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Funny how we alwaysassumed more technological advancement would equal peacefulness. Or maybe it had just been blind hope that it would be so. That if aliens ever came to Earth, they would treat us better than we had treated our fellow humans whom we hadn't considered our equals.
Why we thought technological advancement would bring more wisdom, reasoning, and tolerance, I would never know, but boy were we wrong.
When the aliens arrived, they arrived as the more advanced conquerors they were, with guns blazing and without mercy.
Contrary to common belief or how it had been portrayed in movies and books, they didn't come for our water, or mineral resources. They didn't want our gems or gold. They came for us.
Once they defeated our militaries and the only resistance left came from armed citizens or small, scattered groups of militia, they sent in drones to sniff us lone survivors out.
Which was how they found me. For five days I managed to stay hidden underneath my desk in the office where I worked before the Cryons came.
The day they arrived had been, up until then, the best day of my life. I had just closed the biggest real estate deal of my career and was waiting for a fat check that would allow me to purchase a better house in a better neighborhood—which didn't matter ten minutes later, because suddenly all neighborhoods went to shit—when all hell broke loose.
When I mentioned earlier the Cryons arrived with guns blazing, I wasn't kidding. They released pods filled with fifty soldiers each all over the globe, several in each city, creating so much chaos, our armies didn't know where to respond first.
In the beginning, my six coworkers and I watched the horror unfold on the large TV screens in our office. A young family who was browsing catalogs at the time werethe first to run out, followed slowly by one colleague then another, until it was only me left.
I kept no guns at home, I had no pets, no family, and no friends I could have sought shelter with. Everybody I knew was as helpless as me.
Our small office was located on the outskirts of San Diego. There were no woods I could have run to find shelter in, and quite frankly even if there had been, I wouldn't have known the first thing about surviving in the wilderness.
The only things surrounding me were ocean, desert, and mountains. None of which sounded appealing. Plus, I figured my chances of running into the streets and into an armed gang were just as high as being killed by the aliens.
In hindsight, maybe I should have tried to get home to my small apartment, even though there was nothing there, I could have at least dressed in some more apocalyptic-fitting clothes; like sneakers instead of my stiletto heels, and changed from my tight pencil skirt and blouse to jeans and a T-shirt. I didn't though and with each passing day it became harder to leave the office.
On some level I knew that sooner or later the electricity would be cut off and I would be unable to charge my phone, which I was using to watch the increasingly sporadic becoming news, or even have water in the bathroom.
Fordays though, I watched the news and social media, watched people being killed and taken, watched the aliens ransack and bomb cities, watched them squash our armies.
With each day my courage fell, because, I wondered, if those trained military men and women were getting killed by the dozens, hundreds, thousands, what chance did I have? The only weapon in my possession was the letter opener I took from my boss's desk.
The office offered more food than I kept in my apartment. Just that morning Rosi brought in two dozen pastries in anticipation of customers. The fridge, as long as it worked, held several lunches my coworkers brought in for the day. Right next door was a pizza place and I figured that once I ran out of food here, I would move over there.
But when I watched the first drones appear on social media, on day four—news coverage died in the early morning hours of day three—my fear grew.
The previous days had given me ample time to get used to the idea of aliens existing, but I had a hard time believing the world as I had known it was over.
I still prayed for the national guard, marines, army, or whoever to come and whisk me away to a secret government bunker where I would be safe, and surrounded by hunky soldiers, even though deep down I knew how unlikely that scenario was, but having lived twenty-six yearson this planet, living nowhere but San Diego, had accustomed me to the idea that help was only a phone call away, despite 911 having stopped working three hours into the alien invasion.
How some social media outlets still worked when the news didn't, I couldn't have explained, not even with a gun to my head, but I was grateful since it provided me with some kind of connection to the world as I had known it. For an hour here or there, sitting on the cold tile floor in the tiny bathroom, I could even delude myself into thinking everything was alright.
Until they posted about the drones. How thousands of them swarmed the cities, even remote locations in the woods of North Carolina and the swamps of Louisiana.
See, I told myself,you won't be any safer anywhere else. So I stayed and watched in growing horror as more and more people were first spied by the drones, before alien soldiers came and killed or took them.
They weren't particular about it either, I watched them take an eighty-year-old man and shoot a twenty-something woman with one of their light beams.
The only thing I could do was stay where I was and pray the small real estate office would be overlooked if I wanted to stay alive. For what purpose I didn't know either, becausechances of the Cryons leaving seemed slim to none. And yet, what else could I do?
Had this been one of my romance novels, by now a hunky soldier would have appeared and taken me to safety, but that hadn't happened yet, and I seriously doubted it would.
On day three I watched a group of obvious gang members walk by, talking animatedly to each other, holding machine guns in their arms, with smaller guns strapped to all parts of their bodies.
I almost called out. I felt desperate enough. I had been in this office for three days, the footage on social media was becoming grimmer and at least those people out there were human and armed and knew how to use their weapons.
I didn't though, and that was a blessing, as only seconds later I watched—kneeling from my spot by the window, with only my eyes poking above the sill—as a man approached the gang. The man's clothing was tattered, blood streamed down the side of his arm while he yelled something I couldn't hear at the gang.
His posture was submissive, as he held his gun up high, before making a show of putting it down. He waved his hands in front of him, as if saying they should join forces.
