Page 2

Laurel pushed aside the thick evergreen bushes covering the entrance and dove inside the cave. “Oh god, oh god.” She sucked in huge gasps of air. Her heart pounded so hard and fast, she could almost see her heavy jacket move. This kind of stress could cause an elderly person with a heart condition to go into cardiac arrest. Except, they’d all died during the invasion.

“The motherfucker is alive! It could have killed me!” She didn’t used to talk to herself, but she hadn’t spoken to or seen another person in a year. She needed to hear a human voice, even if it was her own. Thinking out loud had become a habit.

She unholstered her dad’s gun, released the safety, shoved her hood off, and listened by the entrance for footfalls. She doubted it could follow her in its condition, but recent historical events had proven erroneous assumptions could kill you. When enormous spaceships appear in the sky and block the sun, don’t presume the visitors come in peace.

Hearing only her own ragged breathing, she removed her jacket and collapsed into a chair, keeping the handgun within easy reach on the adjacent side table.

“I screwed up.” Lizard-brain activated, she’d run pell-mell to the “safety” of her lair. Having assumed control again, her cerebral cortex pointed out she might have drawn a road map to her location. The ground was frozen solid—it wasn’t like she’d left footprints in the snow, but she’d snapped quite a few twigs and kicked up leaves and pine needles.

That wasn’t the only way she’d messed up—she’d missed the opportunity to finish the bastard off. “Why didn’t I shoot it? Obviously, I’m more ‘flight’ than ‘fight.’”

Hugging herself, she rocked. “What am I going to do? Leave? Or lie low?”

If she left, where would she go? Where would she hide? Not in a house or any building when the Progg were on the march!

Caves were the best places to hide, and southwest Missouri was home to a lot of them. But she didn’t know where any others were, except for the tourist sites like Smallin Civil War Cave and Fantastic Caverns. If she went to one of them, she might find other survivors. However, they might not appreciate a drop-in. She wouldn’t trust somebody who showed up unannounced. He could be a colluder.

“Better to call first,” she joked. Without electricity, she couldn’t even charge her phone to play games or look at her photos.

As she thought about it, she remembered billboards along the highway advertised the tourist caves. All the aliens had to do was follow the signs.

So, tourist attractions were out. Houses were out. Earth had become a veritable buyer’s market of vacant move-in-ready homes. Priced to sell—free! The attack, which had vaporized people, had left all structures intact.

She imagined that Amish homes would likely be well stocked and suited for a life without electricity. They’d never had electricity. The town of Seymour was the closest, and formerly the largest Amish community in the state.

However, she would never feel safe in a house again, not even her parents’ home, which was a short hike through the woods. After blasts from the massive spaceships vaporized entire city populations, regiments had marched through the smaller townships. Like homicidal missionaries or genocidal political candidates, they had gone house to house, neighborhood by neighborhood, town after town. Not even Big Creek had been saved.

What made this cave a natural hideout was that nobody knew about it. It wasn’t on any topographical map. Located on the undeveloped parcel adjacent to her parents’ twenty acres outside of Big Creek, she and her brother had found it when they were kids exploring the woods. At some point, it had been used by a doomsday prepper—because it had been stocked with all kinds of survival supplies.

They’d kept mum, never revealing what they’d discovered, so they could sneak away to drink beer stolen from the garage fridge and escape the parental units when they got too parental. She had a feeling Brent used to bring girls to the cave, too, having found a pair of panties once. Then they grew up, moved out, got busy with jobs, and she forgot about the cave.

Until the invasion happened and she suggested the family could shelter there. At first, her uber-honest, rule-follower dad had been averse to using it because it technically belonged to somebody else.

“This is a matter of survival, Dad! Besides, nobody has been there in years!”

As the situation had grown more dire, and with her mother’s support, she and Brent had convinced their father to agree to go there.

They waited too long. “Mom, Dad, Brent, I miss you so much. God, I wish I’d insisted we leave when the alien ships first appeared. You’d still be alive.”

Back then, she—and everyone else—believed Earth’s militaries could do something! However, the aliens quickly took out the military bases and major cities.

Why, why, didn’t I leave the hospital sooner? Misplaced loyalty had kept her working. She’d been dedicated to the patients when she should have been more committed to her family. Brent, a police officer in Kansas City, had been the same way, reluctant to leave the city unprotected. But if she had quit earlier, maybe he would have also. He was in KC the day it was vaporized.

She’d have to live with the guilt for the rest of her lonely life.

She suspected a prior owner, rather than the one on record, had been the prepper or the landowner would have used the cave himself. Fortunately, she and Brent hadn’t touched the nonperishable food or the survival gear when they were kids.

From the entrance, a passage descended and then widened into a large chamber. Linked by short passages, two other rooms spoked off the main one.

The prepper had obviously intended the outer area to be used as a gathering space by furnishing it with a sofa, a table and chairs, and the recliner she sat in, which no doubt had been reserved for the “man of the cave.” The larger of the smaller chambers contained a bunk bed and two singles pushed together, supporting her guess the prepper had planned for a family. The third room was used for storage, its shelves loaded with supplies and equipment.

Unlike the tourist caverns, this one wasn’t limestone but granite, which meant no water seeped in from the surface, so the inside stayed dry as a bone. It also stayed temperate. Like Smallin and Fantastic, the interior temperature never varied much from 60 degrees Fahrenheit, a huge plus during the winter when temps sometimes dropped below freezing and during the summer, which always got oppressively hot and humid.

She surveyed her hideaway, devoid of any personal touches. There had been no time to collect keepsakes or mementos of her family. Other than how-to survival guides the prepper had left, the only books in the cave were dog-eared romance novels left over from adolescence. They’d been read and reread.

Romance and marriage could only be found in novels now. There would be no knight in silver shining armor to sweep in and rescue her. Thirty years old, she would never marry, never have kids—never have sex again. “I’ve become a hermit nun.”

Before the end of the world, she’d lived in an apartment near the hospital. She’d already quit work but had gone to retrieve Brent’s girlfriend’s grandmother from St. Louis when the town of Big Creek and its outskirts had been hit.

She’d lost so much, and now she had to abandon her safe space? Where would she find a place as well hidden and well stocked?

“It might only be a cave, but it’s my home. It’s all I have left!”

Unfortunately, having seen her, the alien now knew a survivor existed. She had to prevent it from alerting its compadres. Even if it succumbed to its injuries, they would find the body and realize people were in the area.

“I have to dispose of the body. If it’s not dead, I have to kill it.” She donned her jacket and grabbed the gun.

* * * *

It’s gone! Her heart stuttered with alarm. The alien had vanished. She gripped the gun so tight her knuckles ached. If it was well enough to move, it could come for her. I gotta get out of here.

Why didn’t I kill it when I had the chance?

Craaack!

Laurel practically leaped out of her skin as another tree snapped under the weight of ice. Her head jerked up, and there, perhaps fifty yards away, she spotted a gray lump. Alien? Or boulder? The ground in these parts was rocky. Cautiously she picked her way toward it. Before she got halfway there, she saw it .

It lay facedown on the frozen ground, hands dug into the frost-covered leaves as if it had tried to get up. It had three fingers and two opposable thumbs on each hand. From the lack of blood or exit wound on its back, she surmised the slug was still inside its chest.

“First one didn’t do the trick. Let’s try another one.” After releasing the safety, she pulled the slider to chamber the bullet and aimed at its head, peering down the sights. Her hands shook, but at this close range, it would be impossible to miss. A red bead danced on its skull.

Squeeze the trigger. Do it. What are you waiting for? For it to kill you? Kill somebody else?

Perhaps no one else had survived, but she continued to hope others had hunkered down in a safe place. There were other caves, bunkers, mines, underground tunnels where people might have escaped the death rays.

The alien scum had murdered damn near everyone on the entire planet. They didn’t deserve to live. And this one could pose a threat to her. She had to kill it.

While agreeing in principle that a person had the right to defend himself with deadly force, she’d never imagined herself killing somebody under any circumstances. She hadn’t owned a gun. The automatic pistol had belonged to her dad, who’d insisted she and Brent learn how to use guns since he’d kept them in the house.

Pull the trigger. Do it.

Killing it when it lay facedown, half dead already seemed more like a cold-blooded execution than an act of self-defense.

She lowered the handgun.

Maybe nature will run its course and finish it off soon anyway. Or it will get a massive infection and die a slow, painful death.

It might even be dead, in which case, shooting it in the head would be a waste of good ammo.

She’d thought it dead until it had moved. It hadn’t gotten far, but it had moved. What if it survived?

As if proving her point, it groaned.

She jumped. It clawed at the ground, pushing itself up and rolling over. She raised the pistol. The bead of light danced between those startling-blue eyes. She recognized resignation in its gaze. It knows I intend to kill it.

Intense anger surged through her as she remembered her parents, her brother, everyone she fucking knew, every single one of them dead, while this thing lived.

She squeezed the trigger.