THE SON OF ELI

CHAPTER 2: THE THING

The fragile nature of human existence, in general, was manifested by how people celebrated wildly when the Purple Threat disappeared from the sky. They had been exposed to unimaginable terror for a week, and their minds had run riot with the wildest of imaginations bordering on death and destruction. The terror of the unknown and the horror of the possibilities had made their souls stress within them.

Seeing the clear sky without that evil purple circle brought hope and relief to the people of earth. It did not matter that debris still rained from the sky – from destroyed satellites and exploded aircraft and all the technological inventions that had been hovering up there in the sky. It did not matter that ships, boats, canoes and other crafts on the seas had capsized. It was the greatest calamity that had hit earth after the last world war in terms of people who had died, but it did not matter after the disappearance of the hole.

What mattered was that the sky was back to normal again; pale clouds on blue backgrounds, a hint of rain, a little sunshine, a beautiful moon, and life was good.

The week of horror had passed, and things could go back to normal. They had all seen the thing falling from the sky and the hole closing up. That vile thing was now somewhere on earth, far from them. They had seen only one alien body falling from the sky, and the assumption was that it could be dealt with by the combined forces of countries.

That thing, whatever it was, therefore lost its mystery and threat once its hole sealed up and it toppled down on the plateau in the Kingdom of Eden.

The aftermath of horror and stress of times bred and seasoned hunger. So, there was an instantaneous global celebration. People poured into the streets in mass jubilations on all the continents. The saké flowed freely in Japan. The Russians slaked down vodka whilst beer was guzzled in Germany. The Americans poured whiskey on rocks and Europeans hit bars and poured everything drinkable down their throats. Africans went hard on palm wine. Livestock and poultry were instant delicacies.

The human race had witnessed terror, lived through it, and seen it plummeting, so they celebrated.

The news channels slowly came back online, and death statistics began to roll in. The fact that the thing had landed inside Africa and already allied forces had cordoned off the perimeter was reassuring news. However, the news of how the landing had somehow destroyed a whole village and killed every living thing within that radius – humans, animals, plants – was kept from the public for the time being.

Fighter jets entered the air space of the kingdom and made runs over the yawning crater where the alien had landed, sending high-powered aerial photographs to many agencies across the world.

Movies had, since eternity, prepared humans for the possibility of an alien invasion. Governments across the globe had dedicated special agencies to the study of space and the possibility of finding life out there in the mysterious planetary system. So, the presence of the thing was not so strange or utterly unexpected. What was frightening, though, had been the destruction its arrival had caused. Leaders debated hotly on what to do next. The overall decision was to blast it into oblivion for fear that several more of the aliens could be waiting somewhere out there to invade earth.

Others, on a minority, argued that it would be best to find out more about the thing and garner enough information to prepare earthlings for a possible invasion and how best to defend earth against an army of aliens, if indeed it was working with an army.

The first photographs and videos showed the thing sitting inertly at the bottom of the deep crater, leaning against the wall. It was an alien with a human shape except for the many limbs it appeared to have, and its different facial arrangements.

A magnified image showed its horror of a face with a huge, nasty, hollowed nose, an explosion of several eyes where a forehead was supposed to be, a huge mouth with an elongated lower jaw that folded across its upper lip and seemed to split open into four parts, the horrible things in its mouth-like cavity that looked like ferocious reptiles.

The thing was horrible to behold, and it drove blind terror into the hearts of those men and women who saw the images. Wisely, they decided such images should not be in the public domain until a definitive resolution of the crisis had been achieved.

Its body – if it was indeed a body – was not flesh-like but had a shiny quality, almost reflective, and the assumption was that it could be in some sort of armour or suit although this was not so easily distinguishable.

Finally, the world leaders agreed to capture and transport it out of the Kingdom of Eden to a location where more interactions with it would be possible.

Its resting destination became another subject of wrangling since the superpowers could not trust each other. Finally, they agreed on a joint-team operation to capture the thing and transport it to a scientific facility in Geneva, Switzerland.

Since it was too huge for an aircraft and its exact measurements could not be estimated easily, they eventually agreed to transport it on a warship provided by Russia, the Chernaya Ptitsa, meaning the Black Bird.

The sixty-man crew to undertake the capture of the alien was selected from ten nations, all of them battle-hardened professionals who knew exactly what they were getting into.

With satellites hovering over the crater, the crew members were airlifted and dropped on the plateau to secure the alien.

They eventually gave it a name: The Purple Visitor, TPV for short. Fighter jets and warplanes were on standby to be deployed for instant destruction of TPV in the event of any hostile and unexpected activities from it.

Professionals waited anxiously in operation rooms and centres across the world to witness how it would go.

Images and videos showed the heavily-armoured and armed operative team landing on the plateau and moving towards the crater. Thirty men with body cameras used rope ladders to drop into the crater and approached the alien. This close, the body cameras showed the immense size of TPV for the first time. Its body indeed had a skin-like structure that emanated dull sheens of light.

Thirty men crept towards it with hooks and special numbing devices to sedate it and hook it up securely.

It took less than a minute!

Its plethora of eyes opened, and there was a low hum as a scanner-like beam shot from its eyes across the humans in its lair in a cold, ominous manner.

Then the operatives began to disintegrate… one after the other!

It began with their eyes.

Some of the eyes simply exploded in their sockets and sent gooey milky red pus streaming down the cheeks of the men. Some also just popped out of their sockets and rolled down their cheeks, supported by thin membranous strands.

There were startled gasps of horror all around for a moment as eyes went exploding. Next was their heads. Their faces just bloated outward, some with their necks, and then they exploded. The skin around the head and neck disintegrated outward, leaving the bloody skulls. Some were not so lucky as the tops of their heads crashed open and exploded brain matter all around.

Those who were wearing protective helmets tried to claw them off as blood and gooey seeped beneath them, but the helmets exploded too, ripped off their heads with flesh and hair, leaving them with bloodied skulls as heads.

The panic set in.

Most of them forgot their training in the face of this horror and tried to clamber up the ropes again. Others levelled their guns and opened fire on TPV.

Heavy-calibre armour-tearing bullets smashed into the head and body of the alien, but none penetrated. The heavy bullets simply rolled off the thing's face and body and fell on the floor of the crater. It was obvious that the alien was not even remotely concerned about the bullets hitting it.

The bodies of the men in the crater puffed outward alarmingly in a most macabre manner. It was like their bodies were being pumped with air, and then their fleshes were ripped outward in horrible muted sounds: phlaat, phlaat, phlaat!

Uniforms and flesh exploded outward in gooey showers across the floor of the crater. There were screams of terror as the unnatural hit the soldiers and blew their minds. This was beyond armoury and tactics, they knew immediately.

This was madness!

With the skin gone, they looked like human beings that were being manufactured on an assembly line! They had their skeletons and within the frame of those bones were their intestines, hearts, kidneys and other organs. They were like the first editions of human beings partly-finished and waiting for their skins to be slipped on for completion!

It was a gory, gut-churning sight that made those watching the horror on screens inside control rooms freeze and hold their breaths with horror.

Then what they all feared happened!

The organs and tissues and intestines within the skeletal frames exploded with showers of blood, together with the bones.

Thirty men were gone in a minute!

Their remains – flesh, bone, blood – littered the crater together with their guns and gadgets.

Those standing on the firmer ground above the crater had seen the brutal destruction of their colleagues on their hand-held devices. The fact was, these were men from different countries that mistrusted each other, but at that particular point in time, nationality and background ceased to matter.

It was a simple case of humans against alien!

Their horror at the c*****e prompted them to open fire into the crater with screams and shouts! A hail of deadly bullets hammered into the crater. They hurled in grenades too. The relative silence was shattered by the rapid gunfire, exploding grenades and the furious yells of the scared men.

And from within the crater, a milky purple cloud rose slowly, covering everything within it and coming up like smoke, thick and heavy! The soldiers could not see what was happening inside the crater. The purple cloud spilt over the edge and swirled gently around the legs of the warriors.

Mayhem!

Madness!

They began to suffer the same fate that their colleagues had!

They exploded outward, eyes, face, neck, body, in that order!

Organs, bones… phlaat, phlaat, phlaat!

In the control room in China, the stunned army commander uttered simple words:

"Qīn'ài de zhǔ!"

Dear Lord, he said!

The same phrase was echoing on the lips of many observers inside the control rooms across the globe!

What was happening was unexpected!

"Oh, Jesus!" cried the high-ranking army officer inside the American control room. "Oh, Lord Jesus! Kill it! Kill that thing! Airstrike approved now!"

"Roger that!" the pilots affirmed.

Two jets dove low and their Gatling guns opened up, filling the crater with deadly bullets. Three more aeroplanes honed in, the last one releasing two air-to-air missiles into the crater!

That plateau should have been torn apart by the heavy gunfire and the missiles striking it. The crater should have been obliterated, totally razed to the ground in a rage of rabble!

But something that defied the mind was happening here!

The bullets struck the crater, and the missiles went directly in, but everything remained calm inside that crater!

There were no explosions, no collapsing, no breaking in of the earth! Instead, that purple cloud filled the crater to the brim so that they could not discern what was happening within!

"What the f**k is happening?" cried the first pilot as the jet began to rise again. "Something is happening to me! Mayday, mayday, mayday!"

The glass canopy of the jet was suddenly filled with blood as the pilot exploded in his seat in a shower of skin, organs and bones! The jet plane wove drunkenly through the air and plummeted into the sea!

The second pilot managed to press the knob that ejected the canopy upwards and rearwards, and the seat was ejected violently out of the jet and began to sail into the sky as the pilot blasted clear and searched for the parachute release!

That was as far as he got!

His head – still inside the helmet – separated from his body in a horrible spray of blood a second before his whole body exploded! The jet shot off the plateau and turned over twice with its engine whining, and smashed into the valley below, exploding suddenly in a horrible cacophony of tearing metal and exploding tanks.

The third jet exploded at the base of the crater, raining debris down the sides of the plateau.

It took a long time for the dust to settle and the horror to set in!

It was that definitive moment, that fine instant, which finally rendered everybody watching speechless and afraid!

The thing, TPV, whatever it was, had managed to send a clear message to the world leaders!

It was not messing around!

Man's darkest hour had just dawned.