Earth escape

Chapter 5

We heard little whiny sounds, almost like the buzz of a flie. Then I started to sweat and tremble; they were getting closer. Even though we still couldn't see anything, I had already loaded my pistol, ready to fire. After looking around, I noticed that there was a twinge of fear in the crowd.

Suddenly, John, our battle leader and second-in-command of the camp, stood up and shouted:

"Soldiers, whatever comes through those mountains, we will stand our ground! Why? Because we are survivors!"

Then everyone cheered back in agreement.

That's when we saw them. Dozens and dozens of enemy ships came speeding out of nowhere, with a deafaning noise and firing down at us. We all shot back. There were shouts, bullets and explosions everywhere. The aliens were dropping bombs on us! I then saw a couple of men load a cannon and fire it, the projectile directly hitting one of the ships, which then came crashing down to the ground only a few meters away. I stared in astonisment.

Suddenly, a woman to my right shouted:

"Look! They're coming at us from the ground, too!"

Sure enough, I looked out into the distance and saw what looked like a giant-sized tank, rolling at a steady pace toward the camp. There were at least ten of them, and they were so big that they probably fitted about twenty aliens inside them.

But then, to my surprise one of the mighty tanks blew up in flames, fragments of it spreading everywhere. That's when I remembered that a few of our people had put the hidden traps in the ground. Unfortunately, only a few were blown up, for many of them just kept rolling toward us, now only about a hundred meters away.

The tanks had now caught the attention of most of the campers, and so we shot at them like mad, though we didn't cause too much damage.

After realizing that my little pistol was practically useless, I threw it away and got out one of my hand grenades.

"Right, I have to calculate this perfectly" I said to myself. 

So I took out the pin and threw it at the tank closest to me. It was a terrible shot, and it didn't go anywhere near it. I cursed and took out my second and last grenade. Taking a deep breath, I took out the pin and tossed the grenade. It flew through the air, aimed directly at the tank, which then went up in the flames with a loud BOOM.

"Yes!" I shouted, and then noticed Leah staring at me in amazement.

"Did you just...?" she started.

"Yes, I did" I said with a proud smile on my face.

But before the conversation could go any further, she screamed and then dived behind one of the crates, taking me down with her.

"What the...?" I asked.

"There are aliens pouring out of the tanks!" she interrupted "Here, have this! I hope you know how to use it!"

She handed me a black submachine gun, and then got up and started to shoot back at the invading aliens. I gladly joined her.

But once I saw the aliens, I started to have second thoughts. They were big, monstrous creatures, with long arms and legs. They had two dark, beady eyeballs, and their skin was an ugly greenish brown colour. They ran at us like lions chasing their prey.

I soon lost count of how many I had killed, but they just kept coming, streaming out of the huge tanks. I saw as a few aliens tackled one of our soldiers and beat him to death. I screamed in fear and kept on spraying bullets everywhere.

The battle went on for about fifteen more minutes, but finally the great mass of aliens started to decrease. I also noticed that there were hardly any alien ships left, most of them had been shot down by our side. The few remaining ones suddenly panicked and escaped, seeing that the battle was lost.

I walked throughout the camp grounds. There were bodies everywhere, both human and alien. The good side was that we had won. The bad side was that we had lost many. I recognized a few of the dead faces. The man that had given me the grenades, squad B's leader,... 

Also, entire squad N had fallen in battle. I wiped away the tears that started to roll down my cheeks. It was so sad.

After giving an approximated count, commander John told us that we had lost about a hundred people, meaning that there was only about three hundred of us left.

"Alright, listen up people" he said sternly "Now what we are going to do is pack up and get out of here, because if we don't hurry, we all know what's going to happen, don't we?"

We did. After or during a battle, the aliens would contact their leaders, who would send their deadly weapon, Skêtior, to go and wipe out all the human survivors. If we encountered it, there was no escape and we would definitely die. Thankfully, Skêtior was slow and would take at least a few hours to get to us, because it would be somewhere else around the globe. That would give us enough time to pack up and get as much distance between us and the location of the camp as possible, before Skêtior arrived.

And that's what we did. There was no time to lose, and so for the next hour everyone was running about the place, getting all they needed for the journey. We also put all the bodies in a pile and lit a bonfire, and after a minute of silence, we were off, abandoning our home and setting off on a journey to an unknown land for all of us.