Taken (Stories of the Alien Invasion Book 1) Read online

  How would we carry all of that on our dirt bikes? Jor seemed a bit overconfident to me. Mikey didn’t say anything.

  Jor picked up a big rock, moved back about six feet, and pitched it at the passenger window like a heavy, oddly shaped baseball.

  Glass exploded everywhere.

  “Jor! You just needed to break it, not strike it out,” Mike shouted.

  Jor reached through the broken window and let them into the motorhome.

  Mikey frowned at the steering wheel and ignition. They weren’t going anywhere. Neither of them knew anything about cars. How could they even get into the wires under the dash?

  “Go grab our clothes and throw them in a backpack in case we have to take off,” Jor said. “I’m gonna check out the food.”

  Mikey filled up his backpack and strummed his guitar.

  “It’s a lot for two people,” Jor said after awhile.

  Mikey said nothing, just kept playing softly.

  “Too bad we lost Gramps’s dirt bike trailer when they took Dad,” Jor said.

  When Jor started dumping out Mom and Dad’s suitcases, a string snapped under Mikey’s fingers. He cursed.

  He knew that if they were… wherever the aliens took them, they wouldn’t need their riding clothes, but he didn’t like Jordan throwing out their clothes.

  * * *

  TWO

  SPC LAWRENCE POOLE

  “TWO INBOUND HOSTILES headed towards Elko,” the radio crackled. Sergeant Graves wanted Poole’s unit to evac the civies from Elko and get them to a secured location. Now, that alien scum Al would beat them there for sure. If they didn’t, then Poole’s unit would sure wind up inside Al’s flying coffins. He didn’t want to feed Al’s flying coffins. Only a couple days into the invasion, and they’d already shortened alien scum to Al. Gotta love military inefficiency.

  “Roger that, sir,” Poole radioed back. “We are en route. Do we have air cover?”

  “That’s a negative.”

  If there’d been planes, Al would at least take out the planes before they took out the soldiers on the ground. Bullets didn’t do jack against the flying coffins. RPGs and grenades didn’t do anything against them. Everyone’d seen that in LA, San Diego, New York, and just about every other refugee center the brass had tried to set up. Grunts weren’t supposed to know, but everyone knew what was happening. They’d shattered human civilization in mere hours, and now were picking up the stragglers.

  Poole had been dragging his heels on the way to Elko, purposefully taking back roads through the Nevada desert. He’d told the others the freeways would be all backed up with cars picked clean of civvies. No one had even questioned the decision. If he could only figure out a way to get out of here and take off on his own, he might have a chance.

  “Poole, what’s the plan?” Sanchez or Suarez or whatever the other driver’s name was radioed up on Poole’s private channel from the other Humvee. Poole didn’t know the plan. He didn’t even know how he’d wound up in charge in this mess. He sure wasn’t a sergeant to be in charge of a platoon – oh they hadn’t called it a platoon when they’d put him in charge, but there were too many bodies for it to be anything else. Up-armored vehicles didn’t do anything against these things any more than it had really kept soldiers safe in Iraq. Poole and Salvador—was that it?—each had a platoon melting in the back as we rolled through the desert. At least it was only June.

  “We take a piss break, then get back on the road,” Poole snapped. “Don’t want to get there at the same time as Al.”

  Truth was, Poole didn’t want to get there at all. This supposedly secured location was way out in the desert, which he liked. There shouldn’t be much around it, but if they were bringing civvies and grunts into it, then there’d be too many people there all too soon. Which meant Al would be paying them a visit.

  He pulled off on the side of the road, and hollered for the soldiers to get out, empty their bladders and all that. Truth was, they weren’t that far from Elko as the crow flies and could have powered along over the desert, but Poole didn’t want to get there at the same time as the aliens.

  “Ladies can grab some privacy in front of the lead truck,” Poole said. “Men, behind truck two.”

  After he divided everyone up by gender, Poole climbed out the truck too. He couldn’t just sit at the drivers seat with the ladies in front of him, even if he wanted to. They’d complain about the lack of privacy.

  If Poole wanted to be free of the other grunts, he couldn’t just take the truck and run. They’d hunt him down in the other one. He didn’t take a piss. Pants on, he toyed with his knife. He could flat tire the other truck while they all pissed, then he’d be free to take off on his own. Though, what was the fun in that? He’d joined the military so he could kill people, not so he could run and hide on his own. Didn’t much care who he got to kill – sure, these jerks all thought he was hero, if a little trigger-happy. Truth was he’d just as soon blow off their heads as the enemy’s.

  Poole inched towards the other truck, trying to be inconspicuous. He buried his knife in the tire, then spotted them in the distance: two flying coffins. A big one and a little one. Word was the big ones held about fifty people, the little ones maybe ten tops. Sure as sin, as he watched, the big one peeled off from the little one and headed straight towards his unit.

  Fuck.

  Sánchez and his whole crew turned towards Poole. He must have said it out loud.

  Poole pointed at the flying coffin and sprinted towards his truck. Half the others ran towards the truck, trying to fasten up their pants. The women who’d hidden in front of his truck and came up from their squats and stumbled towards the back. One jumped into the driver’s seat of my truck. He was not going to take her with me. They’d let one go if they had a big score. We’d seen that before.

  “Move over!” Poole shouted as he clambered into the truck, knife in hand. She did as he commanded. Poole started the truck, he had the magic touch, no else could get this bad boy started. Poole floored it – a woman fell off the back as the truck lurched into motion. The others screamed at him, but the big coffin was already on them. None of them bothered shooting at his truck, instead they turned their weapons towards the big metal box coming at them. Not that it would do much good. Beside Poole, the woman gaped.

  “You just left them there.” He still had the knife in his left hand, but he wasn’t going to stop driving to get rid of her.

  “If they didn’t get in fast enough, it’s their own fault.”

  She leaned back, trying to bring her gun around in the confines of the truck. The cab was big, but it wasn’t designed for aiming an M16 towards the driver.

  “Go back and get them,” she said.

  “If we go back, we’ll be riding the metal coffin to heaven.” Poole shook his head. He wasn’t riding that thing up to Al knew where.

  She inched back a bit more, her back pressed up against the door.

  “You will or I’ll shoot you.”

  “What about the people in the back? I bet they don’t want to go back to Al.” Poole knew for sure that no one had made it into the back. He’d been too fast for that. The men should have been getting in the back of Suarez’s truck. The one with the flat tire.

  “No one made it back there!” she shouted. Damn woman was observant.

  “No?” Poole asked. “Why don’t you check?”

  In the side mirror, Poole could see Al’s metal arms grabbing the men he’d ditched.

  Her gun wavered.

  Poole spun the wheel hard to the left. Almost rolled the truck, but it did the trick. Her gun swung out with the force of the turn. She didn’t shoot.

  He slammed on the brakes. As they skidded to a stop, Poole let go of the wheel, keeping his foot on the brake. He slammed the knife into her chest, pinning her to the door. She wheezed as she tried to scream. Weak chick wanted to play at soldier. He snatched the gun from her hands and tossed it out the window. She pushed at him weakly. He smirked as he realized h
ow hard he was. He could screw her like this, but not with Al right behind them.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Still had fight in her spirit, but not in her body. Her breath rasped again.

  “We could have partied in the desert,” Poole told her. “Why didn’t you just accept you were safe from Al?”

  She spit at him. Landed on his jacket. He slit her throat and the fight drained out of her. Her glassy eyes stared at him.

  As he drove, he pulled off his jacket and wiped his hand clean. Then, he shoved her and the jacket onto the floor of the truck. There. Now he was mostly blood free. He grinned and kept on driving towards Elko. Didn’t need the military to be able to kill people now. By the time Poole got there, Al would have finished clearing out the city and he’d be safe to go in and do whatever he pleased. Hopefully, he’d find himself a survivor or two for his own use. Didn’t want to be bored out there in the desert.

  Poole drove along, watching the road, hoping he could find himself some sort of entertainment for the alien apocalypse.

  Find out what happens next, order The Queen’s Gift now!

  Live on August 23, 2017

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  About Mel

  Mel Corbett wants to be a werewolf, no a vampire, no a fairy, no an ancient alien theorist. Well, she at least writes about all of those. Mel is also in love with Giorgio Tsoukalos’s hair and while she isn’t saying that it was aliens, it was totally aliens! She studies linguistics at UC Davis and lives with her son, her husband, and two 55 pound balls of fluff.

  She writes fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction.

  Find more at MelCorbett.com and on Mel’s Amazon Author page.