“Right,” Joshua agreed, thoughtfully. He might have joined the father of two girls, both of whom were entering their teens and knew it, but it wasn’t as if he had much in the way of money. He’d kept most of what he earned safe in his apartment, where the IRS and other busybodies couldn’t find it. There wasn’t enough to make it worth taking special precautions. “I think you’d better get moving fast…”
Another burst of light, high above, illustrated his point. A moment later, a streak of light appeared from space, racing down towards the planet, striking… somewhere kilometres to the west. He wondered, suddenly, if that was where Fort Hood was located; there was a flash of light in the distance, followed suddenly by a long rumble of thunder. More flashes in the distance caught his eye and he found himself wondering, suddenly, what was under attack. Had the aliens gone after everywhere? Was Austin the last city left on Earth?
It was silly, he knew, but in the air of unreality surrounding the entire war, it was easy to believe that they were alone in the world.
“Yeah,” Mr Adair said. “Do you want to come with me?”
“No, thank you,” Joshua said. Banding together, along with the others in the apartment, probably wasn’t a bad idea; one of the permanent inhabitants had even started a neighbourhood watch and encouraged the other residents to stock up on guns, just in case. At the moment, Joshua wondered if he’d been precognitive, or just paranoid. The media had been full of stories about collapsing gun control programs everywhere as the reality of alien contact sank in. “I’ll stay and watch…”
An hour passed slowly. Shelia, one of the other residents, appeared with a flask of hot soup, which she distributed around to the residents. Joshua hadn’t realised that they’d been joined by five others, including two children, but he was grateful for the soup and for the quiet buzz from the radio one of the others had brought. It was a more powerful model than his own, but despite constant channel sweeps, they heard very little. The static — or, he suspected, the jamming — seemed to be everywhere.
It cleared, suddenly. “All designated emergency personnel are to report for duty at once,” it said. Again, the voice was almost impossible to recognise under the static, but it sounded like the FEMA manager he’d interviewed once in the wake of a building collapse in the city. “All FEMA volunteers are to report to their local emergency centres; all others are advised to stay inside and off the streets…”
There was another burst of static. High overhead, he heard the sound of an aircraft, racing towards… what? A wink of light flared up and a streak of flame fell towards the ground, coming down somewhere to the east. This time, the explosion was smaller and he found himself praying that the pilot had managed to eject before the sudden destruction of his aircraft. He hadn’t been a big fan of the military, but watching the death of the aircraft reminded him that they risked their lives so that people like him didn’t have to risk theirs. The pilot, male or female, had deserved better than to die like that…
“They’ve bombed San Diego,” the radio squawked suddenly. “The death toll is in the millions… the entire harbour has been destroyed!” The voice changed suddenly. “We have an unconfirmed report of an aircraft carrier ablaze and sinking off the Atlantic coast.” It changed again, again and again, each message vague, unconfirmed, and panicky. “The President is dead! My God; they bombed Washington!”
Joshua gasped and heard the others gasp as well. It had been fashionable to bitch about Washington, to complain about the IRS auditing good Americans, about the FBI wasting time playing politics when they should be protecting American citizens, about fat cats outsourcing businesses to places that didn’t have labour laws, or starting wars in far-off countries for their oil… but… but it was Washington! He hoped — he prayed — that it was a lie, or even a mistake; he didn’t want to face the possibility that it might be real. No one did.
Shelia came over to him and sat beside him. “If the President is dead, then who takes over?”
Joshua shuddered. “That would be the Vice President, in theory,” he said. He didn’t think much of the Vice President and knew that others shared that opinion; he’d only been given the role, or so they believed, because he had no embarrassing skeletons in his cupboard. “With all the disruption of communications… God alone knows who’s in charge these days…”
Another piece of flaming wreckage fell towards Earth. He remembered, with a sudden flash of dark humour, the end of Independence Day. The destruction of the alien mothership had produced the same effect, even though the mothership should have sent enough wreckage crashing down onto the planet to make it completely uninhabitable. More and more streaks of fire were burning up in the atmosphere; he found himself praying that they included alien wreckage, spacecraft destroyed from the ground, or even by the secret orbital defence systems that rumour said had existed for years. A brief flare of yellow-white light, like a bad version of a science-fiction laser, flared for a moment in the darkness, and then faded out. Whatever was happening up there was coming to a close.
“Damn it, they should be telling us what’s going on,” someone said, in the darkness. “We’re taxpayers, right? We have the right to know what’s happening!”
“I doubt,” someone else said, “that the government knows what’s happening right now. What are they supposed to tell us?”
The first man had no answer. “We now have confirmed alien attacks on almost every military and civilian airport within the United States,” the radio said, suddenly. “Alien weapons have struck them from orbit and the death toll is…”
The voice broke off, again. Joshua listened to the next two reports — and a bout of terrible elevator music — without fully hearing them. High overhead, the fighting seemed to have stopped, but the man with the telescope was reporting that there were still spacecraft moving high overhead. It was tempting to believe that NASA had launched the shuttles and somehow driven the aliens arrive from Earth, but Joshua had listened to enough NASA-bashing over the past three weeks to doubt that the NASA bureaucracy could organise a whorehouse, let alone a coordinated counterattack against alien spacecraft. The situation called for Will Smith, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a patriotic scriptwriter. All three were rather lacking.
“This is Governor Brogan,” a new voice said. Joshua recognised the man at once. The Republican Governor of Texas might not have been one of his favourite people, but just then he’d have welcomed George Bush, father or son. “The aliens have attacked the planet Earth…”
“Yeah, tell us something we don’t know,” someone jeered, in the semi-darkness. Dawn was coming, slowly. “You useless…”
Someone shushed him as the Governor continued. “I have no communication with the Federal Government,” Governor Brogan continued, “so I am declaring a state of emergency on my own authority.” His voice was growing stronger as he continued to speak. “The aliens have hit at least a hundred targets within Texas and, reports suggest, hundreds more within the Continental United States. I ask all civilians to remain calm and remain in your homes. Rioting and looting will be dealt with severely and perpetrators will be arrested and tried under martial law.”
A voice echoed out in the darkness. “Is that legal?”
“I don’t know,” Joshua answered. It didn’t sound legal, but he’d had enough experience to know that ‘legal’ was often just a matter of interpretation. The Governor probably couldn’t get away with ordering looters gunned down in the streets, but the police, National Guard and State Defence Force would have very liberal rules of engagement. “At the moment, he could probably get away with anything…”