Bathed In Ash...

ONE
The Earth. Our Home...

The home of millions before us. A place housing the eden of life.
For eight thousand years, Humanity made itself into a species nearly defying evolution. We assumed our intelligence was the only form to be encountered within the duration of our species' time on Earth.

How wrong we were...

My name is Hastro. I'm one of only a few who remember the times before "They" came. The times when I might have been happier to tell you about our past... But I fear, that I may forget, how wrong or how sweet it was. I don't want to forget. But I don't want "Them" to take it from me. Who are "They"? What do "They" want? They are emotionless. They want us to be extinct... They came here, to Earth, to sacred Terra, and destroyed it. The cities are wastes, ashen. The barren landscapes that once were pastures or streams or forests, are a silent grove of charred memory. They had weapons, almost... Specifically designed to exterminate us.

Thousands were gone in only hours. Millions, in a day. Walls of red fire, toasted flesh and piles of the dead.
We tried to fight them. Fight back. Too late when we started. I got up from a small runway hut on the left-hand side, facing east, when they appeared overhead. I saw what looked like a massive metal ring floating on a red-orange glow. Lights blinking. A terrible whir of sophisticated engines/systems, I can't know. At a low altitude they waited, I could only stare. I wanted to know them. Their energies, their knowledge. Charging fields of ions collected in a central inverted dome in the centre of the craft and radiated outward towards the rings edge... They emerged everywhere at once...

Red hazes sifted and cleared all around the complex near the runway and the terminal. Ground crew scattered or stood rooted in awe, They emerged from the haze. Each one a large steel-resembling ornament of anti-human horror. Some seemed to be organising themselves, before they began killing, diagnostics maybe? Others simply shifted and advanced on the people nearest them, they opened fire with glowing red orbs in the central mass of their "chests". Transparent red beams carved away limbs and caused someone to explode in a cloud of ichor. They glided onward and began lazing the fearful, turning to flee. I could only join them in flight, my brain unable to process the event. "Hastro!" I heard my name, I couldn't see who said it, I ran. "Hastro?!!" I stopped as I was gaining on a doorway to the terminal, I saw Jadir in time enough for his body to be diced apart by bright arcs of red. The blend of red blood and red light, eviscerating his Argentine frame in seconds.

I coughed, edged inside. I looked out a view port to my right. The floors in there were crazy with panic. Outside the steel pods hovered ominously in all directions, pursuing stragglers, annihilating those that were trapped in the open. The noise out there was remarkable, the screams of people caught in beams, explosions as the pod-like steel killers engaged aircraft docked to the south, sizzling and whining from the chest-mounted primary weapons. I wanted to cry, as I was about to, the window disintegrated in my face and I was thrown backward - a segmented metal... Tentacle?! Had lashed the view-port away from infront of me, from between scratching glass fragments off me, and getting up off the floor to run, I begged to watch the steel-like limb slither forward around the wall, followed by another on the opposite... I didn't want to wait for the rest of it. People's screams, clattering of running feet, panicked echoes.. There was no escaping the horde of soon to be victims. Everyone wants to get out. Yet no-one can.

I found myself in a waiting area for passengers, I could still see outside, the platform raised near a jet in plain view was ungalantly thrust aside by a pod. Then it kept coming. It had no face. No eyes, no limbs. It had only the sterile shape of death, encased in foreign alloy, the rounded shape ending in a short point, like a tail. Save for the glowing structure embedded in it's raised chest-region. No other discernable means of interacting with it's environment seemed to exist. I examined these thoughts after I found a way out. They were hovering into the terminal now, and systematically terminating anyone they found. "This isn't happening dude. It can't fucking be!!" These, my only thoughts. Even now as I describe this mayhem to you, I struggle to believe any of it. As though I am already about to wake from this shitty nightmare.

I escaped with a family into high country as a defence force arrived, troops from inner country poured into the scene and engaged. I watched from the evacuation point before Elsie and Namo ushered me into their car. I could see sparks blinking off some of the metal sheen of the pods bodies. Bullet impacts. They didn't seem to take notice. The one I watched simply hovered onward, as if seeking the unarmed victims it had been hunting earlier in favour of the armed and hostile target shooting at them now. The ring-craft sat on it's sheet of red glow high above the airport. Every so often, it would flash, and fade. Flash, the energy radiating outward from the central dome structure at it's centre parallel to the ground, and the light given off would fade again. They were deploying more. More? I hadn't seen any of them die, from what I remember, the soldiers didn't seem to even be denting the things. They weren't replacing their losses, they were bolstering their numbers. I didn't find out if they succeeded in destroying any of them there at the airport. The troops seem to be busy. All their assets were used. I don't know if the invaders attacked the troops or kept searching for the civvies. I don't know how long it's been since that first day...

TWO

My father once told me before I started high-school: "Son, I'm not gonna lie, the efforts of some men to survive, are as peaceless, and petty as the way light shines from the Sun." I never tried to understand what Dad was trying to tell me back then. Now, I can only remember a long series of counsels Dad gave me. Amidst the raging disgust and forceful discipline when I fucked up. "As petty as light shines from the Sun." Well, if Dad could see the futile shit-storm we live in now, I would assume he'd believe, as I do, that "proverb" has next-to no relevance here. Try as we might to stop these things, our attempts to survive are just cut-off, decapitated or burned to carbon. Namo was on his way to France, his wife Elsie and son Hugo were going with him. Namo had landed a new position as a regional surveyor for some architectural firm in Brest. Hugo was eight. Scared to death, and not much different to his mother. Elsie, like hugo had green eyes, black hair and expressions that only embodied what two people could feel when confronted with the sight of alien-machines cutting people apart with unimaginable power. Raw fear. It was on all of us. Whether our faces, our speech, our demeanor. The four of us for hours, collapsed on the floor of an old cottage in utter shock. Scared beyond breath.

The journey away from Heidlberg Airport was fraught with tears, cursing and an indescribable confusion. Cars and vans packed with people cluttered the road on the right lane. Trucks, jeeps and personnel carriers sped past us in the opposite direction, headed back to Hell.
"Where are we going?! Why haven't we moved yet?? Who's going to get us out of here?!" Namo's words were stamped with shaky conviction. I needed a while longer before I could make a decision... "I'm Hastro, we are under attack by something from another world, I've seen what they do, I think you all have, and I'm sorry."
"Namo Gleizwur. This is Elsie, and Hugo. What the fuck man...? Shit!"
"Yeah. We are lucky, this isn't good, we're moving too slowly, if they're here to destroy us, they will pursue us." I didn't know how that helped, but at least our rationality re-emerged. Hugo wept a little in the rear seat. Elsie cradled him and whispered the only uncertainty we knew, to her son. "It will be okay."
"The traffic out here is making it very dangerous, those... Mechanical pod-things? They're bad news, but I've seen something that might be worse... I... I... I think you need to take the next exit Namo."
"Right you are. Fuck! The military is closing the outer suburbs, where are we meant to go?" Namo drove towards the next exit, and edged out of the lane. We headed due east.

"Head for an army checkpoint." I suggested. "Maybe they can tell us where an evacuation area is." Namo drove faster. The traffic on these roads was much lighter, but still confused and alot were headed back toward Heidlberg Airport. They didn't know? Shit!
We couldn't stop.

Eventually, Namo pulled us up at a roadblock a few kilometres up the eastern hill roads we had taken. Two apc's and barbed wire were set up across the road. A handful of soldiers halted us. Namo lowered his drivers side window to speak to an officer:
I couldn't understand what they said completely, I only know small few words of German.
The officer tucked his weapon back up to a ready position and returned to his men, Namo spoke as he started the car and wound up the window: "They said we can go no further. We have only one option, the officer said we should find somewhere to take shelter and we should be safe. He seemed to know what was going on. I do not know why we cannot go on. he didn't say."
I looked at Elsie and Hugo in the rear vision mirror, then at Namo. I had made up my mind.
"Okay. Okay... Shit. Okay. We are  trapped here, so lets not panic, if we do what the troops told us we should be okay. Do you or your family have a problem with me staying with you Namo?"
"No."
"W-Why would we? We helped you get out of it back there. You've calmed us down. And Hugo isn't crying anymore, why wouldn't we be happy to have you come along to safety with us Hastro?" Elsie seemed so concerned. I hadn't done anything. Except witness an alien invasion and occupy the front passenger seat of their getaway. I was so grateful. I wanted them to know that if I could help, I would. We needed to be together for this. This is going beyond the foundation of what we each previously thought survival meant.

"Thank you." Was all I said.
"Did you want to leave?" Asked Namo. Panting as we parked on the roadside in a gulley. The oaken overgrowth, and autumn foliage canopy above us, seemed impartial to our comfort. Like we had a place to hide and think for a minute.
"I wouldn't make it." I said.
"No shit. Now where are we going to hide?" "Can you see that cottage over there?" Namo pointed to the right and tapped the windscreen, I traced his direction and spied a little brick house surrounded by trees on a small hillock. I got out.

From outside, I could hear explosions, bombs maybe. The Army must be dug in hard. We were still close the Airport. But we could go nowhere else. The cottage was our refuge. We left the Gleitzwur car parked, and ran down the slope of the east road and up the driveway toward the cottage. Listening to the crazed battle happening not far away. We still feared them. Our fright was made worse as Elsie tripped over something, she landed awkwardly and leapt up screeching... She had kicked a dead goat chained to the fence and disturbed the decomposing remains. Some of the facial tissue slid off onto her leggings. She charged into Namo and clung to him dazed with fright and sobbing. Hugo held his fathers hand, trying hard to glimpse the sight of the faceless goat as he gantered uphill.
SHIT. I could only move and keep up from behind. The noisy battle, the grim sobbing from Elsie, our collective panting and sudden breathlessness sated as we reached the cottage door... Bursting through it. Collapsing on the floor. Panicked and exhausted...

THREE

I got up first. Hugo tried but his mother had him pinned under her arms. I stood and looked around. No-one is here? If this were someones home, (which it did look lived in,) then they had either been informed that the worst possible scenario had happened, and are gone for good. OR, they were rounded up by the army and moved to a safer zone before quarantine was enacted. Still. It struck me as strange.
I helped Namo up and Elsie found a seat to collect herself in. This was... Strange. No-one around, a rotting goat in the driveway, no signs of a hurried need to leave? There were pictures on the walls, a small oval-framed one caught my eye. It held the expression of a worn old face. A woman, leaning on a pitch-fork, clad in farmers wear. The multitude of the other photo's seemed to reveal young men. Some in suits, some in upmarket fashion. The only woman was the old farmer lady. She must be the mother to the other boys. I wondered what became of her.

Namo quieted Elsie, then sat Hugo at the table to keep an eye on him. He joined me. Searching trying to understand what the hell we had fallen into.
"Hey." He grunted. "Look here."
He handed me another small frame from a side table in the family area. On it, the image of a healthy goat, strung to a fenceway. Not so healthy now. A pet I gather. Why hadn't it been buried? Where is... ANYONE?
"Well. I should imagine that the occupants of the cottage are gone." "We should settle in."
Namo nodded. And went forward toward the curtains shrouding a window in the family area. It was very dark, he swept them aside and leaned to see the car and road.
I felt a small vibration at my feet. The ground had shaken. The combat at the Airport, was audible inside. Namo quickly shut the curtains.

Namo and Elsie walked about inspecting the refuge of the lowly cottage. If we could stay hidden until the conflict subsided, we might have a chance. We can't argue with the troops guarding the roadblocks, and I'm glad namo had sense enough not to try. I watched Hugo. He didn't move too much. He seemed lost. Poor guy. It's been a day for curiosity and terror by him. I would find a room to lay him in later.

Elsie and Namo sat down around me at the kitchen table. As she sat Elsie started with another jolt from the floor, some pottery and shelves tickled this time. Closer? Shit.
"Alright. We have come this far, we can't go back, we can't go forward, we have to stay. The aliens attack doesn't sound like it will end soon, so we have to remain hidden." Namo quickly declared.
"Yes. But..." I started. I collected the thoughts from my sight of the pod-like structure that had approached from beneath the plane a couple of hours or so ago,
"But...?" Came Namo.
"I managed to get a glimpse of what they look like from the outside, while trying to get to the terminal entrance. They don't have any eyes or lenses that I could see. No arms or legs. I'm not sure how they are able to see. They are machines yes? These means of perception must be housed inside the pod-casing." I tried to be informative, but thorough.
"What does that mean Hastro?" Asked Elsie.
"It means, we don't know if we can hide from these things."
"Shit...FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO STOP THOSE THINGS MAN??!" Namo's frustrated outburst caused a sleepy Hugo to jump as his father thumped the table violently.

"I don't know. I.. I didn't see if they could be damaged by our weapons. I don't think they can be." I had to declare my thoughts, because from what I saw happened to Jadir, bullets and bombs are not going to slow these ghastly machines down, much less stop them. It's not an optimistic view, but I believed it to be the truth. The army are wasting their time, their ammunition and their lives most likely trying to abate the invaders. Jadir... He was a veteran. Ground crew at Heidlberg loved their foreigners. All of Germany, and they recruit an Argentine aeleron mechanic, and an Irish aviation co-ordinator... Ironic. Heidlberg got to meet the utimate foreigners today...

We discussed little else. Concentrating instead on settling in and hiding ourselves as best we could manage. Hoping against hope that we wouldn't be found by our malevolent off-worlders. The night was sinking into the sky and looking like tar spilt on a deep blue sheet.

FOUR

I helped Elsie settle Hugo in a room at the back of the cottage, he was barely conscious when we got there. Leaving the mother with her son, I decided I should try to blanket our presence as much as possible. None of us knew if the pods might search every human structure  hunting survivors. I imagined their onslaught to be grim and unrelenting. It could only be a matter of time. Namo and I sat discussing the threat and how best to deal with it. He quivered. Hands plastered to his face, ruffling hair, trying to reason. He could have suffered the worst, from the ordeal. Though... I hadn't exactly escaped horror myself. Jadir was really the only other non-German I had come to know and like.
Agreeing to close the curtains and not use any electricity, (it would be offline soon anyway.) To hide ourselves as best as humanly possible.
I have never wanted to be trapped in the circuitry of doubt and fear, or be at the mercy of something that seemed infinitely lethal, yet I had no idea about. My doubts were not unique to me. I felt it radiating from this small family. Even as they slept.

Namo retired with Elsie in the old lady's room. I didn't hear Hugo. "Hastro?" Namo had checked Hugo and looked ready to sleep.
"Yeah man?" Responding sleepily.
"It's been three hours. You should try to rest. We may have to move soon. They're still fighting out there."
"I will. Thanks." Fighting? Yes. Winning? I don't know. I wanted to rest. I had worked all morning trying to keep rosters for flights moving in the right people's direction. And then Jadir, Shit. I felt myself assessing how well I had reacted to this whole thing. I didn't know too many people in Germany. I didn't know the few I did, would be killed by a hostile alien invasion force. Then I questioned why the army had reacted so... Slowly? Did they have any warning? Could they have seen or tracked the craft as they approached Earth? Or did the machines simply materialise between the clouds...? Frustrating.
I didn't like the idea of sleep. Not when we were so unsure of anything. It was dark. I grew only more tired with every thought.
Dozing. Fluttering. Sleep.

Waking the next morning, it was dark still, early. I froze... No Noise? I could hear no bombing or the shattering of battle. Had they won? Had they failed? SHIT. I tried to peer through the curtains when I heard a nauseating sound. A low whirring...
That sound... Froze me. I listened, too rigid to move. It came from above us. We had stayed too long...
The floor moved beneath me, the whirring sent it in a vibrating frenzy. I gasped and sunk low to the floor. We are trapped at its leisure it would kill us. We have to get out. The soldiers hadn't managed to contain them, now they swept the countryside, searching for us.

I inched toward the hallway desperate to wake the others. Elsie was sat up in bed already, Namo was trying to see outside where it was coming from. "SH!" I whispered and pointed upwards, then gestured they follow me to get Hugo. Grabbing clothes and each other, we crept toward the back of the house. All the while the incessant drone from above us reverberated through the ceiling, walls and floor...
Shit...! I dropped to a crouch, a section of wall infront of me was illuminated with red light, oozing between the gaps around the cutains of a west-facing window. It faded quickly, I began to wonder if there were more than one of them out there. Or if that one had floated down from the roof. Namo over took me and reached the door to Hugo's room, it creaked open. Hugo wasn't awake.
"Son." Namo shook him, the little bed wobbled. "Hugo? Up! We're leaving." Namo hissed. The boy stuttered and woke, trying to rub his eyes, Namo didn't give him a chance. He picked him up, Elsie promptly applied his shoes. The had coats and now we were scared.

We could hear it. it was certainly there, it just... Didn't show itself. Windows facing west toward Heidlberg and south toward fuck-knows, I couldn't see the roof or anything out in the dark from either window. Namo huddled with his family, they had heard the sound. And knew what the danger presented if we try to run for the car. Then it was on us...

The wall to my right exploded, debris collapsed into me, splinters, dust and wood. The loud whir growing ominous. From beneath the rubble the screeches from Hugo and Elsie, I struggled. I saw it. It turned slowly in mid-air facing us. "NAMO! RUN!!" It floated and organised itself, as though its exterior was doing the thinking. It was like the others, a pod-shape, but it had... It had the TENTACLES. It whirred and chirped ignoring the fleeing family, I pushed away chunks of wall, the cold night air rushed over me, I heard the front door being rattled and some cursive remarks from the adults. It watched me. It had a raised chest like the others, but the tentacles effused from the lower half of it's alloy shell. The searing brightness of its orb igniting the intact quadrant of Hugo's room. I stood up only to hear the enunciation pertaining to my ruin. A sound like, charging, like a collection of energy before being released. I stared at the rapidly brighteneing orb. As raw instinct overtook me, I lost myself to inhibition, the restless pulse of adrenaline dropped my body to the mess-encrusted floor. Heat burst out over me, instant, it threw me sideways out the south window. In the time it had taken for the tentacled orb to discharge its weapon, It had... Destroyed itself? The resulting explosion was the second wave of heat I felt just as the shock catapulted me outside. What the fuck?

Slightly stiff, and jarred from being detonated, my eyesight fell on something shimmering in the morning gloom from inside the room. It was a mirror. A mirror sat atop a dressing table beyond the bed. I looked at it, at the smoking wreckage from my adversarie, the mirror, the wreck... Then I started. The mirror had reflected the laser beam back at it! I had managed to evade its fury and in so doing, allowed the thing to destroy itself. A small red dot fused and boiled in the middle of the dressers mirror. Climbing through mess, dust and a small fire emanating from the disintegrated thing, I had the urge to take the mirror. "Hey!"
"Namo?" I saw him crooning over the smouldering mass from the doorway, "We weren't going far that way... They are at the car, how did you...? I expected to find you dead? I expected US to be dead??"
"It killed itself. I.. Just... Dodged the beam and it bounced off this." I held up the mirror, it was hot, I held the ceramic edges, the face was hot...

"It's a miracle!" Exclaimed Elsie.
"It will be a MASSACRE if we can't get away from here, we should go!" Namo's hissing was easy motivation, I kept hold of the mirror. Hoping it might give us a chance.
We abandoned the little cottage sanctuary. Running up the tree growth, the slopes over behind the property. We didn't want to stay, try to fend off the ones inspecting the car. It might not work a second time.

Sprinting to catch up to Namo; "How many were there? What did they look like?" I panted.
"Too many, they were like big steel water drops facing upward." He explained breathless and fatigued.
"Did you notice the one that found us had those worm-like armatures?"
"Kind of." Namo shot me a frown of intrigue. We ran on. Trying to converge on somewhere, we didn't know where, but not here.
"It was different from the others, back at the Airport, one of them smashed a window infront of me, I didn't hang around to find out what it was." My memorised encounter spluttered from my lips unceremoniously. But efficiently enough to show them the point.
"A searcher you think?" Asked Elsie. Her input was met with relief by me, finally she had something rational to react to. And develop ideas to best suit our continuity.
"Could be. But one thing was buggin' me last night, did the Army know before, or after they landed? Either way, what took them so long to respond?" I didn't think this mattered now, but I said it. If there were any soldiers left, they needed a solution to combat these things. Mirrors aren't exactly safe, but it's something. "If they knew before they landed thaey were coming, they had better have a good reason for being slow." Namo slowed to a jog. We fell in step with him to save our energy. The sky was brightening fast, the grass, soggy, clung to our shoes.

At the apex of the last hill before the highway, we stopped to look out at Heidlberg city. Off in the distance, columns of smoke, debris and chaos rose from burning streets and the crumbling edifices. Panting, and horrified, our soiled attire swooshed against a war-torn wind The ring-craft, many now, simply glided over the towers and apartments disgorging more of their kind into the streets like a poison attacking organs in a body. Elsie started to sob... We let her... We let her sob, because I felt like I wanted to. I wanted to cry forever. They were destroying us. Killing ANY sign of us. The troops had no chance. The civvies had less. It was hopeless. We couldn't keep running, they had taken the city already, in only hours. If they were everywhere else on the planet, they would have massacred entire populations. I don't know if we were hit first, I don't know where we should go, they were creeping into the country, seeking us. The city is a loss. If anyone is still there, they must be bathed in ash...