In This New World for bluedreaming (1/2)
Title: In This New World
Recipient: bluedreaming
Pairing: N/Sojin (Girl’s Day)
Rating: R (violence, sex, dark themes)
Wordcount: 15,349 words
Summary: For two civilians in a city decimated by alien invasion, the lines between love, war, and survival become increasingly blurred.
Notes: This story is heavily inspired by the TV show Falling Skies.
1. Now
They didn’t talk much about the day the world ended.
Since that day, his focus had simply been survival. There wasn’t much left in the burnt-out husk that was once the city of Los Angeles. Its freeways were quiet, its downtown deserted. The rusted-out ruins of cars still sat lined up on the 110, on their way to nowhere. Some of their doors were still open, their panicked passengers and drivers having leapt out to forge ahead on foot. Others were still in the cars when the phase fire hit, incinerating them instantly. Still others plummeted through the yawning cracks in the overpasses, concrete sliced by phase fire as easily as a knife through an apple.
The party rode down Laurel Canyon Road in their Jeeps, motorcycles, and trucks-only the most practical of vehicles were still in use anymore-to pick through whatever resources they could still locate on what remained of Sunset Boulevard. The glittering hotels, trendy night clubs, and glitzy boutiques lay abandoned and neglected; a dilapidated billboard once advertising designer jeans hung cracked and ruined overhead. Granted, the aliens cared more about destroying the first world’s military strongholds rather than popular night spots, but little had been spared in their campaign.
Least of all human lives.
Hakyeon and Sojin pulled up on their motorbikes next to what was left of the Standard Hotel and night club. Swinging a long leg over her bike, Sojin casually hoisted her shotgun over one shoulder, hair falling in a thick cascade over the other. Hakyeon strode through the door behind her, shouldering his own weapon, a second handgun tucked into his boot and a knife into his belt. He no longer remembered what it was like not to be packing heat. He no longer could imagine a life in which he’d walk through these doors free of care, hearing the pulsing beat of dance music rather than the whine of sirens, inhaling the heady scent of perfume and cigarette smoke rather than the stale odor of decay.
There wasn’t much left to sift through here. The scattered bands of surviving Angelinos had picked the place clean. Sojin strode behind the bar anyway, kneeling down behind the counter scattered with broken glass and the sticky remains of the spirits it once held. She arose a moment later, a grin across her face and a bottle in her hand. “They missed this one.”
“We’re on a mission,” Hakyeon pointed out as she unscrewed the lid and casually took a swig, smooth white throat bobbing a the amber liquid slid past it.
“The world’s a shithole, what else is new?” She passed him the bottle.
He frowned, but took a sip anyway, whiskey searing a path down his throat and simmering in his empty stomach. He handed the bottle back to Sojin, who stashed it in her pack.
At that moment, the radio strapped to her belt crackled to life. “Incoming hostiles. Abort mission.”
Shit. Cursing, Sojin and Hakyeon readied their weapons and scrambled for the door, skidding to a stop as phase fire blasted through the window directly in front of them. They scrambled behind the bar, taking turns providing cover fire as the phase rays whizzed above their heads and seared into the counter. The fire undoubtedly came from the aliens’ ground troops, in one of their many sweeps of the city in a bid to root out any human stragglers. The troops might’ve been extraterrestrial grunts, but they-or more accurately their weapons-were still deadly, and the suits of some high-tech armor they wore made hand-to-hand combat an impossibility. Despite their armor, they were devastatingly quick and agile, and it hadn’t taken Hakyeon long to learn that the best way to deal with them was to pump them full of as many rounds as he could, then run like hell. Gunfire rarely killed them, unless you were a great shot and could land a bullet right between the eyes-even then, their hides were tough to crack, and it might require more than one bullet.
“Guys, we are dying in here, literally,” Sojin shouted into her radio while Hakyeon provided cover fire. “We’re behind the bar. It’s not going to hold for long.”
Hakyeon dropped back behind the bar. “I’m out of ammo.”
Sojin rose to provide cover fire as he reloaded. He was down to his last clip.
“And I’m out.” Sojin dropped back behind the bar. At that moment, a deep crack opened in the bar, cutting a jagged path like like spilled beer flowing over the sticky surface. Shit.
Through the crack, Hakyeon could see at least two troops making their way toward them at nine o’clock and twelve o’clock. Probably a third coming from the three o’clock position, if their usual attack pattern held. The only chance they had now was to make a break for it.
Sojin reached for his hand, her palm slick with sweat and blood. She must’ve cut her hand on some glass or something. His fingers curled around hers, and squeezed.
“We go together,” she said.
He nodded.
“Now!”
She stood and made a break for the door as he followed, providing a continuous shower of cover fire. The aliens returned it in earnest. Pain exploded into his right thigh, a familiar sensation-phase burn.
“Go!” he told Sojin.
“Not without you.”
“One of us has to get out of this. Don’t make this a waste of my time.”
She glared at him, but the troubled look in her dark eyes belied her anger. “You’re an asshole,” she said, and ran.
He fired. Nothing. He was out of ammo. Quick as a flash, he whipped the handgun out of his boot and kept firing, slowly moving backward. Just as he ran out of bullets, the crack of more gunfire rent the air. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the troops go down. The distraction cost him. A dark blur jumped him and he went sprawling on his back, broken glass biting into his skin as he frantically scrambled for purchase. The alien was on him, rancid breath burning against his face, foul venom dripping from its lips, soulless eyes staring into his.
He reached for his belt, bloody palm sliding across the handle of his knife. With a strangled cry, he thrust it upward right between those glowing green eyes.
Viscous black liquid slid down his knife, mixing with the crimson streaks of his old blood, burning as it hit his fingers. The alien’s body jerked violently, and with a dull groan, finally collapsed limply on top of him.
Hakyeon sagged on the floor, grip finally loosening on the handle of the knife. A moment later, the heavy body was forcibly hoisted off of him, and he found himself gazing into the concerned brown eyes of his friend.
“Jesus Christ,” Jaehwan muttered, seemingly as much a prayer as an epithet, as he stared at the dead alien.
“Goddamnit, Hakyeon!” Another voice caught his attention, and he looked over to see the flashing eyes of Sojin. “I am not here for this hero bullshit, you hear me? Don’t you ever do that again!”
She smacked his arm, not seeming to care about his injuries.
“Why, Sojin, I didn’t know you cared.”
Her only response was to shoot him a look of pure venom.
Jaehwan’s gaze bounced back and forth between the pair in a mixture of amusement and concern. Then, “We need to move on; too damn many troops here and not enough bounty worth scavenging. I can’t believe we let these assholes take us by surprise.”
“They’re getting more vigilant,” Sojin remarked.
“Something’s happening,” Hakyeon said.
2. Now
The camp was located above the city, in the hills of Laurel Canyon overlooking the valley. What had once been the haven of L.A’s elite lay in as much ruins as the rest of the city; unlike the rest, the aliens didn’t take much interest in it. Nothing much up here, Hakyeon supposed, but rich people’s abandoned homes. And while their mansions provided the ragtag group with a large enough place to squat, they were good for little else. Power was on the blink, as the aliens didn’t particularly care to preserve human infrastructure; same with water.
Nobody knew what their endgame was. Colonization of Earth? Maybe, except that they seemed less interested in colonizing humans as they did in exterminating them. Nobody had any name for them, not in any human or alien tongue, because they’d never bothered to communicate. The aliens weren’t interested in that. Crippling the human civilization seemed more their priority.
The group had scavenged what little they could before returning home, venturing into the no man’s land below Sunset to see if they could find anything there. They had little luck, but at least they made it out without another attack. Not even the aliens wanted anything to do with anywhere below Sunset.
As evening fell over the ruined city, the breeze brought a sudden bite with it. Autumn was coming to the southland. The power was on the fritz again, so Hakyeon had a fire going in the mansion’s fireplace (he had no idea why a home in southern California needed a fireplace, but at least it was a real one and not one of those fake ones mostly there for aesthetics). He settled back on the once-luxurious rug with a mug of instant ramen noodles (he was not surprised that of all the foods on Earth, those survived an apocalypse) which he ate with mismatched chopsticks. He’d heard that it was a major no-no in Japanese culture. Mismatched chopsticks were only used for death rituals.
Well, the world as they all knew it was dead. Close enough.
The group’s current campsite was a deserted mansion left surprisingly undamaged in the attack. Hakyeon had no idea what had become of its occupants, but he suspected they’d left in a hurry, since many of their possessions remained in the home. The gold and platinum records decorating the front hall suggested that this had once been the abode of a high-powered record exec; the relative lack of family photos suggested that he or she was likely single. The living room was a large, cavernous space boasting a stark and minimalist aesthetic; glass doors opened out onto a patio overlooking the San Fernando valley. In the days following the invasion, many surviving Angelinos had fled to the valley for refuge; the fatalities there were as much from fellow survivors jockeying for shelter and supplies as they were from their extraterrestrial invaders. Eventually, the valley emptied out and was now largely deserted save for the occasional gang of brigands. Once again, it had become a no man’s land.
Hakyeon was still ruminating in front of the fire and barely noticed when another person sank down next to him, until he heard the words, “Care for some fruit with your recommended daily allowance of MSG?”
A faint smile crossed his face and he glimpsed Sojin sitting next to him, holding out half a bruised apple. He didn’t know where she scavenged that from. She was resourceful. Always had been, as long as they’d known each other.
She also had the whiskey. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed that it survived today’s attack and that she’d managed to bring back to the camp.
“Keeping it classy tonight,” she quipped, pouring the amber liquid into two chipped coffee mugs.
“Thanks.” He lifted one of the mugs and took a long sip. The whiskey warmed him where the fire didn’t.
“How you know you’re from SoCal-you’ve got a fire going when it hits the lower sixties,” she joked.
He managed to crack a smile, but he knew that her levity was a front, a coping mechanism. She made inappropriate jokes to stave off the reality of their new lives. He would laugh at them and try to remember who he was. Lather, rinse, repeat.
“How’s your leg?”
In the midst of almost getting killed, he’d forgotten about the phase burn on his thigh. “It’s been better.”
“Let me have a look.” Setting her meager dinner aside, Sojin gently peeled back the makeshift bandage he’d wrapped around his leg-a rag torn from the sleeve of his shirt-and peeled back the ruins of his cargo pants. The flesh was red, flaming, and angry, blisters popping up like the few intact buildings left in the city.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve seen worse.”
“I can handle it.”
“I’ll get the doc.”
“Don’t. There are others who need it more.” They were lucky that they’d fallen in with a survivor possessing an M.D. Before the aliens, Taekwoon had been interning with a plastic surgeon to the stars. Now he’d graduated from rhinoplasty and Botox injections to phase burns and GSWs. Just another day after the apocalypse.
“At least let me find some medication for it,” Sojin insisted.
Hakyeon didn’t argue. She returned several moments later with a tube of cream and a prescription bottle. “Gotta love rich people… always a handy supply of legal narcotics on hand.”
He washed the pill down with the whiskey as she carefully re-dressed his wound. The fire crackled beside them.
He knew that they would not be cold that evening-her body would keep him warm, and vice versa. They’d claim the first unoccupied bed they’d find and fall asleep in a tangle of limbs and sheets, and when the first rays of sunlight slanted through the cracked windows, one of them would undoubtedly be gone.
When Hakyeon woke alone the following morning, he figured he’d know where to find Sojin. Wincing, he unwrapped the makeshift bandages to check his leg. It wasn’t looking great, but it was better. He re-wrapped the bandages, tugged on a fresh pair of pants, and took a few steps. Just a flesh wound-he’d be fine.
He made his way out to the mansion’s huge garage and sure enough, there Sojin was, tinkering with one of her many weapons. Before the aliens came, she’d been a phD candidate in mechanical engineering, though these days it seemed her skills were mostly useful in fixing things.
At least she had more to contribute than a dancer did.
“Teach me something,” she’d asked one evening early in their acquaintance. It was still summer then, the air balmy, whispering across the tops of their empty wine glasses and the bottle absconded from the mansion’s now-emptied pantry. They sat on the patio, the valley spread out before them in its tawdry glory, and it was almost possible to forget what the world was now.
“You mean like, dance?”
“Unless you have another specialty I don’t know about.” Her dark eyes glinted with mischief. “Can you lift me like one of your dance partners?”
“There’s a technique, you know,” he said. “I don’t just lift women like weights. You’ve got to help.”
“Of course, like men can do anything without our help,” she cracked.
“This is highly dangerous, you know.”
“We are an endangered species in a world overcome by murderous aliens, and this is dangerous?”
She had a point.
Even as he watched her tinker with a gun, he still recalled her graceful fingers curling around his, her silky hair whispering against his skin, her silvery laughter as he hoisted her into the air. She shrieked and grabbed at him, causing him to stumble, and they both tumbled to the floor of the patio. He instinctively moved below her to absorb the fall, leaving her sprawled on top of him. Her hair streamed around his face, smelling sweetly of fresh summer air despite the lack of luxuries in their lives.
He did something dangerous then, far more so than fighting aliens or teaching women to dance.
He kissed her.
She looked up, catching his eye almost knowingly, as though she’d sensed where his thoughts had wandered. He broke eye contact, pretending to be studying her weapon. “Everything fixed up?”
“It’ll take out some aliens, if it must.” She set the gun aside. “Scouts returned this morning. There’s more news on that militia up north.”
Though most of the country’s military bases had been decimated in the invasion, apparently enough stragglers, retired, and ex-military had made their way to the bay area to form this militia. According to rumor, they had been having some success against the alien invaders. They were led by a man called the Dragon, whose real name was Kris Wu. The circumstances surrounding his dishonorable discharge were murky, but the prevailing theory seemed to be that he’d deserted in the midst of a tour and was considered a traitor.
“Sounds like the kind of guy I’d want leading me,” Hakyeon said dryly.
“I agree, but he’s also all we’ve got,” Sojin remarked.
“A valid point.”
“Jaehwan thinks we should head north to find them, and I’m inclined to agree,” Sojin said. “As nice as our current digs are, there’s nothing much left for us here. That wasn’t even good whiskey from our last run.”
Irreverent humor aside, Hakyeon had to agree. He still felt unsettled after their last supply run. There was something going on down here with the aliens, and he didn’t want to stick around and find out.
“We’ll call a meeting,” he said. “See what the others have to say.” He didn’t expect they’d hear much dissent, though. Though no one relished the idea of picking up and moving on through potentially dangerous territory, it was probably their best chance. If there was anything the group understood, it was doing what they had to in order to survive.
3. Before
In the weeks after the invasion, Hakyeon had been adrift. He wasn’t even a native Angelino-a professional dancer, he’d traveled from New York with his company for a couple of shows in the Southland. When the first volley of alien missiles hit, his sole priority was survival. He wasn’t sure if it had ever changed.
He had lost track of his fellow dancers, either dead or simply lost to him in the chaos. He was on his own.
The alley ended in a dead end, trapping him between a dumpster and certain death. In the months since the attack he’d been eking out a meager existence in the remains of Korea Town, occasionally running into other scattered survivors. None of them thought to organize. None of them were trained in the arts of war or combat. They obtained their weapons the way they obtained anything else-scavenging, mostly from the now-abandoned law enforcement stations or the occasional right-wing gun enthusiast who kept a firearm in his or her home. Hakyeon wasn’t sure where his weapons had come from; he’d traded for them. But even his trusty shotgun would not ward off three approaching troops.
Shit. He was smarter than this. He knew better. How had he let himself be lured into this cursed alley? He cursed this unfamiliar city that was now his home, these invaders who’d forced this existence on him.
Well, there was really only one thing left for him to do. He raised his weapon and prepared to pump those bastards full of as many rounds as he could get off before he fell.
He managed to take down one of the approaching troops, but there was no time for pride. As the seconds ticked off of what would likely be the last moments of his life, there was really no time to think of anything including how little he’d be leaving behind.
The noise in the alley seemed to multiply. Over the wheeze of the alien’s phase weapons, the crack of further gunfire rang out. Phase fire whizzed past his head. The troop standing in front of him froze and seemed to waver for a split-second before it collapsed at his feet. Viscous black alien blood splashed onto his boots and oozed into the cracked asphalt.
The roar of a motorcycle engine snapped him into focus. Its rider, shotgun aimed directly into the alley, shouted, “Get on!”
Hakyeon staggered to his feet, boots slipping in alien blood, snatching up his weapon as an afterthought. His savior continued firing her weapon at incoming reinforcements. Flaming red hair streamed out from under her scratched helmet and gleamed in the sunlight. His movements uncharacteristically clumsy, Hakyeon swung a long leg over the motorcycle and hopped onto the seat behind her, looping an arm around her slender waist.
“Cover me!” his savior ordered. With his free hand, Hakyeon fired off several shots as the motorcycle peeled off down the street.
He was out of ammo. With shaking fingers he reloaded while his companion fired, steering the bike with one hand.
“Hold on tight,” she warned once he’d reloaded and was ready to provide cover fire.
The bike whizzed through streets and alleys and screeched around hairpin turns, deserted storefronts and abandoned vehicles flying by in a blur. Whoever this woman was, her knowledge of this city was prolific. Judging by their current ride, she was definitely a seasoned L.A driver. Her circuitous route was enough to shake any possible alien tails, or else they had concluded that these two humans were more trouble than they were worth. Whatever the reason, they continued north with no further incident, though their speed never once abated.
Taking the back streets, they made their way past Sunset and up toward Laurel Canyon, into the shelter of the hills overlooking the city. It was then that Hakyeon learned where the last of the Angelinos had fled to. It wasn’t until they pulled up in front of the imposing abandoned mansion that he thought to tell his new friend, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. You’re either extremely dumb or new here; either way, you didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Well, she certainly had a way with words.
“I’m not from here,” he told her. “I take it you are?”
“Born and bred. I’m Sojin.”
“Hakyeon.” He reached out to shake her hand. Her palms were calloused, her nails short and bearing chipped nail polish as blood-red as her hair.
She removed her helmet, shaking her hair out. It gleamed in the fading light like the fires after the first volley of the invasion. Beautiful and deadly.
“A bunch of us have camped out here. We go into the city for supply runs sometimes. Korea Town is damn near cleaned out; you’re getting out just in time.”
He couldn’t deny that.
“The canyon seems to be the last place left the aliens haven’t gotten to. I don’t know why. But for now, I won’t question it. You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.”
And the rest, as they say, was history.
4. Now
The group set out at dawn, pale rays of sunlight filtering through the blanket of smog that seemed permanently settled over the Los Angeles basin. In this early morning light, the city almost seemed peaceful, tranquil. The crisp air whispered across Hakyeon’s clothing as he packed up what few possessions he travelled with; few of the group owned much more than the clothes on their back. Given how often their invaders kept them on the move, it wouldn’t do to amass many things. With a backwards glance at the palatial mansions surrounding him, he reflected with dark amusement how meaningless these monuments to conspicuous consumption now were in this new world order.
The group formed a short convoy with the few vehicles they’d managed to commandeer. Most of the medical equipment was packed into a winnebago that doubled as the infirmary; the rest of the supplies and ammo were piled into Jeeps and pickup trucks. Scouts led the convoy and brought up the rear on motorcycles. Hakyeon and Sojin were in the former group, followed by Jaehwan, who rode in a jeep with a youth he’d befriended named Hyuk. The kid was barely more than a teenager, a college student left stranded in the southland when the first torpedoes hit. He had no idea how his family up north had fared, if they were still alive or not. Mass communications had pretty much ceased to exist after the attack. The possibility of capture by the aliens was not something any of them cared to contemplate. Nobody knew what went on with the captives-if they were killed, imprisoned, or kept alive and experimented on à la alien abduction stories of the past.
These invaders, however, were not the little green men of Roswell.
The convoy made their way over the other side of the hills and toward the valley. The 101 freeway wound around the base of the hills, a gruesome tableau of crushed concrete and warped metal in some places; abandoned vehicles still lined up on a journey to nowhere in others. The roads fared mildly better, though it was still necessary upon occasion for the group to maneuver around abandoned vehicles.
Everyone was on high alert as they made their way through the valley. The place was like a ghost town, much like the destroyed city; occasionally, shots rang out in the distance, accompanied by shouts and various sounds of destruction-glass shattering, metal crunching. For the most part, the trip proceeded without incident, though everyone breathed a sigh of relief once they cleared the valley and hit the open road.
Progress up north was slow. The freeways were mostly out of commission, cluttered with abandoned vehicles or debris, or simply destroyed. The aliens were a clever lot-not only did they decimate population centers, but they also took out the arterial roads surrounding them. That left the backstreets and smaller country roads, which made the trip a lot slower.
The group made camp for the first night somewhere outside Santa Barbara, in one of those little tourist-trap towns. Summerland, it was called. Long-abandoned in the wake of the invasion, the place had pretty much been picked clean. There wasn’t much to scavenge here. The group took refuge in what had once been a high school. They cased the place carefully before setting up camp, on high alert for alien troops. As far as everyone knew, the aliens had no interest in places like this, but one could never be too careful.
Once they concluded that the school was empty of either human or extraterrestrial occupants, it was time for dinner-this time, Hakyeon and Sojin boiled their water for ramen noodles over a pair of Bunsen burners in the chem lab (luckily, there was still power here). They were soon joined by Jaehwan and Hyuk, who seemed pleased as punch to have ridden at the front of the convoy.
“I take it your training has been going well?” Hakyeon asked.
The youth nodded, grinning. “Maybe I should’ve taken riflery instead of econ. It’s a lot more fun.”
“I somehow doubt UCLA had planned for an alien invasion,” said Sojin dryly.
The conversation shifted to where they would be now if they weren’t here.
“I’d probably be in the library now, cursing my existence for not starting this dissertation earlier,” Sojin said.
“I’d probably dreaming up yet another fictional scenario that still wouldn’t be as messed-up as our reality,” Jaehwan joked. “Too bad aliens don’t enjoy reading mysteries.”
“I’d be on my way back to New York, eating terrible airline food and watching a terrible movie,” Hakyeon added. “Probably an adaptation of one of Jaehwan’s books.”
Jaehwan threw a chopstick at him, while the others laughed.
“I’d probably be drowning in a sea of useless homework assignments,” Hyuk finished up. “You know, as shitty as this war is, it has kind of given me a new perspective. It’s kind of broken life down to the basics, you know? Like survival. None of the bullshit matters anymore.”
“Like most of our old jobs,” Sojin cracked.
An awkward silence fell over the group, and Hyuk quickly tried to break the tension. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know you didn’t,” Jaehwan assured him.
“Hey, at least my skills are useful in fixing guns and motorbikes, and cooking ramen in a chemistry lab,” Sojin pointed out jokingly.
“I… can’t do much of anything,” Hakyeon admitted. “Well, I couldn’t before I learned to fire a gun.”
“Hey, you were in good physical shape,” Sojin pointed out. “You’ve got some people here who could barely lift a gun, let alone fire one.”
“Yeah, like this kid here.” Jaehwan nudged Hyuk with his elbow.
“I’m sure you really worked your arms typing away at your laptop,” Hyuk fired back.
“Hey, I had to lift those stacks of books for book signings. How do you think I got these guns?” Jaehwan flexed, and everyone groaned.
“What?” he demanded. “We can’t all be dancers like Hakyeon or gym rats like Hongbin and Won-shik.” The two young men had joined the group early on, neighbors who enjoyed hitting the gym after what Hongbin once described as “the soul-sucking drudgery of a nine to five job.”
“Hyeri’s pretty tough for a former sorority girl,” Sojin added. “Probably used to combat from fighting off those frat boys.”
“Hey, I take offense to that!” Hyuk exclaimed, a former frat boy himself. Then he added, “… You think she’d be up for, you know, some training?”
More groans from the others.
The conversation brought some much-needed levity to the situation, something the group badly needed to keep motivated. Everyone studiously avoided retreating too far into their thoughts, their memories. Hyuk and Hyeri, the youngest in the group, were the most resilient, with the benefit of their youthful spirits and energy to buoy them onward. It was the elders-Jaehwan, Sojin, and Hakyeon-who shouldered the burden of leading the group and upholding morale. Hyeri and especially Hyuk trained and fought with great relish. They rode on the fires of anger, despair, grief, and fear-but the elders were always around to assure them everything would be OK, and that they would live to see another day.
But there was no glory in killing, not even murderous aliens who mowed down the inferior humans with impunity. Humans were cattle to them; a nuisance to be rid of, before they achieved their goal of… what, exactly? Did they plan to colonize Earth? Strip-mine it? Destroy it for the fun of it? The latter seemed unlikely, for despite their eventual victory, the aliens suffered heavy losses at the hands of humanity’s greatest weapons. Yet there seemed an endless supply of invaders, dispatching shuttles from their behemoth vessels and troops flooding from their doors like some kind of horrific clown car.
Even as Hyuk laughed and joked with his new friends, there was a darkness lurking behind his eyes, one that Hakyeon was all too familiar with. Hyuk’s youth and idealism kept it at bay, at least for now. For Hakyeon, however-and Sojin as well, he suspected-it was far too easy to disappear into that darkness.
They had their own strategies to keep it at bay.
5. Before
“You’re pretty good at this for a guy who’d only ever handled theater prop guns.”
“And you’re good at this for an academic computer thumper.”
“The hell is a computer thumper? You think of that one all by yourself?”
Glancing over the shoulder onto which her rifle was propped, Sojin grinned at Hakyeon with flashing dark eyes. Her hair was drawn back in a ponytail, glinting in the afternoon sunlight like a lick of red flame. Backlit by the sun setting over the Hollywood Hills, she was a study in contrasts-the delicate beauty of a model or starlet in her face, the ferocity of a lioness in the skilled hands clutching an assault rifle as though it weighed mere ounces. Beautiful and deadly, in more ways than one.
She took aim and fired. A dull ping sounded as the soda can bounced off the fence.
Hakyeon followed suit, aiming carefully. The bullet whizzed past the can and embedded itself in the side of an abandoned Buick.
“You were distracting me!” he protested.
“And how, exactly, did I do that?” Sojin wanted to know. “By standing here?”
“You need to do more?”
His eyes glinted teasingly; she quickly turned away. Hakyeon thought he glimpsed a flush of pink in her round cheeks, but he didn’t give himself that much credit.
“Playing with phallic-shaped weapons all day gets you hot and bothered, huh?” she murmured.
“I’ve got something for you to play with.”
“Please, we’re in mixed company.”
“What mixed company?” he quipped, gesturing toward the empty lawn with one hand. Once impeccably manicured, he was sure, the lawn was now an overgrown mess, but it suited their purposes as a makeshift shooting range.
“Those virgin ears over there.” She nodded toward Hyuk, who stood several feet away firing at-and mostly missing-his target.
“Like the kid would hear anything over all this gunfire.”
“Like anyone would hear anything over this gunfire.”
“We’ve got guys guarding the perimeter,” he assured her. “We’ll be fine.”
Sojin brushed past him, not entirely convinced. For such a ferocious lioness, she had an unnerving habit of retreating back into herself at the most unexpected moments. Striding over to the mansion’s front porch, she grabbed a soda can out of the cooler. Though it contained no ice, the cooler at least prevented the beverages from getting any warmer than sub-room temperature.
Hakyeon grabbed a soda and sank down onto the steps beside her, saying nothing. He knew by now that he had to let her come to him. She was so inscrutable, but maybe he liked it that way. They could escape from themselves and into each other, but never so deep they couldn’t find the surface again.
He no longer feared loss, if only because there was nothing left to lose.
“Do you ever think of them?” she asked.
He knew who she meant without saying so. “Sometimes. Not much point to it.” Like Hyuk, Hakyeon and Sojin had been separated from their families in the war. With the information superhighway currently at a dead halt, they both had no way of knowing what had become of them.
“I’m working on something.”
“What do you mean?”
“A radio. One of those old ones for emergencies. Bless this mansion’s owner for his earthquake preparedness.”
Hakyeon tried to smile at the joke. An earthquake seemed so banal compared to this reality.
“They took out the Internet, they’ve got their fancy head-telepathy radios or whatever,” Sojin remarked. It had been observed that the aliens somehow found a way to communicate with each other over distances yet never seemed to carry any communicators or other such devices. That left implants or some other kind of fancy alien-tech not immediately visible. “But they might not think to bother with good ol’ fashioned radio waves.”
“Oh, good thinking.” If there were other survivors out there, perhaps they were thinking the same thing.
They both fell silent, too reluctant to let the conversation proceed further and into the vicinity of hope. While some hope was good-hope kept them alive long enough to see another day-too much hope was not. False hope was not something they could afford in this new reality.
“They died before my eyes,” Hakyeon said eventually, before he was aware he said it.
Sojin turned to look at him.
“My company. We were on the way back to the hotel when the first wave of torpedoes hit. We jumped out of the car and ran. It was chaos. Everyone running down the middle of the street. But I was faster. I hid under a fallen billboard with some other people. But the others… my friends… didn’t make it. They were vaporized. No bodies, no blood. Just… nothing.”
“I’m sorry.” She knew how trite and inadequate the words are, but she said them anyway, and he appreciated the gesture.
“I never thought an oversized ad for insurance would save my life,” he joked, his voice dry but humorless.
“I guess advertising finally did the world some good,” she added. And he knew, in that moment, that she understood exactly what he meant. That she had experienced what he had.
The fell silent again, gazing out over the lawn as Hyuk continued firing at his hapless aluminum targets. When he finally hit one, he cheered and did a fistpump at his two observers.
Hakyeon and Sojin smiled back indulgently. If only soda cans were the only target this young man needed to hit.
6. Now
Something was wrong.
Hakyeon sensed it from the moment his eyes opened. His body tensed, perfectly still as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and attempted to scan as much of the room as he could without moving his head. He and Sojin had set up camp in an empty classroom, laying their bedrolls out beside what had once been the teacher’s desk. He couldn’t see the classroom’s clock from here, not that it was accurate anymore anyway, but he’d guess it was sometime in the wee hours of the morning. Sojin had rolled over so her back was to him, and she was still-he couldn’t tell if she’d awakened or not. His hand gradually snaked into his bedroll in search of the handgun he left concealed there.
The click behind him was so subtle, he almost would’ve missed if he hadn’t been holding his breath.
“Don’t move.”
He froze. Within seconds, a flash of red and a blur of motion crystallized into Sojin propped on an elbow with her handgun trained on the forehead of Hakyeon’s assailant. “How about you don’t move, unless you like the sight of your brains spattered on the blackboard?”
He loved a woman who had a way with words.
“You wouldn’t, not while I’ve got a rifle to your boyfriend’s head.”
“You want to try me?” The hand holding the gun didn’t waver. Whatever had happened to this former grad student had forged her into steel.
Boots clomped into the classroom, and guns were drawn. From what Hakyeon could tell in the skimpy lighting, he thought he made out Jaehwan, Hyuk, and two of theirs. Hyuk and Jaehwan’s weapons were both trained on Hakyeon’s assailant.
“Looks like we’re at a standstill,” Jaehwan said.
“So this one’s your leader, then?” the assailant asked.
“I am,” Hakyeon said, before anyone else could reply. “Now why don’t you lower your guns and we’ll have a little talk.”
“The way I see it, we’ve got you outgunned and outnumbered. There’s way more of mine out there than yours in here.”
“So what’s your point then?”
“Your ammo and medical supplies. We’ll take them all, thank you very much.”
“Like hell you will!” Jaehwan exclaimed.
Hakyeon shot him a warning look. “I’m going to get up now, and you’re going to face me and talk to me like a man. I’m not doing this with the barrel of a gun pointed at my head.”
Hakyeon slowly rose to his feet. Sojin rose with him, never once lowering her weapon. Hakyeon caught her eye and tried to convey to her, I got this.
“Everyone, lower your weapons,” he said. To his attacker, he said, “We just want to talk.”
“Ain’t nothing to talk about.” The gun was still aimed at his head.
Hakyeon raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, backing up slowly. The sun was starting to rise, and what little light seeped in the classroom windows lent Hakyeon a view of his attacker. From what he could see, the man of similar height-and Hakyeon was no small man-but considerably bulkier in build. His face was mostly hidden by a filthy kerchief, the bill of his cap drawn low over his forehead. Hakyeon could see only his eyes, which glinted coldly.
“We’re on the same side here,” he said. “We’re fighting the same enemy. Rather than fighting each other, how about we focus on that?”
“I ain’t fighting for no one but me,” his attacker declared. “It’s a cruel world out there. We do what we must to survive. Nothing personal, you see.”
“We can help you,” Hakyeon offered. “You can join us. We can work together.”
“And why would I want a gang as useless as this lot?” his attacker countered. “Your girl is a quick draw; I’ll give her that. And she sure is a looker. Perhaps we’ll take her with us.”
“Try it and you’ll be making out with this handgun,” Sojin warned.
“Feisty, too.” Under the kerchief, the man seemed to grin. “She’ll be a good addition to our band.”
“What is this, the old west?” Hakyeon demanded. “You’re not taking our ammo and you’re not taking our women. Come on, now.”
“And what are you going to do about it, then?”
Hakyeon sighed, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “I guess we’re just going to have to fight.”
He lunged, hoping the element of surprise would lend an advantage in disarming his larger attacker. A gun went off-Sojin’s, most likely-and the next few moments were chaos. Gunshots rent what had been deathly silence before. A bullet pierced the ceiling of the classroom, bringing chunks of dry wall with it. Hakyeon and Sojin whirled around in the direction of the sound. One of their attacker’s men now had Hyuk in a chokehold, a gun to the young man’s temple. A bead of sweat rolled down Hyuk’s forehead, as he gazed at Hakyeon with wide eyes.
“So you’re going to give us your ammo and drugs,” the brigand leader said. “Or the pretty boy here ain’t gonna be so pretty no more.”
***
“We need to retaliate.”
A chorus of hearty agreement followed Jaehwan’s words. The group were gathered in the school’s cafeteria, none the worse for wear after the brigands’ departure, but their load considerably lighter.
Hyuk, whose only wound was, fortunately, to his pride, gazed about the group in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, you guys. This is all my fault.”
“No, it isn’t,” Hakyeon said firmly. He was still kicking himself for being caught unaware like that. Though he’d posted guards on a rotating schedule through the evening, the brigands had somehow still been able to catch them by surprise. Fortunately, both guards came through the ordeal with no injuries worse than goose eggs on their heads after meeting the butt of a rifle. Still, it smarted to think these men *still* got the better of them after all the precautions they had taken. It didn’t matter to him that their group of civilian survivors was led by a former dancer, a mystery author, and grad student, all of whom had only picked up weapons for the first time several months ago. They hadn’t survived this long by being stupid and complacent.
“That’s why we’ve got to retaliate,” Jaehwan insisted. “We’re fresh out of ammo and medical supplies, and it’s not like those are easy to find.”
“And by retaliating, we lose what little ammo we do have,” Hakyeon pointed out. “Or worse.”
“I don’t see how we’d be any worse off,” Sojin countered. “If we tried to go on as we are, we’d be sitting ducks for the aliens.”
“We can’t risk losing any soldiers,” Hakyeon insisted.
“Right, so we can lose them to the aliens later.”
“The lady’s got a point,” Jaehwan said.
Hakyeon glared at him, pleased when the other man seemed to shrink back a little. If there was anything Hakyeon was good at, it was a well-deployed glare.
“How many people have we already lost in this war?” Hakyeon wanted to know. “How many more can we lose? We already almost lost Hyuk!”
“You might have been better off,” Hyuk mourned. “If not for me we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“If it wasn’t you it would have been someone else.”
“This is pointless,” Sojin huffed. “I say we hit them tonight. We’re losing time and with every moment we waste, we’re less likely to track them down.”
“They had the element of surprise last night,” Jaehwan added. “I say we give them a taste of their own medicine.”
More cheers.
Hakyeon opened his mouth to argue, but at this point, he could see he was outvoted. Not even Sojin had his back, not that he would’ve expected her to. She was a woman who knew her own mind. Still, it would’ve been nice to have someone in his camp. Stung, he glared at her.
Unlike Jaehwan, she seemed immune to his glare. If anything, she’d just glare back.
Which she was doing right now.
“So let’s talk strategy,” she said, turning to the others.
It had been decided.
>> part 2
Recipient: bluedreaming
Pairing: N/Sojin (Girl’s Day)
Rating: R (violence, sex, dark themes)
Wordcount: 15,349 words
Summary: For two civilians in a city decimated by alien invasion, the lines between love, war, and survival become increasingly blurred.
Notes: This story is heavily inspired by the TV show Falling Skies.
1. Now
They didn’t talk much about the day the world ended.
Since that day, his focus had simply been survival. There wasn’t much left in the burnt-out husk that was once the city of Los Angeles. Its freeways were quiet, its downtown deserted. The rusted-out ruins of cars still sat lined up on the 110, on their way to nowhere. Some of their doors were still open, their panicked passengers and drivers having leapt out to forge ahead on foot. Others were still in the cars when the phase fire hit, incinerating them instantly. Still others plummeted through the yawning cracks in the overpasses, concrete sliced by phase fire as easily as a knife through an apple.
The party rode down Laurel Canyon Road in their Jeeps, motorcycles, and trucks-only the most practical of vehicles were still in use anymore-to pick through whatever resources they could still locate on what remained of Sunset Boulevard. The glittering hotels, trendy night clubs, and glitzy boutiques lay abandoned and neglected; a dilapidated billboard once advertising designer jeans hung cracked and ruined overhead. Granted, the aliens cared more about destroying the first world’s military strongholds rather than popular night spots, but little had been spared in their campaign.
Least of all human lives.
Hakyeon and Sojin pulled up on their motorbikes next to what was left of the Standard Hotel and night club. Swinging a long leg over her bike, Sojin casually hoisted her shotgun over one shoulder, hair falling in a thick cascade over the other. Hakyeon strode through the door behind her, shouldering his own weapon, a second handgun tucked into his boot and a knife into his belt. He no longer remembered what it was like not to be packing heat. He no longer could imagine a life in which he’d walk through these doors free of care, hearing the pulsing beat of dance music rather than the whine of sirens, inhaling the heady scent of perfume and cigarette smoke rather than the stale odor of decay.
There wasn’t much left to sift through here. The scattered bands of surviving Angelinos had picked the place clean. Sojin strode behind the bar anyway, kneeling down behind the counter scattered with broken glass and the sticky remains of the spirits it once held. She arose a moment later, a grin across her face and a bottle in her hand. “They missed this one.”
“We’re on a mission,” Hakyeon pointed out as she unscrewed the lid and casually took a swig, smooth white throat bobbing a the amber liquid slid past it.
“The world’s a shithole, what else is new?” She passed him the bottle.
He frowned, but took a sip anyway, whiskey searing a path down his throat and simmering in his empty stomach. He handed the bottle back to Sojin, who stashed it in her pack.
At that moment, the radio strapped to her belt crackled to life. “Incoming hostiles. Abort mission.”
Shit. Cursing, Sojin and Hakyeon readied their weapons and scrambled for the door, skidding to a stop as phase fire blasted through the window directly in front of them. They scrambled behind the bar, taking turns providing cover fire as the phase rays whizzed above their heads and seared into the counter. The fire undoubtedly came from the aliens’ ground troops, in one of their many sweeps of the city in a bid to root out any human stragglers. The troops might’ve been extraterrestrial grunts, but they-or more accurately their weapons-were still deadly, and the suits of some high-tech armor they wore made hand-to-hand combat an impossibility. Despite their armor, they were devastatingly quick and agile, and it hadn’t taken Hakyeon long to learn that the best way to deal with them was to pump them full of as many rounds as he could, then run like hell. Gunfire rarely killed them, unless you were a great shot and could land a bullet right between the eyes-even then, their hides were tough to crack, and it might require more than one bullet.
“Guys, we are dying in here, literally,” Sojin shouted into her radio while Hakyeon provided cover fire. “We’re behind the bar. It’s not going to hold for long.”
Hakyeon dropped back behind the bar. “I’m out of ammo.”
Sojin rose to provide cover fire as he reloaded. He was down to his last clip.
“And I’m out.” Sojin dropped back behind the bar. At that moment, a deep crack opened in the bar, cutting a jagged path like like spilled beer flowing over the sticky surface. Shit.
Through the crack, Hakyeon could see at least two troops making their way toward them at nine o’clock and twelve o’clock. Probably a third coming from the three o’clock position, if their usual attack pattern held. The only chance they had now was to make a break for it.
Sojin reached for his hand, her palm slick with sweat and blood. She must’ve cut her hand on some glass or something. His fingers curled around hers, and squeezed.
“We go together,” she said.
He nodded.
“Now!”
She stood and made a break for the door as he followed, providing a continuous shower of cover fire. The aliens returned it in earnest. Pain exploded into his right thigh, a familiar sensation-phase burn.
“Go!” he told Sojin.
“Not without you.”
“One of us has to get out of this. Don’t make this a waste of my time.”
She glared at him, but the troubled look in her dark eyes belied her anger. “You’re an asshole,” she said, and ran.
He fired. Nothing. He was out of ammo. Quick as a flash, he whipped the handgun out of his boot and kept firing, slowly moving backward. Just as he ran out of bullets, the crack of more gunfire rent the air. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the troops go down. The distraction cost him. A dark blur jumped him and he went sprawling on his back, broken glass biting into his skin as he frantically scrambled for purchase. The alien was on him, rancid breath burning against his face, foul venom dripping from its lips, soulless eyes staring into his.
He reached for his belt, bloody palm sliding across the handle of his knife. With a strangled cry, he thrust it upward right between those glowing green eyes.
Viscous black liquid slid down his knife, mixing with the crimson streaks of his old blood, burning as it hit his fingers. The alien’s body jerked violently, and with a dull groan, finally collapsed limply on top of him.
Hakyeon sagged on the floor, grip finally loosening on the handle of the knife. A moment later, the heavy body was forcibly hoisted off of him, and he found himself gazing into the concerned brown eyes of his friend.
“Jesus Christ,” Jaehwan muttered, seemingly as much a prayer as an epithet, as he stared at the dead alien.
“Goddamnit, Hakyeon!” Another voice caught his attention, and he looked over to see the flashing eyes of Sojin. “I am not here for this hero bullshit, you hear me? Don’t you ever do that again!”
She smacked his arm, not seeming to care about his injuries.
“Why, Sojin, I didn’t know you cared.”
Her only response was to shoot him a look of pure venom.
Jaehwan’s gaze bounced back and forth between the pair in a mixture of amusement and concern. Then, “We need to move on; too damn many troops here and not enough bounty worth scavenging. I can’t believe we let these assholes take us by surprise.”
“They’re getting more vigilant,” Sojin remarked.
“Something’s happening,” Hakyeon said.
2. Now
The camp was located above the city, in the hills of Laurel Canyon overlooking the valley. What had once been the haven of L.A’s elite lay in as much ruins as the rest of the city; unlike the rest, the aliens didn’t take much interest in it. Nothing much up here, Hakyeon supposed, but rich people’s abandoned homes. And while their mansions provided the ragtag group with a large enough place to squat, they were good for little else. Power was on the blink, as the aliens didn’t particularly care to preserve human infrastructure; same with water.
Nobody knew what their endgame was. Colonization of Earth? Maybe, except that they seemed less interested in colonizing humans as they did in exterminating them. Nobody had any name for them, not in any human or alien tongue, because they’d never bothered to communicate. The aliens weren’t interested in that. Crippling the human civilization seemed more their priority.
The group had scavenged what little they could before returning home, venturing into the no man’s land below Sunset to see if they could find anything there. They had little luck, but at least they made it out without another attack. Not even the aliens wanted anything to do with anywhere below Sunset.
As evening fell over the ruined city, the breeze brought a sudden bite with it. Autumn was coming to the southland. The power was on the fritz again, so Hakyeon had a fire going in the mansion’s fireplace (he had no idea why a home in southern California needed a fireplace, but at least it was a real one and not one of those fake ones mostly there for aesthetics). He settled back on the once-luxurious rug with a mug of instant ramen noodles (he was not surprised that of all the foods on Earth, those survived an apocalypse) which he ate with mismatched chopsticks. He’d heard that it was a major no-no in Japanese culture. Mismatched chopsticks were only used for death rituals.
Well, the world as they all knew it was dead. Close enough.
The group’s current campsite was a deserted mansion left surprisingly undamaged in the attack. Hakyeon had no idea what had become of its occupants, but he suspected they’d left in a hurry, since many of their possessions remained in the home. The gold and platinum records decorating the front hall suggested that this had once been the abode of a high-powered record exec; the relative lack of family photos suggested that he or she was likely single. The living room was a large, cavernous space boasting a stark and minimalist aesthetic; glass doors opened out onto a patio overlooking the San Fernando valley. In the days following the invasion, many surviving Angelinos had fled to the valley for refuge; the fatalities there were as much from fellow survivors jockeying for shelter and supplies as they were from their extraterrestrial invaders. Eventually, the valley emptied out and was now largely deserted save for the occasional gang of brigands. Once again, it had become a no man’s land.
Hakyeon was still ruminating in front of the fire and barely noticed when another person sank down next to him, until he heard the words, “Care for some fruit with your recommended daily allowance of MSG?”
A faint smile crossed his face and he glimpsed Sojin sitting next to him, holding out half a bruised apple. He didn’t know where she scavenged that from. She was resourceful. Always had been, as long as they’d known each other.
She also had the whiskey. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed that it survived today’s attack and that she’d managed to bring back to the camp.
“Keeping it classy tonight,” she quipped, pouring the amber liquid into two chipped coffee mugs.
“Thanks.” He lifted one of the mugs and took a long sip. The whiskey warmed him where the fire didn’t.
“How you know you’re from SoCal-you’ve got a fire going when it hits the lower sixties,” she joked.
He managed to crack a smile, but he knew that her levity was a front, a coping mechanism. She made inappropriate jokes to stave off the reality of their new lives. He would laugh at them and try to remember who he was. Lather, rinse, repeat.
“How’s your leg?”
In the midst of almost getting killed, he’d forgotten about the phase burn on his thigh. “It’s been better.”
“Let me have a look.” Setting her meager dinner aside, Sojin gently peeled back the makeshift bandage he’d wrapped around his leg-a rag torn from the sleeve of his shirt-and peeled back the ruins of his cargo pants. The flesh was red, flaming, and angry, blisters popping up like the few intact buildings left in the city.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve seen worse.”
“I can handle it.”
“I’ll get the doc.”
“Don’t. There are others who need it more.” They were lucky that they’d fallen in with a survivor possessing an M.D. Before the aliens, Taekwoon had been interning with a plastic surgeon to the stars. Now he’d graduated from rhinoplasty and Botox injections to phase burns and GSWs. Just another day after the apocalypse.
“At least let me find some medication for it,” Sojin insisted.
Hakyeon didn’t argue. She returned several moments later with a tube of cream and a prescription bottle. “Gotta love rich people… always a handy supply of legal narcotics on hand.”
He washed the pill down with the whiskey as she carefully re-dressed his wound. The fire crackled beside them.
He knew that they would not be cold that evening-her body would keep him warm, and vice versa. They’d claim the first unoccupied bed they’d find and fall asleep in a tangle of limbs and sheets, and when the first rays of sunlight slanted through the cracked windows, one of them would undoubtedly be gone.
When Hakyeon woke alone the following morning, he figured he’d know where to find Sojin. Wincing, he unwrapped the makeshift bandages to check his leg. It wasn’t looking great, but it was better. He re-wrapped the bandages, tugged on a fresh pair of pants, and took a few steps. Just a flesh wound-he’d be fine.
He made his way out to the mansion’s huge garage and sure enough, there Sojin was, tinkering with one of her many weapons. Before the aliens came, she’d been a phD candidate in mechanical engineering, though these days it seemed her skills were mostly useful in fixing things.
At least she had more to contribute than a dancer did.
“Teach me something,” she’d asked one evening early in their acquaintance. It was still summer then, the air balmy, whispering across the tops of their empty wine glasses and the bottle absconded from the mansion’s now-emptied pantry. They sat on the patio, the valley spread out before them in its tawdry glory, and it was almost possible to forget what the world was now.
“You mean like, dance?”
“Unless you have another specialty I don’t know about.” Her dark eyes glinted with mischief. “Can you lift me like one of your dance partners?”
“There’s a technique, you know,” he said. “I don’t just lift women like weights. You’ve got to help.”
“Of course, like men can do anything without our help,” she cracked.
“This is highly dangerous, you know.”
“We are an endangered species in a world overcome by murderous aliens, and this is dangerous?”
She had a point.
Even as he watched her tinker with a gun, he still recalled her graceful fingers curling around his, her silky hair whispering against his skin, her silvery laughter as he hoisted her into the air. She shrieked and grabbed at him, causing him to stumble, and they both tumbled to the floor of the patio. He instinctively moved below her to absorb the fall, leaving her sprawled on top of him. Her hair streamed around his face, smelling sweetly of fresh summer air despite the lack of luxuries in their lives.
He did something dangerous then, far more so than fighting aliens or teaching women to dance.
He kissed her.
She looked up, catching his eye almost knowingly, as though she’d sensed where his thoughts had wandered. He broke eye contact, pretending to be studying her weapon. “Everything fixed up?”
“It’ll take out some aliens, if it must.” She set the gun aside. “Scouts returned this morning. There’s more news on that militia up north.”
Though most of the country’s military bases had been decimated in the invasion, apparently enough stragglers, retired, and ex-military had made their way to the bay area to form this militia. According to rumor, they had been having some success against the alien invaders. They were led by a man called the Dragon, whose real name was Kris Wu. The circumstances surrounding his dishonorable discharge were murky, but the prevailing theory seemed to be that he’d deserted in the midst of a tour and was considered a traitor.
“Sounds like the kind of guy I’d want leading me,” Hakyeon said dryly.
“I agree, but he’s also all we’ve got,” Sojin remarked.
“A valid point.”
“Jaehwan thinks we should head north to find them, and I’m inclined to agree,” Sojin said. “As nice as our current digs are, there’s nothing much left for us here. That wasn’t even good whiskey from our last run.”
Irreverent humor aside, Hakyeon had to agree. He still felt unsettled after their last supply run. There was something going on down here with the aliens, and he didn’t want to stick around and find out.
“We’ll call a meeting,” he said. “See what the others have to say.” He didn’t expect they’d hear much dissent, though. Though no one relished the idea of picking up and moving on through potentially dangerous territory, it was probably their best chance. If there was anything the group understood, it was doing what they had to in order to survive.
3. Before
In the weeks after the invasion, Hakyeon had been adrift. He wasn’t even a native Angelino-a professional dancer, he’d traveled from New York with his company for a couple of shows in the Southland. When the first volley of alien missiles hit, his sole priority was survival. He wasn’t sure if it had ever changed.
He had lost track of his fellow dancers, either dead or simply lost to him in the chaos. He was on his own.
The alley ended in a dead end, trapping him between a dumpster and certain death. In the months since the attack he’d been eking out a meager existence in the remains of Korea Town, occasionally running into other scattered survivors. None of them thought to organize. None of them were trained in the arts of war or combat. They obtained their weapons the way they obtained anything else-scavenging, mostly from the now-abandoned law enforcement stations or the occasional right-wing gun enthusiast who kept a firearm in his or her home. Hakyeon wasn’t sure where his weapons had come from; he’d traded for them. But even his trusty shotgun would not ward off three approaching troops.
Shit. He was smarter than this. He knew better. How had he let himself be lured into this cursed alley? He cursed this unfamiliar city that was now his home, these invaders who’d forced this existence on him.
Well, there was really only one thing left for him to do. He raised his weapon and prepared to pump those bastards full of as many rounds as he could get off before he fell.
He managed to take down one of the approaching troops, but there was no time for pride. As the seconds ticked off of what would likely be the last moments of his life, there was really no time to think of anything including how little he’d be leaving behind.
The noise in the alley seemed to multiply. Over the wheeze of the alien’s phase weapons, the crack of further gunfire rang out. Phase fire whizzed past his head. The troop standing in front of him froze and seemed to waver for a split-second before it collapsed at his feet. Viscous black alien blood splashed onto his boots and oozed into the cracked asphalt.
The roar of a motorcycle engine snapped him into focus. Its rider, shotgun aimed directly into the alley, shouted, “Get on!”
Hakyeon staggered to his feet, boots slipping in alien blood, snatching up his weapon as an afterthought. His savior continued firing her weapon at incoming reinforcements. Flaming red hair streamed out from under her scratched helmet and gleamed in the sunlight. His movements uncharacteristically clumsy, Hakyeon swung a long leg over the motorcycle and hopped onto the seat behind her, looping an arm around her slender waist.
“Cover me!” his savior ordered. With his free hand, Hakyeon fired off several shots as the motorcycle peeled off down the street.
He was out of ammo. With shaking fingers he reloaded while his companion fired, steering the bike with one hand.
“Hold on tight,” she warned once he’d reloaded and was ready to provide cover fire.
The bike whizzed through streets and alleys and screeched around hairpin turns, deserted storefronts and abandoned vehicles flying by in a blur. Whoever this woman was, her knowledge of this city was prolific. Judging by their current ride, she was definitely a seasoned L.A driver. Her circuitous route was enough to shake any possible alien tails, or else they had concluded that these two humans were more trouble than they were worth. Whatever the reason, they continued north with no further incident, though their speed never once abated.
Taking the back streets, they made their way past Sunset and up toward Laurel Canyon, into the shelter of the hills overlooking the city. It was then that Hakyeon learned where the last of the Angelinos had fled to. It wasn’t until they pulled up in front of the imposing abandoned mansion that he thought to tell his new friend, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. You’re either extremely dumb or new here; either way, you didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Well, she certainly had a way with words.
“I’m not from here,” he told her. “I take it you are?”
“Born and bred. I’m Sojin.”
“Hakyeon.” He reached out to shake her hand. Her palms were calloused, her nails short and bearing chipped nail polish as blood-red as her hair.
She removed her helmet, shaking her hair out. It gleamed in the fading light like the fires after the first volley of the invasion. Beautiful and deadly.
“A bunch of us have camped out here. We go into the city for supply runs sometimes. Korea Town is damn near cleaned out; you’re getting out just in time.”
He couldn’t deny that.
“The canyon seems to be the last place left the aliens haven’t gotten to. I don’t know why. But for now, I won’t question it. You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.”
And the rest, as they say, was history.
4. Now
The group set out at dawn, pale rays of sunlight filtering through the blanket of smog that seemed permanently settled over the Los Angeles basin. In this early morning light, the city almost seemed peaceful, tranquil. The crisp air whispered across Hakyeon’s clothing as he packed up what few possessions he travelled with; few of the group owned much more than the clothes on their back. Given how often their invaders kept them on the move, it wouldn’t do to amass many things. With a backwards glance at the palatial mansions surrounding him, he reflected with dark amusement how meaningless these monuments to conspicuous consumption now were in this new world order.
The group formed a short convoy with the few vehicles they’d managed to commandeer. Most of the medical equipment was packed into a winnebago that doubled as the infirmary; the rest of the supplies and ammo were piled into Jeeps and pickup trucks. Scouts led the convoy and brought up the rear on motorcycles. Hakyeon and Sojin were in the former group, followed by Jaehwan, who rode in a jeep with a youth he’d befriended named Hyuk. The kid was barely more than a teenager, a college student left stranded in the southland when the first torpedoes hit. He had no idea how his family up north had fared, if they were still alive or not. Mass communications had pretty much ceased to exist after the attack. The possibility of capture by the aliens was not something any of them cared to contemplate. Nobody knew what went on with the captives-if they were killed, imprisoned, or kept alive and experimented on à la alien abduction stories of the past.
These invaders, however, were not the little green men of Roswell.
The convoy made their way over the other side of the hills and toward the valley. The 101 freeway wound around the base of the hills, a gruesome tableau of crushed concrete and warped metal in some places; abandoned vehicles still lined up on a journey to nowhere in others. The roads fared mildly better, though it was still necessary upon occasion for the group to maneuver around abandoned vehicles.
Everyone was on high alert as they made their way through the valley. The place was like a ghost town, much like the destroyed city; occasionally, shots rang out in the distance, accompanied by shouts and various sounds of destruction-glass shattering, metal crunching. For the most part, the trip proceeded without incident, though everyone breathed a sigh of relief once they cleared the valley and hit the open road.
Progress up north was slow. The freeways were mostly out of commission, cluttered with abandoned vehicles or debris, or simply destroyed. The aliens were a clever lot-not only did they decimate population centers, but they also took out the arterial roads surrounding them. That left the backstreets and smaller country roads, which made the trip a lot slower.
The group made camp for the first night somewhere outside Santa Barbara, in one of those little tourist-trap towns. Summerland, it was called. Long-abandoned in the wake of the invasion, the place had pretty much been picked clean. There wasn’t much to scavenge here. The group took refuge in what had once been a high school. They cased the place carefully before setting up camp, on high alert for alien troops. As far as everyone knew, the aliens had no interest in places like this, but one could never be too careful.
Once they concluded that the school was empty of either human or extraterrestrial occupants, it was time for dinner-this time, Hakyeon and Sojin boiled their water for ramen noodles over a pair of Bunsen burners in the chem lab (luckily, there was still power here). They were soon joined by Jaehwan and Hyuk, who seemed pleased as punch to have ridden at the front of the convoy.
“I take it your training has been going well?” Hakyeon asked.
The youth nodded, grinning. “Maybe I should’ve taken riflery instead of econ. It’s a lot more fun.”
“I somehow doubt UCLA had planned for an alien invasion,” said Sojin dryly.
The conversation shifted to where they would be now if they weren’t here.
“I’d probably be in the library now, cursing my existence for not starting this dissertation earlier,” Sojin said.
“I’d probably dreaming up yet another fictional scenario that still wouldn’t be as messed-up as our reality,” Jaehwan joked. “Too bad aliens don’t enjoy reading mysteries.”
“I’d be on my way back to New York, eating terrible airline food and watching a terrible movie,” Hakyeon added. “Probably an adaptation of one of Jaehwan’s books.”
Jaehwan threw a chopstick at him, while the others laughed.
“I’d probably be drowning in a sea of useless homework assignments,” Hyuk finished up. “You know, as shitty as this war is, it has kind of given me a new perspective. It’s kind of broken life down to the basics, you know? Like survival. None of the bullshit matters anymore.”
“Like most of our old jobs,” Sojin cracked.
An awkward silence fell over the group, and Hyuk quickly tried to break the tension. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know you didn’t,” Jaehwan assured him.
“Hey, at least my skills are useful in fixing guns and motorbikes, and cooking ramen in a chemistry lab,” Sojin pointed out jokingly.
“I… can’t do much of anything,” Hakyeon admitted. “Well, I couldn’t before I learned to fire a gun.”
“Hey, you were in good physical shape,” Sojin pointed out. “You’ve got some people here who could barely lift a gun, let alone fire one.”
“Yeah, like this kid here.” Jaehwan nudged Hyuk with his elbow.
“I’m sure you really worked your arms typing away at your laptop,” Hyuk fired back.
“Hey, I had to lift those stacks of books for book signings. How do you think I got these guns?” Jaehwan flexed, and everyone groaned.
“What?” he demanded. “We can’t all be dancers like Hakyeon or gym rats like Hongbin and Won-shik.” The two young men had joined the group early on, neighbors who enjoyed hitting the gym after what Hongbin once described as “the soul-sucking drudgery of a nine to five job.”
“Hyeri’s pretty tough for a former sorority girl,” Sojin added. “Probably used to combat from fighting off those frat boys.”
“Hey, I take offense to that!” Hyuk exclaimed, a former frat boy himself. Then he added, “… You think she’d be up for, you know, some training?”
More groans from the others.
The conversation brought some much-needed levity to the situation, something the group badly needed to keep motivated. Everyone studiously avoided retreating too far into their thoughts, their memories. Hyuk and Hyeri, the youngest in the group, were the most resilient, with the benefit of their youthful spirits and energy to buoy them onward. It was the elders-Jaehwan, Sojin, and Hakyeon-who shouldered the burden of leading the group and upholding morale. Hyeri and especially Hyuk trained and fought with great relish. They rode on the fires of anger, despair, grief, and fear-but the elders were always around to assure them everything would be OK, and that they would live to see another day.
But there was no glory in killing, not even murderous aliens who mowed down the inferior humans with impunity. Humans were cattle to them; a nuisance to be rid of, before they achieved their goal of… what, exactly? Did they plan to colonize Earth? Strip-mine it? Destroy it for the fun of it? The latter seemed unlikely, for despite their eventual victory, the aliens suffered heavy losses at the hands of humanity’s greatest weapons. Yet there seemed an endless supply of invaders, dispatching shuttles from their behemoth vessels and troops flooding from their doors like some kind of horrific clown car.
Even as Hyuk laughed and joked with his new friends, there was a darkness lurking behind his eyes, one that Hakyeon was all too familiar with. Hyuk’s youth and idealism kept it at bay, at least for now. For Hakyeon, however-and Sojin as well, he suspected-it was far too easy to disappear into that darkness.
They had their own strategies to keep it at bay.
5. Before
“You’re pretty good at this for a guy who’d only ever handled theater prop guns.”
“And you’re good at this for an academic computer thumper.”
“The hell is a computer thumper? You think of that one all by yourself?”
Glancing over the shoulder onto which her rifle was propped, Sojin grinned at Hakyeon with flashing dark eyes. Her hair was drawn back in a ponytail, glinting in the afternoon sunlight like a lick of red flame. Backlit by the sun setting over the Hollywood Hills, she was a study in contrasts-the delicate beauty of a model or starlet in her face, the ferocity of a lioness in the skilled hands clutching an assault rifle as though it weighed mere ounces. Beautiful and deadly, in more ways than one.
She took aim and fired. A dull ping sounded as the soda can bounced off the fence.
Hakyeon followed suit, aiming carefully. The bullet whizzed past the can and embedded itself in the side of an abandoned Buick.
“You were distracting me!” he protested.
“And how, exactly, did I do that?” Sojin wanted to know. “By standing here?”
“You need to do more?”
His eyes glinted teasingly; she quickly turned away. Hakyeon thought he glimpsed a flush of pink in her round cheeks, but he didn’t give himself that much credit.
“Playing with phallic-shaped weapons all day gets you hot and bothered, huh?” she murmured.
“I’ve got something for you to play with.”
“Please, we’re in mixed company.”
“What mixed company?” he quipped, gesturing toward the empty lawn with one hand. Once impeccably manicured, he was sure, the lawn was now an overgrown mess, but it suited their purposes as a makeshift shooting range.
“Those virgin ears over there.” She nodded toward Hyuk, who stood several feet away firing at-and mostly missing-his target.
“Like the kid would hear anything over all this gunfire.”
“Like anyone would hear anything over this gunfire.”
“We’ve got guys guarding the perimeter,” he assured her. “We’ll be fine.”
Sojin brushed past him, not entirely convinced. For such a ferocious lioness, she had an unnerving habit of retreating back into herself at the most unexpected moments. Striding over to the mansion’s front porch, she grabbed a soda can out of the cooler. Though it contained no ice, the cooler at least prevented the beverages from getting any warmer than sub-room temperature.
Hakyeon grabbed a soda and sank down onto the steps beside her, saying nothing. He knew by now that he had to let her come to him. She was so inscrutable, but maybe he liked it that way. They could escape from themselves and into each other, but never so deep they couldn’t find the surface again.
He no longer feared loss, if only because there was nothing left to lose.
“Do you ever think of them?” she asked.
He knew who she meant without saying so. “Sometimes. Not much point to it.” Like Hyuk, Hakyeon and Sojin had been separated from their families in the war. With the information superhighway currently at a dead halt, they both had no way of knowing what had become of them.
“I’m working on something.”
“What do you mean?”
“A radio. One of those old ones for emergencies. Bless this mansion’s owner for his earthquake preparedness.”
Hakyeon tried to smile at the joke. An earthquake seemed so banal compared to this reality.
“They took out the Internet, they’ve got their fancy head-telepathy radios or whatever,” Sojin remarked. It had been observed that the aliens somehow found a way to communicate with each other over distances yet never seemed to carry any communicators or other such devices. That left implants or some other kind of fancy alien-tech not immediately visible. “But they might not think to bother with good ol’ fashioned radio waves.”
“Oh, good thinking.” If there were other survivors out there, perhaps they were thinking the same thing.
They both fell silent, too reluctant to let the conversation proceed further and into the vicinity of hope. While some hope was good-hope kept them alive long enough to see another day-too much hope was not. False hope was not something they could afford in this new reality.
“They died before my eyes,” Hakyeon said eventually, before he was aware he said it.
Sojin turned to look at him.
“My company. We were on the way back to the hotel when the first wave of torpedoes hit. We jumped out of the car and ran. It was chaos. Everyone running down the middle of the street. But I was faster. I hid under a fallen billboard with some other people. But the others… my friends… didn’t make it. They were vaporized. No bodies, no blood. Just… nothing.”
“I’m sorry.” She knew how trite and inadequate the words are, but she said them anyway, and he appreciated the gesture.
“I never thought an oversized ad for insurance would save my life,” he joked, his voice dry but humorless.
“I guess advertising finally did the world some good,” she added. And he knew, in that moment, that she understood exactly what he meant. That she had experienced what he had.
The fell silent again, gazing out over the lawn as Hyuk continued firing at his hapless aluminum targets. When he finally hit one, he cheered and did a fistpump at his two observers.
Hakyeon and Sojin smiled back indulgently. If only soda cans were the only target this young man needed to hit.
6. Now
Something was wrong.
Hakyeon sensed it from the moment his eyes opened. His body tensed, perfectly still as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and attempted to scan as much of the room as he could without moving his head. He and Sojin had set up camp in an empty classroom, laying their bedrolls out beside what had once been the teacher’s desk. He couldn’t see the classroom’s clock from here, not that it was accurate anymore anyway, but he’d guess it was sometime in the wee hours of the morning. Sojin had rolled over so her back was to him, and she was still-he couldn’t tell if she’d awakened or not. His hand gradually snaked into his bedroll in search of the handgun he left concealed there.
The click behind him was so subtle, he almost would’ve missed if he hadn’t been holding his breath.
“Don’t move.”
He froze. Within seconds, a flash of red and a blur of motion crystallized into Sojin propped on an elbow with her handgun trained on the forehead of Hakyeon’s assailant. “How about you don’t move, unless you like the sight of your brains spattered on the blackboard?”
He loved a woman who had a way with words.
“You wouldn’t, not while I’ve got a rifle to your boyfriend’s head.”
“You want to try me?” The hand holding the gun didn’t waver. Whatever had happened to this former grad student had forged her into steel.
Boots clomped into the classroom, and guns were drawn. From what Hakyeon could tell in the skimpy lighting, he thought he made out Jaehwan, Hyuk, and two of theirs. Hyuk and Jaehwan’s weapons were both trained on Hakyeon’s assailant.
“Looks like we’re at a standstill,” Jaehwan said.
“So this one’s your leader, then?” the assailant asked.
“I am,” Hakyeon said, before anyone else could reply. “Now why don’t you lower your guns and we’ll have a little talk.”
“The way I see it, we’ve got you outgunned and outnumbered. There’s way more of mine out there than yours in here.”
“So what’s your point then?”
“Your ammo and medical supplies. We’ll take them all, thank you very much.”
“Like hell you will!” Jaehwan exclaimed.
Hakyeon shot him a warning look. “I’m going to get up now, and you’re going to face me and talk to me like a man. I’m not doing this with the barrel of a gun pointed at my head.”
Hakyeon slowly rose to his feet. Sojin rose with him, never once lowering her weapon. Hakyeon caught her eye and tried to convey to her, I got this.
“Everyone, lower your weapons,” he said. To his attacker, he said, “We just want to talk.”
“Ain’t nothing to talk about.” The gun was still aimed at his head.
Hakyeon raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, backing up slowly. The sun was starting to rise, and what little light seeped in the classroom windows lent Hakyeon a view of his attacker. From what he could see, the man of similar height-and Hakyeon was no small man-but considerably bulkier in build. His face was mostly hidden by a filthy kerchief, the bill of his cap drawn low over his forehead. Hakyeon could see only his eyes, which glinted coldly.
“We’re on the same side here,” he said. “We’re fighting the same enemy. Rather than fighting each other, how about we focus on that?”
“I ain’t fighting for no one but me,” his attacker declared. “It’s a cruel world out there. We do what we must to survive. Nothing personal, you see.”
“We can help you,” Hakyeon offered. “You can join us. We can work together.”
“And why would I want a gang as useless as this lot?” his attacker countered. “Your girl is a quick draw; I’ll give her that. And she sure is a looker. Perhaps we’ll take her with us.”
“Try it and you’ll be making out with this handgun,” Sojin warned.
“Feisty, too.” Under the kerchief, the man seemed to grin. “She’ll be a good addition to our band.”
“What is this, the old west?” Hakyeon demanded. “You’re not taking our ammo and you’re not taking our women. Come on, now.”
“And what are you going to do about it, then?”
Hakyeon sighed, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “I guess we’re just going to have to fight.”
He lunged, hoping the element of surprise would lend an advantage in disarming his larger attacker. A gun went off-Sojin’s, most likely-and the next few moments were chaos. Gunshots rent what had been deathly silence before. A bullet pierced the ceiling of the classroom, bringing chunks of dry wall with it. Hakyeon and Sojin whirled around in the direction of the sound. One of their attacker’s men now had Hyuk in a chokehold, a gun to the young man’s temple. A bead of sweat rolled down Hyuk’s forehead, as he gazed at Hakyeon with wide eyes.
“So you’re going to give us your ammo and drugs,” the brigand leader said. “Or the pretty boy here ain’t gonna be so pretty no more.”
***
“We need to retaliate.”
A chorus of hearty agreement followed Jaehwan’s words. The group were gathered in the school’s cafeteria, none the worse for wear after the brigands’ departure, but their load considerably lighter.
Hyuk, whose only wound was, fortunately, to his pride, gazed about the group in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, you guys. This is all my fault.”
“No, it isn’t,” Hakyeon said firmly. He was still kicking himself for being caught unaware like that. Though he’d posted guards on a rotating schedule through the evening, the brigands had somehow still been able to catch them by surprise. Fortunately, both guards came through the ordeal with no injuries worse than goose eggs on their heads after meeting the butt of a rifle. Still, it smarted to think these men *still* got the better of them after all the precautions they had taken. It didn’t matter to him that their group of civilian survivors was led by a former dancer, a mystery author, and grad student, all of whom had only picked up weapons for the first time several months ago. They hadn’t survived this long by being stupid and complacent.
“That’s why we’ve got to retaliate,” Jaehwan insisted. “We’re fresh out of ammo and medical supplies, and it’s not like those are easy to find.”
“And by retaliating, we lose what little ammo we do have,” Hakyeon pointed out. “Or worse.”
“I don’t see how we’d be any worse off,” Sojin countered. “If we tried to go on as we are, we’d be sitting ducks for the aliens.”
“We can’t risk losing any soldiers,” Hakyeon insisted.
“Right, so we can lose them to the aliens later.”
“The lady’s got a point,” Jaehwan said.
Hakyeon glared at him, pleased when the other man seemed to shrink back a little. If there was anything Hakyeon was good at, it was a well-deployed glare.
“How many people have we already lost in this war?” Hakyeon wanted to know. “How many more can we lose? We already almost lost Hyuk!”
“You might have been better off,” Hyuk mourned. “If not for me we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“If it wasn’t you it would have been someone else.”
“This is pointless,” Sojin huffed. “I say we hit them tonight. We’re losing time and with every moment we waste, we’re less likely to track them down.”
“They had the element of surprise last night,” Jaehwan added. “I say we give them a taste of their own medicine.”
More cheers.
Hakyeon opened his mouth to argue, but at this point, he could see he was outvoted. Not even Sojin had his back, not that he would’ve expected her to. She was a woman who knew her own mind. Still, it would’ve been nice to have someone in his camp. Stung, he glared at her.
Unlike Jaehwan, she seemed immune to his glare. If anything, she’d just glare back.
Which she was doing right now.
“So let’s talk strategy,” she said, turning to the others.
It had been decided.
>> part 2