Divided (#1 Divided Destiny) (3 page)

“Hit the ships with something stronger,” a female scientist near the front of the room suggested somewhat timidly.

“Like what? We’ve already fired our strongest air-to-air missiles,” an older male scientist said.

“I would hardly call them our strongest; they were standard missiles,” the Southern scientist scoffed. “We should drop the MOAB.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, that ship is currently hovering over New York. That’s a problem all on its own, but there’s no sense in making it worse,” Julian pointed out. He growled in frustration at the sea of blank looks before him, and these were supposed to be their best and brightest. “We need to breach the shield, but blowing up half of New York won’t help with that. We start throwing bombs onto that ship and that’s what will happen.”

“Oh, so you have a better idea?” came a shout from one of the corners of the room, a smug, smarmy colleague that Julian had never liked.

“Of course,” Julian stated confidently. “We need to analyze the energy pattern of the shield. We might be able to overload it with a certain electrical current. Once the shield is down, the ship will hopefully be as vulnerable as any aircraft.”

General Sampson looked pleased. “Good, that’s what I wanted to hear. Now, how do we analyze it?”

“Keep attacking it. The more we attack it, the more data we can collect,” Julian suggested.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” the same smarmy male scientist piped up, a smirk playing across his lips as he repeated Julian’s patronizing words, “every time planes attack that ship, it shoots them down. People die.”

“People are dying anyway. We might all die,” Julian told him bluntly with a careless shrug.

Julian stared the room down. In a sea of military uniforms, suits, and other professional attire, he was the only one there in jeans and a casual shirt, and he didn’t care. However, they would be wrong in assuming he didn’t care about the lives he was suggesting would be lost in order to test the alien shield. He did care, but he didn’t let sentiment get in the way of making the hard decisions. Not that he’d had to make any really hard decisions before. It was just the type of man he thought of himself as, the type that did what was necessary, not what was popular, which was perhaps why no one liked working with him.

“Besides, as I’ve already said, that ship is hovering over New York. Even if we do succeed in bringing it down, the shockwave will cause as much damage as the impact. Perhaps I was hasty earlier,” Julian said wryly. “It doesn’t matter if we blow up half of New York bringing it down; when it crashes, it will destroy the city anyway.”

It was certainly a mark of greater events, when the fate of a city as large as New York wasn’t the big picture. This wasn’t a fight for a city, or even a country—this was a fight for the world, and they would fight. It was practically programmed into their DNA. They fought over everything, which was why there was always a war raging in some corner of the planet. Freedom of religion was enshrined in their constitution; everyone could worship whatever god they wished, and no aliens, even with a freaking for real spaceship, were going to change that.

“If that’s all, I believe we all have a fair bit of work to do.” Julian looked pointedly at General Sampson.

General Sampson nodded. “Dismissed. Get to it, people. We need to make those aliens regret attacking a small planet called Earth.”

*****

When the booming voice had demanded worship, Hector had just laughed. He had stopped laughing when his daughter had turned to him with wide eyes and a quivering bottom lip.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Gabriela had cried.

First and foremost, Hector considered himself a father. His wife had died last year, and his little six-year-old girl was now his entire life. He was a regular guy; he worked construction, and didn’t really think about the world much outside of his small part of it. Oh, Hector worried sometimes about how violent the world was, and that one day he would have to send his little girl out on her own. However, apart from that, he wasn’t a deep thinker.

Hector had taken Gabriela out for pizza. It was a Tuesday, and the place wasn’t that crowded. After she had said she was scared, he had just gathered her into his arms and reassured her that it was just a joke, that there was nothing to be scared about.

An hour later, his words would prove to be a lie.

They had just left the restaurant, heading for the subway. The sidewalk was crowded as normal; people bustled all around them. It was New York; there were always people everywhere. However, what wasn’t normal were the knots of stationary people. They were standing around, whispering urgently. Hector felt uneasy. His smartphone’s battery had died by the time he’d left work, and there hadn’t been a television or radio in the pizza parlor. He hadn’t heard the news, and something wasn’t right.

Gabriela’s small, delicate hand was clasped in his meaty paw. Her feet were dragging as the long day caught up with her, her sparkly purple trainers scuffing against the ground.

That was when the screams started.

Sunset had been an hour ago, so there was no real shadow cast on the land. However, what little of the night sky that could be seen was blocked out. Hector looked up. A dark, sinister shape, dominated the sky.

For a moment, nobody moved, but fear was contagious. One person bolted, and the next thing he knew, the crowd turned into a panicked, fleeing mob.

Someone hit Hector hard in the shoulder as they dashed past. The impact spun him and he lost his harsh grip on Gabriela’s hand.

“Daddy!” Gabriela shrieked in terror.

“It’s okay,” Hector yelled automatically.

He leaned down to pick her up; they’d move faster that way, and they had to get out of here. However, the ground was not a good place to be. A pumping arm clipped his face, the blow sending him staggering to his knees. Another blow hit his side from a raised foot, and then he was on the ground.

The third and final blow was a kick to the head, and everything went black. His arm was outstretched, and he didn’t feel his fingers break under the crunch of a boot.

“Daddy!” Gabriela screamed again.

She fell to her knees next to her fallen father. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She grabbed his shirt and shook him.

“Daddy, wake up, please wake up,” she pleaded.

*****

Meanwhile, down in Florida, a retired couple, Richard and Beth, moved with precision around the grocery store. The second the booming voice had faded, they had jumped in the car. They were both retired military; Richard was Army and Beth was Air Force. Their training told them that things were going to get bad, likely very fast.

Like most Americans, they bought in bulk; it was cheaper that way, and living in Florida, they had a stockpile for the hurricane season. However, now the country was heading for a potential apocalypse. Hurricanes didn’t usually last that long, a couple of weeks at most. This alien invasion would likely last a lot longer. If they wanted to survive, they needed to be prepared.

When they first arrived at the store, people were in shock. Most didn’t believe what they had heard. A few minutes later, the news reports started.

“What do we do?” Beth heard a middle-aged Hispanic woman ask her husband.

Her husband shrugged helplessly. “I do not know, but it will be okay, you’ll see.”

Beth exchanged a glance with Richard. Nothing was likely be to be okay for some time, if it ever was okay again. If the country had been invaded, then it was obvious what most civilians should do: find a way out to another country and safety. They were former military, though, and they would join the fight if they could. However, it was the world that had been invaded. There was no way out. There was nowhere they could flee to for relative safety.

Suddenly, there was a sharp bang. On instinct, they both fell to the floor. Beth looked up. The Hispanic woman was staring at her husband in horror. Her husband looked down as a bright red stain spread across his pinstripe white shirt. He fell to the floor.

Another bang and the woman joined her husband in death.

Richard drew his pistol and crab walked over towards the dead couple. They had been standing at the end of the canned goods aisle. Cautiously, he peered around, right at the same time a panicked young man wielding a pistol of his own turned the corner. He stumbled over Richard, knocking him onto his back. The gunman staggered but didn’t fall. Richard rolled back onto one knee and aimed his pistol, but it was too late.

They might have been former military but they only kept one pistol at home. From just a couple of feet away, the gunman couldn’t miss. He put one round into Beth’s skull, exploding the back of her head, splattering skull fragments, blood, and brain matter down the aisle.

A second later, the gunman’s head exploded; this time, it was his face that ceased to exist. He collapsed forward, pitching to his knees, landing just to the left of Beth.

“No!” Richard cried, lurching to his feet.

He had taken one step towards Beth when a bullet hit him in his right shoulder. Another hit him lower, puncturing his right lung. He could hear screaming but couldn’t make out the words. Richard tried to turn and took a third bullet in the side of the head. He collapsed back, the remains of his skull landing against his wife’s knee. His pistol clattering uselessly to the ground next to him.

“You killed him!” the young woman who had killed Richard screamed. “You killed Carlos!”

In despair, she looked at her dead lover, then at the pistol she was holding. They had started shooting for the supplies. Carlos had said the world was heading to hell, that they needed to get ahead before the mass panic set in. They didn’t have the money to buy the supplies. He had told her they needed it all so they could hide for the next few months.
‘It’s us or them,’
he had told her, and she hadn’t wanted to die.

Mechanically, she started grabbing the supplies. Without Carlos, the next few months would be harder, but she would try to survive; she owed that to him and to herself. She also owed it to the poor people they’d killed just so they wouldn’t have to poke their heads out and forage for supplies once things had got bad.

The alien ship might have been hovering over New York, but she was no fool. This wasn’t an invasion of one city; it was an invasion of the world. The only way to survive
was to hide
, was to be invisible. She was going to find a remote spot and do just that.

She just wanted to live.

*****

Back in New York, the problem with an emergency was that it took time to organize a response. Someone would need to decide what orders to give, and then those orders would filter out, but it would take time.

Time was something the citizens of New York didn’t feel they had.

The news stations were trying to help. The government had sent out a message to stay calm. They had declared a state of national emergency. Martial law was to be enacted, and the National Guard called up to help maintain order.

None of that helped New Yorkers, just hours after the booming voice had demanded their surrender. It was all very well for the news stations to tell them to stay calm. In other parts of the country, people could hunker down and take shelter in their homes. However, with the alien ship hovering above them, the city was about to become ground zero.

For those that lived within the city limits, remaining at home wasn’t an option. They wanted to get out, to get as far away as possible. With everyone feeling the same way, the only result possible was complete gridlock.

Lucy had been living in the city for the past eight years. For a small town girl from Louisiana, it had been like a whole new world. She had come to the city for college and never left. Her parents had worried about her, their little girl alone in the big city, but she’d loved it right up to the moment the alien mothership had appeared.

Then, she wished she’d never left home.

Right then, she forgot that she was already in her mid-twenties, a career woman in finance. She just wanted her parents more than anything. Lucy had tried to call but couldn’t get a connection—too many users trying to use the network. She threw a bag into the back of her car, grateful at least that she’d kept the car for trips home. She’d been terrified of flying her whole life; the drive might take two non-stop days, but it was better than climbing into a metal coffin and praying.

The drive was slow going, but the traffic kept moving until she got close to the Lincoln Tunnel. That was when everything just ground to a halt. There must have been some sort of accident. With so many people on the road, and so many of them speeding if they could, it was all but inevitable.

Lucy sat in her car and sobbed.

All around her horns were blaring. There was angry shouting, cars revving their engines. Several cars up the line, two men got out of adjacent vehicles. The older of the two, with a paunch and thinning hair, swung the first punch. It swiftly turned into a brawl as nearby drivers joined the melee.

Then a shot rang out. It hit a side mirror, shattering the glass. The second shot hit a young man in the leg. He looked to be the same age as Lucy, and at another time she might even have thought he was cute. He fell to the ground screaming.

Shaking, Lucy pulled her cellphone and dialed 911. She got the same message as when she’d tried to call her parents. The network was overwhelmed, please try again later. It didn’t matter. No police car or ambulance could get through the solid traffic. That was if they even had anyone to send.

No one was coming to help them. They were on their own.

Chapter Three

Don had been right. The first ship the American military was concerned with was the one that was hovering over their sovereign soil. It hadn’t moved since it had drifted down to occupy the New York skyline. Given McGuire’s use as a transport base, it had its own airstrip and was one of the closer bases to New York. It quickly became designated as the frontline base.