Hardcore Honey & The Cavalry

She awoke with a start, which she found to be an incredibly irritating turn of events given the fact she had been in the midst of a particularly enjoyable dream that involved, amongst other things, a buttplug the size of an industrial flashlight.

As one might expect her bedding was soaked and was most definitely in need of yet another run through the washer-dryer, and not for the first time that week. She had bigger things to worry about, however, that being what was signified by the klaxon to which she had awoken.

She struggled into a pair of panties, and slipped a t-shirt on as she hurried over to the window.

Sure enough the sky was already lit by a series of inordinately large gaslight spotlights, each and every one aimed directly at the point directly central to Earth’s trio of moons. Yanking on a pair of jeans she watched as flickers of pink and purple, visible even in the well-lit sky, played and danced between the moons.

She grabbed her weapon, an MKII plasma rifle, from its holster beside the door as she exited her dwelling. Outside the street was already full of people who had been similarly awoken. All brandished a weapon of their own, anything from the laser sword of her neighbour to the dreadnought-type body armour worn by a young man further down the street.

“What’ve we got?” she asked of her laser sword-wielding neighbour, her voice raised that she might be heard above the din.

“We’ll find out,” came the reply. “Whatever these alien fucks throw at us though, they’re in for a motherfucker of a shock if they think we’re going to roll over and take it up the shitter!”

“Oh I don’t know, Bernard,” she replied with a grin. “I’m quite fond of a stiff one in the rear!”

If Bernard was going to proffer anything by way of response she never knew, as a blast towards the end of the street flung a piece of shrapnel that took the man’s head clean off. For a moment his body remained in an upright position, until gravity took over and it dropped to the ground with a dull thud.

It was far from being the first time she had witnessed something along those lines, and without so much as a second thought she stooped, grabbed the weapon of her former neighbour, and advanced into the fray like a fucking badass.

She sidestepped an energy beam from above, its colour the same pink and purple of the light dancing merrily among the moons. Knowing what was coming she rolled further away, turning while doing so, and the nanosecond the alien creature materialised, all tentacles and slime and icky shit as it was, she put a single bolt of plasma straight through what passed for its head.

She had lost count and had no idea what number that particular kill took her bodycount to, but she knew it was a lot. Over the ten years since Earth’s natural satellites had tripled in number, alien invasions had become a near-fortnightly occurrence. Ergo, she had killed a lot of aliens. Everyone had.

Turning away from the already-rotting corpse of whatever race of alien creature it was she’d killed, she ascended a pile of rubble that had, until not too long ago, been a dwelling. She grinned as she saw, coming around the corner at the bottom of the street, what would forever be known as The Cavalry, Dino Riders - specially trained men and women who rode genetically-engineered prehistoric creatures into battle.

As had become the custom, she and everyone else who had noticed The Cavalry’s arrival fired a trio of shots, one for each moon, into the night sky, which in turn elicited an almighty roar from what looked to be a Giganotosaurus leading the charge.

And she smiled for her work was done. For her and for everyone else the battle was over. She could go back to sleep, hopefully back to the dream she had been enjoying so much and come morning, she and everyone else who had survived the night’s attack would begin the clean up, which itself would probably be done and dusted just in time for the next invasion.

“But that’s future Honey’s problem,” she muttered to herself as she headed back towards the ruins of her dwelling. “If I can find my bed somewhere in there, then right now nothing else matters.”