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The gangsters laughed and in horror I watched the shortest of them level his gun and shoot, only once. Straight at the man's head.
I pressed my hands in front of my mouth to subdue the scream that tried desperately to break free, and slid down the rest of the way underneath the window. My heart pounded so hard, I was sure I would faint.
I didn't know what became of the man or the gang, as I lay there, shivering in fear for what seemed like hours, before I dared to peek over the edge of the window again.
The street was eerily quiet. Seagulls and crows were fighting over the man's body still lying on the road where he had been shot.
On the fifth day I finally decided that I needed to do something, having no idea it was already too late. I stood by my desk to study maps of the surrounding area, trying hard to come up with a plan to go anywhere but stay here, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and I recognized the dreaded silver-colored, disk-shaped drone from social media silently entering the office. I had no idea how it got in. After the incident with the gang members, I had made sure all doors were bolted tightly and I hadn't heard glass breaking or any other indication of the thing getting inside.
Withno other place to go, I ducked underneath my desk and prayed the thing hadn't spotted me. My heart hammered furiously while I cowered inside the small space.
Besides the erratic,boom, boom, boomof my heart and the rushing sound of my blood in my ears, I heard nothing. I didn't know what the drone was doing, where it was, and had even less of an idea of whatIwas supposed to do.
Suddenly it was right there, right in front of my face. In disbelief, I stared at the silver thing that looked like a thin plate until a red light blinked. That's when I bolted.
Adrenaline hit me so hard I punched against the disk, making it fly straight into the wall.
With a scream I scrambled out from underneath my desk and had just about enough sense to run out to the back exit instead of the front.
The back exit led into the narrow alley the real estate office shared with the pizza place and I wondered if I should try my luck there. Another drone coming around the corner killed that idea though, and I ran down the alley into the opposite direction straight into the arms of four silver-clad Cryons.
I screamed, tried to pivot, but a long arm shot forward, grabbed my hair, effectively stopping me. He wound my hair around his fist and forced me to kneel in front of him,while he talked to the other three in the chirping language I had heard a few times by now, but didn't understand.
I shivered so hard I swore I could hear my bones rattle.This is how you die, repeated inside my mind, andnobody will ever know.Nobody will mourn or miss you. You will be just one more casualty among millions.
Everything became strangely clear. I tuned out the aliens talking and instead listened to the cry of a seagull, which had always been my favorite kind of bird. I inhaled the sharp and tangy smell of the air as it blew in from the ocean and would have called my state of mind almost serene, until my nostrils detected a hint of rotting stench and once I smelled that, it became overwhelming. Trash hadn't been picked up in days, food was rotting all around me and worst of all, so were the bodies of the many people who had been killed.
How many,I wondered oddly detached,have been killed by fellow humans like the man I watched being shot by the gang members, and not the aliens? Are we our greatest enemy after all?
The aliens were still jabbering in their indecipherable language, one was even speaking into his wrist now, making me assume he wore some kind of gadget that would connect him to…wherever their command center or whatever was. I didn't care.
"Just shoot me already," I pleaded. "Get it over with." Because suddenly I wondered what happened to the people they had abducted. Not that I hadn't speculated about it before—me along with thousands of others on social media—and all those theories haunted me now. From becoming food to being turned into a sex slave or experimented on, none of my options sounded appealing, so I pleaded for a swift death instead. Because I truly didn't want to know where the aliens took their captives.
I was right, Ireally didn't want to find out where the aliens took us. But I did.
First they cuffed my hands behind my back, a pose I would become more familiar with over the next few days, and marched me through the alley to the street, where not much was left of the man I had watched getting shot.
A large pill-shaped capsule landed in the street, looking much like the pods that had expelled the alien soldiers, and the four holding me captive prodded me inside.
Two soldiers with drawn weapons waited inside the surprisingly spacious area that was much larger than what the outside hinted at. Not that I really noticed. I was focusedon the alien soldiers with their guns and the other eight prisoners, kneeling against a wall, facing away from me.
A hard stab into my lower back made me move forward and assume the same position as the others.
My mind kept telling me that this wasn't real, that I had fallen asleep on the bathroom floor in the office again and was having one of the many nightmares that had plagued me for days.
The pain in my shoulders however, from having my arms pinned behind me, was real and so was the sweat pouring down my face, arms, back, and many other places—some I would rather not mention. My eyes burned from the sweat dripping down my brow. Unable to wipe them with my hands, I tried to rub them against my shoulder, covered by my dirty blouse.
A sob from a child next to me caught my attention and I risked a quick glimpse down the row of other prisoners. The prisoner next to me was just a boy, maybe thirteen. Having grown up in foster care, I avoided kids like the plague, yet this boy's misery affected me as much as my own.
"Hey, it's okay," I whispered.
My words were immediately followed by a hard blow against my head from an alien and I got the message: no talking.
I tried to concentrate instead on the white wall in front of me, where small black dots made some kind of pattern, but I was too unfocused to make sense of them.
When I was brought in, I got a quick glimpse of the other seven prisoners beside the kid. Most were women, one wore the uniform of a police officer, one fatigues.So the army is still here, I thought as a quick jolt of hope ran through me, right before the room darkened as the ramp that I used to enter retreated back into the pod, closing like a hatch. Green light spilled over me and the wall, and my hope of being rescued at the last second died.
I refused to think why six of us prisoners were women but gulped.
