Marionette (A 'The 5th Wave' Fanfiction) [COMPLETED] #wattys2017

2. Sleepless nights; Chapter II.

    I can imagine Grandad shaking his head if he caught me with a gun. “Put that thing away before you waste the bullets,” he once said. I felt proud he trusted me not to blow something up. “Your stuff is in the garage. Keep your nose out of the hut!” Ma's orders, I'm sure. Funny, because the first thing she gave me when we got off the plane was Pa's pistol, now nestled in my pocket.

    A few minutes walk from our house was all that separated us from the forest. Grandpa had friends with whom he would go hunting on Saturdays. The day I had gymnastics. He kept the guns and all the goodies in the shed in our backyard.

    I asked him if I could try one. He didn't seem all that reluctant but Ma said, “No, I will not see you with any of those deadly weapons. I'll get a heart attack!” She would threaten us with those every time Pa and me attempted being physically productive.

    Three years ago on my twelfth birthday Grandpa made me a bow with a set of arrows and painted some old shoe boxes to resemble targets. Despite Ma's resistance he taught me the basic stance, where to aim efficiently, how to fire and all that. I never took classes so it was only a habit when I needed to let loose a few strings.

    I picture a pistol as a miniature bow—it helps me when I have to kill a rabbit for food or something.

    I end up on a motorway clustered with cars and SUVs and trucks and motorbikes. The windows are broken and all the ️‘precious️️’ and ️️‘valuable️️’ things have been looted. To sum it up it looks like a junkyard of human waste.

    I will myself not to make a sound while I walk over the asphalt, shards of glass crunching under my weight and some smaller pieces embding themselves into my heel, the least protected part of a ballerina shoe (since the toes are obviously the most used).

    A thousand years and five hundred torments later the glass isn't on every step of the way and the vehicles are moved more-or-less to the sides of the motorway. Like someone wanted to clear a path in the middle. With that haunting thought I pick up my speed once more, running from all. The stars wink down at me. All the lucky ones. I feel so exposed it's bone-chilling.

    Being alone isn't all that new to me. Back at home, the only people I actually socialized with were my grandparents, few of their friends and teachers. And if we're talking about a kid, then that'll have to be my neighbour. A cute guy with dimples and shining pale eyes. Minor problem one: he was six. Minor problem two: he's probably dead.

    That said, being alone is not the worst issue. Being alone in a foreign place—now that's painful. I have no idea what is what. I might as well be heading for a certain doom for all I know. Not only do I have a poor sence of direction, I'm also on a completely different continent.

    I remember the day we first spotted the green Mothership. The news and media were full of it. Finally we know of another civilization. We're not alone.

    Those weird alien fanatics with the grey shirts with the bulb-headed aliens with three fingers felt like a comic fan that got a whole stack of comics for his birthday—heaven. I wonder what they feel like now. That is, if they even survived. Not likely.

    We once watched the old telly in our livingroom. The telly had a tape player in it and you couldn't control it with a remote so we always had to walk to it to change a channel. It wasn't that bad, but when the guys in my class talked about a TV series, like Teen Wolf, The Vampire Diaries or Mean Girls, I never had any idea what any of it meant. So once at the said TV a reporter quite known in England was discussing what the Mothership could be. An unknown form of intergalactical species? No clue.

    Grandma, though, got an ️️‘excellent️️’ idea. With all the uproar the planes had to be cheaper, right? She had a distant family of some sorts near Urbana. A fun way to pass the time awaiting the visitors.

    That was a week before the First Wave. The flight went smoothly; I can't say the same for the landing. We flew over the Atlantic ocean and about twenty feet above the landing point the First Wave hit and we went plummeting the rest of the way with increasing speed. I was scared crapless. All electronics went dead and the pilots lost connection with the base.

    The picture of the giant crater-like hole the impact created burns in the back of my eyelids every time I attempt to sleep. Like all the horrors of the day choose that time to bite. In the part that's most important—rest to regain strength. I wonder how far the Others had planned this out. If only I knew back then that the crater weren't the only consequences the fall had.

    Before the catastrophe I was for the most part asleep and when I woke I had this pushing feeling in my gut. Most likely my fear of heights. “Can we switch seats, sir?” I asked Pa, fumbling with the material of my hoodie. The seat next to the window unnerved me.

    Grandpa looked at me from above his newspaper he bought at the airport back home. “Oh? Don't worry, Rosie, we're nearly there. We'll be on safe land soon enough,” he assured me, enveloping my bony hand in his withered one, a touch I knew as well as my own palm.

    I tried for a smile. “I know but sir . . . I don't like my seat, sir. Can we please switch seats?” My grandparents were old style and preffered that things be done similarly like back in the day, resolving in me addressing them as ‘sir️️’ and ️️‘ma'am️️’ and when talking to them referring to them in plural.

    Once again mostly Ma's idea—she was the more traditional one and liked things to be done properly and was all up for girls wearing skirts, visiting church on Sundays and Christmas holidays, pray before and after a meal, sit straight and always be a lady. She visited an all-girls' school when she was my age and they were strict on her as she was strict on Mother and now on me.

    Speaking of the devil, Grandma perked up from her nest. She had that long bird-like nose and the hawk eyes, never calm, always weary and cautious. If I think about it the last-minute bun on her head kind of did look like a big grey nest. “Rose, stop that nonsense. Leave your poor grandpa to rest.️️”

    That triggered something in Pa and he unfastened his seatbelt. “No no. It's fine, Marie.️️” He rolled the newspaper in his hands into a tube, as if he wanted to use it to squash a fly, and he got up, grunting under his breath from the effort.

    Guilt weighed me down like a boulder when I fumbled with the seatbelt. Grandpa pushed himself closer to the seats to free a path for me. I stepped over his feet and plumped down to his seat, yet again struggling with the seatbelt.

    Grandma didn't seem pleased that he gave in—not very disciplinary. Still, she stayed quiet when Pa huffed in annoyance. “You're such an oaf, Rosie,️️” he said sternly. I didn't like when he called me Rosie. It made me feel childish. I like to think of myself as mature. Now I would do anything for him to say it again.

×Dictionary×

Motorway- highway
Telly- TV