He can’t really be as big as they claimed! They must have been exaggerating.
A gut-wrenching klaxon suddenly screams out, breaking me from my lustful thoughts.
Oh, shit! It’s a sound that hasn’t been heard in Barl for over a decade. I drop my wrench instinctively - in innate, primordial terror – and it clinks against the ground.
I’d heard that sound before as a child, but never in Barl. Scorp never land this close to a city. The creatures might be beasts, but they have a strange cunning – as if they can sense which cities have formidable anti-air defenses.
“It’s a false alarm. It has to be!” It’s Edgar, his voice brave. Despite his claim, though, he lumbers towards the cabinet where he keeps his rifle.
I swallow hard, my nerves shaking. I pray that he’s right. Scorp have never come this close to a major city, but those klaxons are warning us of an imminent attack. I just hope Edgar’s right – and it’s just some accidental triggering of the warning system.
Suddenly, the ground shakes so hard my bones rattle. My stomach drops as I comprehend the horrific reality of the situation. I can feel the anti-air batteries firing as I hear the shots. The thuds hit me like a punch. The air explodes into thunder-claps as the anti-air defenses boom out their challenge to the sky. My hand shakes as I pick the wrench up from the floor.
It’s not a false alarm. The Scorp are really coming!
I stare at the wrench in my hand. As a weapon, it’ll be next to useless against a half-reptile, half-human, ten-foot-tall Scorp Warrior. Nevertheless, it feels cool and hard in my hand – and if nothing else, it grants me a sense of false security.
Clutching the wrench, I run out of the shop and into the cool evening air to witness the spectacle.
My jaw drops. I’ve never felt a horror this pure and visceral - not since I was told the news that my village had been destroyed by that Scorp attack; and that I’d never see my parents again.
Now I was facing the same nightmare that had taken them from me.
As I stand there, I feel my body rocked. The anti-air batteries are firing shot after shot into the air, rounds tracing through the evening sky. A single Scorp organic ship would be turned into pulp by this barrage.
But it isn’t just one Scorp ship.
It’s…
One… Two… Ten…?
Oh, Gods – there’s too many!
The Scorp ships fall like hideous, corrupted raindrops from the sky. The huge, organic, egg-shaped capsules of the Scorp plummet down from the heavens, punching through the atmosphere. I know that each contains at least a hundred lethal, venomous warriors – and a thirty-foot-tall Scorp Queen.
That’s how they infest new planets - traveling blindly through space from Gods-know-where to constantly propagate their disgusting species. If even one of those gruesome ships penetrates the anti-air defenses and lands in this city, it’s going to be a bloodbath.
A huge round from an anti-air battery rips a shot through a Scorp ship looming overhead. I squint my eyes and watch as reptilian bodies pour out of the tear – falling freely into the atmosphere above. Those ones will splatter against the ground and die… but many more will take their place.
Screams fill the streets as people stare up, transfixed. As one, they run in a panicked mass, fleeing into their homes and businesses, and desperately barricading the windows and locking their doors to anyone foolish enough to remain in the streets.
There’s no humanity left – no rational thought. People are stampeding as if they’re nothing but frightened animals.
Mind you – maybe that’s better than just standing there gawking, like I am.
To demonstrate that, a huge man barrels into me, knocking me to the ground hard enough so that my teeth rattle. His eyes were wide and thoughtless as he bulldozed past me – like a crazed beast. I watch him flee desperately down the street as I pick myself up from the ground.
Dusting myself off, I try to think…
But what is there to think about? I’m as helpless as everybody else. I can’t do anything except retreat back to the shop in a daze. Edgar stands near the doorway, his rifle in his white-knuckled hands. He knows what the anti-air batteries mean as well as I do. The old man’s hands tremble as he sees my expression.
“How many?” He yells the question like an order.
I try to tell him… I try to form words…
…but suddenly, I can’t make a sound.
It’s as if my mouth doesn’t work. My body feels paralyzed. I want to scream, to fall to my knees and cry out at the insanity and horror of life.
Instead, I grip the wrench as tightly as possible, trying to cling to my mind and sanity in this terrifying world. As Edgar rants, I shake my head slowly – my lips quivering in wordless fear.
Edgar steps closer. He grabs my shoulders and shakes me, but I feel nothing. “How many, dammit?” Spittle flies in my face, but I still can’t find the words to answer him. Instead, I move aside, and he brushes past me with a snarl – into the city streets to find the answer out for himself.
Seconds later he returns, slamming the door behind him. It shakes in its frame. Round after round of anti-air batteries continue to thunder in the sky, and the walls of the workshop shudder as each one explodes; as if they might fall and obliterate us instead of the Scorp ships.
If they did, it would be a merciful fate – at least compared to that of being dragged, shuddering and screaming, to a Scorp Queen. I always felt that the phrase ‘a fate worse than death’ was overwrought; but not so for the victims of the she-bitch matriarch
