Prologue
In retrospect, their brash fascination with another world is what started it all.
Curious as to the humans psyche and jealous of the planet they inhabited, they needed to know why mankind was so different. As humans were contemplative of life’s origins, and forever in search of the answers, they were no different in their questioning of existence.
Why are we here? What does it all mean?
As they collected their samples and analysed their information, they started to realise that this inferior race called humanity could actually stand up to their science. While the humans weren’t as advanced as they were, and certainly could never hope to be, there was still intelligent life among the destruction.
What made them decide to advance into this human world was the same egotistical trait that humans had. They saw themselves as the top of the food chain, the reason for their world’s existence and progress. The Visitors knew that man’s thought process was flawed.
It was humankind’s constant search for intelligence and technology that was killing the earth. So many fumes, chemicals, unsafe construction and forest degradation were slowly destroying the beautiful planet they could never evolve to leave.
The Visitors knew how to advance the Earth without destroying it, and how to live with their much-advanced technology for millions of years before the planet began its natural order to crumble and decay away into the solar system. If the humans continued to exist in such a foolish way, then the Visitors would have no choice but to accelerate the destruction and claim the resource as their own.
Following this reasoning, mankind certainly didn’t deserve the world they evolved in and that was why the Visitors decided to contaminate them, and take their beautiful world from them.
*****
Blue lights swam in front of his eyes, making him feel so cold and numb that he was paralysed from it. A large head danced in and out of his vision, around the blue light. It was like no other head on any creature he had ever seen.
With what seemed like a thousand eyes searching the depths of his soul, Ian Peters could feel himself scream, but could not make any sound. The creature above him brought a large metal scalpel with rotating nozzles closer to his body and he could see a small vial of red oozing liquid seem to dance in the tube connected to the nozzle. He tried, unsuccessfully, to shriek and struggle.
Ian lifted his head with a jerk, knocking his half empty glass and a bowl of mixed nuts to the floor. He was caught off balance by his own sudden movement and toppled off his bar room stool.
Lying on his back, Ian could hear laughter all around him as his vision swam. He tried to focus and bring his attention to the present to figure out where he was.
Once his vision stopped swimming, Ian could see the outline of the wooden bar that he had fallen away from and the cruel twisted faces of other drunken patrons in the establishment as they stood around him, laughing. It dawned on him where he was and why everyone was laughing at him. Ian pushed himself to his elbows and then lifted himself up with all his strength. His body felt heavy, as if it were made from bricks.
As he righted himself and picked up the toppled bar stool, Ian came to realise that the other patrons were still snickering at him.
Mr McMason, a white haired old oaf with teeth reminiscent of Stonehenge, came up to him, laughing so wide and hard that Ian was sure the old man would have a heart attack. McMason slapped him hard on the back of his right shoulder, causing Ian’s whole body to shake from the unexpected strength.
“What’s wrong, crazy?” McMason cackled, “Havin’ another one of them wacked-out alien dreams?”
“Yeah man!” piped up Tony Farrell by the pool table. “Your crazy ass story is legendary! What happened Peters? Did the little green men probe you a bit too hard?”
Tony’s friends who were standing around the table with him all laughed maliciously, but Ian fell silent. He’d become used to this, but he sure was sick of it.
It was a story that was well known around his small hometown. Ian Peters was a used car salesman, obviously unhappy with the life that stuck him in a short-sleeved white business shirt and a too-tight tie that hung like a noose around his neck. Ian and his wife Rose used to fight a lot, and his stickybeak neighbour told all the other gossips in town. Many thought he was crazy or believed that he was suffering a very dramatic midlife crisis.
If only it had all been an elaborate prank, then maybe the nightmares wouldn’t keep coming every time he shut his eyes.
Ian had been leaving work late one night after another gruelling shift of not selling any cars. He was walking to his own beat-up steel trap when a huge blinding blue light lit up the sky in front of him. It was all he could remember before waking up, in the darkness of a nearby field, owned by a small-town wheat farmer named Dog Johnson.
He had no idea what happened, but he groggily wandered the roads until a friendly face pulled up and offered him a lift. He didn’t even remember the ride to his home, or who picked him up, but when he got there police cars were flashing their lights and lined up outside his house. Rose came running out of the house and over to him, collapsing into a surprisingly tear-filled bear hug.
Apparently he had been missing for three days.
That was last night, and in coming home Ian’s story to the police had been spread about town by the gossipy neighbour. Ian had tried to fall asleep after returning home, but every time he did he dreamt of blue lights, heads with eyes that were as black and deep as space and red liquid that oozed in a series of small test tubes. He was so paralysed with these night terrors that he was operating on no sleep. It strained his relationship with Rose even more and made everything harder. Gone were the tears she wept for him the night he went ‘missing’; the look in her eyes was now resentment and disgust at the mess her husband had become in such a short space of time.
His insomnia was so strong that it had Ian dozing off in highly populated and unrestful places, like in the car yard earlier that afternoon and even in his local bar. He had obviously had one too many shots of bourbon to ease himself into going home and had drifted into a terrifying sleep.
Ian shook his head, feeling his blood starting to boil in anger. “It’s a bit rich you calling me crazy McMason,” Ian tried to reason, “You too Farrell. Shouldn’t you be screwing your third ex-wife’s daughter or something?”
That struck a nerve. Farrell stopped laughing and abruptly pushed off the pool table, sauntering over to Ian with a pool cue still in hand, ready to use it as a weapon.
“Oh, didn’t you hear Ian?” Tony whispered angrily as he approached, the sound of his smooth voice making Ian’s blood react even more to the sweaty closeness. “I’ve moved on from her. Now I’m having a pork at your old woman, since you’re too busy taking it up the ass by little green men to treat her right.”
Tony’s friends started to laugh again at the swing Tony had verbally taken. Ian started to physically see red, as his blood reached boiling point. He started to concentrate on Tony’s filthy, smiling mouth and imagined what it would look like to shove the whole pool cue he was holding down it.
“You can say what you want about me Farrell,” Ian spat at him, “But don’t you dare start stirring crap up about my wife!”
“And you know what Ian?” Tony continued to test him, “Boy, does that little piggy sure love to squeal!”
In a flash Ian was on Tony, tearing the pool cue from his hands and pushing him into the side of the pool table. Tony grunted at the impact and the sudden hard shove sent the eight ball rolling away across the table. Ian snapped the pool cue against the table, splintering it in two pieces. Patrons with their drinks were springing into action, whether it was to move away from the fight or join in.
Ian raised the half broken pool cue to shoulder height and aimed its jagged broken edge at Tony’s smug mouth. His mind only saw the red-hot rage brewing inside of him and his eyes reflected it. Ian delighted at the look of terror reflected back at him through Tony’s eyes.
Suddenly, hands were grabbing at Ian’s arms, legs and stomach, pulling him away from Tony. It was Farrell’s three laughing friends, trying to protect their leader. They hung onto him as Ian struggled to break free.
Tony raised himself from the pool table, trying to regain his composure as Ian continued to struggle to charge at him like a bull at a matador.
“Hey Ian! That’s enough!” hollered the bartender from behind the bar. “Get the hell out of my bar Ian, I don’t want to see you darkening that doorway ever again!”
“This was MY bar before it was ever his!” Ian angrily hissed, still kicking and fighting against Tony’s friends.
“Well it isn’t anymore. It was one thing to have your crazy ass story follow you in here, and it’s another to have you fall asleep all over the place, but damn it Ian enough is enough!” The bartender pointed to the front door, “Throw him out boys, and Ian if I hear you even so much as touch Tony Farrell for this I will tell the police and you will be locked up in the crazy bin where you belong!”
Tony’s friends lifted Ian up and took him, struggling, to the door where they set him down and gave him a hard push. Ian fell to the ground, cussing as he grazed his hands in the fall.
He turned around and shouted profanities as the three gave him one last menacing look before returning to their leader, slamming the door in Ian’s face.
Ian muttered angrily as he scooped himself up off the bitumen. He hesitated and swayed where he stood, wondering what he should do and how he should get home. With his eyes seeing double as the combination of adrenaline and bourbon took hold, he decided he would leave his crappy car where it was parked outside the bar and walk the distance to his house to try and calm his nerves down. As he walked in the dark his thoughts turned to the flashing blue lights and red oozing tubes, and instead of calming down he began to get more and more agitated. All he could feel was red, screaming hatred bubbling up inside of him and turning his world an even darker red than it was already.
Finally reaching home, Ian had been unable to soothe the feeling of hatred that started from the base of his cranium and had worked its way into popping a blood vessel in his eyeball. Why was he the one that the craziest kook in town called crazy? Why was he singled out that night coming home from the dealership? He had always paid his taxes on time, he didn’t abuse Rose and he didn’t do hard drugs, so why was all this foul luck befalling him?
Walking up the path that led towards his front door, he kicked a rock a little too hard and it smashed through the side windowpane next to the wooden door. Letting out a curse, Ian stopped and stared at the broken glass, shattered into a million little pieces like his very own life.
Suddenly, the porch light sprang on and Rose angrily pulled open the door. Dressed in her pink nightgown with her sandy blonde hair cut short and hanging loosely at the base of her neck, she could have been so lovely if not for the ugly scowl on her face. In fact, for as long as Ian could remember, she always wore a scowl that darkened her features whenever he talked to her.
“What the hell did you do?” Rose yelled, looking down at the smashed windowpane. Ian made to go inside, but Rose pushed him back. “Have you been drinking at that damn bar again? Ian, I can’t handle this mindless destruction anymore!”
Ian felt his rage flare up again and he stared Rose down, finally deciding to barrel past her to get into his own home.
“I’ll show you mindless destruction if you don’t get the hell out of my way and let me into my own damn house!” he snarled back at her, pushing her out of the way and stomping through the entrance corridor.
“And there you go again with the threats! I have had enough of you coming home smelling of bourbon, pushing me out of the way and treating me like part of the furniture!” Rose was yelling, but tears also started welling up in those hazel eyes. She spoke again, a bit more softly this time, “You never speak to me anymore, you never touch me. Not like before that day. At least when you were busy all the time and fighting with me you actually spoke to me! I actually miss our fights Ian because at least you acknowledged my presence! Do you know how screwed up that is?”
Ian pushed open the fridge in the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of beer in the hope that it would help block the vile words looking to push their way out of this throat. He turned away from his wife and faced the kitchen window, trying not to look at the anguish on her face that no doubt mirrored his own.
“Well, good. At least we’re fighting now! Are you happy? Maybe I wouldn’t treat you like part of the furniture if you didn’t treat my experience as an embarrassment, something to be laughed at!” he cried angrily.
“Ian, you claimed to be abducted by little green men!” Rose exclaimed, “Surely, you know how crazy you sound? I almost wished that you were having an affair and running around with a hussy for those damned three days! It would make this so much easier …”
“What so much easier?” Ian exclaimed as he turned back to face is wife.
“I’m leaving you Ian,” Rose told him, lowering her voice so that it was even. “I’ve met someone else. Someone more … stable. I can’t handle this crazy spiral you have created for yourself and I sure as hell won’t be dragged into it anymore.”
Ian seethed. He knew exactly where this was going, or more precisely, who his wife was going to.
“It’s Tony Farrell isn’t it?” Ian demanded, his voice rising several octaves, imagining that devilish grin as he made fun of Ian in the bar. He knew it was true. Farrell was just too smug for his own good and too smug to ever keep a secret that he could throw in someone’s face.
“He treats me better than you ever did. He’s not afraid to make me feel again. I haven’t felt anything but ice cold from you in a while,” Rose snapped, her slow tears hardening on her cheeks.
Ian felt it again; that red-hot rage that had been bubbling up inside of him for a long time. He saw it through the red, Tony Farrell and his evil laugh as he proclaimed his smug affair with Rose at the bar while his hyena friends were laughing and throwing Ian onto the street. The images changed to Tony having his way with his wife—a place that Ian hadn’t dared to go since the sudden existence of blinding blue lights in his life.
Ian’s eyes and his mind were filled with a flash of brilliant colours: blackness as he tore the images from his mind, the blinding white light of an antibacterial haze, pulsating neon blue, and finally a flash of fiery red as his anger tore through his very existence. At the centre of it all was Rose’s defiant face and all the disbelief and hate she felt for him, and suddenly Ian mirrored her actions and her pain.
Smashing his beer bottle against the kitchen sink, Ian lunged for his wife. She screamed as he jumped on top of her in one swift action and cracked her smaller frame against the cupboard door, falling on top of her on the linoleum floor. Struggling underneath him, he saw the terror in Rose’s eyes as she struggled to comprehend the reality of the situation. She knew that something had snapped, and that this was the end. Before she could utter a single word to him, Ian raised what was left of his broken beer bottle and brought it down towards her neck, slicing the thin tissue there and ending the life of this woman he had once loved.
Rose’s life force trickled out of her onto the linoleum, the blood oozing from the deep gash through her throat. Every one of Ian’s tiny fibres and nerve endings jumped into action, like getting a jolt of electric energy from a large battery. He stooped down and ravished the wound in every conceivable manner—cutting, clawing, biting—destroying everything in a blinding red passion that was animalistic and primal.
Ian’s fiery destruction flashed into a blinding white light and he fell backwards off the body of his wife, now lying silent and still except for the flow of her blood all over the kitchen floor.
The white-hot sensation in his mind sent tense spasms through his muscles, his skin, his organs—his very being. He felt the scarlet rage that became him flow through his body like his blood, but upon hitting the vital arteries in his heart it became an electric blue calm that caused the pain and the anguish to subside and his vision to return. His body stopped twitching with adrenaline and he lay there, out of breath, on the kitchen floor.
Once he had regained his strength, Ian pulled himself up off the floor and looked at the horrifying scene he had created. His lifeless wife’s body was laid out in front of him, drenched in blood and looking unrecognisable where he had ravished it in a rage like that of an out-of-control pit bull. Blood had begun to congeal around the wounds and on the kitchen floor where it had flowed freely, and Ian realised that he too was covered in blood and grime. He had an overwhelming urge to get as far away from the body as possible, but staring at what was left of his wife Rose, he felt his mind begin to unravel.
What had he done? She was leaving him, but Rose never deserved to die over that. She should have left him long ago because she deserved much better. What had he become? Why was he even alive? What was this destructive rage that he had felt? He had never felt this angry in his entire life and Ian could simply not comprehend what had come over him.
In the background, Ian could hear the wails of the police cars as they came closer to his neighbourhood. He realised that his fight with Rose and the sounds of her demise must have alerted his nosy neighbours to call the police, as they had done before when their fighting had become too much. Ian knew there was nothing left of him, and he deserved what he got, but he felt he couldn’t face another human after destroying one in such an animalistic way.
Ian heaved himself towards the door that led to the backyard, his body stinging after the burst of adrenaline. The flashing lights of the police cars began to fill the room from the front of the house. With one last look at the proof of his destruction, Ian hurled himself out of the kitchen and out of the house, not fully realising the extent of the damage that he had caused and the chain of events that he had put into motion.
The two policemen, a beautiful African woman named Tanya and a Caucasian man named Andy, came into the suburban home with their hands on their holstered guns. They had followed up on a domestic disturbance case at the Peters house before, as well as been on duty when the crazy Ian Peters went missing for three days earlier in the week, but they were surprised to discover the eerie silence that they walked in on. Usually, domestic cases filled the air with shouts and cries and broken furniture and tears. This was too quiet.
Tanya was the first to discover Rose in the kitchen. She was splayed out on the white linoleum that was stained red with her congealing blood. Rose was almost beyond recognition, gashed at the throat, but her head remained attached to her body by her damaged spine and some pieces of flesh at the back of her neck. Tanya yelled for Andy before she backed out of the room and called it in on her police radio.
Andy walked in to the kitchen and cursed on site when he saw Rose Peters. He knew Ian, and he had always seemed a little nuts in thinking he had been abducted by aliens, but it seemed they now had proof that he had become completely unhinged, and unfortunately Rose Peters wasn’t able to get out of the way in time. Andy knew that Rose was dead just by looking at her and he decided to leave the body for the coroner and backed out of the room to find Tanya.
Andy reached Tanya in the hallway leading to the kitchen where she had just called in the murder. The cops at the station were no doubt scrambling together to get to the house while Tanya wished that she was somewhere else. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking as she re-holstered her walky-talky.
Suddenly, Andy heard a scraping and shuffling sound from behind him in the kitchen. Thinking it was perhaps a cat or a dog that the Peters had kept as a pet, he turned around to detain it and stop it from contaminating the body.
What he saw instead was no pet, but the most unnatural sight he had ever seen. It was so simply impossible that he felt paralysed to move.
Rose Peters’ supposedly lifeless corpse was standing up and staring straight at him.
Her head lolled to one side, arching backwards and exposing the deep gashes and destruction in her throat that was barely holding her head to her body. Andy saw straight through it and knew that in every conceivable way she should not have been able to survive such a mauling and couldn’t fathom what he was currently seeing.
Before Andy could utter a word, Rose’s head slowly moved forward in his direction, making a horrible wet sound as it landed too far forward and lolled in place. Andy could see the tops of her eyes under the congealing blood and amongst the deadened hazel there was a startlingly bright supernatural ring of brilliant crimson around the iris.
In that second, the fragile corpse of Rose Peters became transformed in an animalistic rage and lunged for him, knocking Andy to the ground and pinning him there, surprisingly strong despite her slight frame and current physical condition. He felt her sticky blood flow from her wound onto him and he could barely contain his disgust as he fell backwards.
Rose Peters continued her attack on Andy, mauling and thrashing in a terrible frenzy that destroyed everything in her path like a dangerous and unpredictable hurricane. Tanya let out an ear-piercing scream from the hallway and Rose turned what little she could of her head towards her, flashing her piercing now grey eyes and red irises in a hungry fashion.
Rose lurched off Andy—who had begun convulsing and was now laying silent in a mixed pool of blood and gore—and she dived towards Tanya. In her terror, Tanya’s reaction time was off and Rose brought her down quickly in a bloody attack against the wall.
Through her screams and the destruction, Tanya’s vision swam quickly and she vaguely saw the body of her partner Andy spasm suddenly before he too got off the ground in a shuffling manner. The last thing that Tanya saw of her life was Andy’s eyes as they mottled together to create the same grey pupils and red iris that engulfed Rose’s own.
Slowly, in the silence and darkness, Tanya joined her fellow victims by convulsing spasmodically on the floor. In an instant the change had come, and together, all three of them stood up amongst the debris of their own attacks. They waited silently, their blood soaked bodies practically crackling with raging energy, as the red and blue flashing lights of police sirens drew ever nearer to the end of the world.
