Stray Cat Strut

The First - Chapter One

The First - Chapter One

The First - Chapter One

I'm just a guy, just some dude, trying to make ends meet, trying to get my shit together. Generally disappointed in life, generally on the broke side of things. I've got an okay job as an insurance broker. It pays enough. I graduated from college about six years ago. Or is it seven now? I'm twenty-nine, going on thirty.

It's October, so it'll be my birthday in... six days. I don't expect to do anything for it.

I know, I've always known, that shit's going to hit the fan some day. I think it's all the news I watch, and the job. There's nothing like hearing sob stories and seeing people's lives going to shit all day to crush that last little bit of hope.

My job is half to convince people to pay the company more than they should for a service that I'm also paid not to deliver.

It's hard to do this kind of work and not be a cynic, but I figure it could be worse. I could be on the streets.

I think things are a little fucked, and I've never been sure of what I can do to fix them. But I kind of expected the end to happen... you know, more biblically? Maybe a Chinese nuke? Or climate change will just barrel on past the point of no return, and I'll die of a heat stroke at the office when corporate decides to cut corners and not turn on the AC one day.

I figure that, in reality, I'll probably go out the same way my uncle and father did. My heart will just... give up one morning.

I'm standing in the parking lot just outside. A few of the others have run back inside, they're afraid, of course. It's reasonable. I see Peter from Accounts Receivable opening the trunk of his hatchback, pulling out a handgun and starting to swallow it before Eric slaps him behind the head and wrestles the gun away.

Yeah, I guess it's not the time for that.

My name is Zane Martinez. Right now, at this very moment, I'm watching as the skies open up and aliens come pouring down onto the city. My first thought was 'wow, this is going to be a lot of work.' I think that's kind of sad, but I don't know if I still have it in me to really feel sad anymore.

"We're so fucked," I mutter.

"Shut up, Martinez," Cindy says.

She's hot. And also a cunt. Keeps calling me Zane from Zanesville, as if that's the funniest joke I haven't heard a million times.

"I mean, what the fuck are those?" I ask as I gesture to the holes in the heavens.

There's tentacles. I... have seen some things that I'm not proud to have watched, the kind of shit that I'll only watch in Incognito mode. This is not that. These things are huge. If I didn't have the Cincinnati skyline to help, I might not even be able to put a scale to things.

The trunks? Tentacles? The things, they look like they're as thick around as a bus, and they're coiling down like someone's spilled intestines, all wet and pulsating.

Has someone ripped god's guts open over Cincinnati? Why? Cleveland's just an hour away.

"I'm going home," someone says, and I think it's the first smart thing I've heard all day.

"Yeah," I mutter.

"Work's not off yet," I hear someone say, and I recognize that voice. It's my general manager.

I point ahead and into the sky. "It looks like the world might be ending," I said.

"I know for a fact that you don't have any sick days left," he sniped back.

I was real curious about that handgun Peter had. "Okay, well, I'm gonna go die at home." I can see that little bit of hesitation on his face, and that's all the okay I need. I don't even bother heading back in. My 2012 Toyota's parked at the far end of the lot. It's a walk, but there's a tree there that keeps the sun off the front seat around four, so the car's not baking as much on the inside.

I get in, start it up, then pull out of the lot. There's a bit of traffic, but most of it is heading away from the centre of the city.

That's... probably pretty wise, actually. But my home is closer to downtown. Not by choice. It's the only place I found within twenty minutes of work. I have a roommate. He's a dipshit, but he pays on time and his pet cat is pretty cool, so it's alright. We barely see each other, and with the rent split in half it means I can afford a place near downtown.

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I pull up to the far right lane as I notice a few cars driving down the wrong side of the street, some of them going at insane speeds to get out of the growing congestion blocking off the left lanes.

I... I can't remember ever seeing something like this. I lean forwards, half my attention on the road, the other on the skies. I haven't gotten too much closer, but enough that I can make out some more details on the tentacles.

It looks like they're slowing down. There are other things slipping out of the holes, big pods that trail smaller tentacles.

I gasp, almost slamming on the breaks, when one of those pods rams into Carew Tower. "Holy fuck!"

This is... I was just a kid when 9-11 happened. I mean, I kinda remember it, but more for the aftermath and seeing it all over the news as a kid. I think this is what the people in New York felt that day, maybe.

Is this happening all over?

I turn on the radio, but it's just a pre-recorded state of emergency broadcast on every channel. Then I need to swerve not to rear-end a pick-up and I decide that paying attention to where I'm going is probably more important.

Which is why I'm lucky enough to see it coming.

One of those pods comes out of a tear in the distant sky. I'm not sure, but it looks like they're shrinking, maybe. The pod comes out at an oblique angle. It darts out, slashing through the smoke rising from downtown, then angles slightly upwards. I don't think I'd pay much attention to it, normally, but it's heading my way.

Straight at me.

Sure, downtown is a half dozen miles away, but I can tell when something's growing bigger.

"Fuck!" I shout, and suddenly, the pod is right there.

I swerve to the right as an explosion rocks out just ahead and to my left.

It crashed onto the bumper-to-bumper traffic to my left. The damned thing looked like it might have been the size of a car from afar, but now that it's close, it's closer to the size of a greyhound, and this one just crushed half a dozen cars.

I stop and stare. It's not smart of me, but traffic's dead now. A few cars have slipped out of their lanes and no one's moving anywhere.

The big... egg-thing is alive.

It's pulsating, covered in large gel-like sacs on the exterior that squirm, and the tentacles coming out of its rear end are swinging around and slashing out at the air.

I don't know what is going on, exactly, but I know that I don't want to be here. The egg's sides opened up, large tubes slipping out of holes like tongues out of a drooling mouth. They open up, swelling as something large passes through, and just like that, the egg gives birth to some large, placenta-covered thing, right there on the street.

"Fuck that," I say even as it pumped out another.

I almost gun it. My little Toyota's well insured. I can ram my way past the minivan ahead.

But there's people under that thing. There's people around it. And even as I watch, one of the things the egg just dropped stands up and takes off at a clumsy trot towards the first kind soul to come out and try to help.

It opened a mouth that's all wrong, and latched onto his face.

A moment later the alien pulls its head back, and serrated teeth take half the guy's face off.

"Ah, fuck no," I say.

And that's when I reach back into the space between my seats and grab a tire iron. I always imagined using it to bash some car thief's face in. This... isn't that, but not sure it matters at this point.

It ain't right to sit back and do nothing, so I'm going to do something.

Just as long as I don't think about it too much.

***