Chapter 4. No Hiding Place

Fear gripped Becky, and she lost control of the wheels. The vehicle skidded off the road and crashed into a tree. 

“Becky!” Jimmy yelled as he shook her. This was not the time to fall unconscious. They had to run. After several shakes by Jimmy, Becky exhaled.

“What happened?” she asked, rubbing her head.

“Run now; talk later.” Jimmy kicked open the door, quickly jumped down from the vehicle, and headed straight to the driver’s side to help Becky out.

The creature started approaching, firing multiple blue, glowing balls at them, but they were fast enough to roll away. The glowing blue balls blasted the vehicle away with a deadly shock wave.

They ran as fast as they could, trying to get away from the creature. At this time, Jimmy realized that everything happening was a reality, and he wasn’t dreaming as he had thought at first. Everything was happening so fast. He needed to fight back, but he didn’t have a weapon. They did not have any idea where they were running to, but it was better to run than to wait for the creature to get to them.

After a while, Becky slackened her pace as she panted heavily. She was exhausted from running and needed to rest. Jimmy slowed down and started running toward Becky, who was leaning on a tree.

“Are you alright?” Jimmy asked, showing concern.

“I can’t run any further. I need to…”

Becky’s words were pushed back into her dry throat by the sound of a blast from the creature’s lethal weapon. However, they were lucky again that the creature missed. Becky had no choice but to quicken her pace and start running once more as Jimmy followed her cue.

They were in a wooded area as they ran towards the Northside of the woods. They were greeted by the sound of rustling leaves followed by the chirpings of birds. With no idea of where exactly they were running to, they came to a halt under a fig tree.

They both panted heavily as Jimmy broke the silence, “Do you have a phone on you?” he asked. He wanted to check their location to know exactly the part of the woods they were in since they couldn’t be running without any idea of where they were headed.

Becky leaned on the fig tree, facing down; she tried to catch her breath for a while and then lifted her head to speak. 

“I stopped carrying a phone since the cell tower was destroyed.”

“What do you mean, ‘the cell tower was destroyed?’”

When the invasion happened, there was a flash of a shockwave that traveled across the sky, releasing an oxygen-eating fireball that destroyed every cell tower around the Earth. This incident made the world leaders lose access to a joint military task force to fight the invasion. This made planet Earth vulnerable to the invasion that they didn’t see coming. There was no way to launch a deadly attack to thwart the invasion as most of the military bases around the world were destroyed within minutes by a tiny white device, which created an oxygen-eating fireball followed by a deadly shockwave.

This type of tiny white device looks like a tennis ball. It flew around the world’s military bases on all continents, reaching speeds of Mach 3.3-- that’s more than 3,500 kph and almost four times as fast as the average cruising speed of a commercial airliner. Upon reaching its targeted military base, it unfolded and changed into a large device, creating an oxygen-eating fireball followed by a deadly shockwave.

Becky emitted a long, deep breath and then opened her mouth to speak. “Seems like you have no idea of what’s happening around our world, do you?”

“I don’t. I just woke up from a coma.”

“I see,” Becky muttered as she slowly moved closer to Jimmy. “I can now see why you managed to escape the aliens.”

Becky was lucky to have escaped being taken by the aliens by slowing her heartbeat. It was now clear to her how Jimmy had managed to escape as well.

Before Jimmy could say a word, he caught a glimpse of the shadow of the creature. As he flicked around to run, the creature slammed him into one of the trees.

“Oh… Shit!” Becky let out a scream as she quickly pulled out her dagger.

One thing about being a field agent in NASA is getting trained in self-defense and how to intercept an enemy. She was good at using her dagger, but she ran out of luck charging toward the creature.

Before she could get closer to the creature, she was slammed into a tree too. With no one to help them, both Jimmy and Becky swallowed a lump in their throat with fear in their eyes as they both dragged themselves up to their feet to face their fate.

With humongous half-green eyes, the 7ft tall creature stared down at them with his weapon. 

“You two will surrender and come with me!” echoed the creature in a static voice as he slowly lowered his weapon.

“Hell to the no!” Jimmy disputed.

Jimmy had been taught during one of his field combat training sessions never to surrender to the enemy. The marines believed it was better to die in action than surrender and be captured by the enemy.

Becky brought her lips closer to Jimmy’s ear and whispered to him, “This is not the time to argue. Perhaps, if we do as the creature has said, we will live another day.”

“Do you know what they…” Jimmy’s words were cut off as the creature landed a powerful punch to his face. Jimmy couldn’t fight back as another powerful punch landed on his face. Punch after punch, he fell to his knees and passed out.

Ten Minutes Later

Jimmy was awakened by multiple laughs followed by a whirring sound. He quickly jumped to his feet only to realize he was in a strange place. There was nothing around him that he recognized. He was in a bright white room, and the strange thing that got him thinking was that the bright white room had no door or window. The laughs he heard were coming from behind the walls of the room.