As we walked, I kept getting a more intense old town ambience, and somehow it made me felt safer. It was probably due to the absence of any sounds and vibrations, unlike the encounter that we experienced earlier. I had to admit however, that the feeling of walking in the middle of an abandoned and dead town was also getting more intense, and that I felt the atmosphere around me getting colder as well.
If I were to describe the street we were currently at, I would say that the street was dominated with middle 20th century styled buildings and houses. Also, I noted that one of the several very distinguishable features were the color of the buildings' walls, which was an antique red brick color.
Aside from that, many of the buildings had chimneys on their rooftops, although no smoke came out from any of it. I also saw that few of them had a vintage neon signs on top of their entrance doors. After I saw those features, I was quite sure that we were in the old market district zone.
When I thought about it again, perhaps the closest station to the museum that we were heading for might also had a distinctive vintage style. If that was the case, we had to be more careful and cautious as older buildings tend to have less resistance to quakes, although we still had not yet encountered any signs of threat since we left the third station.
It was quite some time after I took a good look at the older part of the town, that I suddenly heard three gunshots in the distance. In an instant, the three of us hid behind the concrete railroad fence. Then, another gunshot was heard again as we continued moving forward. We walked for some distances before the fifth gunshot was heard very loudly like it happened right beneath us. It was then that I told Jonathan and Ryan that we better stopped moving first.
We took a peek from behind the fence to find out where the sound might come from. It turned out, that it originated from somewhere on the street below us. We then saw a faint human silhouette from the fog, getting more and more vivid as it eventually turned to a person holding a sledgehammer running away from something, followed by five other people holding handguns behind the person.
"Hey… they are the ones who wanted to rob us back at the bridge, are not they?" asked Ryan with a low voice.
They were indeed wearing hooded clothes and some of them also wore a backpack. When I tried to look more thoroughly, one of the people looked like he had his left arm broken, and he did wear the same clothes as the one who tried to attack us with his nail bat back at the bridge. The different thing was, this time he held a shotgun on his right hand.
"And how did they get those firearms in the first place…?" I said in curiosity.
However, in an almost instant, a T-shaped aircraft also emerged right from behind them flying low and in a noticeably high speed. It seemed that they were running away from the aircraft's pursuit. It caught up to them, hovering right on top of them, and purple beams were shot from each of its legs, hitting four of them who had firearms in their hands.
That was not the thing that really shocked the three of us. It was the sight of that four people, blackened and dry dead right after they got hit with the beams. As they fell down, their dry dead bodies slowly began to dust and evaporated until they completely vanished. When the four of them were already gone, it only left the other two people equipped with sledgehammer and shotgun, who were running away further from each other.
The aircraft then changed its direction to the person with the shotgun, but this time it did not chase him. Instead, it shot a considerably thicker purple beam from one of its turbine engine-like component below its left wing to him, hitting him. It also came as a huge shock for us, as he almost instantly disintegrated immediately right after the thicker beam hit him. And with that, it only left the person with the sledgehammer who was still running away on its opposite direction.
I thought that the aircraft would do the same to him, but I was mistaken. Instead, the aircraft opened up its rear hatch, revealing that it had at least four aliens inside, with two of them got down to the street ground and took aim with its beam rifle. It only took one shot to hit the person straight through at his left chest, and dropped him hard to the ground. One of the aliens then approached his dead body, perhaps to drag his body away, like what the middle-aged man at the church witnessed.
"Bastards deserved it after all…" Ryan said with a low voice.
Looking at the bright side, we finally realized why the middle-aged man did not mention any other thing about the zapped bodies. It was simply because they dusted and vanished away shortly after their deaths.
All of the survivors at the church were most likely got their attentions locked on the remaining alive person, which was the man with the crowbar who shortly got shot by the aliens' beam rifle. They were too focused on him, that when they were trying to find where were the remaining three dead bodies again, they were already vanished.
With the incident that happened right before our eyes again, we unfolded another unanswered mystery. While one of the alien was getting closer to the dead body, we decided that we had to move forward quickly as we did not want it to get its attention turned to us when it drag the dead body to the direction of the aircraft.
To be honest, I would really prefer to run if there was at least no alien on the street below us that could notice our presence should we did not hide behind the concrete fence. I was also starting to imagine if the railroad had no end at all, when finally little by little I began to see the sign of the next station.
I could feel the increasing pace that we took as we were getting closer to the station. When we finally stepped our feet at the station, we climbed up to the platform, and lied down as we were almost out of breath. We let some little time went by, as we slowly got up on our feet and regained our composure again.
Just when we stood up again, a brief quake filled the whole floor, and was immediately followed by a sudden emerging of a T-shaped aircraft, facing directly towards us, and noticing our presence through one of the windows.
Shocked, we followed our instincts to rush for the stairs ahead of us to descend to the first floor from there. As we were running, I could hear a couple of thudding sound from behind me, which perhaps came from two aliens got down from the aircraft to the railroad.
I did not expect that the station only had two floors, as we immediately were out on the street again once we descended from the stairs. When I looked around, I immediately noticed that the aircraft was hovering above the railroad, suggesting that few aliens might indeed landed there earlier and were still chasing us at that moment. When I came to, I realized that I was the only one at the street.
In panic, I looked around to see where Jonathan and Ryan had gone to.
"This way!" said a very familiar voice from the direction behind me.
It was Ryan's voice, and as I rushed to his direction, I could also see Jonathan was trying to hotwire a pickup truck. It turned out that seeing how things have turned out, we need to rush to the museum as well, as the aliens did not seem to hold back until they found us and kill us. When Jonathan succeeded in hotwiring the truck, he told me to drive quickly until we could arrive as close as possible to the museum's entrance.
"Here, take the wheel!" he said in a hurry, "I would not close the door or fasten your seat belt if I were you!"
Right after he finished talking, both he and Ryan jumped to the back of the truck, as two aliens were also already on the street some distances behind us. I got inside the truck, and started to drive it away from the aliens without closing the left door or fastening my seat belt.
As I drove away the truck, I could see from the side mirror that the aliens were still running and pursuing us. I also wondered about what Jonathan could have meant by not suggesting me to close the door and fasten my seatbelt, aside that it would take more time. After a while, I looked again from the side mirror to find out that the aliens were no longer seen. Suddenly, Ryan said something loudly from the back of the truck.
"Travis! Your twelve o'clock!" Ryan yelled.
Surprised, I put my attention again to the road in front of me to see that the T-shaped aircraft was hovering low right in front of us in some distance, and seemed to about to attack us with its turbine-engine like components. It was right at that moment, that I thought Jonathan might have expected similar events that he suggested me to not closing the door and fastening my seat belt, as we had to jump away from the truck, allowing it to crash the aircraft and at least damaging it in the process.
"On my mark!" I yelled to both Jonathan and Ryan, as I was readying myself to jump out, and the truck was getting closer to the aircraft, "Jump!!"
I jumped outside, and landed on a grassy soil as I rolled several feet before I was finally able to stop myself, as I witnessed the aircraft looked like it was losing its balance. Apparently, just when I landed on the soil, the truck managed to crash the aircraft before it could fire its beam. The aircraft then crashed to one of the old buildings nearby, making a hole on its walls in the process, before it finally exploded and letting out a loud deafening noise.
Once I could get over the noise that screeched my ears, I turned around to see Jonathan was helping Ryan to get back on his feet again in the distance. I approached them as Jonathan picked up his garden fork, and once I caught up with them again, we continued proceeding towards the museum together.
Unfortunately for us, however, it seemed that few of the aliens were still alive. Just when we arrived at the main entrance, a loud cracking and banging sound was heard from behind us. We looked behind, to see that three aliens turned out to survive from the crash, as they were starting to get out from the rear hatch of their crashed aircraft.
Surprised, we immediately rushed for the entrance, and attempted to open it just before we realized that it was locked.
"Oh come on, I do not have time for this shit!" Jonathan yelled, as he managed to open the entrance after three kicks.
We finally managed to get inside the museum lobby, which was surprisingly tidy despite the things that had happened the day before. I immediately noticed the standing guide map located right at the middle of the lobby, and found out that the museum had three floors, and there were three large room marked 'Staff Room' on each of the floor.
When I saw that, I realized that the storage room that kept obsolete firearms would most likely be inside on one of the staff room. We were about to determine on where to go first, when unbeknownst to us the three aliens were already right in front of the entrance.
"Great… should we split up?" I asked with a low voice.
"We have to. Just to be safe, you better go with Ryan and go to the second floor. I will start from the first floor." Jonathan responded, as he started to rush for the corridor at the end of the lobby.
Both Ryan and I rushed to the stairs located just behind the standing map to the second floor, as we began to see an alien shadow starting to enter the entrance. The situation we were in just kept pushing us at the edge of our survival.