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.”