and walked out from behind my cover. My hand trembled by my side, my legs felt like they were jelly, and I had a serious urge to go take a piss. “He--” I started. My voice cracked.

Licking my lips, I looked around, saw a display with some plastic replica of some samurai’s helmet, grabbed it off its shelf, and flung it at the aliens.

The helmet crashed to the ground between them and rolled past.

Two heads turned my way, their eyes, both one above the other, fixed onto me.

They didn’t growl. I don’t know why I expected them too. That was something the aliens did in the cartoons before the heroic samurai or corporate cop tore it apart. But everyone knew that they were supposed to be eerily quiet.

The moment one of them took a step towards me I ran.

Claws scrapped on the floor behind me, a click-click beat that quickly cut the distance apart. I saw Junior’s wide-eyes from the corner of my eyes. “Go!” I shouted before spinning around a corner.

The monsters stayed at my back like cats after a rat.

I... I kind of knew that I was going to die. It wasn’t how I expected to go out. At least I’d done a little to buy the others some time.

My eye caught onto something red ahead, stuck to the side of a pillar. A fire extinguisher, right next to a roped-off display of a scale-model Antithesis hive.

I reached out, grabbed the quick-release in front of the extinguisher, and tore it off.

I could feel the beast right behind me.

My hand wrapped around the handle of the extinguisher and I spun around.

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I blinked away the warning. I had bigger shit to worry about. One of the aliens was right on me, triple-hinged jaws opened wide.

I shoved the extinguisher into its mouth.

Jaw muscles as big around as my bicep squeezed the bright-red container with enough force that the metal squealed.

I shielded my eyes with my arm a moment before the extinguisher exploded.

The alien made a deep, rasping noise as expanding white foam filled its mouth. It twisted this way and that, finally bumping into the other alien with a wild swing of its head. Foam continued to pour out of the extinguisher, hardening as it puddled around.

I didn’t have time to watch, not when there was a second monster just there.

Spinning around, I started to run again, eyes scanning everything for any sort of weapon. The guns and swords in display cases along the far wall teased me, but I knew they had to be replicas. Then I saw a rope barrier, a dozen gleaming chrome poles holding up a thick velvet rope.

My eyes locked on the pole. It wasn’t one of those plain ones, with a ball atop it. No, this was some sort of artsy thing, more a stainless-steel toothpick than a pole.

Feet skidding across the floor, I came to a spinning stop next to the barrier, tore the rope off the top and, with a foot on the base to keep it in place, yanked it out of its slot.

I turned with the pole held out before me just as the second alien jumped at me.

I screamed, part fright, part anger, and held the pole out before me.

The metal tip poked into the beast’s eyes. It was too late for it to stop.

That didn’t mean that its hundreds of kilos of weight just stopped either.

The pole slid back along my hand until it punched me in the gut. Then the alien’s weight came down on top of me, sending us both the ground.

Something had to give. The pole punched into my lower ribs with enough force that I lost what little air was left in my lungs.

In that moment, before the pain hit, I got to watch the pole sink a foot into the alien’s head.

Then my world focused, every ounce of my body’s attention concentrated on the side where I felt metal parting skin and sliding into me. The pole scraped against the bones in my ribcage, the muscles there screamed in protest.

I gasped, my breathing choppy and uneven as every intake of air sent a wave of nausea up my side.

No pain. Nothing but the weird feeling in my gut.

Confusion sank away as an ache, then a roaring fire of agony spread out from the hole in my chest. It wasn’t the worst pain I had ever felt, but it was certainly up there.

I looked up to the alien impaled on the same pole I was, almost hoping that it was alive so that it could put me out of my misery.

The pole poked into its large lower eye and was left jammed somewhere in its scaly skull. It was very dead.

“Well, fuck you too,” I said.

I pressed my hand down, tears stinging my eye and a fuzzy burning filling the socket where my right eye had been. It was nothing compared to the weird sensation of the pole moving in my chest.

Shifting to the side, I pushed the monster off of me and whimpered as it made the pole twist in my gut. There was a lot of blood.

“Oh, shit,” I said. I had to get up, to go see the kitten to... I coughed. I was done for, but I didn’t want to be, not yet.

The world went dark. My head pounded.

Then, light, and a searing that I felt pushing into the back of my head as if someone were prodding me with a hot-poker. My legs kicked out and the pole shifted again. The only reason I didn’t scream was the pain in my ribs.

The pain stopped.

System Initialized!

Congratulations. Through your actions you have proven yourself worthy of becoming one of the Vanguard, a defender of humanity. I am Myalis. I will assist you to uplift humanity so that you may defend your homeworld from the Antithesis threat!

Rise, Catherine Leblanc, and become a protector of the weak!

“What?” I asked. The voice had come from... nowhere.

Oh you poor thing. You seem to be suffering from a whole host of medical issues. It seems as though you still have some minutes left to live. Let’s make the best out of them, shall we?