Invasion

They passed, as quickly as they could, groups of refugees, trudging along to the north. They saw no other moving vehicles on the roads, although there were plenty of abandoned or burned-out vehicles. It wouldn’t have taken long for the aliens to have…convinced the civilians that vehicles should be abandoned; the odds were that they had decided that cars might be used as weapons, or worse. Katy and Sophia wanted to pick up a handful of refugees, but Philippe and Stanislav disagreed with them and Gary and Francis agreed; they couldn’t take the risk. A lot of refugees had to be completely desperate and willing to steal a vehicle…or at least to rob them of everything they had.

An hour after they started out, they came across the first sign that there had been a battle. A collection of destroyed or burned-out military vehicles littered the interstate, facing a handful of oddly-shaped piles of wreckage, surrounded by hundreds of bodies. It took Francis a moment to identify the bodies as National Guard…and Gary a few moments longer to realise that the oddly-shaped wreckage was in fact the remains of alien vehicles. The National Guard had made a stand and hurt the aliens…and had then been brushed aside from orbit. Gary insisted on picking up a handful of dog tags, if only to identify some of the dead, and collecting some of their weapons, just in case. They might be attacked along the way.

The signs of devastation grew less as they headed north, the sky becoming overcast as darkness started to fall, but they stayed away from the cities. They could have headed up to Dallas or Fort Worth, but the Americans wanted to head directly to the military base. They were still arguing about the decision when a shot rang out and several soldiers appeared from nowhere, pointing their weapons at the SUV. Gary braked to a halt and grinned as the soldiers surrounded them.

“Who the hell are you?” The Captain commanding them asked. Even in twilight, he looked half-beaten, at least to Philippe’s eyes. The aliens had driven the United States out of one of their most prosperous states. Under other circumstances, he would have laughed at how the mighty had fallen, but if America could fall, what hope did France have of victory? “The Redskins don’t let anyone have vehicles.”

“Redskins?” Gary asked, puzzled. The Captain briefly explained that that was the alien nickname. “Ah, I see…”

“I am Ambassador Prachthauser, Special Representative of the President,” Francis explained, shortly. They didn’t have the time for pleasantries. “Believe it or not, we’ve just come down from orbit and we have to get transport to Washington at once. The President will be anxious to see us.”

“We don’t have constant communications with Washington these days,” the Captain said, “but I’ll see what I can do. You’ll have to be debriefed, of course…”

Philippe shrugged. He could live with that.

Chapter Eighteen

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

– Winston Churchill

Night was falling as Captain Brent Roeder led seven men out of their apartment and up through the silent streets. Austin had once been a well-lit city, but now hardly any of the street lamps were working, nor were there flickering lights from behind any windows. The city felt like a ghost town, one occupied by an army of monsters, and the people were trying to keep out of sight. Brent partly wanted them to come out and fight beside him, but the rest of him was glad that they were out of the way. The fighting was about to get messy.

They ghosted through the streets, sticking to smaller roads and back alleys, trying to remain away from the alien patrols. The aliens hadn’t announced an official curfew, something that had surprised him, but they would probably take an interest in anyone on the streets after dark. It was what he’d do in their position and, given the amount of weapons and explosives they were carrying, would mark them out at once as soldiers. The aliens didn’t seem to shoot armed civilians on sight, as they would have been legally permitted to do under human laws, but they did take them away and, so far, no one had seen any of them again. They might have gone into the work gangs who were clearing the streets, or they might have been taken out of the city, shot and dumped in a mass grave. The internet had been full of speculation, but no one actually knew much for sure. The only piece of encouraging news was that the aliens were having a hard time controlling the chunk of Texas they’d occupied.