THEY CAME Part 3
A week later, I was hiding under a small bush in the rain. The things I saw along the way would haunt me forever. Mass graves filled with the old and useless littered the landscape. Dead bodies with burn marks to scalps lay crumpled everywhere. Yet, in all this morbid death, I still hadn’t found any signs of the resistance.
To be this close to any alien hub was suicide but I was desperate. My supplies were running low, and I was in dire need of a weapon. From my hiding place, I could see rows of booted feet marching by in the mud. One set stopped just to the side of where I hid, causing my breath to catch. Sounds of gears creaking reached my ears. The muscularly lean alien tightened his grip on a laser rifle clenched in human like hands.
I risked a glance up through dripping leaves to get a better look at the creature before me. His body tensed and flexed beneath a Kevlar type body suit. Gears and rods ran the length of his body, giving added strength to his already powerful form. An oxygen mask clung to a humanoid face obscuring his nose and mouth but leaving those angry black eyes free to scan the area. One gloved hand rose to rub his bald scaly head. Pointed brown jaws clenched and unclenched. He took one more step closer to my position, and I knew I’d been found.
Just as he reached down to separate the leaves, a loud commotion erupted from a few yards away. The alien took off at a run to join up with six more of his kind and two of ours. They lead a small party of captives into the area. Each one was chained wrist to feet and looked as if they had been severely beaten. Men, women, and children alike shuffled with heads lowered.
With baited breath, I watched one of the prisoners fall to the ground. One alien, clearly not a soldier but a scientist in his light grey bio-suite, towered over the fallen man while the others shoved the crowd of humans back. To my astonishment, the scientist didn’t yank him back up to his feet. He simply stared down at the weakened human like a lion would stare at his newly fallen meal.
Just as I repositioned myself for a clearer view, the man’s body went into uncontrollable spasms. The convulsions were so intense that he couldn’t even scream. However, a young girl no older than five years old yelled out from the other prisoners. She tried desperately to break free and reach the man she was calling DaDa.
The scientist turned his gaze from the thrashing father to the screaming girl. His eyes scrunched up in concentration as the girl’s widened, but nothing else happened. Tears streamed down her tiny face, but she never hit the ground. Confusion quickly replaced the alien’s expression.
Uneasiness squirmed through my stomach. How could a five-year-old block the mental attacks of our captors? It’s been proven throughout the takeover that their psychic assaults don’t always work, but for a mere child to resist was astounding.
The child’s screams brought my attention back to the captives. One of the human guards held a gun to her father’s head, and I watched in horror as the trigger was pulled. I knew there was nothing I could do, but my muscles tightened in preparation anyway. If I got caught, my sister and her husband would never see freedom, but how could I lay here and do nothing? The war raged inside me until finally, when I was just about to spring from my hiding space, a pair of strong hands covered my mouth while also pulling me backward.
I fought to release myself from whoever held me. The fear of being discovered and killed nearly had me free when I glimpsed a handmade drawing on a completely human chest depicting a little green alien face crossed out in red.
The resistance had found me.
