EPISODE FIVE
“I told you they will not abandon us, Professor Jada and Astra aren’t like that so unless if they had no other choice but to flee, Astra never leaves anyone behind”, Jamie said, looking at professor Jada with a facial expression that exposes his reverence for her, especially having just saved his life.
“No you didn’t say that!” Rhoda objected.
“what do we do now?” Astra asked Jada, walking around the dark area surrounding the small light that the screens on the door showing the entrance to the shelter behind he door.
Jada picked out a pen torch from the breast pocket on her shirt and turned it on, shooting a small stream of light through what they all realize is now a large open area that sits in the cover of the darkness.
Jada walked to the left of the gate, using her pen torch to light her way through the darkness, followed from behind by all of the students.
“Now we settle in, check the integrity of the shelter’s life support system and look for food, if my assumptions about what is happening are right, we will be here for a while and it will be in our best interest to make sure we have the basic necessary survival items in here. If the government is not lying about how well it takes care of the bunkers, we should have full supplies of protein bars, powdered carbs and the oxygen tanks should be full and all the equipment should be functional. Aha, this should be it” Jada said and pulled a lever hanging from the large door.
Instantly, a flash of bright light blinded all of them, then slowly faded out as their eyes adjust to the sudden change in the amount of light. As their vision slowly return to normal, one by one they begin to realize how massive the inside of the bunkers are. From all direction, the space they are currently looking at measures up to how large half a standard football field will be.
Astra and Tim walked around the area, finding scattered all around the large space they are in, large wooden boxes with the government seals on them, some of the boxes are about the size of a small cargo containers, scattered all around the floor while next to each large box, are smaller ones with the same seals on but painted red.
From behind them, Jada and the rest of the students have followed.
“what are these boxes? What is in them? But even more importantly, how did you get the password that opened the door?” Astra asked, looking at Jada dead in the eye with literal curiosity oozing out of her.
“I may as well tell you about this since there is no going back now. The government has mandated that every first class citizen be told about the bunkers and made to cram the keyword to open them, this is the same all over the world so I would have been able to open any other bunker in the world, of course we were made to sign a non disclosure agreement so as to keep it secret all this time” She responded.
Astra heard something from behind the nearest large box and turned, placing her hand on the pistol on her hip and drawing it out.
“what are you doing?” Rhoda asked, having seen her suddenly looking alert with a pistol in hand. But Astra paid no attention to her, she walks past Tim who was in front of her and aimed her gun at the direction of the large box.
“I know you are there, whoever you are show yourself before we start shooting at you!” Astra shouted.
At first even professor Jada was in surprise of her adopted daughter’s odd behavior, the rest of her colleagues were bewildered at how she is suddenly pointing her gun at an empty space and talking to herself, but all of them suddenly pulled out their guns and pointed at the same direction as Astra, having seen three strange persons dressed in blue overalls with protective helmets on, two men and one woman coming out from behind the containers.
“please don’t shoot, we are from restock units of the defense headquarters, we decided it is best we stay after we entered the shelter to restock oxygen tanks that have leaked out and service the ventilation fans stationed at the top of mount chrome. All of a sudden we heard through our transponders that the invasion has begun, Chrome city has been wiped out and all over the world, people are rushing to the shelters to the bunkers to hide from some monster of alien origin that is killing indiscriminately. After hearing that, we realized it would be best to stay here until more people arrived”, said the woman among them.
Rhoda quickly stepped forward and pointed her gun at the three.
“how did you get in here then and why didn’t you open the door for us when we approached the entrance to the shelter?” she asked them. Then turned back at the rest of her colleagues and said.
“if what Professor Jada told us is true about a handful of people knowing how to open the shelters in case of emergency, then they must have someone like that with them since they don’t seem to have gotten in through the door we came through”.
“she is right, if they have gotten through the main entrance, we shouldn’t have had to activate the sequence fro the scratch, if they have, we should have been buzzed in by them. Even if there are other entrances, those entrances must have some sort of encryption as well so without a first class citizen, it will be impossible to get in”. Jada responded.
“she is right, we were four when we came in here, there is our supervisor Mr. Edgar, he is a first class citizen”, one of the men said.
“where is he now then?” Rhoda quickly asked.
The three looked at each other with visible dread on their faces, then the other man said.
“he is dead! At the time that the monolith landed in chrome city, the shockwave compromised the integrity of one of the pillars supporting the inner bunker. Unfortunately it fell on him and killed him”.
Jada looked at them for a moment, then turned to turned to look at Astra.
“Astra, you keep aim and shoot any of them that tries to run or do anything apart from what I tell them to do. Tim and Khan, search them for weapons and restrain them with these” she said, throwing three hand cuffs in front of them that Rhoda and Lawrence just cant get their hand around how she just magically produced three cuffs seemingly out of nowhere; but Tim on the other hand knows exactly where she got the from, she collected them from him a few minutes ago when the lights were turned on and she noticed something reflecting light from his hip. She knows that he has made a habit of carrying them with him to make booby traps to prank his class mates.
She looked at the three people standing with hands in the air, “get on the ground, face down and hands on your head, if you move or resist you will be shot” she yells at them with a commanding tone that emphasizes how serious she is about what she is saying.
Without resistance, they all slowly put their hands at the back of their heads, knelt down and proceeded to put themselves on the ground face down. Khan and Tim slowly approached them, searched them for weapons and found none; then proceeded to cuff all of them.
“now, if you would please take us to the place where Edgar died, I have to see for myself to believe that he really died the way you said he did. I have known him for more than twenty years so you better be goddamn right about the way he died or I will personally feed you to the alien monster outside” Jada said angrily.
Tim and Khan helped them get up and have them lead the entire group inwards into the inner sections of the bunker.
Led by two men and woman, all dressed in blue overalls and white helmets, Astra’s colleagues Tim and Khan walk behind with guns in their hands, pointing them at the three leading the way with fingers on the trigger, ready to fire at them if they make any wrong move.Tim and Khan are not new to gun handling, neither is Astra, Rhoda, any of the students from Chrome city that is over the age of fifteen, including professor Jada of course.Since the end of world war three, a hundred and fifty years ago. The Global human federation has mandated for every able person of fifteen years old and above to undergo special military training, which included survival training, gun handling and combat training.Almost months ago, after the bizarre massage broadcast by the aliens when they arrived, guns were distributed throughout the world in an attempt to arm civilians should the worse case scenario come to be. Among such guns are th
EPISODE SIXJada looks at Khan, then turned to the side and look at the three sitting on the bare floor, in their blue overalls with each of their hands cuffed.“Take off their cuffs, they are also victims of circumstances.” She said.Immediately, Khan pulled out a key from his pocket and freed their hands from the cuffs, walking back to where the rest of his teammates were gathered together with the three in the overalls.Jada turned her attention to them and then asked.“what are your names?”Two of them turned their heads immediately they were asked to look at the third and more mature looking man among them, he nodded his head and they all turned back to look at Jada.“I am Tom, this is Pete and she is Kate.” He said.“Please forgive me for not trusting the three of you at first sight, but I am sure you will understand why I had the three of you cuffed. This is a delic
“What have you realized, Carter? We are in desperate need of information about these creatures so share it with us!” one of the military Generals seated said in a shout.Currently, there are forty-seven people seated in the meeting hall, among which are the president of the global human federation, his direct deputy and all the important political and military faces on the planet.It is no new thing for Carson to hijack an entire presentation in the meeting hall and turn it into a lecture that everyone will be happy with at the end of the day. This is because he knows exactly what he is talking about. He raised his head to look in the direction of the president, who sits in a large P-cube, one of Carter’s inventions that provides an absolute defense against almost all kinds of attacks, it combines layers of different types of bulletproof and shockproof glasses in a cube, with his own oxygen tank inside, once he locks himself inside, his
(BACK AT THE CHROME SHELTER) Astra has been at the guard watch duty, her assigned role after Jada had finished coordinating them to clean up the inner shelter had been to keep watch of the entrance and she has been sitting and watching all the live feeds from the hidden cameras outside the gate of the Chrome shelter. It has been a day since they arrived. At night Mila could see nothing on the screen because it was dark and there was no lighting outside to avoid drawing the attention of the alien crawlers. The next day at the break of dawn, while she was monitoring the outside of the gate, she noticed something peculiar. There was noise being picked up by the microphones of the hidden cameras outside the gate. She called Jada’s attention, and the two of them watched a cloud of dust gather and dissipate as a hovering bus arrived at the gates of the shelter. There are about twenty people inside. “These must be from the neighboring cities we were talking about yesterday,” Astra thought
The crawlers moved quickly and scattered around the large parking space of the shelter. The group started shooting at them as they jump up and down, dashing around at unbelievable speed. ‘something about them is different. They weren't as fast as this, so why are they suddenly so fast? Astra thought. Nevertheless, I must stop them from crossing into another part of the shelter. There are helpless people that cannot protect themselves. She reminded herself and changed her assault rifle firing mode to single shots. She stood for a few seconds and tried to read the movements of the crawlers; she realized they were trying to avoid being shot on the head by jumping around; they became faster than just an hour ago, so it must either be the effect of the larger one that awakened them with a growl or the fact that they have just eaten. Maybe it is because they ate human flesh, she thought, but realized that it would be best to just fight at the moment, then figure out what is strengthening
Astra walked around the inner bunker and examined it, two-fifth of it is a food storage that is filled with protein bars and drinking water while the rest of the bunker contains the general area where she figured they will be used for sleeping. It also contains a bathroom with taps and a heater. ‘The entire area is made for two people, but there are currently five of us. The general area has a long couch. She walked to it and sat on it. Slowly, the reality that Jada has died came back to her and a sudden feeling of sadness and loss hit her like a brick wall. She sat I the couch, put her head against her knee and started shedding tears profusely. ‘I have lost her. After all the years of caring for me like I was her own child, training me so that I can one day be able to protect myself, I could do nothing to save her; when she died, I was there, but I was not strong enough, she thought. “I am not strong enough to help you.” She said out loud and started crying. Khan stood from where
Astra picked the radio transmitter and placed it on the table, pulling out its wire and plugging it into the socket on the floor close to the wall of the bunker. With a single click to the switch button, it started blinking a blue light and a small display screen came on. All the people in the bunker gathered round her as she pulls out the antenna and begin to punch some buttons on the transmitter. “This thing is like hundreds of years old. At this age, it could be said to even be a relic of the past. Can it even connect to the channels run by modern transmitters? But more importantly, can you even operate it?” Rhoda asked. “If there is anyone here who can operate this thing, it is her. She has a huge old tech collection in her room when I visited it once before.” Jamie answered. All of a sudden Rhoda’s attention left the table where Astra is trying to get the transmitter online and focused on Jamie, who, at the moment, is busy trying to take off his shoe. “Did you just said you v
Two days later, Astra and the rest of the survivors have been waiting patiently in the bunker, observing the live feed from the cameras hidden on the steel bunker, the crawlers have been pretty much inactive the last three days, on the first day that they entered, they filled the underground space where the bunker is in, scratching at it with their claws and trying to get it open. However, as it becomes apparent that there is no way to get the people hiding inside, like a tiger chasing a monkey that just climbed a thin tall tree, which the tiger cannot climb. The crawlers lose interest in the bunker and after three days with no human to attack; they stop moving, forming small clusters of five crawlers each and hibernate. On the fifth day, early morning, they all woke up to the sound of an explosion that had happened shook the entire bunker. Followed by a series of sounds that resemble mortar shell bombardment and intense gun fire sounds. Astra watched on the live feed screen that th