Chapter 3

Under Siege

Uncle Ben's Journey.

Morning of the Alien Apocalypse

Against all odds, Ben Anderson had left the blue room early that morning and somehow survived to see the sunrise. He was shocked to find that the green fluid he'd purchased from the alien known as Beginner's Guide when he was drunk, and then injected into his arm as soon as he left the blue room, also while he was drunk, seemed to work. A cut on his hand, that should have taken days to heal, healed in hours, and his head only ached a little from last night's drinking. A tiny silver lining on a giant shitty cloud.

It was early morning, but he was already hot in his makeshift armor of leather pants, and jacket reinforced with Monster-tape and paperback books, strategically-placed to protect his vital organs. His bug-out bag, a heavy backpack filled with necessities: food, water, extra gun, bottles of good scotch (for trade), pulled at his shoulders and made his backache.

He coasted down the street on his bike. Not his Triumph Classic motorcycle. That wouldn't start. But his ten-speed bicycle he'd bought at a garage sale years ago. He'd always meant to ride it for exercise but never got around to it. He oiled it and pumped up the tires before leaving, but the tires were already starting to go flat. In front of him was a giant alien cockroach.

Welcome to our brave new world, he thought. The cockroach was two feet long, half a foot wide, with tentacles that extended three feet in front of it.

A display popped up in his mind: This is a crunchy. This crunchy wants to kill your family. Not every family member, just the fun ones you like hanging out with.

The strangest thing about the alien invasion was the mental display that kept popping up every time he saw an alien. Each time the display said something different. The last crunchy he'd encountered, if its display could be believed, had come to this world illegally to steal his human job and healthcare. Ben was retired, and after his nightmarish experience a few years ago with hospital billing, he'd raise the white flag over that one too. Sadly that crunchy had been in no mood to negotiate. When he'd killed it with his shotgun, he'd gotten four credits from Beginner's Guide and several snide comments about how any normal human would have stepped on the thing. Sure. Good way to lose a foot.

The crunchy currently in Ben's way made a loud clacking noise and flapped its three-foot-long wings. They could fly for short distances and would go straight for the neck and face. The alien roaches didn't seem venomous, but Ben had learned the hard way they packed a nasty bite.

Before he could shoot it, he heard a loud yell as someone jumped in front of him and attacked the crunchy with a big stick, clubbing it again and again with furious energy. He recognized the old man known as Crazy Steve who hung out at the nearby 7-11 begging for money.

“This is my territory. These are my aliens. You need to go kill your own aliens.” The old man said, brandishing his stick in Ben's direction for emphasis.

“Hey Steve, how's it going?” Ben asked.

“Ben? Oh, Ben!” Crazy Steve said, recognizing him. “You were wrong about the aliens. They're friendly! This is the best thing to happen to me!” Crazy Steve dropped his wooden stick and pulled out a small metal smoking pipe and a torch from his pants pocket. A rock the size of a Lima bean appeared in his hand. Crazy Steve put the “rock” into his pipe. “I kill aliens, and Beginner's Guide hooks me up.” Crazy Steve looked up at the sky. “Thanks, Beginner's Guide! I love you! Yeah, I'll kill some more aliens, just give me a minute.” Crazy Steve used the torch on the “rock” and sucked on the pipe. Relaxing a bit, he walked over to the vacant lot next to the street, put his back against a large tree, and continued sucking on his crack pipe.

Seriously? Ben thought. He pulled up his mental display. The Galactic Market had a vast selection of every imaginable product, for every imaginable price. He visualized drugs. What appeared on his display was a paragraph and a long list.

“Seeking alternate states of consciousness is a sacred human trait, and we would never attempt to prevent or interfere with this process. We do not offer alien medications, or recreational substances, because we do not know how they would react with human physiology. We offer a few human substances that we hope you will buy, and use to unwind after a long hard day of killing monstrous alien scum.”

After the paragraph was a long list.

Cocaine—water-soluble/non-water soluble

Methamphetamine.

LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide)

PCP (phencyclidine)

Psilocybin mushrooms

Peyote

Tobacco

Coffee

The list went on and on. The prices were pretty reasonable too. Good grief. No telling who'd take advantage of something like that. Exchanging alien-killing for drugs? You suck BG; he thought.

In the sky, he saw a kid flying around with a jet pack. He visualized the kid's jet pack. When he did, the kid's jet pack appeared on his display.

SUPER SOLAR POWERED JUNIOR JET PACK. 1000 credits. Turn sunlight into jet fuel and rule the sky! Note, gun costs extra. Note maximum lifting weight: 100 pounds. This means you, fat ass. Recommend SUPER SOLAR POWERED ULTRA JUMBO JET PACK. Maximum lifting weight 1000 pounds Complete with machine gun. 100,000 credits.

Ben had 16 credits. So there went that idea.

Ben felt a vibration in the ground, Crazy Steve looked around, feeling it too. Something shot out of the sand next to Crazy Steve, biting his shoulder and pulling him down. A display popped up with the alien. This is a squirmy. This squirmy sneaks into human bathrooms and uses human toothbrushes to clean its filthy alien mouth. The squirmy had a skinny eel-like body the width of a garden hose, and a large mouth full of long sharp teeth.

Crazy Steve bit the alien's body, using his head to shake it like a dog. If he'd had any teeth left, he might have had a chance. As it was, the squirmy ignored the old man, gumming it while sinking its own long sharp teeth deeper into the old man's shoulder. Ben could see drops of blood landing on the sand nearby.

Several more eel-like squirmies came out of the ground and latched onto different parts of the old man's body.

“Ben! help me!” Crazy Steve cried out, still fighting the squirmies, looking desperate.

Feeling helpless, Ben watched the eel things attack Crazy Steve. He couldn't shoot the eel things without hitting Crazy Steve. He couldn't cut Crazy Steve free without stepping into the vacant lot and probably getting eaten himself.

Crazy Steve was a nice enough guy for a drug addict, but... Ben pulled out his old army survival knife and tossed it to Crazy Steve, hilt first. “You got this, Steve. I got to run, family waiting!”

Ben turned away and pushed off with his bike, peddling down the street. See, not a total douche, gave him a knife at least. I'll be reincarnated as a larger slug, or a small snail even. Nothing you could have done, Ben. Keep moving. Pick your battles, got a family to look after.

He'd been thinking of cutting across a few vacant lots to take a mile off his journey, but now he wasn't going to.

He looked up in time to see a pterodactyl-like monstrosity swoop down and take out the kid with a jet pack.

Awe shit. Poor kid, he thought. This was going to be a long trip.

***

3 days later

“So I have to kill alien monsters, to gain skill and stat points, to kill alien monsters?” Gabe, aka Zoltron The Mighty Wizard, said, stirring his cup of water. He was trying to create a small whirlpool or water vortex and having little success.

“Life isn't fair, kid,” Uncle Ben responded. “No point in crying about it. By the way, cockroach (crunchy) meat does not taste like lobster. Beginner's Guide lied to us. Maybe lobster that sat out in the sun for twelve hours... but not anything edible.”

“Could we eat it if we were starving?” Dad asked.

“I wouldn't advise it.” Uncle Ben answered.

Uncle Ben had stumbled in on the first day of the alien apocalypse. He'd lost his bike and his pack on the way over but brought grim stories of what he'd seen. He'd given each family member a painful injection of a green alien fluid he'd bought from Beginner's Guide. He swore the injection would keep them healthy. The jury was still out on that one, but Uncle Ben was convinced.

Ian listened to his family talk. It was the third day of the alien apocalypse, and they were sitting around the living room. He took a sip of his second cup of lukewarm coffee. He hated the bitter taste, but he hoped it would stimulate his gifts.

The first night of the apocalypse, Dad made them board up every window and block every conceivable opening an alien might use to enter the house. Several alien giant cockroaches (crunchies) had found their way inside. Ian hated normal-sized cockroaches, these made him want to run away screaming.

Gabe had found if you held out an alien light, and told it to stay, it would hold its position in the air until somebody touched it again. Three alien lights floated over the coffee table, adding to the creep factor of their already horrible situation. The alien lights looked like glowing marbles and had been purchased from the Galactic Market.

Ian flicked one of the lights with his index finger. It flew about six feet until air resistance made it stop. Gabe, self-appointed alien-light guardian, went over, cupped the light in his hands, and blew on it. It grew brighter, and floated back to where it had been, sitting there as if nothing had happened.

Ian held his cell phone. Three days before, his cell phone had been a huge part of his life, he'd be texting someone or playing one of his games. “OMG Alien Apocalypse Sucks!” he imagined texting Tyson, one of his gaming buddies. Now after the apocalypse, his expensive cell phone might make a decent paperweight.

“Thing is Gabe, every once in a while it's unfair in your favor.” Uncle Ben continued. “Beginners Guide or BG wouldn't take my deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, or my NASA claim to mining rights on the moon, but it took my House, Social Security, and retirement fund, which are worth the same as the other two.”

“If things ever go back to normal, you'll regret that one,” Dad said. “I found something interesting. Stacy's custom-made guns cost two hundred and fifty credits, but the closest thing I could find to a cell phone, that is a long-distance-portable-two-way communication device, costs one hundred thousand galactic credits. The aliens have cut us off from the outside world.”

“Healthy and cut off. That's something. My allergies were killing me before the invasion. Now? Nothing.” Uncle Ben responded.

Gabe snorted. “Good to know when you're eaten alive by aliens, your allergies won't be acting up.”

“That's what I thought. If an alien starts chewing on me, I'll be thinking, if my allergies were acting up, this would really suck.” Uncle Ben responded.

By the third afternoon, they'd all settled into a routine. They spent the night in shifts as their family took turns doing guard duty. The three kids spent their shifts with either Ben or Dad. Though Stacy (Kid Barbie) was good with her pistols, at eleven her dad and uncle didn't think she had the judgment to be left on her own.

Uncle Ben, self-appointed cook, cooked their meals, kept an eye on things, told everyone stories, and bitched about Dad, a non-drinker, not having alcohol in the house. A flying thing had stolen Ben's pack, along with his alcohol, on his way to their house. Dad would then point out that Uncle Ben was welcome to go out and look for some, at which point the complaints would stop, at least for a while.

Dad spent his time wandering around the house mumbling to himself, checking inventory, and working on various projects. Stacy was on permanent alien patrol duty, which left Gabe and Ian doing crap jobs nobody else wanted. Such as dishwashing, and Ian's least favorite, bathroom duty. Dad and Ben had blocked off the drainpipes, so every couple of days the toilet had to be emptied into the garbage. Ian kept losing the coin toss for this job to Gabe, causing him to wonder if maybe there was something to Gabe's wizard nonsense.

“It's never unfair in my favor,” Gabe whined.

Join the club, Ian thought. He took another sip of his coffee, almost gagging on the taste. He kept trying to activate his power, to get it to do anything. So far... zip. He tried to clean his glasses again. He was nearsighted, but the lenses were blurry now and gave him headaches. Could Uncle Ben's shot be changing his vision?

Something grabbed him from behind “Gotcha!”

Ian screamed and jumped three feet. His coffee went flying, splattering him and everything else within a six-foot radius. His mug shattered on the hard-wood floor. He cursed loudly.

Stacie's head appeared several feet away as her alien skin hood came off. She was rolling on the floor laughing. “Oh god that was so great, you should see you.” She laughed even harder.

Ian threw his cellphone. It bounced off the couch and hit Fluffy, who ran off with a loud meowr. The phone's screen cracked, again. Three days ago he might have cared.

“You want to know what sucks the most about this apocalypse?” Ian said fighting back tears. “Nothing has changed. I'm still a worthless waste of space who can't play sports and has no useful skills. I wasn't great at video games, but at least they were fun and if you died, you could re-spawn. This is the real world trapped in a video game, and I'm going to die.” He stormed off into his room before anyone could see him crying.

“Let him go, give him time to calm down,” Uncle Ben said. “Got to admit Carl, that armor is some of your better work. She is hard to see.”

“Damn straight,” Dad responded.

Besides her helmet, chest plate, and armored vest that went down to her thighs, and arm, shin, and knee pads for her extremities, they'd covered her with alien plushie skin. The skins' original owners were dead, but the skin held its late owner's camouflage capabilities blending flawlessly with the environment.

“So when do I get armor?” Gabe asked.

“I told you when I get more materials,” Dad answered. “Also Stacy killed those alien plushies, so it's only fair she gets to wear them.”

Ian leaned against a wall in his bedroom, closed his eyes, and slumped into a sitting position with his arms around his knees. He knew if he opened his eyes he'd see all kinds of things in the darkened room that weren't there, but if he kept them closed, he wouldn't. He tried not to think about the noises he heard from outside. Sounds of alien monsters, occasional gunshots, screams. He pulled up his display. Moving past the front display screen with his name and basic info everyone could see, Lord Ian Mind Master. He pulled up his stat sheet.

Name Lord Ian Mind Master

Sex Male

Age 13

Physical Attributes 3.3

With 10 being an Olympic athlete, and 1 being an invalid in a wheelchair, you are 3.3.

Mental Attributes 7.8

With 10 being a super-genius, and 1 being severely retarded, you are 7.8

Status among peers Low

Your peers consider you a nerd and spasticle.

Spasticle, is a human slang word that means an uncoordinated, clumsy person.

Claims to fame.

Coach Benson considers you the worst player to try out for his little league baseball team, in the fifty years he coached baseball.

Special abilities

Psychic. New, level 0.

You are a New level 0 psychic, only because I'm not allowed to assign negative numbers to your special ability levels.

Ian had received two worthless gifts from Beginner's Guide, and there were no do-overs. He'd already tried, BG continued to ignore him.

He'd had his share of problems in the past, but things had never seemed quite this hopeless.

He got rid of his personal display. He heard the door slowly slide open. “Go away, Stacy,” he said. She didn't answer. “I'm the waste of space, how come I'm sensing fear from you?”

“Why would I be afraid?” Stacy asked. He could tell she was standing in front of him now.

“Everybody is counting on you,” Ian said. “Somebody gets hurt or killed, it's your fault. Don't worry, we'll just hate you forever... Ow.” She kicked his shin, then sat down next to him.

“This armor is hot, and it pinches when I sit down. Dad's so proud of it I don't dare say anything, but yeah, I'm terrified. There's some scary stuff out there. Kid Barbie just had to deal with zombies. Those are easy,” she said. “At least your aim's getting better, you hit the poor cat.”

Ian laughed. “I threw the phone at you, I would never hit the cat deliberately, and I was guessing with the fear. You should have told me I was wrong, I'd have believed you. So what does your mental display look like? Mine is covered with tentacled frowny faces and the words 'Lazy human. You should kill some alien scum', over and over again.”

“Beginner's Guide likes me, so mine is covered with tentacled happy faces, and the words, 'You should kill more alien scum', over and over. Why would an alien send aliens for us to kill? What's the point?” she asked.

“Entertainment,” Ian answered. “I always suspected someone up there was watching me and laughing. Now I know for sure.”

“Dad's after me to pay down the principle of my gun loan, But I couldn't resist getting this Super Awesome Tasting Candy. Ten for a credit.” She handed him one.

He put it in his mouth. “I don't know if it's super awesome tasting, but it's pretty good,” Ian said. It slowly melted in his mouth. He could taste lemon, pineapple, cherry, and a bunch of things he couldn't identify. He sighed. Focusing on the candy, not thinking about anything.

“HELP!” Ian sensed a mental scream and felt a sense of suffocating panic so strong he jumped up and ran back to the living room, gasping for breath.

“We have to do something! A woman and kid are going to die unless we do something!”

“I didn't do it this time. I swear,” Stacy's head said from his bedroom doorway.

“A woman with a kid two houses that way,” Ian pointed. “If we don't help them right now, they're going to die.” Ian looked around, his entire family staring at him.

His dad took a deep breath. “You may not have noticed, Ian, but we're not doing great ourselves. Let's assume this vision is real. Where are they exactly? And rescue them from what?”

“It's an old woman and a kid, two houses away,” Ian said. “The woman's desperate, they're trapped somewhere, something is getting through. That's all I know.

“I bet it's Old Lady Crabapple,” said Stacy. “She lives on that corner, she was always getting mad because I'd pick crabapples from her tree. They taste horrible, but they're great for throwing.”

“The Crabtree's are good people,” Dad said. “Ellen Crabtree's a nice enough person. She's given me stuff from her garden, but I'm not sure I want to die for her. Who would we send? And what would we do if they don't come back?”

“We were talking about looking for supplies anyway,” said Uncle Ben. “I say we take a quick peek. If it's more than we can handle, we head back. If Ian's right, I'd have trouble living with myself if I didn't try to help.”

“But is he right?” asked Gabe, “and I say we send the one with armor,” he looked pointedly at Stacy.

Uncle Ben took a deep breath. “I'll go. There are things out there that Kid Barbie's guns can't handle.”

“I should go too, I may get another vision, that will tell us more,” said Ian.

“If Ian's going, I'm going. Experience is the only way any of us is getting better,” said Gabe.

“I guess it's decided,” Dad responded with a sigh. “Ben, you take the lead. Me and Kid Barbie will take the rear. Ian and Gabe will be in the middle. Everyone stay calm, keep it together; anything goes wrong, we head straight home. Hopefully, nobody dies.”

It took them ten minutes to get ready. They gathered weapons and ammo. Carl loaded a pack with odds and ends, just in case. Uncle Ben threw on his armor and cleaned his sawed-off shotgun. Stacy bought some more ammo for her guns, just in case. Ian and Gabe grabbed baseball bats.

Once everyone was ready, Uncle Ben opened the front door, and one by one they stepped out into the bright afternoon sun and fresh air. For the first time in three days, they were outside.

Outside scary silence surrounded them punctuated with distant roars and gunshots.

The Crabtree's front yard was covered with glass and debris.

He sensed they were being watched. With a sick feeling, it dawned on Ian that he might get himself, and his family killed trying to rescue people he didn't even know.