It was twilight- those moments between day and night when the Sun’s upper edge touches the horizon and Earth’s atmosphere scatters and reflects the star’s rays- when only the brightest of heavenly bodies like Venus and Jupiter can be seen in the sky with the naked eye.
The Flying Saucer skimmed slowly across the treetops near the compound, like the ghost of an ice skater across a frozen pond. On the craft’s underside, were scads of little lights… like baby spiders gathered for milk at their mother’s belly. A square hatch would open and what appeared to be giant seed pods would drift out slowly, one after another and descend, partially floating, partially lowered by what looked like leaves on their topsides, but whirling like the blades of a drone. And each would land in human sized holes that been excavated in the soft dirt of the forest, side by side in rows like cabbages would be grown in.
And Jonas driving his new fuel tanker like a bat out hell, hell bent for leather, to get home before the sun had completely been disappeared into the psychosis of night that totally absorbed the compound each whacked-out evening, came rolling up to the forest just in time to witness the birthing event and parked, with the engine running and got out of the cab.
He’d found a flashlight in the glove-box: truckers always had flashlights, and he aimed the beam low at the forest floor or turned it off altogether as he crept through the now nefarious woods. He thought of that place on the Island of Honshu, Aokigahara, the suicide forest where people went to murder themselves. This wicked thicket was certainly as notorious to him now for what the Aliens were using it for.
He kept his flashlight aimed low, at the forest floor, or turned off altogether as he dodged and darted between and behind trees or bushes so that he could not be seen by the Visitors in the craft overhead. He looked up occasionally to locate exactly where the saucer was hovering so he might determine whether or not his presence had been detected on the ground amongst the bramble of vines and bushes and then… what appeared to be gardens or fields maybe where the long, pod shaped things were being cultivated.
And there were more of them... the pods... floating down, leisurely from the craft. And others, apparently further along in their maturation cycle, in the adult sized slots that resembled graves in rows in the soft, nutrient rich earth were beginning to stir. Some of them had already developed bodies still lightly covered with soil and had what appeared to be faces…female… similar to human females… lying in the ground with dirt in their eyes and ears.
Was this their plan for the earth and him even? To create a society of bloodless vegetable beings that they could rule for their own sinister ambitions?
An urge gripped Jonas, to start killing them, wantonly, angrily, these plant women or whatever they were: as his own girlfriend had been disappeared, disintegrated or atomized or exactly whatever had happened to all the ones who’d been obliterated in the first wave. And he’d been alone and without her and in solitude for this long spell. But he fought the urge even though he had Second A with him and Big Medicine and was in precisely the mood for wholesale berserker annihilating because he reasoned that to start blasting the vegetable faces off these legumes or Bok Choy or Eggplant or whatever they were into would get him the attention of the Visitors on high, in the craft above, and possibly their wrath.
With his foot, about as useless as a log nailed to the end of a stick, it was going to be difficult enough for him to get back to the compound from here without being detected, should he walk. It had been a pretty risky endeavor anyway to even come out here, but Jonas wanted to figure out what was going on in these woods and with the creatures that would emerge from them at night. And he knew of a small back road into this part of the woods from the main road from town to his compound. So he had taken the chance on his way back from town. Now he had just to get back to and in the compound before the assault began.
“Fuck it!” he thought and hobbled as quickly back to fuel transport truck as was possible.
One of the dirt covered cucumber women or spaghetti squash or whatever, rose up from the earth like a screaming zucchini and screeched at him, an ear splitting shriek: “Ahrrreeeee!!!”He turned, and firing Big Medicine from the hip, blasted the broccoli bitch’s head into a million pieces… kinda like a casaba melon exploded by an m80 firecracker. And of course… some of the other Zucchini gals arose from their mulch to give chase. Fortunately, they were clumsy and slow, being new to ambulation, and Jonas was able to outpace these walking Fennel Bulbs even with his fucked up wooden peg of a foot.
He got to the truck, climbed in, and saw that all the food he scavenged in town had been removed. All of the whiskey and beer that he had collected was still in the floorboard of the truck where he’d placed it, and the gas cans full of gasoline were still in the bed of the truck, but every can of beans and bag of frozen succotash or French fries or box of oatmeal- anything at all edible and nourishing was gone.
“Goddammit!” he shouted and pounded the steering wheel. Jonas cast his eye about the woods to see if any of the pork pie hat wearing lemur tail boys (or whatever) were around. When he thought he spied a stripped tail in the brush about 20 yards or so away he let fly a couple of rounds from Big Medicine. And then he thought he heard a scream and a gasp but he couldn’t be sure. So he turned the key in the ignition and fired up the truck and threw it in gear but then instead of driving back to the road, drove into the forest and over them... the okra dames or whatever... as many as he could, mashing them like potatoes mostly or squashing them like squash. But then he put on the brakes for a split second to entertain the thought of grabbing one and tossing her into the bed of the truck for a possible vegetable dip later but then remembered he didn’t have any chips or cheese.
The Flying Saucer, alerted to the fracas, blasted lights from its underbelly onto the open field between the tree line and the compound, lighting Jonas up like a high school running back dashing for the end zone with the Friday night pigskin. The amorphous, screaming female Weirdlings, sort of ran- stiff legged zombie-like behind Jonas with their newly developed human features- faces like tomatillos and limbs like rhubarbs or leeks or parsnips maybe cross mixed with hominids and the size of grown ass women- not pretty.
When Jonas came wheeling up to the compound, of course the first thing he noticed was that the gate was open. He knew he didn’t leave it that way. So either there was someone or something inside… or the electricity had come back on and triggered the breaker and the electrical current had opened the compound gate but didn’t closed it back.
Either way- he didn’t like it!
He steered the truck inside as fast as he could, jumped out and shut the gate: smashing several of the spinach sisters to juice. He tossed their severed arms and legs back over the fence like day old salad out the back of a fancy restaurant, then climbed his ladder to the top of the fence and started firing down at them, furiously, with Second A and Big Medicine.
Although he feared that there was someone or something in the compound with him, he wanted to dispense with the enemies at his wall first… and so he did, alternately shooting them in the face with his handgun and smashing them in the head with the butt of his riffle and knocking their vegetable bodies back to the ground. Their screeching and wailing was deafening but he couldn’t hear it. Their mouth holes would open to howl but his rage and determination had made him deaf to it… until eventually... they were all dead... blasted and disintegrated to mulch.
Jonas climbed back down the ladder. The effect of the adrenaline produced in his medulla and released into his body during the fight was waning and the behemoth pain in his lower leg was returning. It was like being pricked with a thousand jagged pins or stung by a hive of pissed off bees. It was more than Jonas felt he could endure. He didn’t even think he could make it to the bottom of the ladder. But, of course he didn’t have much choice- he must seek out the intruder in his compound if there was one. They would be locked inside with him at this point.
The salvage yard was dark and silent and kind of creepy. Each one of the old wrecked cars or trucks strewn and stacked about were potential hiding places for a Weirdling vegetable woman or one of the ugly assed zombie type creatures he’d also had to battle, or the pork pie hat Lemur tailed boys who seemed to be intent on pestering him. Jonas focused his flashlight on first one car or truck and then another…. expecting someone or something to jump out at him at any minute. He opened car doors and looked into the back of vans and even inside an old school bus. He was becoming delirious from the unrelenting, searing pain in his calf. He was seriously beginning to think that he would be forced to amputate his own leg below the knee- and was just about to give up the search for the potential intruder when he heard a rustling sound and maybe…a whimper.
He compartmentalized- ignored the pain in his calf and listened as intently as he possibly could… and he heard it again… a slight moving sound and yes… a whimper. It seemed to be coming from behind a piece of rusted tin leaned up against the front of an old Edsel and the back of an old Volvo. He doused the bent, tarnished piece of tin with the beam of his flashlight and then ever so carefully reached down, took hold of a curled corner and tossed the entire sheet to one side.
There was a young woman, or what appeared to be a woman. She looked to be naked, sitting on her butt with her knees drawn to her chest and face. She mumbled very quietly and unintelligibly.
“Hey…” Jonas in a non-threatening voice, “You…” to which she raised her face up and toward the beam of his light. To his shock, she looked amazingly like Cara, whom he had lost to the first wave. She was fair skinned and had large brown eyes and dark hair that was cut at her jawline. She looked perplexed or… verklempt maybe. She opened her mouth to speak….
“Reeeowwwlllluuuu.” She said in a very shrill, high pitched voice.
Jonas shot her between the eyes.
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