Traitor: Chp. 1

1:
A Small Boy in the Fires of a Dead World.


It has been so long now, I don’t know how well I can relate the events as they transpired. I was so young, so very young. And what I had seen was so traumatic, I may have repressed the worst of it. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t remember the parts that made me who I am. Because if I had forgotten them, all of this would be meaningless.
I remember that it started sunny. The sun was brighter than it should have been. And the sky was so clear. So bright and blue, not a cloud was visible. The grass swayed in the late spring breeze, a shimmering ocean of green, the long hills in front of me making waves in that sea of nature. All the colors were so rich, the details so sharp. It was like a photograph in my memory, only brighter.
I had only been about seven. Or was it nine? Knowing my earth age at that point is difficult. I assume I was nine. That’s seems about right, as I recall. I know that my birthday was in autumn, so it could have been close to any other age. It was smack dab in the middle of it all.
Mom had taken me to a park, to let me and Max, my small Scottish terrier, play in the park while she took pictures and laughed and smiled. I cant remember the details of her face that well anymore. At least not as it was before the incident. I remember that she had been pretty, as a mother is to the son. Not pretty in the sense of physical attraction, but in the kind of security that all children need from a parent.
I pumped my legs after Max up the steep incline, my denim shorts making a noise that entertained my young ears as the legs rubbed together. I had one a t-shirt with red sleeves and a red collar, which made me look the part of the young American boy out at play. Max and I were running with each other and jumping in the park. There were other kids there, though I only know because a few of them survived with me.
The others didn’t matter though. All that mattered was me and Max, and how we ran up that steep hill together. All that mattered was that mother was there to take pictures of the two of us as we ran up that grassy slope. To laugh as I rolled back down, and max followed as fast as his short legs could allow. That there were grass stains appearing on my shirt as they should on any boys clothes when he’s only seven or nine years old.
I guess at this point you are wondering where father might be. Will he have some impact on this story? No, he like my mother, like Max, are simply my motivation later on. They are simply people. But for the purpose of tying up all loose ends, I will explain now. Mother and father had been young, like many couples, and they had married, then conceived a son. Their only child too.
Dad was at the local Air Force base, having been a mechanic for all the planes. I remember thinking about how cool it was to have a dad that took care of the planes. Sure he wasn’t the pilot, like someone else’s dad may have been, but I didn’t care. If it weren’t for my dad, they wouldn’t be in the air at all, so he was far more important that the pilots.
I cant remember too much about him though. He was often at work on some new military project or another, helping to create new planes that would keep us one step ahead of our enemies. I was too young at the time to realize the full effect of the cold war we were locked in as a country. I just knew that there were two sides, us and them. We, the United States, the good, and North Korea, the evil. I was so young and blind back then.
I saw the sky overhead as I lay at the bottom of the hill, Max having bounded after me, panting as he licked my face while I giggled. The dog was so hyper, and having so much fun running and playing with me. Max had been so loyal. I Began a trek back up the hill as fast as my feet would carry me. Max took a short run towards Mom, then turned and followed me, letting out one of his deep bass barks.
I reached the top of the hill and turned around, when everything grew dark. I looked up and couldn’t see the sun anymore. It should have been just a cloud. If only it had been a cloud. How much pain would so many have avoided if it had just been clouds. But it wasn’t. It was a massive airship. The likes of which man had only seen in fairytales.
It resembled the old ships that pirates would sail on in the movies. Large corrivals, only crafted to a much larger scale. Instead of the large cloth sails that would billow in the wind, it had glowing and sparkling blue sails that still seemed to catch the wind. It had two engines located where the rudder should be, along with more above that. Two great wings tilted and retracted, then expanded as it streamed in the air, not so much flapping, as much as they were catching thermal pockets to stay aloft.
The sound of raid sirens from the near by base sounded, and within minutes the air was bright blue again as the ship continued onward. However, this time, fighters were rushing towards it, their sleek gray forms leaving trails in the air, as they rushed headlong at the thing. They began to open fire. Later on I would learn that that was the cause of the war. That singular moment, when we fired on them, caused untold destruction that would continue for over a decade.
The missiles exploded on the hull of the great vessel, and it barely shuddered as though they did nothing at all to its silver frame. Soon though, the pests were to be swatted from the air. Pouting from the side of the large ship came small fighters of their own, not too much larger than ours, though completely alien in design. They had large expanding wings, which again, didn’t flap, but seemed more for directional control purposes. They bent and shifted as the large birds of prey swooped down on our fighters.
The explosions were still visible form the park, where we all stood dumbfounded. It seemed to take hours, but in reality all this transpired in a mere minute and a half. A battle fought above our very heads.
Then, two large guns emerged on the beast, pointing downwards towards the ground, where they fired two long streams of blazing green energy. The shots touched the ground and seemed to link to the barrels of the weapons for a moment, before vanishing from the air. But that barely caught my attention. What I saw clearest was the rising bubble of pale green moving outward from the point of impact.
Things seemed not to be burned, or swept away, but simply disappearing from existence. The thing kept spreading outward. Or rather, coming closer. Max bounded towards it, possibly barking. I couldn’t hear at this point. Which had to be the most frightening part. I could hear my screams. But I must have screamed. It was all to frightening not too.
And then it reached the edge of the park. People were running. They were all in a panic. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t run, I was awestruck by the vision before me. Till I saw it coming closer to my mother who was desperately trying to scramble up the hill, max in her arms, towards me. Then it touched her leg. And she let out a cry, the only thing I could hear, was her scream. And it still haunts my nightmares.
She let out a cry as her pants fell around a piece of her leg that had warped and twisted. The bubble spread, and I watched her skin turn a sickly gray-green as she fell forward. Max underneath her, and they were both caught in the bubble. And just a foot in front of me, it stopped. It just vanished, in a haze, then disappeared.
But it had consumed my mother, my dog, and later I would learn my father had been in the initial radius of the destruction. I looked at her corpse. Her eye-sockets were empty, stretched far to wide, her skin, dry and disgusting to view, was a mixture of gray and green, stretched over her bones. Max, his hair having fallen out, and his own eyes gone, and skin matching, hers was under her arms. That was when all my senses returned.
I was screaming, a loud cry of fear, loss, and horror at the bodies which lay around me. Not only had my mother been caught in the blast, but many others had as well. Much of the debris from the crumbled buildings of the city, and other corpses had been pushed outward towards the park, and rested just a foot in front of me. This was the first I had ever seen of death, not to mention war.
I looked in horror at the destruction around me and continued to scream and cry. I’m sure I had been making such noises before then, but I didn’t hear it till it was all over. It had now been a total of three minutes and fourteen seconds, earth time. It felt like eternity.
The last of the fighters had been destroyed and the large ship moved to set into the space that had been cleared away by the blast radius. The remaining branches could keep me from seeing the landing struts touching down at the ruins of the military base, or the large sails vanishes, their masts lowering into the hull of the ship.
I sat down screaming still, crying still. Many of the survivors didn’t even notice me above the screams and cries of others, and if any did, they made no move to help me. Fear had driven them to self preservation before all else.
I sat there and cried looking at the bodies, just beyond the green blades of grass in front of me. The grass was brown, and dead, not just dead, but it was as though god had forsaken it. I sat there and cried for what was probably close to an hour. The sun had begun to set, and the ship had not moved. Though, I wouldn’t have seen it move even if it had. I was to engrossed in trying to make reason out of all that I had seen. And I couldn’t.
But I heard a soft hum over in the distance, along with the sound of rustling leaves, and snapping branches. The hum was electrical in nature, the kind you hear from a fluorescent bulb, or small generator. The sound was drawing closer, matching the movements of the sound of rustling trees.
Now is when they entered my life. This was the moment where everything would change for me. My future, my identity, my entire being would be shaped by this meeting. They emerged, a sort of hovering jeep, with out a top to it, carrying four of them. Aliens. Even in the shock that I was suffering, I saw their large black cloaked forms, their striking red hairs and pointed yellow beaks, complimented by their small beady black eyes.
“Over here,” one of them called, in English, though very mechanical in its sounds. “We got one here. Looks like it’s a kid, too.”
The driver turned towards the direction of the pointed finger, and started traveling towards me. I fell backwards on my hands and began to scramble away. I wasn’t going fast enough, but this was so frightening, I had to try anyways.
“Looks like he’s freaking out. Have to calm him down, sir.” I couldn’t tell who said it, they sounded so similar to me, and I had turned away form them to start running away, so I could see their beaks moving anymore. But I heard the car moving closer, as I ran as hard as I could away.
One of them jumped form the side of the thing and began to run to catch me, the inertia giving him the pace he needed to quickly out maneuver me.
“Hey, kid. Hey kid! It’s okay! We don’t want to hurt you!”
I still ran. I don’t know if it was fear, or anger, or simply that I knew they had killed my mother, but I ran. I wouldn’t be caught by them if I had some say in it.
Finally I felt the fingers close under my shoulders, and I was lifted from the ground. I was kicking and screaming, as I was turned around to face my captor. He looked the same as the rest to me. I was still unskilled at seeing the subtle details that make one Ruan different form another.
“Calm down, calm down. Kid, its okay, calm down. Shh, just calm down,” he said. He set me on the ground and I stopped trying to run but I looked at his eyes, tears streaming down my face, as he looked at me. I was going to stand defiant at the very least.
“Its gonna be okay, kiddo. Just calm down. We don’t want to hurt you.”
The jeep thing came back around, and parked next to us, two more of its occupants jumped out and began to search the area. The one got down on one knee, and looked into my eyes, “are you okay kid? Anything hut?”
Even then I was able to think about how he had just killed my mother and wanted to strike him for asking if I had been hurt.
“Can you speak?”
“Y,” I stammered for a moment, fear breaking my resolve slowly, “yes.”
“Well, that’s a start. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No.” Not physically anyways.
“Good. Now, are your parents here somewhere?”
That was all I could take. My eyes teared, and the shut as I collapsed sobbing into my hands.
“Oh hell.” He stood and picked me up and set me into the jeep. Then he went up to the driver, and whispered, “I think his parents must have been in the blast, and he probably was just on the outside of the kill zone.”
The driver, looked back at me, then at the officer. “No. That’s…” His mechanical voice faltered, and I looked at him through my fingers. I saw a single drop of liquid fall from his eye, as he looked to me one more time. Was this alien crying for me? “Hurry up and help look for survivors. The arms are on their way here.”
“Sure thing, cap’n”
He hurried off. It had been a somewhat productive few moments. A dog, and six other small children were added to the back of the jeep with me, all younger than I, and looking to be in worse shape than I was, emotionally and physically. None of the bore the same disfigurements that the corpses had, but they still had cuts or bruises that I didn’t. I went over and held the hand of one of the littlest boys, looking at him. “It’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t know if it would or not, and the words sounded hallow in my ears, but he seemed to take solace in them. Though perhaps its my poor memory of so long ago. But so much is so vivid about that day. I don’t think I forgot.
We were carried from the remains of the park, through the rubble of the city. I cannot remember what the place was called? How utterly sad is that. That its memory could be so obliterated from my mind. But I have forgotten its name. I only remember it was on the eastern seaboard of the United States. In the end, its name meant nothing. All that it was now, was the smoldering remains of a great community, turned into nothing in a matter of moments. We neared the large ship that had landed in the middle of the military base ruins. And we were brought in through a loading ramp.
Other jeeps were returning as well, some with passengers, some without. In the end, we were all rushed to the only space large enough to accommodate us, the observation deck.
The Observation deck (I learned the name as the captors ushered us there) would normally be a -pleasant place. It had a large open window, with green foliage from a green room dangling this way and that, all made to make the surrounding view more appealing. If we had been in space, I think that it would have been too. But only being able to stare out at the smoldering ruins of my home was simply discomforting.
I could see more vehicles, not all of them jeeps now, returning at great speeds towards the ship. They seemed to be in an awful rush to capture their prisoners.
That train of thought triggered even greater fear inside of me though. Why had they brought us back? Were we to be slaves? Or prisoners? Or maybe we were going to be guinea pigs for their experiments. I didn’t know what they wanted so many of us for, but I certainly didn’t want to find out.
I began to edge my way towards the door, trying not to attract the attention of the guards, or the others. I had to find a way out of this place before I could even think about trying to bring the others along to help escape. I wanted to know what I was doing.
I managed to reach the door. I was there for a few minutes, people rushing past me, some being forced in, others coming in freely. I was no longer the oldest by far, their were people of all ages there. And they all seemed panic stricken.
I finally managed to get on the other side of the door, no small feat, when I realized that I had no idea where I was going. But that wasn’t going to stop me. I was not going to be some alien’s pet. I started sneaking down the hall way. I would turn down empty passages, and try to sneak past other ones.
It went well for a few passages. Then a guard spotted me. No longer was it an alien with long red plumes and a beak. Now it was something furry, tall, thin, with very catlike eyes. It had no snout, but its lips were still oddly shaped. For its mouth.
“Hey, you! Refugee! You need to get back with the others!” His voice was also somewhat computerized in its intonations. I panicked. And took off. Now there were more who saw me. A few helped their comrade give chase, but most were too busy to bother chasing me. There was a general feeling of panic aboard the vessel, and it wasn’t just me.
I finally came upon a door, and rushed towards it, hoping it worked like in the movies. Thank god luck was on my side, as it opened automatically to let me in. And I managed to run head first into the entirely wrong place.
I was standing in a large semi-circular room, with multiple mechanical voices speaking loudly at screens, and boards which I didn’t understand. Most of the were so busy, that only about half of them seemed to notice the me entering this obviously off-limits area. This was a bridge, even a young kid like I could see that. And unfortunately the captain saw me standing there.
Our eyes locked, and all at once I knew that there was something going on I didn’t understand. The captain was a Murith, tall, slender people from a pair of twin planets. One of their worlds is water, the other is that of a desert. He was from the water side, with his soft skin, and hard, narrow features.
“Stand to the side, be quiet and don’t interfere. We don’t have time to get you back to the others.”
It may have been all he said, and it may have sounded cold, but something in him made me realize that he wasn’t evil. That he wasn’t some sort of war monger, or a brute. I wasn’t sure what it was at the time, but it certainly wasn’t what I thought any of these aliens would be like at their core.
I did as I was told, and stepped over to the side of the bridge. I looked at the large view screen, and saw a large orange light in the sky. I looked at it, drawing closer, the tail of smoke behind it easy to see in the cloudless sky.
“What is that?” I know I soundly have asked, but I couldn’t help it. I was still young and like many children it was hard to control what came out of my mouth at times.
The captain looked at me, a trace of sadness in his deep violet eyes, and he rose form his chair and walked over to me. He bent downward and offered his long slender fingers. I looked at them with hesitation then took them. He lead me back over to the chair where he grabbed me and lifted me into his captains chair.
“That, is what is known as a nuclear missile. It is one of the most destructive weapons your people have created. He looked at the screen as he spoke. The entire bridge had gone silent and looked at the screen as the missile drew closer. “We are seen as a threat to your world. And rather than try to use diplomacy,” he paused at the look of confusion on my face, “rather than try to talk about it, they are going to try and destroy us. What they don’t know, is that they will only kill their people.”
I looked outside, still unable to comprehend. I mean, it was only a missile, I had seen them get hit by things that looked almost exactly the same, and do nothing. How bad could it be?
I watched it falling towards the earth, as a large shimmering blue field formed an umbrella around the ship. The missile continued to fall, and it seemed so harmless that I wondered why they all seemed so distracted by it.
It was then that the bomb hit the shield. And it detonated. And one of the last images of that day that would be burned into my memory occurred. The flare of light, the thunderous sound. I had to turn away as I saw the explosion. I turned and saw the mushroom cloud, almost directly above us. But what really stood out was the destruction that occurred outside the bubble. I saw the city getting sucked inwards, everything flying towards the explosions, then fly outwards. The rubble and debris flew faster than anything I had ever seen before, as the radius of the explosion expanded outwards.
It was then that I realized that why the aliens were so distracted. The explosion leveled so much ground, ti extended far beyond the ruin that they had left behind in their assault.
The last thing from that day that would be etched forever into my memory was the captains face. He watched the world burning around us, as my own government caused the greatest damage to our people.
A single tear fell down the captains cheek as he watched the world burn.