Page 2

Linda

Once the satellites stop lighting the sky up in sparks of various sizes, and no spaceships are visible in the smoke-darkened sky, we gather our courage to leave the building.

The air is thick with smoke, acrid and cloying, and my breaths come in short, sharp gasps.

I think the reality of what’s happening is finally sinking in, the numbness that helped me through the first moments receding.

I wish it didn’t. I feel so useless between Noa’s calm calculation and Axel’s jaded machismo.

Students are running in every direction, some crying, but all of them looking as scared as I feel. “Did anyone catch anything on the TV?” I ask a passing group, but they mostly ignore me, only one boy bothering to shake his head.

“No signal,” he says over his shoulder as he follows his friends to the other side of the parking lot.

We reach the first rows of cars and slow down. “Do you two have a car?” I ask, looking at the parked vehicles. Car doors are slamming all around us, followed by the squeal of tires. I wish I could floor it out of this reality.

Noa smirks at me as Axel approaches the driver’s side of a black sedan. My mouth falls open when he bends over to pick up a rock, then uses it to smash the window.

“W–what are you d–doing?” I stutter. “You can’t just steal someone’s car. What if they need it?” I protest weakly.

Noa rubs a soothing hand down my back and, despite everything, goosebumps dance to life under her touch.

“We need it now ,” she tells me before hopping into the front passenger seat.

“ Get in, beautiful,” she commands in a no-nonsense voice before slamming the door shut.

I look around me, at the students and professors peeling out of the campus grounds to return to their families.

I wonder where those who, like me, would need a plane to get home are going, then shake myself out of my stupor.

I won’t make it five minutes without Noa and Axel, of that I’m certain.

Gingerly, I crawl into the backseat, just as Axel pops up from under the steering wheel, the car roaring to life.

“You know how to hotwire a car?” I ask in a murmur.

“We know all kinds of things good girls like you don’t,” he retorts with a grin. How he can laugh at a time like this is beyond me.

As we drive closer to the city, the smoke thickens, blowing in through the shattered window. I cover my nose with the sleeve of my top, my eyes watering from both the fumes and the sight of the buildings diminished into rubble where the satellites landed.

“That can’t be just from the satellites,” Noa ponders. “They had to have used some kind of weapons too.”

Axel nods grimly, his hands clenching on the steering wheel. “Oh, fuck,” he says, his voice low and barely audible over the screaming people and car alarms.

Straightening, I look out the window to see what he’s cursing at, immediately wishing I hadn’t. There are bodies on the pavement, dusty and battered from the debris. “Oh, no,” I whine, covering my mouth as tears blur my vision.

Noa’s hand sneaks back to grab hold of my other wrist and I’m grateful for the anchor. “We need to get out of here,” she tells Axel. “Now.”

He exhales sharply, looking at the chaos around us. “Where the fuck do we go when everywhere’s a damn warzone?”

“Out of the city, to the suburbs,” Noa says decisively. “The buildings there aren’t as tall, so there should be less debris. Plus, less competition for supplies.”

My stomach warms at her logical words, like they’re a breath of cold air over a burn. I turn my hand around to intertwine my fingers with hers. She looks back at me in surprise, but one side of her mouth quickly lifts into her signature smirk, and she squeezes my fingers.

Before we get more than a few blocks away from where we saw the first bodies, my ears pop. I gasp at the familiar sensation, dread twisting in my intestines. They’re back.

“F–fuck Axel, go faster!” I scream, then slam back against my seat when he immediately presses the pedal down.

The air hums and people scream louder before a strange metallic shrieking drowns both out.

A deep whoomph sounds, then a ball of fire hits a car not far enough away.

My breath catches in my throat when debris hits our windshield, cracking it.

Axel swerves, pulling off into a side street.

“They’re killing people,” I say, dumbly. It’s one thing to know it and a whole other thing to see it.

When I look at my lap, I notice Noa’s pale fingers clutched in my own. I cut her circulation right off and she hasn’t said a word. With great difficulty, I force my fingers to loosen around hers.

When the spaceship flies overhead, I instinctively duck, too scared to control my body’s adrenaline-fueled reactions. We need to get out of the city, now .

As Axel maneuvers around the debris and fleeing people, I anxiously pick at the rings adorning Noa’s slender fingers. I wish I could go back a couple of hours when being embarrassed over a mean hacker’s prank was the worst of my problems.

***

“Move faster, Pooh,” Axel hisses at me. He’s taken to calling me Winnie the Pooh. I’d like to believe it’s for my golden locks, but I’m afraid it’s more likely due to my round ass.

I fix the strap of my backpack, the cans inside tinkling as they knock against each other.

“Shh!”

Oh, screw him.

For two days, we’ve been looting grocery stores along with the rest of the mob.

Axel nearly peed himself laughing when he caught me trying to use the self-checkout the first time.

Noa just wrapped her arm around my shoulder and then helped me pack.

She looked at the tampons and disinfectant before smiling at me, the skin around her eyes crinkling.

When she told me that was smart thinking, I nearly forgot we were in the opening minutes of an apocalyptic movie.

Noa’s not here now, though, keeping an eye on our ‘base’ instead; a squat insurance office building, emptied in the initial panic.

Because who wants to return to their nine-to-five the day after aliens shoot all our satellites out of the sky and carpet bomb fleeing people?

But we haven’t seen any since and we have no idea where they went to.

In the movies, they always go for cities like New York or Washington.

Or maybe they learned we taste funny and left.

I snort at my thoughts and earn a stink-eye look from the brother.

How can someone as awesome as Noa be related to a jerk like him?

We reach the bottom of a non-functioning escalator and I groan on the inside.

My thighs have been killing me from all this walking around with heavy bags.

I woman up and resolve to stop thinking ungrateful thoughts.

If it wasn’t for Noa and Axel, I’d be in some bomb shelter now, probably trying not to think about nibbling on someone else’s thighs.

As we reach the exit and I breathe in the fresh night air, a scream shatters the silence. I spin around and freeze at what I see. Three men are ripping the clothes off the screaming woman, jeering at her as she tries to pull free.

“Hey, stop!” I yell. I take a step forward before Axel’s hand pulls me back violently.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he growls.

“They’re hurting her!” I snarl, trying to squirm out of his hold.

“Keep walking!” one of the men yells. Another flashes a knife in our direction.

My mouth falls open, the inherent violence of the object shocking me into motionlessness. Axel takes advantage of the softening of my muscles and starts walking me away from the struggling woman and the band of men about to violate her. Or worse.

“How can they just do that?” I ask Axel with a sob once I can speak again. The woman’s screams start fading in the distance.

Axel flashes me a look. At first, he glares with frustration. Then his brown eyes soften a bit. He clicks his tongue. “You’re too fucking na?ve for your own good, Winnie. As soon as the shackles of humanity are removed, we drop our masks. We fuck, we steal, we look out for number one.”

He throws an arm in front of me, making me stop in my tracks. Once our eyes meet, he says slowly and clearly: “We don’t get ourselves killed for something we can’t stop.”

I roll my lips together as the pre-invasion me wars with the me I need to become. Finally, I nod. We’re almost at the office building we’re hiding in when I speak again.

“We need weapons,” I say. “Guns, if we can get them, or knives.”

When Axel doesn’t say anything, I look at him from the corner of my eye. He’s smiling.

“Smartest thing you’ve said, Winnie.”

We climb the last of the stairs to our temporary home and I let my backpack slide down with a groan.

“What did we miss?” Axel asks Noa. The assessing look she gives me makes my heart skip a beat.

I look away, busying myself with the supplies we brought to our temporary home.

I check my phone out of habit, but there are still zero signal bars.

The power comes and goes, though, giving me some hope that humanity is fighting… whatever this is.

“The radio worked for a while,” Noa says and I spin around to focus on her words.

Axel jury-rigged a receiver we found in the supply room and we’ve been trying to catch any news from outside of our bubble.

I can’t exactly take a plane home to see my family, but maybe word from California would help me sleep more than an hour or two at night.

“What did you hear?” I ask, rocking on the balls of my feet. The eccentric girl, still sitting cross-legged next to the radio, gives me an indulgent smile. How is she so calm and collected when the world’s quite literally going to hell ?

“Broken transmissions,” she says, shaking her head.

“There’s no contact with major cities – London, New York, Beijing.

The attacks seemed to be coordinated, disabling satellites, then targeting population centers.

” Noa stands up in one fluid motion, the movement so graceful it brings a blush to my cheeks and I don’t know why.

“There were some repeating recordings. Martial law. Stay indoors and do not engage with the hostiles.” She snorts.

“As if we can fight against giant spaceships.”

She saunters to my side to check what I’ve brought back.

As she presses against my side, the contact sending tingling sensations over my skin, I wonder why she’s not checking Axel’s loot.

Despite having sink baths for the last couple of days, her smell remains pleasant, and I subconsciously turn my face in her direction, like a sunflower positioning itself to catch the rays of sunshine.

As I inhale the contrasting yet appealing mix of bubblegum and spice, her head turns until our noses are inches apart.

I lick my lips and shudder when I feel her exhale against the damp flesh.

Just as she sinks her teeth into her lower lip, something crashes from the other side of the room. I jump in fright, worried the aliens have returned, but then see a can of soup rolling across the floor. Noa stops it with her foot as if it were a soccer ball.

“Oops,” Axel says, shrugging with an ‘aww, shucks’ expression.

Noa rolls her gleaming silver eyes, then bends over to pick the can up. She holds it up for me to see. “Are you hungry, pretty girl?”

I gulp, my suddenly dry throat clicking. Yeah, I am.