Time slowed down to the speed of oozing molasses as Connor ejected the shell of the round that had caused Laura''s beautiful face to shatter across the door of the church. He watched it fall to the forest floor, still smoking, and wondered if he should pick it up. But why? That thought didn''t make sense, nor was it anywhere near the top of what he should be worried about. It seemed like he had deliberated on it for twenty minutes between the impact and a reaction from the camp drawing his attention back to his scope.


    He was far away, over five hundred yards, but he could clearly see a ripple of panic spreading through the previously docile crowd. People ran in different directions to find cover while others seized the opportunity for escape and pulled the Sharlah support staff into the writhing mosh pit of human despair. Connor watched them being savaged and nearly torn apart and realized that he had probably just killed every person inside of that fence. The real monsters would come, and they would kill everyone still standing.


    He had four bullets left. He had just started a prison riot and he had four bullets in his rifle. He looked for the guards on the perimeter and found them running back toward the gates with beam weapons in hand. He held his crosshairs a few steps in front of the lead Sharlah and fired, kicking up a spray of dirt just a millisecond ahead of him. He wasn''t trying to send a warning shot but it still had the same effect. Their charge was stalled and they were looking for cover.


    Three.


    He panned his scope back inside the compound and found a Sharlah tech running toward the church doors but it was pulled backward by the collar of it''s pristine white jumpsuit and stomped into the dirt by at least ten people. He saw another working furiously on a computer panel through an open window of the church. Moments later people all over grabbed their wrists and fell to the ground as if they had been hit by lightning. Their mouths were open but nothing was coming out, they couldn''t even scream. Connor lined up the Sharlah again and fired, painting the computer and the window both with the blue blood of the alien.


    Two.


    His eyes went wide as he remembered the one in red and searched the crowd once again. He wasn''t there. Connor tried to find him through the windows of the church but he wasn''t there either. He flinched as shots rang out from the perimeter but they weren''t red lasers as he had expected. He searched the trees for the source of the sounds but found nothing. That was when he saw it. A tractor trailer loaded down with full sized logs was barreling down the road, blasting cars and other debris to either side as it''s momentum carried it forward and it''s airhorn began to blare louder than the gunshots from it''s passenger side window.


    Lewis was screaming and letting a light machine gun go cyclic at the guards who had taken cover on the perimeter, hitting them in their flank and wounding them all within a few seconds. They tried to roll out of the way as Nathan jerked the wheel to the right and turned them into piles of blue streaked armor in the grass. The truck slammed into the fence next, toppling it as if it were made out of popsicle sticks and causing another flood of humanity toward the opening. Connor sent another round through the window where he knew the computer console was and hoped it was enough to disable their wrist devices.


    One.


    The last round. The last one was for him. He didn''t want to stay on Dottier anymore. Connor looked at his rifle and thought about his parents. They had given their lives so that he and Laura could get away from the farm. He found them both separated in their own crumpled heaps. They didn''t even get to die together. Rage replaced the anguish as his emotions continued to spiral into an uncontrolled freefall. He looked through the scope once more.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    The tractor trailer was spinning it''s wheels backward, trying to reverse but it was stuck in the grass turned mud. He noticed blue streaks on the drive tires. Why did he notice that? It wasn''t important, just like the shell casing. The blue streaks went round and round as the truck struggled to find traction. Lewis pulled his machine gun back inside and flailed in his seat as the hot barrel burned him. He was trying to reload but it was awkward and painful in the small interior of the truck.


    The church doors burst open and armed techs streamed out with rifles held at the ready. They started shooting people at the back of the crowd and the beams went through several before losing their energy and stopping inside of a body. Connor tightened his grip on the rifle but the image in the scope was warped. He closed his eyes tightly and opened them to the same feeling of being disoriented. What was happening to him?


    "Hey you stupid little shit. What the fuck are you doing? I should kill you!" Shawn growled from behind him.


    "I''m sorry. I..I" Connor stammered with a wide eyed and unfocused gaze.


    "Move!" Liz demanded and shoved him out of the way. She had a rifle with a bipod and large magazine and started shooting immediately.


    "What''s happening?" Shawn cried.


    "They''re spinning the tires, they can''t move, there''s people all around it. The aliens are trying to drag them out through the windows." She said with tears behind the words.


    "Noo, Fuck! I told them to drop the trailer, it''s too heavy." Shawn swore.


    "They didn''t have time!" Liz said and fired three more times. "Fuck they got Lewis out, they''re pulling him away!" And then she shrieked and dropped the rifle. "They killed my dad! They were biting him, they ripped a hole in his neck. Oh my god, oh my god!" She stood and walked in circles. "I couldn''t stop it without hitting other people."


    Connor just watched in silence and shock. It was like watching a boulder as it careened down a hill. He had set this in motion and now it couldn''t be stopped.


    Several Sharlah dropships streaked in from the back of the church and opened up with their shipboard weapons, hitting both the escaping humans and their own indiscriminately. People dropped all around the truck as they tried to squeeze too much mass through the too small openings on both sides of the cab. The lucky ones died as they were hit, others didn''t and were trampled as their limbs failed them and they went down near the exit. Connor could see people in the distance disappearing between buildings and behind cars and hoped that they could actually get away and survive.


    A rifle butt hit Connor on his cheekbone and sent him to the dirt, the wind knocked out of his lungs.


    "You got my brother killed you stupid son of a bitch, I''ll kill you for that!" Shawn screamed.


    He was huge, Connor knew that from the night before, and now he was on top of him. The big man postured up as Connor reached for his face and eyes grabbing for anything that would stop what was coming. A fist hit him in the forehead and it felt like a brick that had fallen from a second floor window. His head bounced off of the ground and rebounded before the other hand did the same. He could feel blood warming the skin around his eyes and his vision started to blur. He tried to roll away from the next punch but it never came.


    "Stop Uncle Shawn, Stop!" Liz screamed and hugged him around his arms as hard as she could. He raised up from straddling Connor to push her away and when he went back to finish him, there was nothing but a blue blade and a bloody face waiting there. Connor slammed the knife home and watched as smoke billowed out from the man''s throat. When he found the knife, he had concluded that it was meant to pierce and burn it''s way through armored plates but it found nothing but flesh this time and sank clear through to the other side.


    Shawn died within seconds of hitting the ground and Liz fell at the same time. Her mind couldn''t make sense of what she had just lost and she had fainted there in the bloody dirt beside her dead uncle. Connor envied her response. He still had one round left. He could fall there too, right beside her, but he wouldn''t be able to wake up like she would and face the next day. He slung his rifle onto his back and walked back to the spot that now held Liz''s military style sniper rifle. He picked through the shell casing''s to find his own but he couldn''t tell which one was his first. He touched them all, one after another, and settled for the coldest one and slipped it into the baggie from his boot that held Laura''s torn scrap of red hoodie.