Empire of Dirt #5

With Connac leading the mix of Soteria warriors and meek journalists, the group carefully walked through the alleyway.

One Soteria soldier checker her datapiece. “There’s no sign of Colossus activity two miles from here.”

“I guess we’re headed there then” said Connac, keeping a keen lookout for the savage behemoths.

Lily, hands still shaking, found the courage to say what was on her mind for a few minutes. “You’re the suit.”

Connac stopped.

“You were one of the guys that day, exchanging that envelope”.

He sighed. “Normally I’d kill you for that but I mean...is there really a point? Fuck it, I’ll tell ya everything. We were sharing information about a massive structure that parked itself behind the moon, clearly they aren’t exactly looking to share their culture and make peace with us.”

The journalists were overcome with a wide mix of emotions. Fear, because aliens are attacking. Confusion, because aliens are attacking and why would they do such a rude thing? And also a bit of excitement, because aliens are real after all, and of course during any crisis there’s the rush of living in a historical event, albeit even though this one may conclude in the end of human history.

The group made their way to the safe zone without issue, much to their surprise. The local Soteria operatives set up a small base in a grocery store. They wouldn’t mention it to anyone, but making that small section safe cost six of them and several thousand dollars worth of ammunition and grenades.

The journalists sat and recovered. Other than Lily Burns, the survivors from The Soap Box were: Jessica Donahue, Tom Sung, Devante Keys, Abigail Howard, and Ross Clemens. Neither one of them had ever witnessed anything remotely dangerous or stressful, living fairly easy lives in Manhattan. The most dangerous ones were Ross and Tom who every so often would go to a shooting range together and fire their outdated pistols with rather poor accuracy. Abigail was really good at video games, meaning her coordination was better than everyone else, she was also taking this situation the worst. From the office to a few hours in the safe zone, she never stopped shaking.

Connac, after briefing with the Soteria operatives in the safe house and the other safe houses scattered throughout the city, helped himself to a pack of cigarettes from the behind one of the counters and went to go play a hybrid of a therapist and a teacher to the pack of, to be frank, completely helpless group of young adults who will now never know what it’s like to live a normal life.

Connac explained everything. The governments of the world knew about this species since 2017, that interstellar comet Oumuamua back then wasn’t a comet. A few people theorized it was something synthetic, they were correct, and those stories were buried. When the mothership hid itself behind the moon, we knew. After all, we have been back to the moon several times, Connac took time to explain that side note of why no one knew about it. Telling the public we were sending archeologists to the moon wouldn’t have gone over so well with the public. Of course the base, and it’s personnel that was stationed there, knew about such a massive object and told their respective countries of what was happening. Connac finished his speech with the honest to god truth: that’s really all anyone knew. Roswell and Area 51 never knew about aliens, UFOs may or may not be these guys, no one really knows for sure, and at this point it really doesn’t matter, whoever they are they do not like us for some unknown reason.

“Well after that history lesson, I have good and bad news, both are the same news. It just really depends on how you view it: you are all going to make yourself useful to this situation somehow. I don’t care if you fight these guys, find food and water, build shit, or treat any wounded, you will not be a waste of space and resources. You all grew up dreaming of being journalists, maybe raise a family and live your last years in peace and quiet and die in a hospital bed surrounded by your loved ones. Well that dream is dead. You are hereby responsible for the survival of the human race.”

Abigail puked.

Connac sighed.

This certainly did not begin well, it will certainly not end well.

I hope you enjoyed reading this issue as much as I did writing it. So just a heads up, Issue #5 of Empire of Dirt will leave the Manhattan Crew and check in how the residents of Los Vegas are doing. THAT will be interesting I assure you (hint: the Invaders are sending something other than Colossi there). Check out Boxhead Books on Facebook, follow @boxheadbooks on Instagram as well as my personal account: @tytyscifi (which I will be posting on a lot more often now), and go look at www.boxheadbooks.com for some other blog posts as well as shop around and check out my other works for sale. As always, remember to #ReadOutsideThBox.