Enemy on My Earth

2021

The tripods attacked my city in the early morning of December 24. Outside everything was completely dark: there was no electricity. My eyes stung and the street froze my feet. Lightning flashes illuminated us from time to time, but without any noise. All I heard was the commotion of the neighbours, and a roar from the nearby hills on fire. Where the gigantic machines set fire to radio towers. They looked like four-legged spiders, unlike those that appeared in the news in previous years. When my family and I got in the car, we realized that no cars in the neighbourhood were working.

"Come back to the house!"

Dad made us gather water, food, clothes, our little first aid kit, and some valuables. He chased an acquaintance who was riding in wooden wagons. The man stopped his pair of horses far from panic. He and Dad kept talking. He gave him something in his hand and came back to us.

"Bring everything!!" he pointed to the last wagon.

When we finished, several people tried to get on before us. They knocked us off the wagon. The man with the horses had to go without us. They beat us several times. In the end my parents, sister and I escaped and hid as best we could, each in different ways: running from time to time, cycling, skating, hiding in abandoned houses, and then running again when some of the above were taken from us.

The tripods took their time choosing what to destroy. They moved very slowly, even though they were very fast when they did. I could see how one of them blew up a gas station, using the invisible heat beam mentioned in the news. From time to time the tripods spread a poisonous smoke, to remove the people who were hiding in their houses.

We knew that the neighbouring city had electricity when we saw the lights. It took us a day to walk there, on a journey that takes 40 minutes by bus!

There were several buses and a few military vans picking up people.

"Only women and children!" shouted a military man.

Dad and I had to wait to get into a truck the next morning. The Christmas lights and music from the houses kept us company through the night. The journey was long, tight and dark, until a part of the roof was blown open by a fire. We had been hit by one of the beam!

July 2019

UFOs appeared all over the world. They looked like gigantic drones, little smaller than a helicopter. Invisible most of the time. They were harmless. Several of them were filmed. Most in non-populated regions, and military zones. They took photographs, soil samples, and captured small animals and plants. According to the governments: the spaceships deactivated all communication systems, violating security. Traditional means were used again in the meantime. I have never read so much newspaper in my life! After this, the different armies were unified, and they were able to stop the "invaders" easily.

September 2019

Electrical storms and explosions began to occur all over the world. These left craters, where rockets landed. Robots came out of them, they did attack, and they built tripod-like machines. Most of the news was worrying, talking about attacked places and the new tripods that were arriving. In my country there were no attacks yet. It took the armies a lot to stop them. When they managed to knock one down, the big news was made, because they seemed invincible. Once the communications were recovered again: the military were able to defeat the tripods without problems. Before some spaceships could escape, they left large, almost indestructible containers buried in various parts of the world.

December 25, 2021

Refugees like us were kept in an underground vehicle warehouse. They had emptied it, and formed several spaces with mattresses, and others only with sheets. There were water dispensers, and a team of doctors and nurses at both ends of the place. From time to time, a uniformed man would approach people, and ask them if they needed anything, or help them find a lost relative. I saw one of them give someone a packet of clean clothes. The children played screaming and running from one side to the other. I was so bored; I wish I had at least one book.

"I don't think there will be any presents this year, honey." I heard a mother comforting her daughter.

In this place I met Ximena, who would become my travel companion. They had put us on a boat, to get away from the attack of some tripods that attacked the military zone. But we were attacked by a squid-like tripod, and we had to jump off the boat. After that I didn't see Dad again, it was just Ximena and me. We decided to return to our city, as the past news gave indications that the aliens did not return to the places they had attacked.

January 1, 2022

Since the city seemed deserted for days, one night we went for a walk. We reached the metropolitan park, attracted by the light of a bonfire. There was a huge group of drunks around the giant burning Christmas tree.

"Happy fucking new year!" they all raised liquor bottles as they danced.

For a moment I thought about approaching, but Ximena stopped me, and pointed at something in the dark. Several meters away, hidden, was a immobile tripod, with its lights off: as if studying the strange behaviour of humans. I mistook it for the roof of a building! What followed was a confused and scandalous chase of laughter and screaming. The tripod caught them all with its long tentacles. He would stick a syringe up their spines, sucking their blood, storing the bodies in what looked like a white metal basket, which hung on the back of the machine. After that, we hardly ever came out of hiding.

January 6, 2022

One night, we were dazzled by a greenish light, and then there was an explosion. I woke up hours later.

"Are you OK?" Ximena whispered, pointing a flashlight at me at the minimum capacity.

"Don't get up." she waved her hands "There are pieces of tile and glass everywhere. You will make a lot of noise, and I think they are outside."

The house was almost demolished, and completely covered with earth, except for some cracks, where lights and metallic sounds entered.

We lay side by side quietly until dawn. From a hole in the wall we could see a tripod that, according to me, was looking after a recently arrived rocket, from which robots working in a hurry were leaving and entering.

"Another rocket," I whispered "another rocket has landed here, and buried us."

"It's our end!" she started crying covering her mouth.

The aliens looked like blue-ringed squid. As big as a bear. They seemed to have psychic abilities, because they worked using telekinesis, and made almost no noises to communicate.

January 15, 2022

The tripods discovered other people hiding near us, and we had to leave our hiding place when they began to spread their toxic smoke. Ximena was struck by one of the heat beam, burning in flames. I was able to put out the fire before it got serious. But she burned almost all of her hair and face, one of her eyelids was melted.

We could hardly see: there was too much fog, mixing with the black smoke. We only heard the screams of people who had been caught. Ximena snatched the gun from me, and trembling she suggested we commit suicide. After seeing her for a moment, I thought I would accept her proposal. But I held on and asked her that we try to escape, even if they saw us. After a big hug and a few last words: we started running holding hands.

Quickly, a type of tripod appeared that I had never seen before. And she shot the other one, the one we were running from. Part of it fell on us. Ximena was crushed by the machine. I couldn't see her body, only her blood. I couldn't move, tentacles from the tripod were on me, and I had terrible bone pain. The attacker was searching the wreckage, taking some of them. The new machine continued on its way, ignoring me. He did not attack again. It passed a helicopter in mid-air, and did not attack it either. Maybe because his weapons were limited, or because he knew it was harmless to him.

The machine moved away, and I managed to freemyself. I leaned against the thick branch of a broken tree. With great pain Iwent up to the second floor of a house, until I found a window. The fogdisappeared, and with my binoculars I could see: how the strange tripodstopped, and then, a person came out of it, meeting with those who were insidethe helicopter.