Vanished

Chapter One: "No-one's Left"

Sunset Valley, 8:06 AM

It all started out as a what would have been a normal morning, a bit quieter than usual, but still a morning much like any other. We were in the midst of getting ready to do what we usually did after we’d bought our mobile home on a small property – we had been planning to start a garden and grow vegetables and plant fruit trees so we were planning to go to the local nursery.

“It doesn’t seem normal” Haruo’s pensive look worried me. We hadn’t heard the sound of children laughing and making noise as we normally would have on a normal day. The school was just down the road and by now we would have heard joyful shouts and laughter. I also hadn’t noticed any cars going past either, let alone, the resultant noise from the honking of irritated drivers. Why was it so quiet out. Was it a holiday that we hadn’t been aware of or had just slipped our mind.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t heard any sort of noise that we usually would.” I looked up at the ceiling, “Usually there’d be a plane flying around...hauling a banner advertising something. But I haven’t heard any sound, whether it was a car, a plane or people.”

“I don’t like it.” Haruo stated, “There’s something fishy going on.”

It was a clear day; nary a cloud in the sky. In some ways that made it even more frightening. Memories of watching The Mist a horror movie played havoc in my head making me wonder if I could separate fiction from reality. If there was anything supernatural that was hunting us; in this clear weather we’d be able to see it coming a mile away. In any case the chirping of the birds made this whole situation even more eerie. They were the only other things still around other than animals.

“I don’t like this situation.” Haruo noted, “We’re too unprotected in this place.” He had a point, the walls of this mobile home could easily be pierced through and we had no means with which to protect ourselves.

“But where exactly could we go that would provide us with safety?” The only place that I could think of was the military base in town.

“Yeah, as much as I want access to weapons…” Haruo trailed off as he looked out the window into the distance thoughtfully. “...if anything intelligent is what attacked us, the military base would be its first target and we don’t even know if we’re being hunted if we even are. I don’t even want to know what caused the disappearance of our families. Because...what if it happens again?” I could see why he didn’t want to know. Our stress levels were through the roof and we hadn’t even taken one step outside our home. Haruo and I had chosen to move in together after skirting around our so-called relationship in high-school. We had put our savings into this place and this was our starter home.

Haruo and I had been long-time friends from elementary school much to Parker’s chagrin. Parker had been sniffing around me all the time but he was constantly Mr. Popularity and I didn’t want to be another one of his conquests. And with this situation, we were wondering if anyone other than ourselves had survived. Because we couldn’t see anyone else.

“Like it or not, we gotta leave this place. We’re a sitting target.” My boyfriend’s lips had pursed into a hardened line. I could feel his terror and I was terrified myself, but I could also feel the determination coursing through him like a palpable wave of grit and fire. We would somehow manage to survive...whatever this was.

Before we could gather up our wits around us, we heard a frantic banging on the door of our mobile home. “Quick!!! Let me in…” It was a male voice, panicked and sounding scared. Haruo went to the door, cautioning me to stay back just in case it was something that would pose a threat.

“Who is it!” Haruo’s growl was a primal gutteral sound torn from the very bottom of his chest.

“Noel!!! C’mon!!! Let me in!” There was no mistaking the voice or the sheer panic.

“What the hell happened?” Haruo asked him once Noel was safely inside. There was a note of steel that permeated my boyfriend’s voice making him sound harsher than he usually was. “Where’s Phil and the rest?”

“I don’t know...I don’t know…”

“Wait a sec? You mean to tell me you haven’t seen a single soul? How’d you know to come here? How’d you even figure that we were still around let alone anyone else?”

“I...I...just took a hunch...you’re my best friend...and...well...I was just hoping that you were still around. Thank the Watcher you answered.”

“Something chasing after you?”

“No...but...I just don’t feel comfortable being outdoors with no-one around like this. It’s friggin’ eerie.”

“Well, you’d better get it the hell together because we can’t stay here…” my boyfriend informed Noel harshly. “We’re too exposed in this shell of a building. But first of all, we need to hit the base, see if anyone’s survived and gather weapons because we’re going to need them. We’re taking a stroll into the middle of a poo-storm and you’re gonna be a liability if you can’t get it together.” He gave Noel a stone-hard look, “I can’t have you going to pieces, so you’re just gonna have to buck up and find your spine.”

“But honey…” I interjected, interrupting Haruo’s stream of invective. “What if our friends survived and this is the only place that they know of to search for us?

Haruo shook his head, "There's no point in waiting while we're defenseless. We can't sit here and hope that our friends have survived and will make their way to us. We only have a kitchen knife and steak-knives to defend ourselves. They’ll make their way to us…” He trailed off and I didn’t have to ask to know the insinuation of the unsaid. I could only hope that they would make it to us or find out where we were and locate us.

But before we could make plans to get out of here, another round of hysterical screaming and banging on the door ensued.

Haruo looked at me and asked me pointedly, “Did you tell everyone about our new place?”

“Will you quit griping, and let them in?!” I snapped, my own patience at an end.

“Noel…” Holly said, “You’re not going to believe what we saw…” she trailed off letting Noel’s imagination run rampant. “I think we saw something that had purple skin.”

“It was an alien, I think…” Bebe gasped. As much as we were indisposed to think that it was all in her fantasies – Bebe had a tendency to have wild flights of fancy, the fact that Holly, usually strait-laced and unaffected by such mental meanderings, was indulging her in that flight of fancy, gave us second thought.

\

Haruo raised an eyebrow and glared at her, “Wait? What?! Are you sure that’s what you saw? It just wasn’t a figment of your overactive imagination?” He was finding it hard to believe since Bebe was always prone to telling a whopper of a good story.

“No...it wasn’t my imagination.” The terror and the stress of the journey to our house had caught up with Bebe and she exploded on Haruo. “I know bloody well what I saw and he had pointed ears like Spock. We caught sight of him as he ducked behind some bushes behind Main and Victory Crescent.”

“Phil and Clarissa…” Noel said, gasping audibly. “They live in that general vicinity. We need to-”

Haruo cut him off, “We need to get weapons. Hitting the base just became that much more important. We need to get the weapons before the aliens do. If what Bebe is telling us is true, we’ve been overrun by these purple-skins from who knows where, maybe from the Aquarius quadrant…” he snapped sarcastically, waving the machete he had retrieved from the space between the kitchen stove and the counter...

“We’re not going to be much of any help with only our fists for weapons let alone our kitchen knives.”

“They could end up zapping us into atoms.” Holly said. She sounded even more terrified than before.

“I read something about asymmetrical warfare...” the rest of us looked confused and Haruo explained, “...it’s fighting against a numerically superior enemy via hit and run tactics, essentially guerilla warfare, like what the North Vietnamese used against the United States during the Viet Nam War…” He looked at each of us. “...but in order to fight these guys we’re going to need to get some weapons, preferably rifles, pistols and grenades. If you find a 50 calibre sniper rifle, let me know. Because we’re going to need that too. They’re probably too numerous in numbers to take on alone.”

“So…” Noel said, “We’re going to need claymores.”

“Now you’re thinking.” Haruo grinned at him with a . “That’s exactly the type of weapon we need. Maneuver them into a choke-point and mine the entire location. Anything that we can get our hands on at the base, C4, Semtex, TNT, essentially anything that goes kaboom plus their charging detonators. We’ll send ‘em back to their home planet in pieces.”

I felt reassured that both Bebe and Holly were under our roof at the moment. Perhaps the fact that they saw an alien meant that the aliens were harvesting people to take back as specimens but to wipe out the populace of an entire town meant that the aliens needed to be fought. All the times that we saw the greens were just a reconnoiter of our planet for the benefit of their kind. What we assumed as harmless pollination, the alien babies, the probings, the exploration and research of our planet by these greens was actually a front for something more sinister. The smile gradually faded from my face as I realized what the ramifications of this were – that we were going to have an all-out war with the aliens, that we had passed off for something so innocent and a kind of a novelty if you got abducted. We should have seen it sooner.

“When we step out, I need you to take rear-guard, Noel, we’ll keep Holly, River and Bebe between us. You get the kitchen knife, I’ll take the machete. I wish I had two of them, but we only have the one.” my boyfriend looked worriedly at Noel. "And if we come across friends...hopefully, they haven’t been turned.”

“Perish the thought.” Bebe said, but I knew that there was always the possibility of a turncoat.

“We can’t trust everybody that we meet; we don’t know who is and isn’t working with the enemy.” my interjection aroused the attention of the two males who were busily discussing arms and their effectiveness. “If they have the ability to space-travel, then they’re on a level of civilization that is miles ahead of ours.” Haruo and Noel nodded as if that was a prudent suggestion and Haruo grinned at me. “They could wipe us out like us stepping on a bug crawling across the carpet.”

“Good thinking...honey, we can’t treat anyone as if they’re friendly. Because we don’t know who’s working for the aliens and who isn’t if the world has been overrun.” He noted, “We’re going to stick tightly together until we’ve all got rifles and pistols in hand. Make sure you grab a web-belt and a holster while we’re in the armory...and I’m going to see what we can do about finding keys for a vehicle that we can use.”

"Tank?” Noel asked.

“You think I could learn to drive one effectively inside of two hours?” Haruo asked sarcastically. “Uh...no. Just a plain ol’ pick-up or an SUV that can hold at least eleven people.”

Noel asked him, “You think we’ll find anyone who hasn’t been captured?”

“I’ll hold out hope…” was Haruo’s terse response. “But it isn’t flickering brightly at the moment.”

Homeless in Sunset Valley

Chapter One – “Out on the Streets”

Everyone romanticizes homelessness until it happens to them. Sure, everyone says, “Oh, homelessness is a problem that the person who is homeless has created for themselves. If they would just get a job, they wouldn’t be homeless, would they?” Well, it’s not that simple.

How River and I became homeless was one where I would say was not a problem that I created. What horrific kind of parents did I have that I would choose homelessness over having a roof over my head?

Imagine living with a parent that didn’t give two tinker’s damns about your welfare, whose main goal in life was to beat you down to the point where you didn’t even have an identity. In my household, I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion; was called stupid every opportunity. My ambitions were mocked and belittled, my goals sabotaged in every way possible just so that my mother could exert control over me for the rest of my life. There were no marks on me, so I couldn’t run to the police for help. I would have been laughed out of the station. Man up, if they aren’t beating you, you’re OK. Didn’t matter that one’s soul was being killed. So in that atmosphere of despair and utter futility, I stayed...until River came along.

Society says that you need to honor your mother and father. Even if your mother is an abusive tyrant and your father is an enabler to the n’th degree.

I chose to rebel from those abuses...and willingly paid the price. My life was not worth abasing myself to my abusers.

If you have parents who love you and care for you, don’t take them for granted. There are some of us who haven’t had that opportunity to have that kind of caring set of parents.

Unfortunately, Mrs. McIrish was too full up in her household to take me in...and thus River decided that she was going to stick with me, over the objections of her mother. River wanted nothing more than to see me healed and she was prepared to go through hardship to do it. She said that she didn’t care. That she would go through hell if she had to in order to make sure that I got away from my parents.

River and I had only just begun to see each other in a romantic light – we were testing the waters, then this whole “Get out” business with my mother happened along. I was sick and tired of my mother using that from the time I was in elementary school and 9 years old so I finally called her bluff, packed my clothes and walked out of the house. I think my mother was gaping at the fact that her long spine-less kick-toy finally grew a spine and told her off. She wasn’t expecting that.

So we were out on the street and broke; absolutely nothing in our pockets and no food to eat. It was either swipe food off the trees or starve. Because we sure as hell were not going to steal from the vendors.

Only, I didn’t know just how hard of a road that would be.

Day One:

Well, our first day out on the street started out with a rather smoggy morning. It was at least 8:04AM by my watch. My gal-pal and I decided to synchro our watches to make sure that we knew what time it was and that we were on matched times.

I had decided to get my hair cut real short so as to save money...on haircuts for at least six months. And wore old ratty clothes so that I wouldn’t get the clothes I treasured dirty and wet.

We knew the weather was going to get hot, once the smog burned off by midday, so we needed to get an early start. If we didn’t we would pay for it by heat-exhaustion. I decided to jog over to Grady’s Junkyard to see if I could dumpster-dive in there and come up with some valuables that I could hock at the Aleister’s Elixir/Consignment Shoppe. Yeah, have to be pretentious and put the double-the-consonant-and-add-an-e Middle Englishe-style spin on the word shop. The etymological history escapes me. Anyways, my objective was to dive and try to see if I could come up with something useful that I could pawn and hopefully get some decent return on.

This also would mean that I would need a shower at the end of it all. Yeah, good luck trying to find that while homeless. Also add to that, that evidently Bylaw Officer MacCready was already on our hind-ends thanks to my mother who shot her a note saying that I was a vagrant...and thus now I was §1,500.00 in fines behind the eight-ball. Welcome to hell, it gets even better from here-on-in. Read that as sarcasm.

We did get a lot done that day, surprisingly, even with our financial setback. With consigning what I found in the dumpsters, I managed to get a grand total of §2,725.00 which more than cleared our §1,500.00 in fines. But we have taxes tomorrow. I’m going to hate to see how much we’re going to have to pay.

And of course, with just our luck, the sky opened up and started dumping on us. So my River decided that she was going to head to Central Park to the only roasting fire pit there was. And frankly, so was I if after snorkeling I didn’t get stuck in my snorkeling gear and when the Watcher reset me, I ended up halfway across town. Bloody heck. I didn’t want to have to run clear across Sunset Valley, just to have dinner which for me would be a roast apple.

Can anyone tell me why if I eat an apple, I only get a half-stomach worth’s of hunger satisfaction? Whereas if I turn around, roast the ever-lovin’ bejesus out of it and leach all the nutrients out of it, I end up with a full stomach? Is that nuts or what?

We knew now that the authorities would do everything they could to drive the homeless (that was now us) out of town. I could see the worry on my sweetheart’s face. She now realized just how vindictive the haves could be. They thought of us as cockroaches, as vermin to be exterminated. Unlike some, we were just down on our luck, not addicted to any form of substance, nor abusing what we were on, which was sodas and chips which ultimately were the cheapest things that we could get. I wouldn’t say that she was naive; more like sheltered as to just how cruel humanity could be. Now our next ordeal would be since it was pouring rain and we had very little money to our names, that we would end up having to sleep outdoors. The only way to do that would be to buy sleeping bags and there were no outdoor stores open at 9:30PM.

Luckily for us, that meant napping in fits and starts on the benches...

…or trying to sneak into the gym in order to get out of the rain.

And guess what was in view? Yep, you name it, our friendly neighbourhood cop-shop. So we had a choice. Risk a trespassing fine going into the gym, a trespassing fine or a criminal charge of break and enter for going into the firehall. Or sleeping out in the open and risk another §1,500.00 fine for vagrancy.

Well, even better we got a notice that the city was coming by the lot to throw out our belongings. Well, unfortunately for them, we had nothing on the ground, so they would be wasting their entire time doing it. So somehow we had gotten away with it.

So, what we ended up doing was sneaking into the gym, freeloading off the showers and going upstairs and taking a floor in a room, we fell asleep exhausted since tomorrow would be yet another trying day of trying to survive.

End total Day One: §1,225.00
Total Fines: §1,500

Day 2

As it was, we were lucky that we had found shelter that last night, because it rained heavily throughout the night. When we woke up and started out for the day, we found that the ground was sopping wet. So it would have been nasty to have to be outside overnight. During the height of summer, it got down to around 10 or 11 degrees celcius overnight and it was chilly when it was early morning. Plus most who were indigent for some length of time ended up having their health eroded and were more prone to catching things that healthy people could avoid.

We were lucky that morning that a by-law officer who was making his daily rounds ignored us when we came out of the gym. Either he didn’t see us or he opted to give us a break. Because at four o’clock in the morning, it was probably too early to be actually in the gym for exercise. Well, we’ll try to use today to build up our finances and catching the lucky break in the morning would help us immensely.

Snorkeling had found us several gemstones so we were going up to Aleister’s in order to cut them and consign them. Hopefully that would give us a hefty chunk of money to live off of for the next little while.

Luckily we didn’t jay-walk and used the crosswalk in order to get across the street; River wisely making us cross at the corner. We didn’t need a §375.00 fine for cutting across the street. And it just so happened that the police were driving past at the time. Another lucky break. If we weren’t making a nuisance of ourselves, the cops tended to just tell us to move along and leave us alone. And since it appeared to them that we were moving along, they decided not to bother us.

I suggested that we cut the gemstones in random cuts and hope for the best. River argued that we should attempt to try to get the most possible money for them and cut them in spires. At least Aleister’s had an unlocked gem-cutter that was able to cut every possible gem-cut and we could manage to maximize what we were going to get. Eventually I agreed. We needed the money...badly.

After consigning the gemstones and well, considering the fact that we were already soaked, we decided to go get ourselves even more wet. After all, what’s a bit more water when one is completely drenched to begin with. It was absolutely pouring rain. So we decided to see about doing some more snorkeling in hopes that we could find any more gemstones that we could consign them tomorrow. We also had to see about making a trip up to our mailbox to be able to pay the tax bill. What a royal pain-in-the-rear end. Well, I said something far worse, but you can’t put that in print.

Since we were trying to save money, running was basically our way of getting from point A to point B. Of course, in the rain...it was thoroughly unpleasant. But what can you expect with a climate that was Pacific Coastal Rain Forest. Our attempt to find gemstones on my part was absolutely a waste of time. All I found were several shells. River had much better luck. I figured that it was time to do separate tasks. Maybe she was better at finding gemstones by snorkeling than I was. Me on the other hand, I wasn’t sure if I was more adept at finding dumpster items. But I hated smelling like a sewer after I was finished.

It finally stopped raining around five o’clock in the afternoon. We finished up and headed up to the park to see if we would be able to roast some more vegetables or fruits in the fire-pit. Even though we had a nearly §8,300.00 profit today, I was still down about not getting anything more than shells during my attempt at snorkeling.

While I went hunting for gemstones on dry ground, River harvested the park’s fruit trees and found us a dry place to bed down for the night. And she did find us a comfortable place to bed down after all, somewhere where we couldn’t be seen by those who would mean us ill. It was a place that was not immediately spotted from the street and a low fence concealed us from those who would be walking by.

I told her when I got back that she did a great job in finding us this place to bed down. And it would keep us safe, or as safe as one could be being out on the street homeless.

We were certainly lucky that we found the gemstones that we did and quite possibly we would have a decent amount of finances behind us after tomorrow. But once again, we would be making that long trek to Aleister’s to get our gemstones cut. But for now, we had to hope that it wouldn’t rain over night.

Day's Earnings: §8,357.00
Total Earnings and Current Balance: §9,582.00
No Fines: