Intruders: The Invasion: A Post-Apocalyptic, Alien Invasion Thriller (Book 1) (10 page)

No. I surely didn’t.

* * *

I should’ve been more cautious of this new kid, who was
about my age, but I wasn’t. He could be a danger to Hank and me. A vulture,
looking to take what we had and kill us after gaining our trust, but my instincts
told me differently.

If he’d wanted to kill me, he would’ve done it already.

Still, it wasn’t exactly prudent to blindly follow the guy
wherever he led us.

“So, you’ve got some okay moves, but you’re a little
awkward, Zoe. It could get you killed.” He looked at me and grinned.

“I’m a little new at this. Forgive my fumbling.”

“And tripping. And falling. And dropping.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes.

“It’s okay. I’ll help you. There are six of us at the
compound. We have lots of food if you want to join us. We can always use
another hand to help out.”

“The compound?” There were many others? Amazing.

Hank seemed to like Ryder, once he’d decided that he wasn’t
a threat to us. He loped along beside me, seeming happy for the addition to our
little team.

“Yeah. I’ll explain it all to you. But the short version is,
some doomsday preppers built the compound and stocked it with supplies, in
preparation for some kind of apocalypse happening.”

“You’re kidding. I’ve seen doomsday preppers on TV. I
thought it was all a little paranoid. But judging by what’s happened, I guess
not.”

“I thought so, too. But I guess they weren’t far off.”

“I guess not. And if they are, thank God for the crazies.” I
gazed at the tree line set back from the fields, and again was struck by how
gorgeous it looked.

The sun, now high in a clear, blue sky, reflected off the
glittering snow and warmed us a little. It wasn’t as cold today as it had been.

The wind shifted a little and I caught the scent of soap and
shampoo off Ryder as he walked beside me. He wore a black winter hat over his
hair, which pushed the hair on his forehead over his eyes. He used his glove to
push them absently aside.

“Ryder, tell me what you know about those reptilian things.
I call them lizards.”

“We call them snakes, even though they have arms and legs.
They are like lizards, you’re right. But for some reason someone in the crew
called them snakes and it stuck.”

He glanced at me and I nodded.

“They live underground. You probably know that. You’ve
likely seen them pulling women into the holes.” He looked straight ahead and
his face grew hard.

“I have. It’s horrible.”

“It’s from a nightmare.” He stopped and looked me in the
face. “They took my sister. She’s only fourteen years old. And I need to get
her back.”

“You saw them take her?”

“I had her by the hand as they dragged her in. But they
didn’t want me, so they did this to me.” He held up his arm and shoved his
jacket sleeve up, showing me several scabbed over gashes on his arm. “It was
reflex. The pain made me let go. And then she was gone.”

“They didn’t try to eat you?” I thought of Jessica after
she’d transformed. “One of them tried to eat me. She said she could smell my
blood.”

“She?”

“It was my two year old niece. Actually, she was close to
three.”

He dropped his eyes to the ground, his face sympathetic.
“I’m sorry. It happened to my little brother, too. He was only ten.”

“I’m sorry.” I took a breath and looked around us.
Snow. Fields. Trees. And a seemingly endless road
. It did
look like the end of the world. “I think they took my sister, too.”

He gave a single, slow nod. “I was out here searching for
holes. Trying to learn more about them. How they’re spread out. How their lairs
are built. Is that what you were doing? I saw you looking at the ground.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I was doing. I’m figuring they’re
nocturnal, because I haven’t seen them out during the day, yet. Have you?”

He shook his head and looked out over the fields. “No.
That’s what we were thinking, too. They seem vampire-like. I saw them
completely drain a kid I went to school with. Caught him in the middle of the
street. He was trying to run.” He shivered. “He was nothing but a husk when
they were done with him.”

A shudder moved through me. That’s what the Jessica-thing
would’ve done to me.

I frowned. “Why haven’t they taken me? I was going to be
eaten. Not dragged away. Once I’d gotten away from the one that used to be
Jessica, they didn’t try very hard to find me. I think they were leaving me for
the clean-up crew.”

He lifted his brows. “Clean-up crew?”

“The deadies. They eat what’s left, don’t they?”

He looked up and down the road. “Let’s go. It’ll be dark in
a couple of hours.”

We came to a side road and followed it for about a mile.
Ryder told me more about the snakes, as he called them, while we walked.

“They’re aliens. I think they abducted the kids, did
something to them so that they had alien DNA or something, then sent them back
after they threw all those meteors at us. They’re like some kind of hybrid
now.” He looked straight ahead. “Invasion of the body snatchers. For real.”

“The news reports said that the dead rising had to do with
the meteor dust.”

“Zombie dust. Yeah. I don’t think that was an accident,
either. I think the bastards have been watching us for a long, long time.” A
gust of wind lifted his hair back from his forehead and face and I was struck
by how delicate his features were. He looked almost elfish. High cheekbones and
amber, almond shaped eyes. A straight nose. He was built lean, but he didn’t
look weak. His posture was straight as he walked, like he wouldn’t back down
from anything.

Maybe that’s why he was a survivor.

“Zombie dust. That’s exactly what it was. Do you think it’s
in us, too? Like if we die, we’ll get up and start staggering around, trying to
eat people?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it.”

My stomach rolled. “Ugh. That is so disgusting. I don’t eat
meat.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “That’s the only reason
it’s disgusting? Not the fact that you’d be chomping down on human flesh?”

“Well, yeah. That too. But meat.” I made a face. “Gross!”

He grinned at me. “Okay. If you die and get back up, I’ll
stab you in the eye. Put you back down. Before you get a chance to eat meat. I
promise.”

I laughed, and it felt good. I was amazed that I could still
manage it. “Thanks, Ryder. I appreciate that. Is that your pick-up line?”

He snorted. “Nah. I have no pick-up line. But what are
friends for? I’d expect no less from you.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll put a knife through your skull for
you, too.”

“Thanks, Zoe. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to
me.”

I laughed again, longer. “I guess this means we’re friends?”

“I guess so.” He gave me a closed lipped smile that made a
dimple appear in his cheek.

“Good. Because Hank and I could use one. Right, Hank?”

Hank let out a puff of air behind us.

Ryder looked ahead of us and lifted his chin slightly.
“There it is. Home sweet home.”

I followed his gaze. A large structure with huge, metal
squares spanning a huge expanse over a clearing sat at the top of a steep hill.
“Wow. What is that?”

“That’s the compound. It’ll keep about anything out.”

I looked at him, eyes wide. “Good. Because these days,
there’s lots of things that’ll want to get in.”

* * *

The compound was built of metal storage bins --- the big
ones. They were stacked on top of one another, three stories high.

“This is incredible,” I said. “How did you guys do this?”

“I had no hand in it.” Ryder looked up at the structure, his
face appreciative. “But the preppers did, a couple of years ago, I guess.
That’s what Kyle said. There are only a couple from his original group left.
His wife, Sherry, and his brother, Ozzie. The others are stragglers. Like me.
Like you.”

“Who is your friend, Ryder?”

I spun around, freaked out that someone had been able to
sneak up behind me. Meeting Ryder had momentarily lulled me into a false sense
of security. I’d forgotten, just for a moment, how dangerous the world had
become, and it startled me.

A tall, muscular man in his mid-thirties smiled at me and
nodded hello. He looked at my face, his eyes narrow, deciding if I was a
threat. It only took him a second, because then his grey eyes softened. He had
a strong jaw and a slightly crooked nose, like it had been broken at least
once.

“This is Zoe. Zoe, Kyle,” Ryder said.

“Will you be sticking around, Zoe?” Kyle asked me. He seemed
genuinely curious.

“Is that an invitation? I don’t want to intrude.” I wasn’t
sure how to respond to him. He was large and intimidating, but seemed to be
okay with me.

He chuckled. “You’re not intruding, Zoe. If I didn’t want to
offer you a place in the group, I wouldn’t have.”

“He really wouldn’t have,” Ryder confirmed. “I’ve seen him
turn people away.”

“You’ve turned people away?” I regretted the words as soon
as they were out of my mouth. I didn’t want to insult him. I needed a safe
place for Hank and me.

Kyle’s face grew serious. “They weren’t nice people. Believe
me. They were a threat to the group. They would’ve shot me in the head as soon
as I turned around, then killed the others and taken over the compound.”

I stared at him, my eyes feeling round in my face.

“You know that saying about tough times revealing who you
really are? What you’re made of?”

“Yeah. I’ve heard that.”.

“Well, this invasion hasn’t brought out the best in
everyone.”

That was an understatement. I remembered the carjackers out
on the roads when Hank and I first drove out of town. “I’ve seen it. There were
people torn from their cars when Hank and I left. I wanted to stop. Help them.
But there were so many and . . . ” A lump rose in my throat and I stopped,
unable to talk. My eyes grew wet.

Kyle’s eyes were kind and a little sad. “You couldn’t have
helped them, Zoe. You’d have been overtaken. You would be dead, now.”

I pressed my lips together. Tried to swallow the lump down.
The images of those families were vivid in my mind.

“So what do you think of our digs?” Kyle asked me, waving an
arm toward the building.

I found my voice, though it cracked. “I think it’s neat.”

“Forty-foot steel shipping containers. Designed to carry 58
thousand lbs each. Can be stacked eight high. This is three high. The lower
level has larger spaces. We’ve cut walls out of the containers to make a living
area. Large enough to house a big group of people. There are lots of separate
rooms on the upper levels. You can take your pick of the ones that aren’t
taken. That is, if you choose to stay.”

I looked down at Hank. “Can my dog stay, too?”

“Of course he can. I love dogs.” Kyle crouched down and held
a hand out to Hank. “What’s your name, big fella?”

Hank moved toward him, sniffing his fingers. He sat in front
of him, tail thumping on the ground. Kyle couldn’t be all bad if Hank liked
him.

“His name is Hank. I found him alone in the house next door
to ours.”

Kyle’s eyes flicked up to mine and held them for a moment. I
could see that he’d already guessed, correctly, that I’d lost everyone. He
moved both hands over Hank’s large head, then over his massive body. “Well,
it’s lucky you found each other then, huh?”

“He’s all I have.” I said it more to myself than to anyone
else.

Ryder moved a hand over the back of Luka’s ski jacket. I had
to stop calling it Luka’s ski jacket. Luka’s boots. She was gone. She may never
come back. If she did, and we came across each other and she wanted her stuff
back, I’d give it all back to her. But in the meantime, it was mine.

It was easier to think that way, now.

“So will you stay?” Ryder asked me.

I shrugged. Smiled. “Sure.”

Kyle introduced me to his wife Sherry, a tall, sinewy black
woman who looked like she didn’t have an ounce of fat on her. She wore black
leggings and her toned muscles were apparent under them. Her hair was held back
in a thick, wavy braid. Her large, dark eyes smiled at me.

“Nice to meet you, Zoe.” She had a strong, friendly voice.

“Thanks for having me,” I said to her, not sure what else to
say.

“Of course. Let’s introduce you to the rest of the group,
then we’ll get you set up in your own room, okay?”

I nodded, suddenly feeling vulnerable and humbled by the
kindness I’d found in these people. How could I be so lucky?

A tall but leaner, less muscular version of Kyle sat at a
large metal table with a girl of about fifteen, and another boy of about
twenty.

“This is Ozzie, Logan and Mina. Guys, this is Zoe. She’ll be
joining the group.”

The crowd waved at me.

“Nice to meet you, Zoe,” Mina said. She wore her dark hair
in a boyish short crop. She was a natural beauty, with thick dark lashes and
even features.

“Nice dog,” Logan said, leaning forward and reaching a hand
out to Hank.

I nodded my thanks. “That’s Hank.”

“I love dogs,” Logan said, smiling at Hank and patting his
head and back. “Hey, Hank.”

Hank seemed to be smiling. His movements were light and
cheerful. He’d found an actual pack to be a part of. So had I. What could be
better?

Ozzie nodded. “Meetcha.”

I nodded back.

“Ozzie is a man of few words, Zoe,” Mina said. “A trait you
may appreciate. As I do.” Then she threw a look at Logan.

He looked up at her. “Oh, what? Like intelligent
conversation isn’t a good trait?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Haven’t heard any in a while.”

He shook his head. “Go get her, Hank. She’s a mean girl.”

Mina laughed. “You love it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t listen to her, Hank.” Logan seemed to
have fallen instantly in love with Hank, and the affection was definitely
mutual. He rolled onto his back and offered up his belly to Logan.

“Come on,” Sherry said. “Let’s get you settled in and then
you can have something to eat.”

My stomach growled at the thought.

The upper level had rows of large rooms made from the
shipping containers. I chose a room on the left. Each room had a three by four
square cut into the wall for a window, covered in bulletproof plexiglass, which
was covered in a steel mesh.

“Nothing is getting through those,” Sherry said as I moved
to the window and looked out.

“Pretty safe here, huh?” I looked out over the snow capped
trees and fields. Were there lizard holes out there?

“Safe as we can be, given the situation.” She walked up and
stood beside me, then, as if reading my mind, said, “We haven’t seen them come
out of the ground around here. And believe me, we’ve been watching.”

“Doesn’t mean they won’t, though.”

“We’ve been out checking the ground during the daylight
hours. It’s almost supper so everyone is in right now. But they’ve been
spreading out further and further over the area. We’re trying to figure out why
they haven’t dug their little hidey holes around here.”

“Maybe they will, yet.” A quiver moved over me and I hugged
myself. “I can’t find my sister.”

“They took my daughter.” Her voice cracked. “She was only
fourteen.”

I turned to look at her. “Why have they taken the girls?
What are they doing with them?”

Her eyes were misted over, and her face looked haunted at
the thought. “We think they take girls and women who are the most fertile, so
that they can breed them.”

It was my worst nightmare. “Why don’t they breed their own
creepy females? Why do they need ours?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “We don’t know. Maybe it’s
just part of the invasion. Infiltrating every part of us that they can. Maybe
it makes Earth more habitable for them. Creating hybrids, like they did with
the kids.”

“Because the children were more pure. Not as many toxins in
their bodies,” I said.

“That’s what we think,” Zoe said.

“I can’t believe this is happening.” I was thinking out
loud. Which I’d done a lot of since I’d found Hank.

“Believe it, Zoe. This is real. But as bad as it seems,
having to deal with the chompers during all hours of the day, and the snakes at
night, we still have a chance. It’s not over until it’s over. You’re a
survivor, that’s why you’re still here. You’ll do well with us. We can fight
them. We’re learning more about them all the time.”

“Like what?”

“Like they’re allergic to UV rays. We have LED UV lights and
we’ve tested them. Ozzie ran into a few out on the road trying to get back here
last night. He lost track of the time trying to gather up as many as he could
find.”

“Oh, shit. What happened?”

“We’d already figured that they couldn’t take sunlight,
since they only come out at night. He had a bunch of the UV lights in the truck
with him. As soon as the sun went down, they came out of nowhere and jumped all
over the truck. It was his chance to test them out. It worked like a charm.”

A tremor raced over me, remembering when Hank and I had been
attacked the night before last. “They sure would’ve come in handy the other
night. Same thing happened to Hank and me on the road.”

“And you’re still here to tell the tale. You’re one tough
young woman.”

“Or just lucky as hell.”

“Maybe you’ll bring us all luck.” She rubbed my shoulder as
if it were a rabbit’s foot.

I smiled. It was good to not be so alone in the world
anymore. Just me and Hank in a world of monsters.

The sound of work boots approaching behind us made us turn.

It was Ozzie. “They shrank at the UV light like they’d been
burned. Their skin started smoking and they took off like bats out of hell.”

“Or snakes out of hell,” Sherry said.

“Snakes from another planet,” I said. “Right?”

Ozzie nodded once. “That seems about right.”

“Does anyone know where these things even come from?” I
asked them.

Ozzie shrugged. “Hard to say. Maybe someone does, somewhere.
Or did.”

“If we could figure that out, we might be able to figure out
how to annihilate them. Like, in mass numbers.” I felt a pleasant buzzing in my
head at the thought.

Ozzie grinned, and Sherry straightened at the idea, her eyes
brightening.

Nothing like the thought of mass
alienacide
to boost morale.

“If there’s a way,” Sherry said. “We will figure it out.”

Ozzie nodded. “Let’s put a pin in this conversation and go
down to eat. I’m starved.”

* * *

We all sat at the large table in the dining room/living room
area. The place was utilitarian, with poured concrete over the floor of the
shipping containers and the windows cut into the steel walls. It was like a
large warehouse. All anyone cared about was that it was safe.

The smell of the food on the table made me weak with hunger.
Fried chicken, biscuits and corn were dinner, and it was delicious. I closed my
eyes and I chewed the crispy breading. I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.
“Mmmmm.”

“Not bad, huh?” Kyle said, smiling.

“How are you guys able to do this? Food, cooking?” I was
amazed.

“Over the last ten years, Sherry and I have stored enough
food to keep us and a few friends going for over twenty years. We began
preparing and storing back then, in the unhappy event of an apocalypse. That
unhappy event happened.”

“Just like we said it would,” Sherry added, taking a bite of
her buttered biscuit.

“Everyone thought we were crazy,” Ozzie said. “Better crazy
than dead, I guess.”

“Or captured,” Logan said, his face solemn as he sipped
bottled water.

It seemed everyone lost somebody. Or many somebodies.

Was this something they’d foreseen ten years ago? Ryder had
mentioned the preppers but I’d still been too dazed with happiness to find
another living person at the time to have absorbed what he’d said about them.
“Did you know it would be an alien invasion, complete with the added bonus
result of the dead getting up and eating our friends and neighbors?”

“Honestly,” Kyle began. “We didn’t think it would be an
alien-invasion-slash-zombie-apocalypse. We thought it would be an oil crisis.
No oil to heat our houses, run our vehicles or the vehicles that bring food to
the grocery store. Run planes, trains, ships. Pretty much throwing civilization
into a clawing, murdering, survival-of-the fittest type mess.”

“It wasn’t oil,” Mina said. “But they weren’t far off the
mark in terms of the result. It is a clawing, murdering,
survival-of-the-fittest mess.”

“We also have a stockade of weapons,” Ozzie said, pushing
his clean plate away. “And we’ve trained. Kyle and I were marines. We came back
from Iraq, but a lot of us didn’t. We figured we’d prepare for the worst,
because the worst happens when you’re not prepared.”

“That’s for sure.” I looked at Ryder, who was still working
through his corn. He apparently wasn’t a fan of it, but given the food
shortages that were now upon us, he wasn’t about to leave it uneaten. “Thank
God Ryder found me.”

He looked up at me and grinned.

“I’m sure you’ll be a valuable part of our group,” Kyle
said. “You’re not big, but you’re obviously tough and resourceful. That’s what
we need.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. And I meant it. It was the very
least I could do to pay back their kindness. “Hank will, too.”

“Hey, never underestimate the value of a dog,” Ozzie said.
“I had a dog partner in Iraq. He helped save my ass more times than I could
count.”

Since there was no other dog around than Hank, and judging
by the sadness that crossed fleetingly over Ozzie’s face, I assumed that he
hadn’t made it back.

“What is the plan? What’s the goal of the group?” I wanted
to know what my purpose would be. It would help me feel useful and like I had a
place in the group.

“The goal,” Sherry said, “is to rescue our daughter, and any
other females we’ve lost to those creepy-ass things, and then as many others as
we can.”

Kyle nodded. “Then we find a way to wipe them off the face
of the planet.”

I nodded, wondering how the hell we were going to pull that
off.

Ozzie said, “It’s a tall order, but we’re in a war, Zoe.
It’s a simple concept. Search and rescue, then kill the enemy.”

I gave a single, determined nod. “I like it. Show me how.”

* * *

There wasn’t much time for training after dinner was
finished. We all noticed darkness moving over the last vestiges of light beyond
the windows. Each window had a sliding steel door which locked over the
plexiglass, so that anything outside couldn’t see in. Of course, it meant that
we couldn’t see what might be outside, either.

Still, it was better to keep a low profile.

There was a watch tower which could be accessed by a set of
metal stairs, through a trap door in the roof. The tower was built directly
over the trap door, so that going up into it and leaving it wouldn’t leave the
watcher vulnerable to deadies or lizards. Or snakes, as this group called them.
I still thought of them as lizards, or reptilians.

Aliens are what they were. But for some reason the term
terrified me even more than names like ‘snake’, ‘lizard’, or ‘reptilian’.

Whatever kept me from going into a screaming, shrieking fit
from which I might never return was good.

I was shown the watch tower by Ryder, whose watch it was for
the first two hour shift. I sat in one of the chairs with him. The watchtower
was covered in plexiglass and mesh, like the windows, but the mesh was thicker.
Here, a watcher could see out pretty clearly but it was difficult for anything
to see in.

I sat in a wooden chair beside him, and looked around the
outside of the tower, which offered a 360 view of the outside around us. The
tower sat about fifteen feet above the roof, so that it lent an excellent view
of the ground.

Windmills sat about ten meters away from each other, and
circled the compound. That was how the group maintained energy for the
compound.

“How do you guys hook up to running water?” I asked. The
bathrooms were just like they would be in a house, just more utilitarian. There
were four of them. And the kitchen sink used running water.

“It’s a pipe that runs down into Pine Lake, which isn’t that
far from here. It’s just beyond those trees.” He tipped his chin forward,
toward the trees. “So far, it’s worked like a dream.”

“They really thought of everything, haven’t they?” I was
awed at what Kyle and Sherry had accomplished here. I’d seen compounds like
this one on shows about end of the world preppers, but never imagined in my
wildest dreams that I’d ever be living in one.

“Yeah. They have.” Ryder said, leaning back in his chair so
that it tipped back and the two front legs came off the floor. His work boots
rested against the mesh in front of us. He rocked slightly back and forth, eyes
watchful beyond the mesh. “Lucky for us.”

He seemed amazingly calm for it being night time, watching
for lizards.

“Have you ever seen any of those things around here?” I
scanned the area, peering into the night.

“Nope. Not yet. But there’s a first time for everything. We
can’t let our guard down. Here, take a pair of these.” He handed me some
goggles. “These are night vision. Anything moves out there, you’ll see it. I
like to use both. Toggle them back and forth.”

He grabbed another pair from a small table beside him and
traded his binoculars for them. I did the same.

I saw things moving out there and sat forward, my breath
catching in my throat. “Oh, my God.”