Intruders: The Invasion: A Post-Apocalyptic, Alien Invasion Thriller (Book 1) (4 page)

“They are all dead.” His whisper sounded like dead leaves
moving in the wind.

“How do you know that? There may be some who are alive.
Maybe hiding out somewhere.”

“No. They are dead. I know.”

I stood up, looked out the window. The dead were still
wandering the street. There were more of them. Each time I looked out the
window, there were more of them.

Now groups of them were surrounding houses, trying to get
in. Some doors hung open, and the dead shambled in and out.

They surrounded houses with closed doors, banging against
them. They broke windows, climbing over each other to get inside.

Several of the dead were standing in the yard, looking up at
the house.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed, fear and panic twisting my gut and
racing up my spine. I shot a look to Jessie. What about when the dead decided
to try to get in?

“Don’t worry,” Danny said. “They won’t come in here.”

“They’re looking right at the house, Danny.” How long before
they made their way up the stairs to the porch?

“They smell you inside,” Danny said. “But they won’t come in
here with me and Jessie here.”

I didn’t ask why that should be true. Something told me that
hearing the answer would be more than my already panicked mind could bear.

I trusted that what he said was true.

But we couldn’t stay in here forever.

“You are running out of time.” His whisper was a strange
crackle, like it was coming from a deep well.

I don’t know what he is, but he isn’t
just a kid. Not anymore.
I looked back at Danny. “What do you mean,
Danny?”

He watched me with that blank look on his face and those
weird green eyes. “This world is not yours anymore. There is nowhere for you to
go.”

“What are you talking about? Where did you kids go when you
vanished? Do you remember?”

“It’s like a dream. Of lights. Of knowing. We aren’t the
same. We’re more, now.”

“More what?” I said, fear and frustration raising the pitch
of my voice.

He said nothing else. The corners of his lips lifted in that
strange, knowing grin.

* * *

I woke up, startled, my heart beating wildly against my
chest. It froze when I looked over at the couch and saw that it was empty,
except for a few tufts of hair lying where Jessie and Danny’s head had been
resting. It was dark, but the lamp over the couch was on. When I glanced toward
the window, I saw my own image against the blackness beyond it.

It startled me. My eyes were large and wild looking. My skin
was as pale as the dead outside. My hair, normally strategically messy because
it’s cut that way, now made me look like I’d been living on the streets for a
while.

“Jessie?” Faintly, I heard her voice coming from down the
hall. It echoed in the bathroom, but sounded odd. It was like she was talking
from the other end of a long tunnel. “Jess?”

Something small and white lay on the couch cushion. I leaned
in, looking more closely. A tooth; one of her little teeth.

White blonde hair lay scattered on the carpet, little white
teeth dotting the spaces beneath and between the baby fine strands, leading
from the couch to the hallway, stopping at the closed bathroom door.

I reached out and turned the knob. Locked.

A jolt of panic shot through me. “Jessica!”

“
Zoooooeeee
.” My name was drawn
out on a low whisper that sounded like a hiss.

“Where is Jessica?” I pounded on the door. “Open the door.”

“
Jeeeeessssicaaa is nooooooot heeeerreee
.”
The sound of light splashing.

The hair lifted at the back of my neck and fear twisted in
my stomach. “Where is she? Open the door!”

“Gooooo. Leeeave. Yoooou aaare ooout
ooooof tiiiime.”

The sound of a low giggle over the voice. Hisses overlapping
each other. There was more than one in there. One what?

Splash Splash.

“I swear to God I will kick this door down!” I screamed.

I took a couple of steps back and prepared to make good on
my promise.

The lock clicked and the door opened a couple of inches.

With my pulse beating in my neck and blood roaring in my
ears, I stepped toward the door. Every cell of my being wanted to run. There
was something behind the door that sent fear so raw and complete through me
that every instinct told me to get out. Run out of the house and keep going.

But I wouldn’t go without Jessica.

Please let her be okay. Please . . . he didn’t
hurt her
. I pushed the door open.

Jessica was lying at the bottom of the tub, her eyes wide
open, watching me. Her blonde hair floated all around her head, no longer
attached to her scalp. Blood swirled upward from her mouth. She was at least a
foot longer. As if she’d grown rapidly overnight. She gave me a gummy smile.

I stopped, terror paralyzing me to the spot. I couldn’t tell
if she was alive or dead. “Jessica!”

Danny knelt in front of her, trailing a hand in the water
above her belly. He was bigger too, as if he’d grown a few years in a night.
His hair was all gone. Locks of it lay all over the bathroom floor. I ran to
the tub and grabbed her under the arms, lifting her up. Her head broke the
surface of the water, and her hair stayed in the tub.

She sat up, smiling, and her teeth were missing.

“Oh, my God. Danny, what did you do to her?” I lifted her
out of the water. She had to be twenty pounds heavier. I grabbed a towel and
wrapped it around her, clutching her and walking backward out of the bathroom.

“I aaaaam waaaatching heeeeer
traaansfoooorm.”

I ran down the hall, into Jessie’s bedroom and locked the
door, then laid her gently on my bed. My voice was high with fear and my entire
body trembled as I worked to dry her off. “I’m going to get you to the
hospital, Jessie. You’re going to be fine. We need to get you dressed.”

Jessie gave me a slow smile.
“It iiiiis
ooooooookay, Zooooeeee. Iiiit doooooes nooooot huuuurt.”

“Jessie, what happened to your teeth?”

Then I heard her voice in my head as I worked to get her
dressed.
They fell out, Zoe. I’m growing new ones. Look.
Aren’t they pretty?
She smiled widely, tilting her head back to show me.

And there they were. Several rows of tiny, razor sharp teeth
poking through her gums.

* * *

You need to go now, Zoe. They are coming
.
The Jessica-thing’s bizarre eyes tracked me as I backed away from her.

This wasn’t Jessica. Not anymore. She was gone; turned into
something alien. If some part of her was still in there, it wouldn’t be for
long.

“Who is coming?” I didn’t want to look at her, but I
couldn’t look away. I watched in horror as she changed, and the abject terror I
felt was complete. The world outside was going to shit. The person I cared
about most in the world was gone --- or mostly gone. The last remnants of the
love she felt for me warned me before being completely taken over.

The rest of them. The rest of us. They
can’t harvest you, Zoe. You are defective.

“I’m defective.” My voice sounded far away and tinny as I
tried to make sense of what the Jessica thing was telling me but it wasn’t
making sense. I had backed into her bedroom. I watched the doorway as the
hissing down the hall grew louder.

She slid of the bed, and she pulled herself along the carpet
toward me, her movements lizard-like.

Go now. They are almost here.

I ran to the door, slamming and locking it, then turned, my
back pressed to the cold wood, looking in disbelief at what she was becoming.

She cocked her head at me, studying me as if I were some
interesting species. To the new Jessica, maybe I was. Her movements had become
snake-like. Her arms, torso and legs moved in a strange, serpent-like paddling
manner. Her skull was growing, transforming; the forehead stretched backward,
the back of her head lengthening into a dome-like shape. Her teeth slid through
her gums, long and serrated.

I heard the sound of the front door opening, and hisses
overlapping one another.

I headed toward her window, unlocked it and lifted it. It
was second story. The drop wouldn’t kill me. But the ever-growing group of
zombies below the window would.

Thrown to the dead
. Her head
weaved side to side, like a cobra, and she sniffed the air, what used to be her
nostrils in a now sunken nose flaring.
Or eaten. I can smell
your blood, Zoe.

I looked at her one last time; the strange, alien thing that
used to be my niece. “The meteors. This is an invasion.”

Her eyes, now completely serpent green, slid to the door,
where the handle started turning.

I didn’t wait to see what was on the other side of the door.

* * *

Thank God for all that tree climbing when
I was a kid
. There was a huge old spruce tree with enormous branches
stretching out toward the windows, and in all other directions. The branches
closest to the window weren’t strong enough to hold me, but further in, they
grew thick. I needed to get onto the roof so that I could get a running start.

As I climbed out of the window, I grasped on to the gutter
first, pulling myself up enough that I could swing a leg onto the edge of the
roof. The snow that lay on top of the shingles had hardened. The temperature
had dropped overnight, and although I was freezing, the hardened snow made it
easier for me to gain purchase and pull myself up onto the roof. I said a
silent prayer of thanks that I hadn’t taken my boots off after going out to get
Danny. I didn’t have a jacket on, but the thick hoodie I wore over my old
sweatshirt kept the worst of the chill from my skin --- for the moment.

That and the fear and adrenalin spiking through my body kept
me warm, but I’d have to find a jacket to wear soon or I’d freeze to death.

I wasn’t going back into the house to get mine.

Scrambling up onto the roof, I crab walked backwards,
working my way up. If I wasn’t careful I’d slide down into the waiting claws of
the dead, who would happily break my fall.

Even with the moans and strange animal shrieks they made, I
heard the hissing sound coming from beneath the roof line, where I’d just
climbed out of Jessica’s window. I sat, frozen, watching for her --- for it, my
breaths coming in little pants.

The ovaloid head rose up and weaved, snake-like, upward,
emerging from above the roof line. The thing that used to be Jessica spotted
me, and a long, black tongue slipped out from between the serrated teeth and
licked its lips.

I scrambled backward, moving higher up onto the roof, my
mind racing. I was trapped. The dead were waiting below, and this reptilian
Jessica- thing was slithering toward me. It moved on its belly, zigzagging
upward, the insectile legs paddling upward.

The knife was still in my boot, sitting in the sheath I’d
made for it from thick elastic and Velcro. I’d thought, at the time, that I’d
never really have to use it. But I’d used it already in the last two days, and
I was about to use it again. I reached down and wrapped my fingers around the
Uberti, pulling it out of my boot and gripping it tightly. If I dropped it, it
was over.

Tears blurred my vision as I watched the thing slide upward
toward me. Was there anything of my niece left in this horrific thing? My voice
cracked when I spoke. “Jessica.”

“Zoooooeeee.”
The thing hissed in
reply. The tongue slipped out again, snapping in the air.
“I’m
soooooo huuuungry.”

My entire body trembled as I clutched the knife tightly in
my shaking hand.

“Juuuuust a taaaaaste, Zoooooeeee.”
It seemed that soon the thing wouldn’t be able to form words at all. The words
were becoming less and less audible with every passing second.

The thing was only a few feet from me now. The eyes,
greenish gold, sliding in sockets that had shrunken back, the lids no longer
there. It snapped jagged, shark-like teeth as it approached.

There was nowhere for me to go. This thing would follow me.
Silent sobs shook me as I waited. I knew I’d only get one chance.

Scaled legs scuttled upward, and the body zig-zagged as it
reached my feet. I waited for it to move a little further up, praying that it
wouldn’t take a bite out of one of my legs before I had the chance to stab it.

Moving forward with quick side to side movements, the
elongated neck stretched toward my face. It was so close now. Drool slid over
its teeth and down the greenish chin, dripping into the snow on both sides of
me. The snow sizzled, holes steaming where the thing’s saliva hit it.

A couple of drops hit my hoodie, burning holes into it. My
belly stung where its spit made its way onto my skin.

I screamed, it felt like I was being burned by cigarettes.

She was standing right over me. In a second, she would kill
me if I missed.

What used to be lips stretched over the teeth as the mouth
opened, head titled back. Eyes rolled back into the tipped head and a long,
throaty screech came from the depths of her throat.

I flipped the knife over handed and drew my hand back.

When her head came whipping down toward my face, I brought
my arm down with every ounce of strength I had, aiming for the left eye.

The knife sank into the strange, green-gold orb to the hilt,
and the creature shrieked, a sound of utter surprise, rage and agony.

I yanked the Uberti out and jammed it into the throat,
slicing sideways.

Black blood spurted, spraying onto the snow.

She gurgled, her eyes rolling in her ovoid head.

I hauled back my leg and kicked the thing in the chest,
sending it sliding down the roof, legs skittering for purchase. She slid over
the edge of the roof and vanished.