Hereafter

"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say."

It may have seemed like any other day as dark clouds loomed on Gaza. Desperate to get out, citizens on both sides were crossing borders, ceding territory even. By then, there was nothing left to call home. It was no different at the 38th Parallel where there was no tension, no armies, and no people. It was just desolate. Where sight and sound were nowhere to be found.

Elsewhere... I awoke.

By the time it hit us, I thought I had drawn my last breath. My heart pulsed in such a way that I thought it had stopped beating. And this gentleman beside me, if I was to get into his head was hoping we would switch predicament. I don’t think he would hope the agony he felt on anyone but if he was to live this day in hindsight, I’m certain that he would rather it be me drawing my last breath. As we lock eyes, I only presume that I could ever understand him. With what we had witnessed, it’s only fair to say that survival may be the only thing left on our minds.

As the strange being loosens its grip on his neck, I shut my eyes to avoid eye contact. Slowly... it walks away. After counting a few Mississippi’s, I got my breath back and proceeded to retrieve the gun from his hands. As I approach The White House, I notice it no longer being guarded. It had been abandoned.

As daylight begins to diminish, three faces emerge in line with the rays of the setting sun. Three kids run to me and begin smothering me with desperation.

“Hey, slow down, what’s your name?” I ask the kid wearing bowling shoes.

“Jacob,” he says oblivious to what had transpired.

“Why do they want to kill us?” says one of the girls. I ignore her asking only for her name.

“I’m Karen and this is my sister, Lucy,” she replied.

“Kids, I need you to do something for me, I need you to stay close to me.” Before I could explain anything further, Lucy stumbles in her tracks.

“What is that?” she says trembling.

Suddenly this was feeling more like a bad dream. At that very moment, my mind recalled the scene at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You know when Donald Sutherland’s character turns, points, and screams - then all hope was lost? I didn’t think I would ever be that frightened again but here I was. There was no escaping this.

Jacob cowers behind my leg as I shield the girls. My hand grips the trigger but I freeze. Lucy tells me she’s scared. I on the other hand am terrified. I’ve seen what it can do. It lets out a cry as I raise my hand and aim. It charges at me with such velocity that I jump back as I fire my shot.

It’s over...

I breathe a sigh of relief and try not to react to its heavy yet lifeless body on top of me. As I get back on my feet, something emerges from the right corner of the adjacent building of what was now Starbucks. There’s a pack of them. I fire and fire as the kids scream, and I scream with them to up my courage. I must have fired six shots. My chamber is empty. Three of them are incoming. I clutch at the bullets in my pockets knowing full well that I cannot reload in time. I condemn us to oblivion with every bullet I drop. But I cannot keep my hands from shaking.

I shelter the kids behind me and pray, even though I had never prayed for anything in my life. Short of a blink, I see a red laser light in my periphery. Before I knew it, they were all being reduced one by one. But the final one gets hold of me and I’m hoping its head would explode. It remains a tight grip on my larynx. My heart thumps thunderously at both its strength and foreign touch. Lucy senses my doom, thank god. She instinctively picks up a shard of glass slashing the being in the legs, giving me a reprieve. It didn’t even make a sound. I firmly grab hold of the gun and smash it across the head repeatedly. I’m disgusted by what I have been reduced to do. But I cannot falter now, not ever.

I must have blacked out again because the next thing I remember, I awake to the concerns of gentlemen dressed in Black Ops attire.

“I’m okay,” I say, though I’m really not.

“What if they come back?” Lucy says tugging at my shoulder.

“…I don’t know, Lucy,” I tell her.

This wasn’t the first time I had blacked out this week. Just a few months ago, some guys jumped me and told me to go back to where I came from and proceeded to do what they said they were going to do, which was to ‘Vincent Chin’ me and succeeded then left me for dead. There was nothing I could do to stop their level of hate. Nevertheless, I survived to live another day, but it just feels like Groundhog Day, and I’m still confused about what is happening. But I shouldn’t be. Now I’m awake and aware.

The three men put me in their truck along with the kids. Jacob asks the men what those beings were, for which the response seemed borderline ridiculous but unfortunately true.

“Aliens, kid,” one of the men reflects.

Last night, the news stations went haywire. What had transpired seemed to be some kind of hoax, a practical joke left behind by Orson Welles perhaps. But as the news coverage went on, the reality set in, and panic ensued. Before the world could even react or formulate plans, we were hit with an invasion. Aliens. I still don’t believe it.

The men introduce themselves to one another and Bruce reveals they're not Black Ops. A closer look at Rhett, and I can tell he is a gun enthusiast, clearly an NRA member, despite how young he appears. Of course, he has a shirt on that he seemingly wears proudly. Normally, I would not say this about a gun nut but I’m feeling safer already with him by my side. Beside him is Danny, an African American, a college kid who looks on at Rhett with animosity. Upon further study of Rhett, I see his neck is covered in SS Bolts and suddenly I don’t know what to think. Danny shares with me that he has a boxing scholarship at UCLA, but he found himself here in D.C for a Black Lives Matter rally. Speaking of which though, the aliens have a stronghold of L.A, and every major city along the coast of the U.S but they somehow have fewer numbers on the East Coast. I somehow wonder if all the troops had stormed D.C to protect the capital. Then again, all the world leaders had been holed up safe in Cancún, after being caught at the latest COP, partying in their Hawaiian shirts, living it up with the true masters of the universe while they were meant to be discussing our world ravaged by floods, droughts, fires, and superbugs. On their own accord, they were backtracking on their projections, the only thing that occupied their concerns was giving their one hundred percent to their friends, the one percent.

Speaking of occupying movements. Last I heard, most of Western Europe was succumbing to the invasion. Russia and China are struggling to fortify their borders. North Korea put up a good fight, their nuclear arsenal managed to destroy many of the alien fleets but in the process, their own people suffered the same fate as the aliens. The 38th Parallel was no longer a demarcation and was therefore no longer divided or even occupied. It was all gone and so were the hopes, dreams, and experiences of people who were like me. I’ve never felt more alone in this world than I do now.

Al Jazeera is reporting Gaza has been declared a unified zone in the face of an alien invasion. Of course, Israel has announced that if they make it through this invasion, that’s if they do, they were looking toward future talks with Palestine. We watch the report at an abandoned bar we’ve snuck into for shelter.

“Funny, isn’t it? It took an alien invasion for them to put aside everything, to realize that we are all in this together?” says Bruce.

We all agreed and remained hopeful that we would make it far enough to see the day Israelis and Palestinians live harmoniously. But he made a convincing point, how strange yet how plausible that the only thing that would band them together like that, had to happen as a result of an alien invasion. I always did think that there were three scenarios in which all humans would come together. One was if God ever showed up. Two, a human extinction event, and three, aliens. You’d be surprised at how difference makes an enemy out of us. As I turn my attention to Lucy and Karen, I wonder how long we as humans would stay united in this fight. The twins take turns collecting the pistachios out of the shell, one eats as one de-shells then vice versa. Is that what a united front looked like? Or was it right in front of them, the four gentlemen in ourselves of different demographics sharing a drink in a civilized fashion pondering why the hell did it take so long for us to get to this point?

Poor Jacob had been bowling with his family when the aliens barged through the bowling alley. He tells me that his father had gotten hold of him by the shirt and trousers and bowled him through a lane.

“I got a strike,” he laughed out innocently, unable to grasp that his family was gone.

“Mi casa... We need to get to Mexico as soon as possible. It should be safe there,” says Bruce who looks like Bruce Wayne but with his build, he’s more like Robin. It doesn’t make me feel confident at all especially if a man who went through hell and back to cross over to the land of opportunity was willing to leave it. It says everything, as does the look on Rhett's face for which I study intently wondering out of all of us minorities he despises most. Should I be cautious? How can I not be on edge? But watching him now, he seemed almost indifferent. You could say he was just like any one of us at this moment in time.

"So, we leave for Cancún tonight, yes?" says Bruce.

“Hell, last I heard the President is there surrounded by all the Secret Service agents on the whole goddam roster,” says Rhett. As we watch the news report, we all hoped to be on the wagon out of this godforsaken place.

“I sure as hell didn’t vote for him but I’d do just about anything to see him rally the troops,” says Rhett, now sharing a look with Danny who now put together where he had recognized the man beside him, on the opposite side of the rally he just attended.

Perhaps it was the spirit of the moment, not that anything was forgotten, but Danny stopped looking at Rhett with any grievance. So, did I. For all I know it may have been one of his clan that beat me to a bloody pulp. Somehow the thought sickened me that I was sharing a drink with such a man. But human he was and that alone gave me some consolation.

“Y’all reckon the Commander in Chief would pick me to be his bodyguard?’ says Danny with a chuckle while toasting his polar opposite. The sight of the two clanking their beers together was a sight to behold. I was not ready for any of this, but hey - I welcomed it.

We awoke to a quiet morning but now I can only consider sleep a luxury as the whole world crumbles around us. We pack our remaining gear and set out to find transport. I grab Lucy and Karen by the hands and guide them across the street to the already running red Chevy Silverado Rally in the middle of the main street. I hop into the front seat but Karen’s screaming now. She’s behind us, no longer holding my hand. The alien has her by the neck. I close my eyes, wishing it all away as Bruce runs to her aid. He’s too brave for his own good. It gets a hold of him too. I back the car up fifteen feet and floor it on the accelerator pedal. I hit the alien so hard I see its body flip through the rear-view mirror. We pull up aside Bruce and shovel him into the car.

My whole life I've never looked back. I was always afraid of what I'd see. But maybe we should look back more often, there's too much we can no longer hide from. In the back seat, Bruce slowly succumbs in Danny’s arms, his excruciating agony echoes humanity’s desperate sigh and made for the most uncomfortable car ride. But we had someplace to be at least that's what we hoped, so we kept going, and for as long as we could. The future is everything to us now, it's all we have.

With nowhere else to go, we only looked forward to treasuring every second we were away from what Bruce and Karen had felt. Lucy however remained fixated on Bruce’s lifeless body. I stir myself up to keep going, in the name of survival but remained without hope as the Chevy died before we did. Funnily we’re stopped at a levee, which was dry. God how alien I feel sometimes when no one gets my references. Then I thought to myself no one or nothing on this earth would ever know what American Pie was or Buddy Holly or anything for that matter. It would just all be gone... like it was never even here.

Out in the open fields, we await our doom as the aliens approach in a blitzkrieg-like manner. I scroll through Twitter for what may be the last time in the hope of good news. Israel and Palestine work together now to hold the fort on their end. Iran follows North Korea’s suit, firing at will. As we speak the aliens overrun the subcontinent. Kashmir was no longer in dispute as aliens had a foothold. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the aliens concentrated their efforts on targeting nations with nuclear arsenals, well aware those weapons posed the most risk. How did that get lost on us? Meanwhile, the leader of the most powerful nation on earth had given the green light to unleash its greatest weapon. After all, they always said they’d protect the world from threats. What better way to counteract a threat than with nuclear annihilation? Mutually assured destruction, right? Mad indeed.

I don’t know how we as a species have survived for as long as we have. I wonder if the world would just go on without us. It’s not like we lived in harmony with nature and each other anyway. Who’d have thought there were more destructive beings in the universe than us? Does living and surviving go hand in hand with destruction and killing? It just seems like we all compete with every living thing for survival even ourselves. Honestly, what on earth do they even want with us anyway? I say to myself that they are possible destroyers of worlds. Perhaps with their sophisticated technology they’ve accelerated climate change on their planet. Maybe they have gone so far as to destroy their own world and now they want ours.

I’m not sure what death entails. Will there be a hereafter? What if we could just start all over again? I watch Lucy and wonder what goes through her mind, was it that her sister no longer stood beside her? I tell her that things will be fine as Danny and Rhett stand side by side, firing at will, of what’s left of their arsenal. But they’re out of rounds and unfortunately out of time. Jacob runs past a few, even with those bowling shoes he still has on. It didn’t occur to me why we didn’t get him some new shoes. I suppose it doesn't matter now, any of it. Our home was always going to be a vacuum. Sooner or later however far we had come, for all the glories and tribulations, and accomplishments of humanity - our shining light, well there was always going to come a time when it was all eclipsed, a time when there was no one or nothing around to bear witness and to hear the last sigh of humanity.

Well, we’re cornered now as they grab hold of Lucy, her body hovering off the ground as I engage them in a game of Tug of War. But I can’t hold on. I can't win. So, I just stop and let her go. I spare her the pain of the struggle as her screams lingered once more for more than a moment but I just shut them out.

In her eyes, I see it all come apart...