A Change in the Weather

by M. A. Taylor

It was a day much the same as any other, only more so.

I had started my day, a Thursday, much the same as I had any other day - sleeping in too late followed by a mad leap out of bed and muttered curses against myself for being a devil for punishment, for as the day is long, I was sure to get another ‘friendly chat’ about the pros and cons of arriving to work on time.

However, I missed one minor detail on that day. I didn’t think of the ‘Big picture’.

It was Thursday, the 13th of August, in the year of our lord Nineteen hundred and ninety-eight and, as you know, no one thought of the ‘big picture’ on that fine day.

“G’day Thomas, how are you mate?.....Hmm…..Yeah the settlement went just fine…another hundred grand in the kitty.....Where am I now?….” sigh “I’m in a pub in town studying for my exam tonight.....Well, that might be the case but you know what they say…..You can lead a horse to water but you can’t stop a Nilsen from a drink!”

On that note, with brother’s half laugh and full disapproval ringing in my ear, I hung up the mobile, opened my study notes and concentrated on some serious looking out the window and watching the world go by, not studying.

Well the day was beautiful, and the office girls walking past the bar window were even better.

So there I was, working up a bit of Dutch courage at the bottom of a glass for the exam later on, not knowing that I should really have not worried about it because, at that exact moment, a rather strange looking creature stood at the window in front of me with a placard that read, “THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!”

How right he was…

This was one of those curious creatures that inhabit the streets and parks of every major city in the world. Well, I must say that I have been in many cities in several different countries, and in every one I saw at least one of these fellows wondering the streets on call, just in case Armageddon arrives without notice.

The specimen that was staring at me with blood shot eyes and banging on the window shouting “the end is here, all prepare for the coming of hell” was by far the best example of life’s castoffs I had ever seen. His eyes burnt deeply into mine, and, just behind the glaze of obvious insanity, I could discern a deep and rather knowing being. It was as if he had seen the future but was not able to admit to himself that the prophesy he now foretold was to happen in his life time. This strange little man was being held together by insanity, an obsession with mind altering liquids and grime that must have been three layers deep and a century old.

Well, I thought long and hard about this and decided that he would have to be right about ‘THE END’ if only he hung on long enough. I guess his actions would be justified sooner or later.

It was sooner!

I soon, as did he, tired of this game of ‘look but don’t acknowledge.’ He wandered into the street, and I resumed my drink, with eyes following the dirty prophet. As he crossed the road, I was distracted by a rather large, or I should say obese, gentleman crossing the street.

My interest wasn’t primarily aroused by the man's rather large girth, but more by the look of wonder, fear and amazement that slid across his face. I followed his upward staring eyes and was soon to join him in amazement and wonder.

My view panned upward, and, between the high-rises, I spied in the deep blue, clear sky a dark blotch that grew and spread larger in the matter of seconds that it took to acknowledge there was something there.

At first I thought that maybe it was a flock of birds, however this thought swiftly changed as I watched in horror as the fat man was struck to his knees by a jet black, golf ball sized object.

His face was turned to the sky, but, as he fell to the ground, he turned to face me. His face was a mosaic of agony and surprise, which soon melted into one of sheer terror as he looked down to his immense stomach and saw that, oozing between his fingers, was bright crimson blood which gushed and flowed from out of him as if to a beat of a drum.

Directly beside me, a glass smashed to the floor, and I was finally shocked out of this slow motion dance by the scream that was torn from the girl at the next table. Then chaos erupted in the bar and the streets as a rain of the black projectiles burst from the sky like a summer hailstorm.

A girl on the street directly in front of the bar window had her skull cleft in two by one of the projectiles. Her head exploded like a melon hit with a sledgehammer, sending high into the air a shower of grey and red that sprayed the street and struck the window directly in front of my face with a gelatinous and sickening thud.

Inside the bar, it was silent except for the heavy beat of the juke box that drowned out the screams of those poor devils caught out in the open who danced and burst apart as if in rhythm to the primal and deafening music encased in the bar.

The carnage on the streets and the evil black rain lasted what felt an eternity but must have only been a matter of a handful of minutes. All were in shock. A few that had survived the downpour now wandered lost, screaming on the street. All in the bar were standing in stunned silence, except for those whose lunch was making a very visual and graphic encore. It was as the quiche and lasagne was hitting the floor that I looked to the fat man laying on the street. Above him was the crazy prophet jumping up and down as if he was a kid at Christmas, pointing and laughing and screaming.

"Ha, ha, I TOLD YOU SO! NAH, NAH, TOLD YA! WHO'S CRAZY NOW?!”

That's when the fun really started.....

The not so crazy prophet stopped his reverie of being right and looked at the fat man.

A twitch of fear flittered across his face. I had thought the fat man was dead, however, as my glance travelled down to look at what was left of his bloody and broken body, I noticed that his chest was moving up and down.

I thought, “My God, he’s still alive!”

However, I soon changed my mind as the horror of what was happening exploded into my already desensitised mind. It slowly dawned on me what was happening. The fat man was actually dead, and his corpse still had movement, not due to the forces of life, but of something that was moving and growing out of one of the black objects just under the surface of his flesh.

I was stunned, as were those around me, to see six pointed and insect legs tear and rip through the fat man’s belly and push down on the street like a man trying to lift himself out of a hole. The crazy prophet looked down and then straight at me. The poor bastard had a look of sanity that surprised me! He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders in resignation of his fate.

It was at this point that a 70’s retro mix blared out of the jukebox, telling us that “I can’t stand the rain against my window.”

That I guess is when Elvis, as well as sanity, had left the building.

From out of the fat man leapt two long and hooked pincers that grasped the prophet about the waist and flicked him like it was flicking a Zippo lighter, the end result being that the prophet’s upper torso went into the air, landing some distance away and leaving his naked arse and legs to sail through the window, smashing it and showering me with glass, blood and grey ropy intestines.

When I had finished removing his inner workings from my shoulders, I looked into the street and saw hundreds of these creatures growing like sponges in water out of the small black globes.

At this point, my body moved on pure instinct. I ran past all of the stunned and frozen bar patrons and up the two flights of stairs heading toward the kitchen on the third floor.

My body seemed to know what it had to do, as if it had been drilling and practicing for this moment all its life.

Ah, self-preservation is a wonderful instinct.

As I climbed the stairs, I looked back through the broken window to see the creature that had grown out of the fat man’s corpse. It lifted its head, which was made up of the pincers and little else, and howled out its triumph with two whooping barks like a dog with laryngitis.

Two of his fellow creatures turned their attention on to the bar and hunkered down on their haunches, rear legs bending backwards and leapt into the bar, and so begun the descent into hell.

The next song on the jukebox was Barry Manmilow telling us about another bar in Cuba which was also a scene of destruction.

I had made it to the third floor when the barmaid’s severed upper torso landed at my feet, still alive and screaming. I guess it was around about here that I freaked out a bit. Yelling, screaming, crying like a two-year-old, you know the drill.

I made my way into the empty kitchen and found that it did have a cold room in which to hide. However, before I did hide I looked up and noted that the hotel was equipped with fire sprinklers. This gave me an idea for helping to save my butt. I went around to all of the stoves and hot plates and turned off their pilot lights, then I lit a small fire in the bin furthest away from the kitchen ranges, and on my way to the cold room I turned every gas valve on to high.

The sounds of carnage and the hoots of success from the creatures downstairs made me work even faster. The gas had just begun to make me dizzy when I heard something making its way up the stairs. I hurriedly opened the cold room door and closed it and, then I got into the freezer area to the rear of the cold room. It was only wide enough for me to stand upright, with the shelves of the freezer digging into my back. I had just come to grips with the cold when I heard something sniffing and bumping about the kitchen.

My God, it had the ability to track by smell! Then the earth moved and all was black.

I came out of unconsciousness with a great feeling of dislocation and loss. I did not know where I was. However, wherever it was, it sure wasn’t Kansas any more. Toto!

All I knew in those first seconds of consciousness was that I was cold, stiff, sore, wet and had the smell of seafood and meat enclosing me claustrophobically. I had to get the hell out of here, wherever here was.

I remembered something about being in a pub drinking and of having a feeling of being through something which I did not wish to remember, but for the life of me I could not think straight. Did I get drunk and fall asleep? Am I dead and come back to life like one of those Edgar Allen Poe stories?

I was slowly coming around and working the cob-webs out of my misty brain, when I discovered the door and realised that the ache in my back was from the shelves digging into me. I was in a freezer. I had locked myself in here…..but why?

Well, I could figure that out later, but for now I’m just going to get the hell out of here.

The door opened only a few inches and then was slowed by an obstruction on the other side, so I pushed harder, using the shelves for leverage, and the door pushed and scraped the obstruction clear and opened fully.

It was dark, but I could discern a rectangle of dull light around the edges of the main door to the cold-room.

I bruised my shin on what I felt was the shelf, which had fallen against the freezer door. With muttered words of praise and forgiveness to the shelves, I made my way to the door and quickly thrust it aside along its rollers and… “Jesus Christ!”

I fell backwards with full recollection of what had transpired previously to my hiding in the freezer. The trigger which helped me to recall this information so quickly was the thing waiting for me on the other side of the door. It was made up of six legs which were segmented and bent the same as an ants, with each segment as long as a man's leg. The body itself was only about the same size as my own and ended in a scorpion-like tail and started at the business end with two long, chisel shaped pincers which narrowed to an edge and hooked down to met in the middle once closed. As for the colour of the beast, well, that just wasn’t something I could quite make out. Luckily for me, its current colour was that of black charcoal. The evil looking creature had been burnt to death with the gas blast I had created. If it hadn’t, I would not have been able to describe it to you, as I am sure my insides would have been here, there and everywhere.

I now had full recollection of the horror and the shit myself and everyone else on the planet was now in. I had to orientate myself and to organise a plan of action in answer to that question all creatures have asked themselves since the dawn of time: How do I survive, to live, to see another day?

My curiosity got the better of my fear, so I decided to take a closer inspection of the dead and blackened creature. However, as I reached out my hand to touch the creature, it dissolved and crumpled into dust like a piece of paper left in a fire, or as if it was a vampire caught in the sun, in a B-grade Hammer horror movie from the 70's.

I moved away from the pile of dust which had been the creature and looked around at the destruction I had brought down on the kitchen.

I supposed that I should try and arm myself and then to go carefully and quietly downstairs and find out if there were any other survivors.

I fumbled around the kitchen in the dull and diffuse light that filtered through the grease stained windows, which I figured to be the coming of the night, the realisation of which brought a chill of unease up my spine. To be alone and in the dark, hearing every sound and waiting for those evil and efficient mandibles to leap upon me and bring my life to a rather messy and screaming end.

I stood by the kitchen door and steeled myself for the mayhem and destruction that I had witnessed earlier that day. I had armed myself from items I had found in the kitchen. In my left hand, I held like a shield the metal lid from the large stock pot, and in my right hand, I wielded a butcher’s knife that was more like a sword then a knife. It must have been a good foot long and as sharp as a razor.

The feeling of safety and confidence that these gave me was at once both one of “now I have a good fighting chance and maybe if I do get killed I can take one of the bastards with me” to one of “shit, even if I do come across one of those devils, I would have just about as much chance of fighting it with a wet fish and a cardboard plate.”

I made my way to the landing where the barmaid, or should I say, what was left of her, had landed at my feet earlier that day. I felt the nausea rise to the back of my throat as I thought about the blood, guts and severed and mutilated corpses of those poor devils who had been caught up in the mayhem of the bar and streets.

I listened intently for several minutes for any sound of movement before I proceeded down the stairs into what I knew would be a first class ticket to insanity. However, as I turned the corner to the third floor landing, I was surprised to see that all that was left of the barmaid was her torn shirt and a pile of dust, much the same as I had seen the creature in the kitchen dissolve into at my curious touch.

My mind was trying to make sense of this as I looked over the balcony and down into the bar that I was sure would be a scene of pure carnage. It was not! The bar was empty of bodies and their parts as well as any sign of the creatures that had made such a sudden and destructive arrival that day.

In their place was the same strange phenomenon of the clothing laying ripped and torn on a pile of dust!

One theory was that the beasts themselves, or their masters who had sent them, had released a super bacteria which was capable of decomposing dead tissue in a matter of hours and not years as ours on Earth did. This was only a theory, and the time it would take to investigate could be the difference between life and death.

I made my way cautiously down the stairs to the bar itself.

I turned to the street and saw that all of the death and destruction of the day had left behind nothing but twisted metal and cloth and a hell of a lot of piles of ashes.

Just as I realised that it was soon to be dark, I was hit full in the face by rebounded orange and red light from the coming sunset. It was then that I noticed that the sun that was being reflected off of the windows of the office buildings around me was actually on the wrong side. It finally dawned on me; it wasn’t sunset but sunrise. I had been unconscious for over twelve hours, and I had succeeded in the first rule of survival, “live to see another sunrise.”

My God, the feeling of relief washed over my battered and sensitised nerves as I realised that I would not have to spend a night of fear in the dark waiting for something to come along and snuff out my life’s flame like a candle in a breeze. The fact that I had a full day ahead of me refreshed my confidence as well as my resolve to fight against my personal extinction.

As I stood there deciding on what action I should take next, my mind was made up for me, because in the street was a police car which had been trapped and helpless in the downpour of the creatures the previous day. I would be able to gain their weapons if I could only bring the courage to risk crossing the open street to get to the patrol car.

It was a risk I had to take, because I would surely have a better chance of surviving the coming day armed with a pistol and twelve gauge shotgun then a kitchen knife and tin lid, no matter how big and sharp they were.

However, before I made a run to the patrol car, I decided that I needed a little more ‘courage in a bottle,’ so, to settle my nerves, I jumped over the bar and helped myself to some top shelf brandy. Thus galvanised into motion and purpose, I made my way to the shattered window where I had sat only the previous day. Little did I know then that the challenges I had faced in my life would be nothing compared to my life now.

The only movement in the street was that of the ashes of those fallen as they were blown and spread by the light morning breeze. The only sound was that of the birds in the park a couple of blocks away as they chirped, whistled and fought as they had every day since time immemorial. The only difference is that this morning you could actually hear them instead of the usual bump and grind of the busy city. I must admit that, with the passing of man, the city had become a truly peaceful place.

I made my way to the patrol car commando style, running low and fast from cover to cover, but, as I discovered, it was completely unnecessary as all of the creatures had mysteriously departed from the area.

My little excursion had paid off, though, as laying on the front seat was a pile of dust in a pair of trousers with the matching shirt spread across the car bonnet, with pieces of the shirt still caught in the shattered windscreen.

I removed the gun belt and checked the contents with growing satisfaction. It contained a newer style 9mm pistol with slide action and several spare clips as well as a baton, handcuffs, pepper spray and several other items which would be very helpful for my survival.

The pile of ashes had a partner who had an older style wood handled six chamber 38 calibre pistol. I put on both gun belts, comforted by the weight of the weapons at my side. I looked around the cabin but couldn’t find a shotgun, so I opened the boot to see what else I could find.

I left the patrol car a lot better armed and armoured then I had arrived, so much so that it was awkward to be able to walk and carry my booty. I decided that I should go to the camping and disposal store just up the road and get a few supplies.

I made my way carefully down the street when, to my right, I noticed a slight movement. I turned quickly with shotgun raised and heart in my mouth. Standing in front of me was a man with a shotgun levelled at my head and a look of fear on his face!

The man was myself.

I was looking at a picture of myself in the smashed window of an electrical shop. There was a promotional video camera set up on a tripod in front of me. This led to a thought that perhaps this camera had recorded the carnage of the night before. This was highly unlikely, but I just had to feed my curiosity.

I made my way to the camera and noted that it did have a cassette in it, however it was at the start of its tape. I took the cassette out and put it into a video player and scrolled through the tape. The tape had a time and date read out in the upper left hand corne,r so I was able to quickly find the time of the arrival of the creatures which would cause the world of man as well as my sanity to sit on the brink of oblivion.

The video showed it all. I will save you the full details, as it was just as gruesome and ugly as that which I have already described to you. The one thing it did show that I had not known previously and that had been troubling my mind was what had happened to the creatures which had wrought such destruction onto the ‘peace loving?’ people of Earth.

I forwarded the video to the time when I had blanked out.

The light was getting less and less; the death toll was getting more and more. After the creatures had rampaged and ripped their way down the streets and buildings of the city, they had, within a matter of an hour and a half, turned a thriving Metropolis into a scene of carnage, destruction and desolation.

I watched the screen with a feeling of horror, hopelessness and nausea as the creatures sorted out and killed every human they could find. At one point in the video I was at first shocked and then puzzled to see people raining down on the streets in their dozens. I had to rewind the tape several times to finally come to a conclusion as to why people where hitting the pavement in such numbers and quick succession. It was like watching a re-run of a 1930’s stock-market meeting of the board.

I came to the conclusion that, when the original rain of the creatures had begun, the rigid and fortress like high-rises around the city had had their defences breached by the small projectiles, the end result being that, on each floor of every building, the creatures must have wreaked havoc amongst the trapped and terrified office workers. The only thing I could not decide on was whether the office workers had been thrown to their death or whether they had decided in their instinctive panic that a swift downward trip with a rather sudden and bloody stop at the bottom was preferable to being ripped and torn apart by giant space bugs with a rather nasty disposition.

I know that I would probably prefer having my own life ended by an exhilarating and fast bungy jump without the bungy. Quick and painless, as you wouldn’t even register the impact. This I would guess to be a little less painful and frightening then having your torso cut in two, followed by a confusing and painful handful of minutes lying on the ground trying to figure out why your lower intestinal tract was now part of the paint work and how the hell did my legs get way over there?

I was now so used (if one could ever get ‘used’ to this) to the carnage that I did not feel any real emotion for those who had died. For all I knew, they were the lucky ones.

I continued to speed through the aftermath of the creatures destruction as all that it involved was the creatures running back and forth searching out the few last survivors.

It was towards the end of the video that my question of what did happen to the creatures was finally answered.

The creatures, once they had disposed of all of their human prey, had turned on their comrades with hoots and screams of pain as they wreaked destruction and havoc upon themselves.

This tended to lend credence to my theory that these creatures were actually a type of living biological weapon for a species yet to come. I guess you could say they were the perfect shock troops. They destroy all resistance from the planet to be conquered. They are then polite enough to self-destruct and then let themselves and their victims be turned to dust so they could just sweep themselves under the carpet.

I must say that who or whatever had created this first wave of assault troops were very efficient and practiced in the art of living weaponry.

I took the cassette and then went to the disposal and local food store to stock up on some essentials.

It was at about noon that I had decided that now would be a good time to find some high ground with a good field of defence to shack up for the night.

I made my way along the silent and deserted streets of the dead city. The day was half done, and with the coming of midday the wind had started to bring the ashes of the dead to life. The dead began to slowly shift and rise to the tune of the breeze, drifting and whirling in the air as the wind caressed, jiggled and re-animated the dust and ashes of the dead into a higher more carefree form of life. The white ash eddied and played about my ankles and legs, dancing and flying higher and higher into the air as if called back to life by God, the great puppeteer of the universe using the wind for strings and the world as a stage. I was forced to tie a bandanna over my mouth and nose to stop the choking dust from entering my mouth and clogging my lungs. I grieved for those who had fallen before me, but I was not too impressed about the prospect of ingesting their ashes.

I walked through the fog and storm of the fallen, with the sun dimly shining through the ash to create a world of white about me and making it all very surreal and mystical as if the world had been taken away and I had been transported to a limbo of silence and white.

I imagine that if there is a heaven that it would be as quiet and peaceful as those deserted streets which, hours before, had been a scene of death and carnage. I had almost forgotten that, at any moment, one of the creatures could come out of the fog and turn my heaven to hell with a quick flick of its mandibles.

After some time, the cloud of white was starting to thin and show a darker more sinister colour. There was a gust of wind and the fog raised like the stage curtain at an opera and showed to me the reason behind the darker strains of grey I had seen before. I had made my way through the fog of ash several blocks till I had arrived at the edge of the park that was to be found at the heart of the city.

The sounds of birds no longer drifted and played over the park as it had earlier that day.

I stood in shocked silence and stared at what I saw before me. That which now lay dead in its centre had burned the park.

I looked on with a feeling of unreality as the enormity of what I saw sunk into my shocked and weary mind. In front of me was the smoking and broken jigsaw of that which summed up one of man,s greatest achievements: it was a tail of a jumbo jet.

I felt like an ant next to it.

I had once flown on a plane just like the one scattered and broken in front of me. It must have been struck down whilst it was circling to land by the rain of destruction of the day before. I looked around me, knowing that there must be more as the airport always had planes in long queues waiting to land.

Around the park, I saw at least three planes ranging from airbuses to jumbos in different attitudes of destruction. One of the smaller jets had slammed into a high-rise with only the tail showing and the building bent over with its back broken.

I guess that this was the final push that sent me over the edge.

It had all become too much for me, and I must say that I went just a little crazy. Well, by a little I mean that I started to scream and run as fast as I could away from the park, away from the fog and mostly away from myself.

I guess I ran from myself pretty well, as I didn’t catch up to myself again for nearly three months. Please, don’t ask me what happened during that time, as it is all pretty much a blur, but I do know one thing, when I did finally snap out of it. I sure needed a bath.

Well, my life now was one of survival.

I had found an old home that had not been touched during the downpour. The house was an old one that had been abandoned many years ago, and the main reason I chose it was that it was close to the city as well as its harbour. The house was a two-story job with a large room in the attic. All of the first and second floor windows had bars as well as boards over them. I had fortified them even more with metal brackets and booby traps around the grounds and all through the first two floors. I gained entrance by using a rope ladder up to my attic hide away, which had a brilliant view over the harbour from the balcony.

I sat on that balcony some nights with a drink in one hand and the best Cuban cigar I could find in the other and thought about what would be the best course of action.

I should go across the harbour and look for my brother to see if he still lived. However, even if he was lucky enough to have survived, it was unlikely that he would have made it back to his home, as the last I had heard of him he had been out in the western suburbs of the city.

I had tried to ring his mobile and home numbers, but the whole system was down. I guess the invaders had knocked out all satellites as they came.

Ah well, so much for the international space station.

It was probably four months after the invasion that I first met other survivors. I remember I had just found a powerboat that worked and was all fuelled up and ready to go. I had just finished setting it up for the short trip across the harbour and was about to set out when something made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I spun around quickly with the shotgun pumped and ready. What I was faced with was a group of about eight people, all armed and standing on the dock just behind the boat. I decided that maybe diplomacy was the best coarse of action. I lowered my gun and…..“Hey guys, how’s it going? Nice day for it.”

I don’t think they were overly impressed by my flippant attitude. They responded to my welcome by spreading out and cocking their weapons, to which I replied, “well, that’s not very bloody friendly is it . Good to see the people of this town haven’t lost their pleasant nature.”

They were a rag-tag group of different ages, sexes and backgrounds. I guess that’s what you get for living in a multi-cultural society.

We stood quietly, watching each other wondering what to do and who was going to do it to whom first. The situation was getting tense, so I thought I might as well make the first move.

“So, which of you is in charge?”

“I guess that would be me,” said a rather large and muscular woman from the front of the group. “My name is Sharon, and these fine people with the automatic weapons are my friends. Who the hell are you? Salty the Sailor dog?”

“Well, seeing you asked so nicely, my name is Brad Nils…”

I was interrupted by a sweet and gentle voice from the back of the crowd. “His name is Brad Nilsen, and I know him Sharon, so just relax.”

The group parted to let me see whom it was who had spoken. It was Christy, a girl I had met a year or two ago at a strip club in the red light district of the city.

Well, hey, I never claimed to be an angel.

She was just as sweet and beautiful as I had remembered her - long blonde hair, with legs that went all the way up, and a face that countries would go to war over.

I went back with them to their home base, which was on the hill that overlooked the docks where I had been preparing the boat. During the day and night, we all sat around drinking and swapping stories about how each of us had survived, what we had seen since, as well as what we were planning to do.

I found out that I had not been very observant, and that by going over the harbour I was making a very big mistake. They told me that the first wave of invaders was just as I had guessed, an army of shock troops to thin out the human population before the main force arrived.

John, a man of about fifty years old, and, by the look of it, Sharon’s lover, had watched, a few months ago, massive aircraft slowly come in low over the ocean and hover in the middle of the harbour and slowly sink down in to the water. He had also watched as a priest that he had met since the initial attack had driven a boat out to the submerged ships to try and contact them.

John started to weep in the arms of Sharon as he told the story that the priest, thinking that he could talk to the aliens, had gone out in a boat only to be attacked and killed by a pack of what he could only describe as giant eels. The eels, he said, were about five metres long, with heads as big as barrels filled with rows of razor sharp teeth that, as he put it, made a great white shark “look like a pussy.”

So it seems that they also had a rather effective security system.

We continued in to the night getting rather drunk and finished around midnight with me sleeping in Christy’s bed. All very innocent, I am sorry to say. The good stuff came over the next few weeks that I stayed with them.

We watched what developed under the waves of the harbour for some time. We came to the conclusion that the aliens had taken over the planet so as to make it there own.

I had found out what the aliens looked like one day when I went down to retrieve my stuff from the boat. I turned a corner near the docks and came face to face with one of them. It was wearing a suit that looked like a deep-sea diver’s outfit. It was made up of a white metal with two projections for the arms, stood about five foot high, but instead of having two legs, the creature’s suit was being moved by a creature that looked like one huge mother of a cockroach with a flat back.

I noted all of this in a matter of seconds, because I think as much of a shock that I got, the creature got a bigger one. It had hesitated as I had, but when it recovered it raised a tube towards me and opened fire.

The weapon fired a projectile that moved through the air with great speed but,luckily for me, was not very accurate.

I dived to the left and felt the projectile whistle past my ear. I recovered quickly and returned fire. The blast from my shotgun was loud. I hit the creature in the torso dead centre. However, I guess the suit was designed to withstand such weapons as ours.

The creature was backing away from me, so I quickly put another shell in to the breech and let fly at the cockroach under the alien. This had the desired effect, as the alien toppled over and lay on its back like a stranded turtle.

Seeing it lay there trying to bring its weapon around to defend itself, I didn’t feel pity for it, but pure hatred! I slowly reached to the gun belt around my waist and removed a solid head shell for the twelve gauge. I pumped it in place with a resounding click. I then moved to the creature and looked down into its faceplate. It was amphibian, green, terrified and damned ugly. I lowered the gun, watching it squirm and scream soundlessly in its container of green liquid. I hesitated for a moment…..then let the gun speak its final argument.

The slug hit the visor but didn’t break it completely. I was just pumping another shell when the faceplate started to leak the green liquid through the cracks in and around the shattered visor. The suit started to creak and expand, so I moved away to cover and was blown off my feet as the suit and creature blew up like a water balloon hitting concrete.

This proved two things to me. Number one, that the sons of bitches could be killed and that there was hope for us. Number two was that these creatures must be from an ocean planet, and that they must be used to the great pressure of the water. The sucker exploded like a deep-sea fish brought up to fast.

OK, I thought to myself. Time to get the hell out of here.

I turned to make tracks when I discovered were the projectile had hit. Growing out of the wall of a house across the street was one of those insect bastards that had started all of this. OH SHIT!

It was about half formed, so I let loose with everything I had. Bits of the creature blew away. I pumped four rounds into it. Two of its legs were blown off, but the bastard jumped off the wall and started to limp and spring towards me. With an automatic pistol in each hand, I ran side on, letting it have every thing I had. The creature still kept coming, even though it had nothing but a torso and a few legs left to it.

Both pistols hit empty.

I had just started on a few Hail Marys and How’s your Fathers when Sharon came around the corner with five of the others. They let fly with their automatics and turned the creature into a messy green puddle on the road.

Ah well, I guess the party was over.

We ran back to the house and moved out. This area would be crawling with bugs in minutes.

We had fitted out some armoured cars for a road trip away from the coast. We had planned to go in another week, but if we didn’t make a move now, we never would.

The team broke up into three cars. All this took maybe fifteen minutes.

I stood on the gas and ploughed through the garage door. At the end of the road, I hit the brakes ‘cause standing in the middle of the road was about twenty of the insect warriors.

The others pulled the trucks up on either side of me. I looked at them and gave the thumbs up. Over the two-way radio, Sharon’s voice came through loud and clear.

“Come on, you sons of bitches, it’s a good day to die!”

I planted the foot and went for it. That was the last thing I can remember.

I have a slight vision of those creatures leaping on the cars and their mandibles breaking through the glass. I remember hearing myself screaming as the car overturned, seeing Christy’s face turn to horror as one of the creatures reached in and dragged her out of the cabin by her white and delicate neck.

I could see Sharon standing on the roof of her car, blowing away dozens of the creatures as they climbed to get her. I also heard her yelling, “Come on you ugly bastards, mama’s got a little something for ya!” I also heard the click as the chamber was empty, and Sharon screamed and swore at the creatures all the time that it waved her in the air. I saw her severed torso land several feet in front of me and heard her gurgle a quiet “mother fu…” with her last dying breath.

I also felt the fire around me. I guess that’s what really saved me from the creatures.

It is now a week later, and I guess I am dying from my burns. At least I guess I can stop screaming, then. I hope I can finish this before my strength goes. If anyone should find this, all I can say is get the hell away from the coast and stay low.

As for me, I’m afraid the time for running has past. The pain is just too much. Even the cocktails of drugs I take each day don’t help any more.

Well, at least when I do go out, I know that I will go out fighting. During the days after the crash, I made my way down to the industrial area of the harbour and did a bit of 'last act of defiance' sabotage.

I opened all of the valves on the oil and petrol tanks at the depot and let it flow out into the harbour. (My apologies to the fairy penguins and the harbour seals.) After this little act of environmental destruction, I sat on my balcony with drugs and brandy coursing through my brain and watched the oil slick cover the harbour in a black shinny blanket.

Then, just after sunset, I set off the biggest show this town has ever seen. I slowly raised my flare gun and unleashed my own horsemen of the apocalypse.

My God, it was beautiful!

More beautiful still was the screams of death and pain that floated above the flames and to my balcony from the eels which watched over the alien vessels in the harbour.

I hope you all burn in hell!

Ah, well, the sun is rising on my final day, the gun is oiled and blazing in the corner with a golden beauty from the coming day, and I guess there is only one option for escape left to me.

I guess you could say I am one of the lucky ones. At least it is my choice.

Ok! Time to take that last great adventure…

THE END!

© 2001 by M. A. Taylor. Bio: “This is the first time I have sent a story to be published so I hope you enjoy it. I have been of a drinking age for around 12 years now and have been living on that big island in the Southern Hemisphere with the koalas and big rat-like creatures hopping about. (Australia) I have worked in hospitality for 10 years (2 of which as a manager of a strip club..oh my that was fun!) and have generally been an urban gypsy and world traveler. I have settled down and begun writing as now I work in a finance company and have no fun at all. Hey everyone's got to have a hobby. Bye for now.” M.A.Taylor.