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Alien Attack |
| Written by Dan Greathead | |
| Thursday, 20 September 2007 | |
As I walked through the shadows of the town, cloaked in the black of the night, the scenes I had just witnessed turned over and over in my mind. Why? It was an everyday occurrence. You see and hear about that sort of thing everyday on the news, or in the papers. I suppose, witnessing it first hand makes an impact, like when you go to a concert or a football match, the memories stay for longer than if you had watched it on pay-per-view. The next thing I knew, I was down on the floor covered by an orange blanket, warm and comfortable against the cool night air. I stood up, not heeding the cries of, “Are you alright, mate?” and, “Get down you fool, do you want them to get you?”… Who? Why did they want to get me? Then I remembered, and all of my memories returned in a flash. I turned to face the people around me for the first time. They looked as if they were going to a fancy dress party, but I later discovered that they were an Elite Fighting Force. They handed me a weapon, some sort of gun, and said, “You’ve got to get out of the city!” As shocked as I was, I’m not stupid. I weaved my way between the gutted, overturned cars. Food. I needed food. I had no idea how long this dilemma was set to last. I quickly scanned the rows of buildings on each side of the road and keeping to the shadows, ran up to an off-license. The shutters were down so I aimed roughly at where I thought the door would be, and fired. I was knocked back about fifty feet. I stirred myself and checked for any injuries. As the most serious appeared to be a broken arm, I decided against sitting around and picked myself up. I ran over to the off license. When I got there I wasn’t surprised to find that the entire façade of the shop was lying on the pavement, directly in front of a huge gaping hole. I went inside, and filled my pockets with as much read-to-eat food as I could, which in the end wasn’t a great deal, mostly chocolate and sweets. I looked outside, and it is a good job I did so because I was being watched, and fired upon by something that looked and sounded sub-human. I threw myself behind the counter and returned fire, but it just kept coming and coming. I looked for a way out. Luckily, there was a door which I assumed led to a stockroom or somewhere similar. Wherever it led, it had to be better than this. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I opened the door and, watching my back, dived through the door, straight into the clutches of many more of the sub-human looking creatures. They were playing pool, obviously drunk or stoned out of their tiny little minds, but all the same there was only one of me and maybe twelve of them. I fired a shot at the pool table, making sure that I was leaning against something solid, although it made little difference. I hit the ground outside the off license running, crushing three, maybe four of the little bastards as I landed. As the sweat evaporated off my forehead, I wished that I had stayed with the Elite Fighting Force, and then I began to wish that it wasn’t past closing time, because I was so thirsty that my throat was dry. The creature’s weapons were far superior to mine, as I found out when I decided to take refuge behind an overturned lorry. It ended up about thirty feet in the air and was losing altitude fast. I knew that I couldn’t move fast enough, so a laid down and rapidly fired at the descending lorry. This did very little except push me back into the ground, and the lorry landed without a scratch, no more that six inches from the tip of my nose. When I decided that the little creature’s voices had died down enough, I clambered up from my DIY grave and up through the lorry. I left the vehicle behind me and headed south towards the river, killing along the way. I discovered that I could control the power on my weapon, simply by turning a dial on the top that I hadn’t noticed before. I thought that if I could make it down to the river, I could find a boat and hopefully have free passage out of the city. I made it to the river, having had many near fatalities and several not so serious injuries such as a dislocated wrist, and a twisted ankle. I scanned the waterway and the only vessel was out in the middle of the river. I pretended that my arm didn’t hurt like crazy and I grabbed my gun with it. I dove into the water, taking a deep breath on the way, and arrived at the boat gasping for breath. I clambered on deck and realised that it was part of the River Police fleet. The radio was gone though, so there was nothing for it but to try and start her up. She turned over straight away and I sped down the river, munching on the few bars of chocolate that I had left, but it didn’t make me feel much better. As I was nearing the mouth of the river, I noticed a huge bulk on the horizon. I couldn’t remember there being any islands this far down river, so there were only two things, in my mind, that it could be. Either, a flying saucer or a huge battleship. Whichever, I was dead, just one ore lingering and painful than the other. As I drew closer, I realised that it was indeed a battleship, probably eight thousand times the size of my tiny vessel. I steered the boat to shore and jumped out. I ran down the path at the side of the river until I was level with the bow. I set my weapon to full, and just as I was about to fire, I was ambushed. I turned, but too slowly and was shot in my good arm. I didn’t take too kindly to this so I fought through the pain and pulled off a couple of shots before I remembered that I had my gun on full power, and was now flying through the air at an alarming speed towards the battleship. I missed by a couple of feet and swam away from it as fast as my injured body would allow. When I was what I estimated to be fifty feet away, I turned. Treading water, I aimed directly at the hull of the ship. Sweat was dripping off my neck, or was it water? Either way, I didn’t particularly care. I knew that there were sharks swimming just outside the mouth of the river and I wanted to get out of the water as quickly as possible, so, I fired. Even though I was in water, the force of the shot still knocked me back a fair distance, which surprised me, and I think I slipped a disc, but again I fought through the pain. I reached my own vessel just in time to see the bow of the ship sink into the deepest part of the river, which was pretty damn deep. I started my boat and slowly she started to move. I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see a hoar of the little creature’s at the back of my boat. As I was about to fire, they all disintegrated, vanishing completely. I got back to the task in hand, and piloted my boat off the river and out onto the open sea. I had left the city! Copyright 2007 Dan Greathead {moscomment} |
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