Midnight Disaster ~FINALIST Watty Awards 2012~

Chapter 32 (Revised 4/15/2020)

There were far more of the aliens out here than I had guessed based on Clarissa's guess. The second the doors slammed shut behind me, all their eyes were on me like they were a pack of wolves and I was a hunk of meat. I supposed that in a way, that's exactly what this situation was like.

I tried to keep my head up, to hold the confidence that had lured me out here in the first place, but it was dissolving away with the realization of exactly how outnumbered I was. As uncertain of my own body as I was, I forced my eyes to move down the line of aliens.

They were all unfamiliar though the predator-like gleam in their eyes was not.

"I want to talk to Miles," I said.

They blinked at me, one going so far as to lick its lips, but none of them replied.

I blinked back. Could they even understand me? I doubted it. Even with the doubts, I found myself making the same request.

Still, they looked at me like a meal which made it all the more interesting that they hadn't swarmed me by now. They were holding back for some reason. Feeling a little more confident with the assumption, I stepped toward them, hands balling into fists at my sides.

"Where is Miles?" I called, hoping maybe he would hear me from wherever he was hidden and that would be enough to flush him out.

Still nothing changed. An alien at the end of the line, one who looked an awful lot like Miles with the transparent skin and choppy hair, caught my eye. If this was supposed to be his idea of a joke, I wasn't in for it.

If anything, I was angry.

Before I could quell it down, I lunged for the ugly alien. My fists went right for its face with all the force that my rage could summon. His blood soaked my hands, face, and clothes. When I came back from the blackout, I was crouched over him and he wasn't moving.

The aliens around me watched with little to no expressions across their face.

"I'm here, Maya," a familiar voice said from behind me.

I didn't take my eyes off the unconscious alien at first. The sound of soft footsteps on the grass behind me made me turn, wiping the blood from my face with my forearm. Miles looked the same now as he had the first day I had ever seen him. That was a thought that should've made me angry, but in the wake of what I had just done, I had no capacity left for it. All I felt was sadness.

It was impossible to tell what Miles felt, if anything at all. He strolled toward me, arms held out to either side, and I guessed that was a nonverbal cue to the aliens around me. There was dried blood on his chin, but other than that, he looked the same as he always had.

"What do you want?" he asked at last.

"What do I want?" I asked, exasperated. "What do you want? You're the one who's invaded our town, torn countless families apart. I thought you were my friend...I went to such trouble to save you from an unjust slaughter only for you to bring that exact thing to my doorstep. Why?"

"I never meant for you to get hurt. Or Cameron. You two were kind to me, and I welcome you even now. The truth is, we need to eat just as anyone else does. Our planet is dying. Your planet is overpopulated. So many of you humans and not enough resources to sustain you all. We're doing you a kindness."

I scoffed, trying to keep myself from showing the sadness that I also felt. "Was killing Lilliana a kindness?" I asked. "Sure she wasn't always there, but she was nice to you. The woman was the only family I had left, and you took her from me."

"That wasn't my intention. I will find who harmed her, and they will pay."

I tried to smile at him, hoping against hope to keep my tears at bay, but they refused to listen. The first of them bubbled in the corner of my eye and slid down my cheek. "That won't bring her back, Miles. You know as well as I do that she never should've been killed in the first place."

"I agree but such is the way of life."

"You're going to kill everyone in the community center, aren't you?" I asked, unable to think anything else.

"I...don't want to do that," Miles said, taking an uncertain step forward. "You all have suffered enough with the initial invasion. I actually...wanted to work out a deal with you."

"I have nothing to offer you."

"You could strike the same deal with me that you did when you found me," Miles said. "I'm not foolish. I know that eventually people outside of this town will catch wind that something serious has happened. Help will be sent, and we'll be demolished. My hope is for us to blow town, to spread out and hunt across the globe. For that to be successful, no one can ever know we were ever here. And that's where you would come into it."

I flinched backward as if I had been slapped. "We can't just make what you've done not exist," I said. "Even if I agreed to this deal, there's no telling that everyone would go along with it. Everyone in that building has lost at least one loved one. They don't want to just go on with their lives. They want revenge."

Miles lifted his chin as if I had something particularly distasteful. "I see," he said.

The tone he used to say it sent chills down my spine.

"What is it?" I asked.

"If we can't live peacefully, there's only one way we can still do what we need to do," Miles said. At his side, his fingers extended into claws. "And that's to wipe out any witnesses."

I took my que then, turning on my heels to run for the door. I didn't know if Miles was chasing me or not because I refused to look back. I pushed against the doors, thankful when they opened, and fell to the floor inside as the survivors worked to put the board back in place.

Cameron was the first to approach, dropping to his knees beside me. I sat up, and he pulled me against him, his grip so tight it nearly knocked the air from my lungs. "Please tell me you're not hurt," he said, fingers running lightly over a patch of blood on my clothes.

"It's not mine," I said, staring off into the shadows on the other side of the building.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I talked to Miles," I said, picturing the eerily calm look on his face as he had told me the truth of the invasion, the plan. "He said the aliens came here for food. Their planet is doomed, and Earth was the closest." I paused, unsure if I should spit out the next bit of information or not. "He said he would make a deal with us."

"A deal?" Cameron asked, pulling back enough to push my hair out of my face. A lock stuck stubbornly in the blood drying on my cheek.

"They want to move on, to hunt in other towns. They said they would leave if we promised not to tell anyone about what really happened here."

"That's absurd! He can't think we'd ever do something like that," Clarissa said from nearby.

I looked up at her through half-lidded eyes. I hadn't even been aware that she had approached.

"I told him the same thing," I said.

"I bet he didn't like that," Cameron said.

"He told me they would still do their plan. They're just going to wipe us out first."