Greenflies Read online

  Meg wrapped her arms behind his neck, “Half hour? Who you kiddin'?”

  “Ah now, that’s no way to…”

  Macon was ripped unceremoniously off of her by four green clawed hands. They tossed him casually away from the pickup truck, sending the naked teen sprawling into the line of corn fifteen feet away. The alien that had performed the act turned back to look at Meg, lying in the bed of the pickup in her t-shirt and panties, the blanket a memory. The creature’s baseball-sized eyes didn’t look at her face, but disconcertingly at her belly. Its skin writhed, thousands of peg-like scales erecting and relaxing in complex patterns. It made no sound, even as it reached a single clawed hand at Meg.

  Meg screamed and kicked the thing hard across the eyes, then tried to scramble through the windowless rear of the pickup cab. The aliens swung its eyes on its flexible neck back to look at the girl, after being knocked away. The right eye was a spiderweb of cracks, the glassy surface of the ball shattered like a thick pane of glass. It reached forward with its two upper arms, grabbing Meg around the ankle before she could scrabble into the pickup cab. The abdominal arms reached behind it and withdrew the weapon that had been stuck on its scaly back like Velcro. Meg yelped as it tugged her backwards with its upper arms, pointing the weapon at her kidneys. She wasn’t looking at the thing, still trying to pull herself forward, but she could hear the buzzing from its weapon, just behind the small of her back.

  “Aaaarrrgghh!!!” Macon yelled at the top of his lungs as he tackled the alien from behind. The monster didn’t seem to hear the attack coming, and lurched to the side, just as it fired. Quarter sized yellow insects rushed forth, fast enough to splatter themselves on the bed of the pickup. The alien’s claws were pulled off of Meg, leaving deep red gouges.

  Meg pulled herself the rest of the way into the cab and scrambled to right herself in the driver’s seat. She looked over her shoulder to see Macon wrestling with the thing. At nearly seven feet tall and built thick, it was tossing Macon like a rag doll by sheer mass. It threw him to the ground by the corn again, this time spraying him with a swarm of stinging insects as it did so.

  While the alien was silent, the insects most certainly weren’t. They buzzed nearly as loud as Macon howled, rolling around on the ground. Meg shouted his name as she started the truck, but he was already dying. By the second time she screamed his name, a thick foam was emerging from his mouth.

  The alien had repositioned itself to fire through her open passenger window. All she could think to do was duck down on the seat, allowing the insects to dart through the cab, out the open driver’s window. They were fired with such velocity, they couldn’t redirect their flight in time to strike her.

  Still ducked down on the seat, she gunned reverse and swung the pickup in a U-turn, nearly slamming into the alien in the process. She sat up as she drove full-out down the dirt road leading to Route 49. The sight in the rear view mirror was one she would never forget. The first alien was standing in front of Macon’s body. The insects still swarmed him, but beyond the body, she saw something large and brown moving in the corn, folding over a large swath of crops as it approached. There were three more trails forming in the corn, smaller, about the size of the first alien. She could see three sets of baseball-sized eyes moving towards her, bounding through the corn the way wolves bound through snow.

  She rocketed down the dirt road, the non-existent shock absorbers bumping her against the ceiling. She was running parallel to the paved road now, only thirty feet of trees separating her from the headlights of a passing car. She repeatedly checked the rear-view mirror, until she saw what she didn’t want to.

  The four aliens were galloping towards her, slightly faster than the truck. They were running on their lower four limbs, pointing weapons with their two remaining arms. She could hear the humming of insects fired to either side of the truck, their weapons apparently no good at range on a moving target. The aliens closed the distance while Meg cried and ducked and pushed the gas pedal through the floor.

  One of the aliens leaped into the pickup bed the moment before she swerved onto the main road, and it was thrown off by the momentum. Once on the pavement, the truck outpaced the monsters, and she saw them give up pursuit in the rear view mirror. She didn’t slow down at all, clocking 80 mph on the curvy roads for the four miles back home.

  She emerged from the woods surrounding her farm, and she saw her dad, mom, and little brother emerging onto the porch of the farmhouse. Her father was wearing a sweaty wife-beater and gripping his shotgun. Even her little brother had the hunting rifle he’d gotten at ten. She pulled up to her porch, and ran into her mother’s arms.

  “They got Macon! They were… big, green things, they…”She sobbed.

  Her mother held her close, “We seen ‘em on the TV, girl. They been popping up all over the place. We were worried sick about you.”

  “It’s a fuckin’ invasion is what it is,” her father said, from somewhere beyond her sight, as she was so wrapped in the brown hair and fat of her mother.

  “Cool!” her brother said from behind her, “What happened to this thing?”

  She turned away from her mother to see her 12-year-old brother Mike inspecting the pick-up. It was splattered with bug-goo from the point blank shots, and the bed had a decent sized splotch of blood from Meg’s leg. There was even a four foot gash along the side, probably from an alien claw when Macon tackled it. Mike was looking primary at the dead bugs and the virtual explosion of guts around the point-blank fatalities.

  “You stay away from that stuff,” her daddy said.

  A deep humming could be heard from the road back into the woods. As it grew louder, everyone on the porch felt their hair standing on end, and the crops surrounding the farm shed a cloud of dust and pollen into the air, creating a mist in the porch light. The brown hover-vehicle emerged from the woods, traveling slowly along the drive to the house as casually as if it belonged to the postman.

  “Mikey, take the girls inside,” her daddy said, as he leveled his shotgun at the approaching vehicle, “Turn off all the lights.”

  Mikey stepped back from the pickup and rushed up to the front door of the house. He, Meg, and their mother rushed inside. Meg and her mother crouched behind the couch in the living room. Mikey stood by the front door, peering through the tiny square window in the door. As an afterthought, he clicked off the porch light. Then he stood, wringing his hunting rifle like it were a mop.

  Meg’s dad fired a blast at the brown vehicle, now lit only by the moon. A small puff of something like blood sprayed from the impact, but there appeared to be no significant damage, no change in its deliberate pace. The shotgun belched again, but still the floating shape approached. While it was tough to make out in the darkness, the material dripping from the small wounds on the craft didn’t appear red. He snapped the breach open to slide in two more shells. He knelt behind the rail of the porch and fired twice more. This time, although the damage still seemed minor, the vehicle stopped. He reloaded again and waited for the humming shape to do something more. Static from the thing’s base actually seemed to be singing the grass on either corner of the drive.

  Orifices appeared on both flanks of the vehicle and opened like mouths. Four pairs of eyes on four serpentine necks peered out, two from each side. The white insect-launching weapons appeared as well, held to line up parallel to the vehicle’s center-line. When the attack came, it was literally blinding. The porch was embroiled in a storm of buzzing, stinging insects. A couple shots rang out, but they went wide of even hitting the alien vehicle. Meg’s dad screamed in a long, drawn out way that degenerated into a gurgle.

  Her Mom rushed towards the door, screaming his name, but Meg held her back. Mikey backed away from the door, his mouth hanging open, and realization miles away from him. He was yanked back to reality when he realized the buzzing was coming from his feet rather than outside. A couple of the insects, looking much like bumblebees, were crawling through the crack beneath the door. He st
amped down, crushing one of them, but the other buzzed into the room. It flew up towards the ceiling and disappeared into the shadows.

  “Mikey, did one of ‘em get in here?” Meg asked.

  Mikey stepped away from the door, holding his rifle by the barrel like a baseball bat, “Yeah… it’s up by the fan I think.”

  Meg grabbed a pillow from the couch and began swinging it towards the ceiling. Her mother just slunk back to the ground behind the couch. The bee swooped down near Meg’s face, but then back up against the ceiling. Mike flipped the lights on, and Meg swatted the newly visible bee. It thunked against the TV by the bay window of the living room, and it bounced to the floor, stunned. Meg just shoved the entire TV over onto the thing. She dropped the pillow to the ground and backed up, regarding the sparking television.

  “Hit the lights again,” She said.

  Mikey hit the switch, and suddenly the glare disappeared on the bay window. Two aliens were standing perhaps ten feet away outside, calmly regarding the humans in the living room. Meg screamed and dived back behind the couch with her stunned mother. Mikey ran into the room and leveled his hunting rifle at the bay window. The aliens, recognizing the weapon as such, noiselessly leaped out of view to either side. Mikey stepped backwards to join his sister and mother by the couch, not taking his eyes off the window.

  “Is Mom alright?” he asked.

  Their mother was just trembling, her eyes closed, extremely pale.

  “No, she’s not fucking alright! None of us are fucking alright! There’s…”

  Meg was interrupted by a thunking noise from upstairs. Their home was a simple two-story A-frame farmhouse. It sounded as if a great weight had landed on the roof. A second followed. Then there was a series of small tearing noises, like Velcro coming undone. Sequential. Paced. Footfalls.

  “They’re on the roof,” whispered Mikey, “All the windows are open up there.”

  “Help me get Mom to the basement,”Meg replied.

  “You do it,” he said, gripping his gun tightly. He began moving towards the stairway upstairs.

  “Mikey, don’t you even think it!”Meg hissed.

  “Call 911 from the kitchen, and drag Mom downstairs. I’m going upstairs to close the windows,” he whispered, as he took a couple very slow steps up their stairs.

  “Mikey,” she hissed after him again, “Mikey!”

  She left her mother behind the couch and rushed to the kitchen to the phone. When, she put it to her ear, there was silence. No dial tone. No static.

  “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!” She said as she slammed the phone back on the hook.

  From upstairs, she heard a series of three reports from Mikey’s Harringer, then grinding noises like furniture being moved. Then the crash of a lamp on the floor. There was clearly a brawl going on upstairs, probably between a seven-foot, four-armed alien and a twelve-year-old boy. Meg grabbed the biggest knife from the wooden block on the counter and rushed back into the living room with the intent of rushing upstairs.

  In re-entering the living room, she saw her mother standing, but clearly not alert, by the front door. She had every appearance of being ready to open the front door, to the buzzing that could still be heard on the porch. Even seen from behind, she was clearly wracked with sobbing.

  “No, Mom!” Meg rushed forward and tackled her mother forcefully against the front door. The knife clattered to the floor.

  “We’ve got to help your father,” her mother said, her voice child-like.

  “He’s dead, Mom. If you open that door, we’re going to be dead, too!”

  There were six extremely loud thuds on the roof, as if great weights had been hurled onto them. The entire house vibrated from the impacts. Dust shed into the air from the top of the book cases in the living room.

  “Oh, God, not more of them,” Meg said, pulling her mother down to the ground in front of the stairs and away from the front door.

  Then she heard machine gun fire, almost exactly like in the action movies. Automatic fire from multiple guns came from the rooftop. The sound ran together like rain falling. There were further noises from the front yard, a sound like a punching bag being hit again and again. Meg shot to her feet and looked out the small square window of the front door. Beyond the bees swooping back and forth on the porch she could see the brown vehicle, parked almost casually in the driveway. Gravel all around it was being kicked up by bullets being fired from the roof. The vehicle itself was spitting purplish goo from a number of wounds.

  Suddenly, one of the aliens flopped to the ground from the roof. It twitched for a moment as bullets continued to pelt it. Then it lay still on its back, its six limbs curling up into the air like some cartoonish insect.

  There was a noise up the steps, audible even over the gunfire outside. Looking up the stairs, Meg caught sight of the alien just as it was bounding downwards at her and her mother. Its weapon gone, it mauled Meg, wrapping her in its abdominal limbs. The alien’s mass pushed it onwards, knocking Meg’s mother prone and unconscious. It held Meg aloft as she kicked. It took her a moment to realize that the alien itself was not standing on the ground, but rather clinging to the wall and ceiling around the front door with its upper and lower limbs. She was literally being suspended, and her flailing legs had nowhere to impact.

  That was when she saw the soldiers. A pair of humans in black body armor were walking down the stairs. They wore gas masks with red visors, in a way making them look more insectile than the aliens themselves. The one in front was thumping a nightstick in his hand, and the other had something like a baton, sparking with an electric arc along its shaft.

  The alien was evidently aware of the newcomers as well. It scuttled sideways along the ceiling over the living room, dangling Meg over the displaced furniture. The human soldiers followed, the one with the sparking stick standing in front of the bay window and the one with the nightstick holding back towards the front door, evidently looking for some kind of opening.

  The alien, apparently having planned to escape through the bay window, altered its direction, and Meg felt herself being pulled towards the kitchen doorway. The soldier with the nightstick saw a moment of distraction as the alien looked away from him towards the doorway, and he attacked. He ran straight forward, stepped off the edge of the couch, and flying tackled the alien into the kitchen. The monster came ripping off the ceiling with the sound of splintering wood, and timber still stuck to its claws when it hit the ground. Meg rolled clear on the kitchen floor, her arm making an ominous crack, but she was free from the monster’s grip.

  The human soldier was not so lucky. The alien escaped his grasp using all six of its limbs, and then it hurled the man bodily into the kitchen sink. Water sprayed up from the obliterated faucet. Without hesitating even a moment, the soldier rolled off the kitchen counter and prepared to engage the alien, this time without his nightstick. He rushed the alien again and nimbly evaded a pair of slashing claws to lay into the creature’s main body with a series of quick jabs. He dodged one more claw-strike, and then swept the alien’s lower limbs out from under it.

  The alien barely noticed, using its abdominal limbs to stop its fall. It then grabbed each of the soldier’s arms, one in each upper limb, and savaged the soldier’s belly and torso with the claws on its hind limbs Standing on its abdominal limbs seemed to be as natural to it as using its hind limbs. Once again it tossed the soldier away, this time with his chest body armor tattered, Kevlar strips hanging like crêpe paper.

  The alien turned its attention to Meg, grabbing her hair by one of its abdominal limbs and preparing to drag her through the window over the sink. It kept a watchful eye on the human soldier, but didn’t seem to understand quite what was going on as the human picked up a kitchen chair. The human swung the chair in an overhead arc at the alien, but the creature just swatted the chair out of his hands with its upper limbs while flat-handing him in the center of the chest with its free abdominal limb. The soldier splintered the kitchen table as he landed, b
ut once again seemed to be getting back to his feet. The alien released Meg and prepared to pounce on the soldier one last time.

  It landed on the second soldier, who had been hanging back. He had rushed forward with his electric baton at the ready. The alien flew backwards as if it had been struck by a car. It crashed into the refrigerator and lay still.

  “Status?” The second soldier asked the first.

  “Just a broken wrist, I think, sir,” he replied with a thick Irish accent, “I was unable to find any soft spots in close quarters.”

  “Acknowledged. Good work, Hegerty. Secure the prisoner.”

  Then the second soldier seemed to address people through his helmet radio: “Doc, we have two more wounded civilians down here. Rice, assist her. Klugman, clear the front porch and set claymores on the second floor, one per quadrant. Decker, take position on the first floor covering that transport. If it so much as twitches, open fire.”

  Meg felt the stomping of feet through the building as much as she heard it. A man overturned the couch and positioned it by the bay window of the living room to use as some kind of sniper cover. She saw a cloud of smoke extend in front of the house, probably a smoke grenade to clear off the bees on the porch. Most importantly, a pair of soldiers came into the kitchen, one carrying the limp form of her mother, and the other carrying her brother. Mikey was in a bad way, his skin swollen and distended as if someone had stuck a tire pump into him.

  The soldier with Mikey placed him onto the kitchen counter and knelt down in front of Meg. The soldier pulled off her helmet to reveal the face of an attractive Indian woman, far too young to be fighting aliens.

  “Can you tell me your name?” she asked.

  “Meg. My brother, what’s wrong with my brother.”

  “He was stung, Meg. We’re doing everything we can for him, and help is on the way. I need you to help me now. Were you stung yourself? Does it hurt anywhere? Your back? Neck?”

  “My arm.”

  “Squeeze my hand, Meg. Good,” the medic said before reaching down to her bare feet, “Can you feel this?”