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The Inception of War Against the Coilers

The war against the invaders is about to start.

By M.G. MaderazoPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 4 min read
15
The Inception of War Against the Coilers
Photo by Anis Rahman on Unsplash

I wasn’t born yet when the Coilers arrived. Father told me they came when Mother was six months pregnant. They came with vast spaceships, silently springing up in the skies after the green lights had shown up, like that of the Northern Lights. Father said the world hadn’t prepared for their coming. Because if we had, we could have won the war against them. We hid underground so they couldn’t see us. Some had taken off to space, and, by now, would have been dead of suffocation or starvation. They have killed millions of people around the world by tensely wrapping the human body to death as a snake does to its prey. That’s why we call them the Coilers.

Father told me how he had saved me after Mother gave birth to me. Every time he speaks about it, he would always shed tears. I couldn’t cry, because I didn’t feel what he felt. It was just my first day outside, on Earth, when the Coilers took Mother’s life. Father and Mother had settled under the Metro Manila Subway, along with some twenty-five survivors. The subway is a hundred miles away from here, our current underground settlement. One of the men, assigned as a guard at the door leading out to the surface, died of an illness that was most likely caused by hunger. He died sitting like a philosopher while waiting for their comrades, who were looking for food to feed all of them. Nobody knew he was dead.

The Coilers heard my first cry when I came out. And so they entered our settlement. There were about over twenty Coilers that got in, and they chased after the survivors and killed them one by one, except Father, Mother, and me. Father wanted to take both of us, but it was difficult for him. He couldn’t carry me and Mother at the same time. She couldn’t walk for obvious reasons. Had he insisted, they would have killed the three of us, too.

He was crying when he said to Mother, “I love you so much, Cassandra. I’m so sorry that I have to leave you.” His tears didn’t stop that entire day.

“I understand, Al,” Mother said, putting a smile on her face. It was a smile of love, not of sadness and goodbye. A smile of hope and faith for me and Father to survive. “Go now, Al,” Mother said in a weak voice.

“I’m so sorry.” Father squeezed her to him for a few seconds while his tears streamed out from his eyes. He kissed her on the forehead. His last kiss to her. He had always kissed her every day when she was still alive. He wrapped me in a blanket, leaving a small hole for me to breathe. And then he put me inside a carton box with a small rope tied around it. He had made that so it would be easy for him to carry me.

The Coilers were creeping like snakes toward us. Their large green scales were pushing the ground like a millipede’s feet. Father held the carton box, gripping the rope tightly. He looked at Mother one last time. Her eyes were smiling at him. He didn’t want to see the Coilers kill her. He ran as fast as he could. He ran more than twenty miles under the pitch-black Metro Manila Subway for over four hours, from Bicutan to Valenzuela, until he saw dim lights from the outside. Upon reaching the subway’s boundary, we hid under the platform and waited until some survivors from outside the subway heard me cry.

From the time I understand the things around me, Father would always tell me stories about Mother. “She was a fighter, Aldra,” he would say. “She was braver than me. Before the invasion, she was the one who had encouraged me to pursue my dream to become a lawyer. I hadn’t had the courage to take up law, but she made me take it. She had inspired me. She was the bravest woman I’d known. And, that courage?” he paused. “I see it in you.”

Father is now old. He has bequeathed me his throne to lead the remaining survivors in a battle against the Coilers. We have studied their weaknesses and we now know how to defeat them, although nobody knows where the Coilers came from. Some say they had been living on Earth long before us, and that they only appeared when they were ready to invade us. Others claim they were from a dying planet, and they came here to take Earth from us. Istan, the oldest man I have known, and who claims to be a scientist, believes that the Coilers came from a faraway galaxy and that they came through wormholes concealed in many parts of the world. Regardless of where they came from, they took our freedom away from us. They took my right to have a mother and to grow up with her. And now, the only way for us to reclaim freedom and serve justice is to fight them.

science fiction
15

About the Creator

M.G. Maderazo

M.G. Maderazo is a Filipino science fiction and fantasy writer. He's also a poet. He authored three fiction books.

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