November Pain

It’s Thursday again. I know it’s Thursday because the view is always the same on Thursday. As I stand here on this rocky cliff overlooking the valley, to my right I see the Appalachian Mountains, green, lush and full of beauty and life. To my left, scorched earth, burning trees and craters the size of a football field from when they fired their artillery on us.

Jacob and I are out checking game traps again. It’s getting harder and harder to catch anything. This time we only got two squirrels and one rabbit. It’s gonna be kind of hard to feed all 57 people back at the lodge.

We’ve been holed up now for nearly three years, finding refuge in, of all places, the very ski resort I used to go to with my high school ski club. But it’s perfect. It’s isolated. It’s not near any large populations or cities. It has its own generators and water source. And if we continue to work together the way we do, we can probably last a few more years here.

After the attacks, there were other camps. We used to keep in touch on a ham radio; but something must be happening, because over the last few months we’ve lost contact with over half of them.

“Hey this one’s empty too.” Jacob breaks the silence, confirming yet another empty trap.

I wish my dad was still here. He’d know what to do. I rub the golden heart-shaped locket of his that dangles from a bracelet around my wrist. My mom gave it to him their first Christmas together and it's all I have left of the both of them.

I hear a sound behind me that I haven’t heard since that unimaginable day. This is what I get for breaking our rule about staying vigilant. I am frozen in place as terror courses through my veins. With every fiber of my being, I'm praying that it isn’t what I think it is. Slowly, inch by dreadful inch, I force myself to turn until my eyes meet what has been every human’s waking nightmare for the last five years.

Eight feet of hard exoskeleton layered like plates on a bug, it’s chittering mandibles clacking and chirping, staring back at me is a creature that I can best describe as an ant mutated with a human. A wretched Xenomorph. Damn.

The sun is setting just over its left shoulder. I raise my hand to block the glare. I guess I need a better view of my eminent demise. When I raise my hand the locket flashes in the sunlight. This thing is mesmerized by the golden shine, and I can see its many soulless black eyes fixate on the locket. It lowers its gun, and for a moment there isn’t a sound in the world, my execution is delayed just long enough.

Suddenly, its body lurches as if a lightning bolt has struck it in the chest. It drops its weapon and begins to scream a piercing painful shriek. The thing turns violently away from me and I can now see Jacob standing behind it. When I see the back of its head I see the handle of Jacob’s knife sticking out between two plates of it’s hard shell. He stabbed it in what I think is the thing’s brain stem.

It flails its claws and tries lunging for Jacob, He dodges and rolls away. The Xeno continues to try and get to him, but the blade is already doing its job. And after a few brief moments of violent cries and frantic swings of its talon like claws, it collapses in a giant husk of dead bug.

Jacob starts to laugh. Not a laugh like it was funny. A nervous laugh, like again he has cheated death. Again he has gotten away with something.

My attention goes back to the locket around my wrist. Tracing its heart shape between my fingers and thumb I think of my dad again. “That’s two I owe you.” I say softly to myself.

“Hey, check it out.” Jacob picks up the alien’s weapon.

“You know it doesn’t work, “ I say. “It’s biologically mapped to the species.”

Jacob chuckles and shrugs his shoulders. ”Yeah. It’s cool though, right?”

And in that very moment the weapon releases a blue super heated high pitched plasma charge that races across the cliffside and obliterates a pine tree that happened to be in its path.

“Holy shit!” We both yell at the same time.

We look at each other. Jacob raises the weapon, this time taking aim. Again, the same blue charge is emitted, obliterating another pine tree.

“I’ll be damned. The thing works,” he says.

“Well maybe it’s just you. Let me try.”

He hands me the rifle. I walk about ten steps. I take aim at a random pine tree and I squeeze the trigger. I’m ecstatic to see that the result is the same for me as it was for Jacob.

Jacob is laughing. “This is amazing. Do you know what this means?”

I find myself staring at the rifle. This is no longer an alien’s weapon, it the ticket I’ve been looking for. This whole situation has just become very serendipitous.

“Hey, Jacob.” I try to hold back my smile.

“Yeah?”

“Remember last November?”

“What?”

“Yeah. When you ran like a little bitch into that house? Locking the door behind you? Leaving my dad and my little brother outside?”

“Hey, wait…”

And before he can get another word out, I raise the weapon. My nerves are calm. My conscious clear as I take aim and fire another blue heated plasma charge square into his chest.

The blast knocks him off his feet, flinging him into the air. He lands in a smoldering heap of burnt flesh and smoldering bone. When these weapons hit us there isn’t much left.

I walk back over to my alien assailant, who in his death had just become my father and brother’s redemption. I return his weapon to his side.

Well, it’s gonna be about an hour hike back to camp, which will give me just enough time to work out the details of my story.