Chapter Eleven

Dale took a turn a little too fast and his car tires squealed. He glanced over to make sure that Cokey was wearing her seatbelt.

"This is fucking crazy." Dale muttered and then blasted his horn at a minivan overloaded with camping gear that was backing rapidly out of a driveway.

"If they got somewhere else to go I don't blame 'em." Cokey said quietly. "When they're done in Chicago and Washington they're gonna come here."

"And New York, and Moscow supposedly, and who knows where else. This is the end of it all, it's all folding in like a house of cards."

Dale wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm and gunned the car on the straightaway towards downtown Fort Wayne. The streets were quieter there. Most businesses and all of the shops and restaurants were closed.

"It ain't as bad as all that. They come, take over or whatever, then what? Then things'll be the same way they have always been, just a new man cracking the whip."

"They're draining human blood! They could be testing us to see if we'll make suitable food!"

"Could be, I guess." Cokey admitted. "Could be testing us to see if they could have babies with us. Have some half-people and half-crazy space robot alien babies or something."

Dale slowed down as they motored past a pileup in the parking lane, three cars crumpled up pretty bad and a man staggering around holding a rag to his bloody face.

"Two carrier groups in the Persian Gulf region have set sail towards the continental United States, although their exact destination remains unknown." The woman's voice on the radio interjected. "Survivors of yesterday's air battle with the invaders over the nation's capitol report engaging 'lightning fast T-shaped aircraft' that fired 'invisible beams of heat'. General Clunk Rocktough of the United States Air Force stated in a press conference held at his home that the airspace over Washington D.C. remains 'vigorously contested'."

They reached the station parking garage and pulled inside, the usual attendant replaced in his booth with a sign written on a flattened cardboard box that read "FREE PARKING UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD". Dale snorted at the gallows humor.

Only a handful of cars were scattered around the lot, not really a surprise considering how few people had showed up for work at the station the day before. Dale pulled into his usual space and reached for the keys to turn the ignition off when a strange voice broke in on the radio.

"Sieben acht acht neun vier neun vier drei null null null null sieben acht acht neun vier neun vier drei null null null kennzeichnung Reiher."

A bolt of terror raced down Dale's spine and he felt suddenly sick with recognition.

"Spy numbers! The fucking spy numbers!" He gasped.

"Sieben acht acht neun vier neun vier drei null null null null sieben acht acht neun vier neun vier drei null null null kennzeichnung Reiher."

"What are you sick bastards doing?!" He screamed at the radio.

He flipped the dial randomly between stations.

"Vier drei null null null null sieben acht acht neun vier neun vier drei null null null kennzeichnung Reiher."

"Dale." Cokey said his name, her voice distant and soft. "Dale, I…"

Dale looked over at her. Cokey lifted her hand up to her face and furrowed her brow as if she had a headache.

"Are you okay?"

Her hand fell limply at her side and her head rotated slowly to look Dale in the eyes.

"Drive me to Gary, Indiana." After a moment's consideration at Dale's inaction she added, "Now."

"What?! We can't go there, Chicago is overrun with those things, I-"

Cokey grabbed Dale by the throat. Not quite enough to cut off his flow of oxygen but he could feel the menacing strength in her fingers.

"Drive me to Gary, Indiana. I can't Drive, Dale."

Dale nodded with fear and turned the key in the ignition, prompting an angry screech from the already running engine. Cokey released her grip on his throat only after he had backed out of the space and was driving back out of the parking garage.

***************

From his mountain top command center in Argentina Karl Haushofer, supreme leader of the Thule Society, smiled as another sleeper was awakened.

"Cokey Roberts." He addressed the glowing green dot on the display that represented his newest recruit even as dozens of others blinked to life. "Your honor is loyalty."

When the xenos had been defeated the New World Order would follow soon after. Upstarts like Raylene would be fighting for the honor to lick Karl Haushofer's boots.

Haushofer stood up abruptly from his wheelchair, fake intravenous tubes popping out of their sockets on his withered skin. He clicked his bed slippers silently together and with pride swelling in his mostly mechanical breast offered a salute to his life-sized portrait of Adolph Hitler.

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)