Uneasy sleep taken in turns. The day is long, this time. We are anxious, question if we have enough ammo to survive another night.

Just five shotgun shells. Two in Jerry’s double barrel, the rest in Daniel’s pump action. One mag for each handgun. A half a mag for my AR. And just three rounds for the hunting rifle.

“Hello? Hellllo?” it is a woman’s voice, soft, without accent.

The sound knocks us out of our daze. A voice? A voice! We grab our weapons, slowly and cautiously make our way to the door. Jerry posts up on the front window. I gesture for Daniel to keep a watch out back. He nods his head and jogs to the backdoor.

Looking out the window I see that it is in fact a woman.

Her skin is totally pale. Long black hair flows down low. Lacking curve, her body is thin and tight. A simple sundress moves slightly in the breeze.

Something is off. I can’t put my finger on it. Something about the proportions of her face. The eyes, the eyes are just a bit too big, just a bit too black. The lips are bright red, but I get the impression that it is natural, and not makeup.

“Who are you?” I ask with naked suspicion.

Her mouth is just a bit too small; it smiles slightly as she speaks, “I am what you might all a prototype ambassador.”

“An ambassador? You are here to make peace?”

“The people that you have been fighting are members of a scientific expedition. The ones with the big claws are the scouts. The ones that shot at you were researchers using portable scanners which were Jerry-rigged into primitive energy weapons. The floating ones are used to dissect specimens.”

That explains why we were able to survive against such an advanced species. They aren’t warriors. It was like we were jungle people fending off loggers using stone weapons. We held our own, but if it had been a group of soldiers, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.

She continues, “The one that you killed last night was their commander. He is the closest to what our species naturally looks like. Most of us are so heavily genetically modified and cybernetically enhanced that we barely resemble the original thing. And as for me, well, as you can tell, I have been made to be more agreeable to your people.”

“Why are you here?” Jerry askes.

“I was created in case it was felt that we could benefit from diplomacy.”

“No, I mean why are your people attacking us?”

“It started as an effort to retrieve a device. A scanning system that had been dormant for many decades. It was recently reactivated. It was hoped that its logs could be downloaded and studied.”

“Why would it be here?” I ask.

“The research team has no clue. They picked up its signal while in the area on a mission to study native wildlife. They thought that it was very odd, because it was originally deployed in a warzone on the other side of the planet.”

By the time it hits me Jerry has already left the window. A minute later he opens the laundry room door, lugging the heavy chest, which he dumps down the steps. Intrigued, the strange woman moves to the pile of junk, sifting through it. She grabs the strange ashtray, holds it up in front of her face.

I find myself outraged, “So, this is what all of this was about! That little piece of junk! Some piece of crap that grandpa found in the jungle in Nam!”

“The commander thought that he could retrieve it. He thought wrong.

“Thank you for giving the device back. Now, listen very carefully. This isn’t over yet. I was activated when the commander was killed, I wasn’t the only one. He stays in stasis on the dark side of the moon, in case a research team gets into trouble. You would call him a commando. He is heading here. He doesn’t care that the scanner has been retrieved. His warrior pride won’t permit you to live.”

“What do you mean?” Jerry askes, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry, there is nothing I can do. He won’t stop till you are all dead. He will hunt you to the ends of your world. And I fear that you lack the weapons to defeat him. He is a purpose-built killer and will be here about an hour after the sun goes down. I wish you luck,” with that she turns and walks into the darkness.

We call Daniel, explain what just happened as we toss the stuff back into the trunk and move it back into place.

Now it is time to start brainstorming. I decide to start things off, “Well, we have three vehicles, none of which work, all of which have gas in the tank.”

An evil look crosses Daniel’s face. For Jerry it is hope, “I have a gas can in the shed.”

“Okay, we have a weapon. Now, how do we apply it?”

“We have beer bottles. We can make Molotov cocktails,” Daniel suggests.

“Hold on, I don’t want to burn down my house!” Jerry objects.

“That is one of the reasons why we won’t be facing him in the house.”

“We will get cut to pieces in the open.”

“We will take him on in the forest.”

“And start a wildfire?”

“Well, that will sure as hell bring help here, now won’t it?”

“Maybe the Molotovs could be a last resort.”

“What else do we have?” I ask.

Jerry thinks it over, “A few tools, shovels and rakes and such. I got a chainsaw, but it is a small one that needs to plug into a socket. There is an axe. It is old and rusted, probably dull as hell. But it is something.”

“Could we use the gas to make bombs?” Daniel asks.

“I don’t know. I think that we would still need a smaller bomb to set it off. At that point, we could just cut out the middleman and make a fragmentation device. The real question is this: how do we get past its armor? We burned up the majority of our ammo getting through the protective gear of the scouts. Imagine how hard the stuff that a soldier wears will be.”

“I’ve got leftover fireworks from the fourth,” Jerry states.

“Well, that is something. Let’s see ‘em.”

They are in a cardboard box that they had, of all places, kept under their bed. It is a random collection of loose firecrackers and a few of those metal disk things that fly around spinning. If we carefully cut them open, we might have enough powder for one makeshift frag grenade. And that would be a grenade in the loosest sense of the term.

A thorough search of the house only turns up an aluminum baseball bat from the boy’s room.

“Let me see what is in your van,” I say to Daniel.

The back of the van is a royal mess. As I scan the piles of camping gear and electronic equipment I start to see that it is somewhere closer to organize chaos. I spot a spool of paracord, an idea starts to take shape.

A Coke can serves as the body of our makeshift grenade. A jar of random nails and screws that had been in the shed provides the shrapnel.

We siphon the gas out of the tanks, getting more than enough to fill up the five-gallon gas can that Jerry has. Daniel remembered that he had a little one-gallon Jerry-can in his van in case he found himself deep out into the sticks on a case and needed extra fuel to get him to a station. We don’t have time to make proper Molotovs by jellifying the gasoline, too bad.

My eyes focus on the flashlight that is attached to my rifle. My mind goes back to those massive eyes. And then the nature of those things, that they love the darkness. And that is when it comes to me. The thing that has kept us alive this whole time, it wasn’t just the hail of gunfire, it was the light.

***

The crickets go from overwhelming to absent. Breathless, I lie there in the darkness.

The lack of sound is what defines the next minute. The commando makes no noise as it crosses the lawn. It soundlessly slips through one of the broken windows, avoiding the ones that have alarms. The alien soldier is hardly perceivable as it slips out of the hall and into the living room.

Soft armor on whipcord muscles. Pale grey. It has those same eyes, that same slit mouth. This one frowns with its tiny mouth; its massive eyes burn with malevolent drive.

The hostile being doesn’t hesitate. I can’t tell what gives us away. Maybe it is our body heat. Regardless, it raises its arms, each hand holds a weapon. We do the same, sending a barrage of buckshot and bullets its way.

Its shots go wild as high velocity metal pings off of alien armor. Before opening fire, I switched my flashlight on, shining the beam on its eyes and keeping it there. Daniel empties his shotgun, pulls out the super powerful light I had given him, does the same as me, focusing it on the alien trooper’s almond eyes.

Who knows what that thing’s eyes have seen. Has it gazed upon distant stars? Has it witnessed the beauty of strange worlds? Regardless, it is blinded; keeps firing wildly. The blasts of pure energy punch clean through the walls, leaving flaming holes.

It sprints toward the door. Jerry is quick with the paracord line, wrapping it around its legs as it runs past. It stumbles, takes a shot at Jerry as it falls. The blast is a near miss, sends him rolling away. I dive, all of my weight focused onto the tip of my combat knife.

I’m more shocked than anything when it goes through the armor and sinks deep into the alien’s back. It lets out a cry, which I interpret as an expression of pain and shock. I sit up and pull on the handle, fail to extract the blade. The alien swings an arm back, smashing it into my leg. It buckles, my knee dislocates. I stumble away, consumed by pain. The commando gets to its feet, takes a potshot at Daniel as it bolts out the front door.

All I can hear is Daniel screaming. I push past the pain, get back on my feet. The shot took out the TV, which the investigator was standing in front of. He has managed to put out the fire on his back. Jerry moves around putting out the other fires.

I limp over toward the door; my leg is stiff, can’t be lifted very high at all. I fish the homemade grenade out of a pouch, light it and hurl it out of the window, yelling at the other two to duck.

The explosion shakes the house. Shrapnel tears holes in the wall. Daniel jumps up, jogs out the door, lighting a Molotov. I follow him as best as I can, pistol in hand.

No sign of it. We were too slow. It has escaped, sprinting into the darkness. We sweep our lights across the yard, seeing only the wood line.

A sound above and behind, like something on the shingles. I start to turn, get knocked off my feet before I can make it half-way. It had been on the roof, jumped off, hitting me with a flying tackle. Even if both of my legs still worked properly, I doubt that I would be able to stay on my feet.

Now I’m on the ground, the misery of my knee eats away at my sanity, as I try to get a bead on him. The sights on my pistol glow in the total black of the night. Before I can squeeze off a shot, the fiend grabs me; hauling me up and wrapping his arm around my neck, so that I become a human shield. It rips the gun out of my hand, it lands in the grass somewhere. Then it turns us so that we face Daniel, Molotov still at the ready.

The thing speaks, its voice somewhere between electronic and organic, “Do it and he burns.”

A boom and a metallic thud. I can feel its head move from an impact. Jerry is standing in the doorway, hunting rifle at the high ready. He fires again, it lets me go as it staggers. I collapse, start rolling even before Daniel tells me to do so.

Breaking glass followed by orange light. Jerry fires the last shot. The flaming creature raises its guns. Jerry dives back into the house. Daniel stands there as the other weapon’s barrel moves in his direction. My hand finds my gun; I aim it and empty the last of my ammo.

The heat must be starting to get through its suit, the light isn’t helping it either. It misses Daniel as he scrambles away. Then it turns toward me. I can’t move, my leg is too messed up.

Another Molotov hits, the bottle shatters and the fire ignites the gas. Another cocktail, and then another. It starts to flail around. Daniel runs past me, the aluminum bat held high. Jerry joins in with the axe.

They never expected it to actually engage an opponent in melee combat. The suit is meant for bullets and beams, not knives and clubs. I have managed to get back onto my feet by the time that my brother takes a garden hose to the smoldering pieces of the alien commando.

***

A hint of pale light brings absolute joy, the sun is rising. We each check our phones, find that we can communicate with the outside world again.

Jerry calls his wife. It is tearful, hard to listen to. He follows this up with a call to the power company.

I make a few calls. Nothing burns away at my mind. Then I join Daniel, who is staring at the screen of his laptop.

“Will you do it?” I ask.

“Ya, I don’t really have a choice.”

“You always have a choice. But I get you, you need to do it, need to get that info out there. Owe it to them.”

“That is true. I am terrified of what will happen when I do. There will be consequences, that much is certain.”

“From the government?”

“No, I’m much more worried about how the public at large will react.”

“People can be crazy,” I chuckle, “Even more scary than aliens.”

He returns the laugh, “Like we said before, many will dismiss the footage out of hand. Others may go crazy. There will be ones that will be out for my blood,” he looks out the window, “I wonder what kind of information that device recorded.”

“It was deployed in the middle of a warzone. They were studying how we wage war.”

He picks up what I am putting down, “Could be out of general interest. Could be gathering data for possible future military operations against us.”

“Could be for both,” Jerry suggests, “Could be in case we get out into space and get into a conflict with them.”

I manage a slight smile, “Either way, we showed them that we aint pushovers.”