Alien Apocalypse – The Hunger

Copyright © 2011 Dean Giles

All rights reserved. No part of this story (eBook) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or book reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidences are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by TWB Press

Edited by Terry Wright

Cover Art by Terry Wright

ISBN 978-1-936991-30-3

by

Dean Giles

Elliott’s piercing scream woke me into a frenzy of panic. I flew down the stairs of our suburban tri-level to find him in the kitchen, wailing as he knelt over Claire’s body. Blood pooled around her dressing gown in a growing circle. My knees buckled. I couldn’t breathe. “What happened?” I choked out.

“He stabbed her, Dad.”

That’s when I saw him standing in the shadows, a man dressed in a long black coat draped with chrome chains. The brim of his baseball cap cast a shadow of menace across his deep set eyes—all that I could see of his shadowed face. Then I saw the knife, still dripping blood. Claire’s blood. He clutched the hilted handle in both hands, the blade pointed at me.

I found my voice, and it came out like thunder. “Who the hell are you?”

He seemed to shrink under the weight of my rage, suddenly looked small compared to my bulk, not much bigger than Elliott’s eight-year-old frame. My size must’ve made him choose flight over fight. He dropped the knife and bolted out the back door.

I fought the urge to chase after him, electing to stay with Claire. Bending over her, I pressed two fingers on the side of her neck. Her wide eyes stared up as if begging me to find a pulse, to say she’d be okay, it was only a scratch. But I felt nothing, not on the right side, not on the left.

My eyes burned with tears, and my voice turned to gravel. “She’s dead. My God, she’s dead.”

“No.” Elliott fell on her stomach and screamed and screamed and screamed.

And the devil, I suppose, screamed inside my soul. All manner of conscious thought dissipated like the smoke of a snuffed out candle. I found myself running outside, leaping over the front hedge, and searching the road, left and right, for the escaped intruder. I spotted him headed away from the streetlights towards the dark safety of the Downs.

Dressed in nothing but loose tracksuit bottoms, I tore after him. My bare feet shrieked in pain with each pounding stride down the gravel road. I fixed my tear-blurry eyes on the distant figure and pushed hard to catch him, to unload my grief, my rage.

The hem of his long coat flapped behind him, his heavy boots stomped the ground, and his chains clinked like the shackles of a condemned ghost. He threw a glance over his shoulder at me. The whites of his eyes were visible against the night gloom. Terror contorted his face. The scum had every right to be terrified of me, he had every right to run for his life...but I wasn’t about to let him escape the punishment he had coming.

He quickened his pace, pumping his elbows wildly.

I pushed harder. Hot fury took over my muscles and propelled me up a dirt path into the dark woodlands of the Downs. I trailed him, gaining ground with every stride. My eyes were pinned on the back of his neck. No way would I lose him in the darkness.

I was getting close. The stench of his sweat assaulted my nostrils, and the stink of his fear drove me forward. A frenzy of adrenalin tore through my body as I reached out to grab his collar.

“Stop, you son of a bitch!”

He spun and faced me, back-peddling as I slammed into him. His nose gave way under my fist, and I heard a sound of facial bones cracking. With a violent thump, my knee made contact with his lower gut. His breath huffed from his lungs. He uttered a curse, but that was all he could manage before I hit him with a right-hook that cocked his jaw sideways to his skull. He hit the ground on his back and groaned while wagging his hands in surrender...but still my rage swelled.

I fell to my knees on his chest and hammered my fists into his temples, right and left, left and right, his head slamming back and forth with such force that his baseball cap flew off in a spray of blood and teeth. Images of Elliot screaming in the kitchen over Claire’s dead body possessed me.

Each crushing blow conjured up memories of our past:

...our first kiss...

I hit him.

...our first date...

I hit him harder

...the joy of our wedding day....

I hit him again.

...Claire’s beaming face after the birth of our son...

...the day we brought him home to start our life as a family...

I hit him two more times, skinning my knuckles on his broken front teeth.

The intruder’s hands flopped to his sides, and his head fell back in complete surrender, but my rage remained on overload, and I continued to rain punches on him until my arms grew heavy. I fell to the ground beside him, exhausted, and rolled over. His bloodied face lolled toward me. Our eyes met. A groan bubbled past his swollen lips, his eyes rolled back, and his beaten body relaxed into death.

It was only then that I studied his face properly, the dark killer revealed: he was just a kid.

***

The police interview room was as humid as a summer sock, and the smell of sweat had long since turned from sickly stale to flat-out unbearable. The boys-in-blue blamed the broken air-conditioning. I didn’t buy it, though. They’d kept the heat up in here to make me miserable. To break me down. The jobsworth copper, Reilly, had been stinking up the place with his threats to hang me like a full-blown serial killer.

Claire was dead. No matter what happened in this room, that fact would never change. Raw feelings of loss pounded inside my head. Each pulse of sorrow in my veins brought vivid memories of her blood-stained night-blouse and Elliott’s wide panicked eyes. I knew without doubt, if I was given a second chance, to relive this night, I would kill the intruder all over again. However, my satiated lust for revenge was my own, so I wrestled to keep my self-satisfaction hidden from the unsympathetic copper.

Detective Reilly’s by-the-book attitude was enervating. A weighty weariness threatened to overwhelm me. The prick was trying to stick a murder charge on me and take my son away. After what we had just been through, I felt livid with contempt for the entire legal system.

His hooked nose cast a shadow over his pencil-thin lips. The overhead lights reflected off his glistening bald head, proof he was responsible for the awful smell in the air. “You killed a sixteen-year-old boy.”

“He killed my wife.”

Reilly showed me a look laced with venom. “He only had a handful of petty crimes on his record. Burglary, shoplifting, breaking and entering. I don’t think he meant to kill Claire. It was a terrible accident, Leon.”

“It was murder.” How dare he trivialize what happened—

“You took the law into your own hands. A kid is dead. You’re gonna have to pay for that.”

Patience and grief collided in my brain like warring tribes, an emotional battle that numbed my nerves clear down to my soul. I wanted to get back to Elliot, grieve for my wife, but Reilly’s accusations were unwarranted. “The killer’s age changes nothing. Claire isn’t any less dead, and it doesn’t make Elliott any less motherless.”

“You chased him down and beat him to death a mile from your house, Leon. That’s not self-defence. That’s not protecting your family. That’s clear-minded revenge, and we’ve got laws against your kind of vigilante justice.”

“He killed my wife.” How many times did I have to remind him? We were the victims in all of this.

Reilly leant forward and doubled the intensity of his indignant stare. “You still don’t get it, do you, Weber?”

I got it, all right. In his eyes, the murderer was the victim. I wanted to spit in Reilly’s face.

“The way I see it, Claire startled him in the kitchen. He lashed out like a trapped animal. Then he ran. He was no longer a threat to your family, but you killed him anyway. That’ll put you in prison for the rest of your life, Leon.”

My face flushed hot with anger. I smashed my fist on the table. “That kid killed my wife, you heartless bastard.”

Reilly glowed with smugness at my outburst, as if he was delighted that he’d gotten a rise out of me. “A bit of a temper, have you?”

“Fuck you, Reilly,” I growled.

“See? I’m right. You lost your temper and killed the boy in a cold-blooded rage.”

“What would you have done?”

“I’d have called the proper police and stayed with my son and my wife.”

“You’re a goddamned saint.”

“If you’d killed him in your kitchen, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“I want to go home and see my son.”

“You’re not going anywhere. I’m charging you with first degree murder.” He lent back in his chair, all pompous like. “You’re going to prison, Leon. And I’ll be there to see you hauled away in chains.”

I swallowed. There’d have to be a trial first. Surely a jury would let me off. The only thing that mattered now was Elliott. I had to find a way to get out of this police station and back to my son.

***

A single thought spanned across light-years of interstellar space. From out of the cold emptiness, an ancient mind sensed the increasing tug of its salvation, and a hunger began to stir within its frozen depths.

The mind reached outwards from the rough-hewn nucleus of a comet and craved the warmth of a fast-approaching yet still distant sun. Excitement resonated through its icy awareness.

Dim memories of a dying world stirred emotions of regret and loss, a world the ancient being, when whole, had completely dominated, a world that was no longer fit to be its home, just another planetary husk devoid of life.

Its instincts for survival forced the ancient being to take risks beyond even its own comprehension in order to escape the dead world. By replicating a transient virus, it rode the plume of a massive volcano into the upper reaches of the planet’s thin atmosphere where it was flung off into space. It sped across the galaxy, a malevolent hitchhiker on comets, asteroids, and space dust, tossed from one star to the next on an inexorable journey to oblivion. Along the way, it had devoured any living organic matter it came upon until all nutrients within its reach were consumed. Then its single spark of existence was forced to hibernate in the frozen depths of space...and wait.

Until now.

A new era was approaching, a new life under a new sun on a new planet teaming with nutrients. And as the sun neared, the ancient being would finally thaw and satisfy its hunger on a blue and white oasis floating in the void.

Little did the inhabitants on that world know of the storm that was coming.

***

Elliott sat shotgun in the old pickup truck as it crossed a cattle grid with a bone-jarring bang. Uncle Kevin shifted his gaze from the road and looked at him with that look again.

Everyone gave Elliott the same odd look these days. The attention made him feel awkward, like he was different somehow...now that his dad had killed someone.

Kevin parked the truck in front of an old farmhouse. “Home sweet home.”

It could have been firewood for all Elliott cared. He took in the view of level fields that spread out in neat squares for miles around. He couldn’t have been deeper in the middle of nowhere if he’d taken a train to the end of the world.

“This land is all ours, as far as you can see,” Kevin said. “And now it’s your home, as well, for a while.”

“When is Dad coming to get me?”

“Your dad is...” Kevin faced Elliott, “...he’s going to be away for a long while.”

Elliott figured his uncle was trying to protect him from the truth, like anything could be worse than seeing his mother killed. And he knew his father was in trouble with the police for killing the intruder. “How long do I have to live here? And be honest. I’m not your baby nephew anymore.”

Kevin exhaled. He sat slouched forward, his eyes tearing up. “Your dad wanted to spare you the pain of a trial and having to relive that night for a jury, so his council advised him to plead guilty to manslaughter.”

“But my dad isn’t guilty of anything.”

“He wanted to hurt the intruder who killed your mum, but he didn’t mean to kill him. Do you understand?”

Elliott thought back to the night his mother was killed. He’d never seen his dad that angry. It wasn’t hard to understand why...not after what happened. “It’s not fair.”

“Of course not, but he knew there’d be a penalty for his actions. There always is.”

“How long is the penalty?”

“Four years.” Kevin swallowed, as if the truth was stuck in his throat. “You’ll be twelve when he gets out. But you can talk to him on the phone and write to him every day, if you want.” Kevin gestured to the land around the farm. “Meanwhile, you’ll like it here just fine. There’s a lot to do and see, lots of open space to roam.”

Kevin may as well have chained Elliott’s arms and legs to a fence post. No matter how much land there was around him, he couldn’t leave this place any more than his dad could leave prison. They were both stuck in their own separate cells. Now Elliot faced a new school, no friends, no Mum, no Dad. Everything and everyone he knew and loved was gone because someone broke into the house with a knife. “I want to go home... please, Kevin, take me home... I want my dad back.” Tears flowed again. He couldn’t stop them.

“That’s not possible, son.”

“I’m not your son.” God, why did you spare me and not my Mum? I should have died too—

“Think of all the new friends you’ll make here. It’ll be fun... you’ll see.”

Elliott pulled his knees up to his chest and sobbed. “I hate it here... I want...to go home.”

Kevin gathered him in a hug and squeezed him tight. He smelled like hay. His arms were strong, but they weren’t his dad’s arms. They were the substitute arms of a substitute dad.

For four years.

Elliott wanted to pry himself free, kick open the truck door, and run away, but instead, he let himself be rocked to the rhythm of his sobs. Life wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t kind. “I just wish this never happened.”

“I know.” Kevin sighed then thumbed towards the back of the truck where Elliott’s things were piled in boxes. “I see you brought your telescope.”

Elliott took a sharp intake of breath. “So?”

“We have some pretty good skies here at night. About as clear as they come—nothing but stars from horizon to horizon, so bright you’d think you could reach up and touch the Milky Way.”

“Stars?” A wisp of hope rose up inside Elliott, drifted through his sadness, and wrapped his broken heart in a warm blanket. He loved looking into the night sky with his telescope, but city lights often made the stars hard to see. “Can I set up my telescope tonight?” He sniffled.

Kevin smiled like a father would smile. “Of course you can.”

Elliott dried an eye with a swipe of his hand. Maybe he should lighten up a bit and see how things went around here. “Okay.”

“Good.” Kevin patted his shoulder.

The front door of the farmhouse flew open. Aunt Sally rushed out, waving, just like his mum used to do when he came home from school.

Kevin chuckled. “Get ready for some heavy duty kissing.”

Smiling wide, Aunt Sally ran toward the truck.

Elliott’s heartbeat quickened. For the first time in weeks, a smile of his own crept across his tear-streaked cheeks.

***

It took four years for the comet to get close to the sun. Under the brilliant bombardment of its raging corona, frozen dust and water, built-up over eons, melted from the comet’s surface. There, revealed beneath the cast-off material, lay a crystallised bed of organic matter, which began to absorb the intense radiation of high-arcing solar flares and boiling oceans of fire. Protoplasm within the ancient hitchhiker began to thaw. Its mind drew closer to lucidity. Thoughts took shape with more clarity. Land and sea. Open spaces. A bright blue sky under a warm sun... And food.

The more the comet’s surface temperature rose, the more the hunger swelled into a hideous, groping need in the ancient being’s awakening core, a need that urgently had to be satisfied. The more it became aware of this hunger, the more the hunger grew. And as it closed in on the blue and white planet that orbited near the comet’s path, the detection of a rich ecosystem awoke a natural instinct to consume and survive.

A gravitational tug-of-war between the sun and the outer gas giants disturbed the comet’s solidity. Cosmic forces split and cracked the rock and ice, which set free the once sessile being and scattered its molecular essence throughout the comet’s icy tail.

Heat reacted with the now awakened being that, in turn, absorbed energy from the sun and released itself towards the passing planet. Using techniques intrinsic to its ancient DNA, it manufactured packets of photonic chemicals throughout its assembling mass. Its feral consciousness drifted like pollen scattered in the winds of this fresh, vibrant world.

Freedom embraced the ancient mind as it entered the stratosphere. The being’s sentient molecules reacted violently with the nitrogen rich atmosphere, super heating the air in a fantastic array of plasma bolts that struck the ground beneath a roiling, luminous sky.

The energy from the storm spread the being’s molecules across the land where it sampled the surrounding genetic structures, identified threats, and built its defence systems. It replicated antibodies to safely capture and consume even the most hostile of indigenous viruses and bacteria.

Excitement radiated through its forming physical mass. Soon it would begin to hunt.

***

Elliott sat on the back porch and watched Kevin stamp mud off his Wellington’s then swap them for his tough walking boots. He moaned about his stiff back and aching muscles after a hard day on the farm. Elliott was happy to help his uncle with the chores and knew he would miss him when his dad was released from prison next month.

Kevin grasped Elliott’s shoulder. “I’ve got to get into town before the wholesaler closes. We need supplies for tomorrow. If I hurry now, I’ll be back after sunset.”

“Will you get me some bubble gum? That’s what good uncles are supposed to do. I read it in the Good Parenting Guide.”

Kevin clipped Elliott with a playful jab to the arm. “I don’t subscribe, I’m afraid. I prefer Pig’s Digest. Which reminds me, clean up your room while I’m gone. It’s worse than the pigsty.”

Elliott would rather wash the pigs than clean his room, but tonight was a special night, a night he’d been waiting for a long time. The comet’s tail was already brushing the earth’s atmosphere somewhere over North America. Come sundown, as the comet streaked across Spain and France, the mixing gasses would produce a show more spectacular than the Northern Lights. He wouldn’t want to miss it because he was busy cleaning his room.

“Can I do it after the comet goes by?”

“As long as it’s done before I get home.” Kevin grabbed the keys for his old pickup truck off the hook by the door. “Tell Sally not to wait supper for me.”

“Okay, drive safe.”

Kevin set a floppy straw hat on his head and bounded out the screen door. The rusted old truck with a dull paintjob and dented fenders ground to life with a pop and a bang then rattled off toward town.

Telescope in hand, Elliott rushed out to the barnyard, set up the tripod, and aimed the lenses south toward France. He couldn’t wait until dark so he could see the comet’s spectacular arc across the heavens.

***

The setting sun scattered light through the atmosphere causing a bright red stain in the sky. The fully aware mind felt a rush of urgency as rich solar radiation diminished to its green, mossy mass, slowing growth. If it didn’t feed soon, it would have to wait out the darkness until the sun returned.

At least it had been free to sink its roots in solid ground and spread in all directions. It drank greedily from the abundant water the planet had to offer. Yet the need to feed dominated its every thought.

The writhing mass had rooted extensively across the world, many parts of a single whole scattered everywhere, creeping toward fertile soil. It encountered a patchwork of cultivated land surrounded by rough saline waters and dotted with clusters of structures that ancient memory perceived as indigenous habitat soon to be consumed by the hunger.

In the fading light, the hunt began. Dark purple clouds rolled inwards. Thick forks of lightning struck the earth all around. In the wake of these plasma bolts, viscous pools of bubbling liquid remained, and multiplied, growing into budding sacks of nerve bundles that could see and hear and comprehend structures and organic material in its relentless hunt for food.

These inflating sacks formed giant bulb-shaped geophytes. Wet with green perspiration, they began to split open and launch huge globules of green slime into the air, which landed sloppily near an indigenous being.

The green globs energized their optic nerves and audio receptors to observe the native life-form moving about an oxidised metal machine that made popping and banging noises. It was infested with red minerals, dull in appearance, and dented.

Atoms within the globs detached from molecules and began to bond into different compounds, a force of instinctive behaviour the mind struggled to control. The globs were analysing the machine’s dimensions, the four round shapes beneath a cubed body, in an effort to replicate it, which would be a waste of precious time, as it wasn’t edible like the life-form moving nearby.

The sacks sensed the indigenous being’s nutrient-rich meat protected inside a waterproof wrapping of flesh, covered loosely in synthetic layers. A floppy object made of dried organic material teetered on the being’s head, and primary locomotion came from the movement of fleshy appendages known to the ancient mind as legs. The indigenous creature appeared weak, making it an easy source of food.

Hunger drove the mind to release the molecular reconstruction mechanisms within the writhing green globs. The bubbling masses gelled together and grew upwards until, as one, it stood on thick legs and sprouted long tendril arms from a broad trunk, loosely replicating its prey, including the floppy object on its head.

A feeling of individuality overwhelmed the replicated mass as it separated from the whole. Independent thoughts distinguished it from the ancient mind, and by its own will, it stalked the indigenous prey that now scrambled into the machine for shelter or escape.

Tendril arms lashed out, snagging a fleshy leg and yanking the creature to the ground. Oozing green slime covered the downed creature and began the digestive process. It struggled and kicked, emitting sounds the watching ancient mind interpreted as high-pitched screams laced with panic until finally the prey fell still...and silent.

With a hunger that spanned a hundred-thousand light-years, the fully functional replicator dispatched its own tendrils toward the stricken prey...

And finally it fed.

***

I’d never taken notice of end-of-world predictions in the past. I’m a rational guy, I’d like to think. Millennia of predictions, Nostradamus notwithstanding, energized cranks and conspiracy theorists who’d lived and breathed the bullshit even after they were proven wrong. Still, bad news spread like a nasty cold.

The problem in here, locked in a high security prison, was that the unbelievable became much harder to ignore. Lying on my bunk, I had too much time to think... what if?

What if the earth’s orbit intersected with the comet’s trajectory towards the sun? What if the earth was in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if the two collided? Scientists had said the dinosaurs became extinct in that way. What if the human race stood on the brink of a similar fate?

Surely the world leaders would know of our impending doom, but they’d have to keep something that catastrophic a secret. Otherwise worldwide panic would ensue. But Christ, they’ve already said the comet’s tail would brush the atmosphere. What if the comet’s gasses poisoned the air and asphyxiated the population? What a horrible way for everyone to die. Elliott wouldn’t stand a chance...

I caught myself before my blood pressure spiked from this self-induced dose of fear. Like I said, I had too much thinking time in here.

The view port on my cell door flipped open and revealed Delmont’s miserable face. His brow was thick and strong like a Neanderthal’s, bushy eyebrows set in a default expression of disgust. Like a boxer’s face, his was bent and twisted by a lifetime of fistfights and riot control.

The port closed, and the sound of rattling keys advised me I was about to endure another unwelcome visit from the prison’s most brutal of guards, a sadistic bully with a chip on his shoulder the size of Big Ben. Delmont stepped into my cell, unsmiling.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked with a wide grin. Sarcasm was my best weapon against him.

“I’m not in this job to make small-talk with scum. I’m here to make sure you don’t rip each other’s heads off like the rabid animals you are.”

“I’m not an animal.”

“You smell like one.”

Delmont threw letters on my bunk with a scowl and turned to leave.

“Wait up,” I said.

He stopped and eyed me like I was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his boot.

“People are saying the comet might strike the earth, you know, all this near-miss talk being just a cover-up for an impending disaster. What’s your take on it?”

Delmont’s face turned red with bridled rage. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe in that bullshit, Weber?”

I sat up on my bunk. “No one knows what’s going to happen when the comet passes.”

“A brilliant light show in the sky, you idiot. Nothin’ to be scared of.”

“I’m not scared...but Elliott might be.”

“Too bad for him. Besides, the comet is passing as we speak, and nothin’s happened.”

I stood, looked Delmont in the eye. “I get out in a few weeks, so I was hoping you could have a word with the governor. Get me a day-release to see my son. You know, before the comet is gone.”

Delmont’s face remained in a fixed display of arrogant irritation. But I knew him better than that. Deep down, he enjoyed his position of control over me.

Bastard.

He pretended to write something on the palm of his hand with an imaginary pen. “Note to Warden: Regarding prisoner Weber. He requests day-release, due to...” He looked up and drilled me with a demeaning glare. “Due to what, Weber, the end of the world, did you say?”

I didn’t bother to answer, just shook my head and flopped back down on my bunk. Delmont turned and left, laughing hardily as if I’d just made his day. Prick.

Lying back, I felt my soul slip into the quagmire of suffocating defeat. Not because Delmont had roasted me, but because I couldn’t shake the bad feeling I had about Elliott facing this comet calamity alone, like when I’d left him alone with his dead mother. I shouldn’t have done that, but I did. I had a choice back then. I have no choice now. Still, I felt an urgency to be outside these high walls, to be with him, in case the end-of-days naysayers were actually on to something this time.

Four more weeks of this hell seemed an eternity.

Continued in “Alien Apocalypse – The Storm” Available NOW from TWB Press.

www.twbpress.com/alienapocalypsethestorm.html

About The Author

Dean lives with his wife and two young children in Surrey, UK. He owns a business jointly with his father, developing and manufacturing fibre optic components. His day job consists largely of shining light through fragile glass fibres, and trying to glue very small things to even smaller things.

Dean is a 2nd Dan Black Belt in Kickboxing and has won national and international titles in the sport. In 2003 he spent a few months living, and training at a Shaolin Kung Fu academy in Northern China. He enjoys running and mountain biking, but now does most of his training in the local boxing gym.

Dean writes science fiction and horror, and his short stories have appeared in webzines in the UK and US.

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A novel by Terry Wright

http://www.twbpress.com/the13thpowerwar.html

The Grief Syndrome (TWB Press, 2011)

A novel by Terry Wright

http://www.twbpress.com/thegriefsyndrome.html

The Duplication Factor (TWB Press, 2011)

A novel by Terry Wright

http://www.twbpress.com/duplicationfactor.html

Woolly Bully (TWB Press, 2011)

A novel by Jameson Cole

http://www.twbpress.com/woollybully.html

www.twbpress.com