"I… would not do… that again… If I… were you…" Della said, barely with any breath left.
"This will not… happen again…" I said, as I was still holding my own body against the ground with my arm and fully drenched in sweat.
That was definitely another most near-death experience that I had experienced after encountering the aliens at the sewers and barely escaping the falling ruins of tall building using a truck on the highway. It was due to that experience that I kept in my mind to better avoid any unnecessary decision that might lead to a severe consequence, unless it was a live or die situation.
As both Della and I were still regaining our breath and composure, I began to hear a faint but familiar flying sound from the direction of behind the building. Apparently, the T-shaped aircraft had arrived right in front of the entrance door, probably waiting the alien inside to exit the building and regroup with the rest of the other aliens.
We waited for some more time for the sound to subside as we were catching our breaths. Finally, when we could no longer hear their possible presence, we lowered our alert and we could calm ourselves down again.
"It is great that you could survive these kinds of situations when you were still alone." Della said, finally having her composure again.
"It seems like I was merely lucky through all this time, though." I responded, as I went up.
Somehow due to the actions that we took which nearly cost us our own lives, I had the feeling that the other aliens would probably have their alert heightened as well. Therefore, I suggested Della that it might be better if we were to lay low for a while before continuing on towards the second gun store.
She agreed with me completely, so we decided to just sat there and leaning against the wall as we waited for more time to pass. Shortly after, Della began to share her earlier experiences in dealing with the situation that befell the town.
"So, how did you start in surviving through all of this mess?" she said, as she looked at me.
"I… barely escaped the military base by the great lakes right after I managed to get a couple of firearms with me…" I responded.
"I see… then, at least you have not seen many familiar faces slowly disintegrating before your eyes, huh…" she mumbled.
"I suppose not…" I said, "at least, not directly yet."
In an instant, her question reminded me of what I had seen back at the sewer through its grate. I could never forget the absolute terror that I felt back at the sewer when I saw a man was desperately running away from the alien, before having his body and head pierced through by a purple beam shot.
Thinking what she had just asked me, the man would most likely had seen many people disintegrated right before his eyes. The thought of slowly vanishing into nothing while perhaps also feeling a severe burning heat on your whole body would naturally put anyone with their right mind to be scared to the bone. She then started to share how she had managed to survive through the ordeal.
Della said that she was a baker at a bakery center in Greektown, and she had been a baker for at least three years. On the night when the great invasion happened, the bakery was about to close for the rest of the year since it was nearing new year, and she got the last shift for that night. Every activities at most of the day remained the same like usual, until it was when she was about to close the bakery when everything had gone wrong.
The first thing that she noticed was a sudden blackout at the whole district. However, the strangest thing was, even her smartphone that had no less than half of its battery had also suddenly gone dead. Not only the phone's signal or its mobile data, it did not even get turned on again when she pressed the on/off button several times. Aside from that, not even a single street light was lighting so it was a pitch black around her.
Just when she was confused on what had happened around her, she remembered that she brought a lighter with her inside her bag, and therefore she decided to use it to light her surroundings. As she was walking through the dark street, she saw many people getting outside the other buildings and houses bringing some sort of light source as well.
She had thought that it was only some kind of a mass power outage for the worst possible cause. However, what she had seen soon after was not even close to her assumption. At first she heard many faint jet-like flying sounds approaching the street, followed by many thumping sounds from afar. All of a sudden, purple beams were shot from almost every direction, obliterating many people and panicking the entire district at almost an instant.
In the middle of the confusion, she rushed to an alleyway closest to her, and barged herself into a building which turned out to be a vintage winery. As she was inside, she carefully looked at the condition of the street through one of the windows to see that what was once a busy and productive night street was quickly turning to ruins full of lifeless dead bodies.
Many police officers were also deployed on the street, but they were quickly wiped out by few shots of larger purple beam from T-shaped aircrafts. She could not forget their agonizing scream as the officers slowly fell to the ground, and dissipated into the darkness of the then already burning street right in front of her eyes.
She had wanted to get out from the winery, as she immediately thought that her end was just imminent if she was to stay at that neighborhood any longer. However, another unexpected event occurred inside the building. It was a loud crashing sound right from behind her.
Scared from her head to the end of her toes, she decided to hide at the wine cellar near her, when she heard a couple of human voices. Those voices belonged to Virgil and Kyle, who were trying to escape from the invading monsters and machines by car before crashing to the winery, entering the building in the process. That was how she met them.
Relieved, if not for a bit, the three of them tried the vehicle a couple more times before Kyle suggested that it was already totaled from the impact. It was then that they decided to lay low inside the wine cellar for that time being instead, since the street outside was also still experiencing raging fire everywhere. As the midnight passed, and feeling that dawn was imminent, the fires on the street had started to get extinguished, yet all of them felt a great deal of fatigue upon them.
"We could not stay there, of course…" she stated to me.
Gathering as much of courage as they could, they mustered themselves to venture the then ruined street filled with countless destroyed buildings and houses. Fortunately however, they had no longer heard any jet-like flying sounds anymore. They took no left and right turns, and were just going straight on the main road when they were about to reach a railroad crossing. As they were about to cross it, they saw a man lying on the side of road about four to five feet away from a burning truck.
At first, they thought that it was only a dead body belonged to a man in a blue marine uniform pants. However, as they were getting close to him, it turned out that he was still breathing, although heavily. Della approached him, and it turned out that he was an officer of the marines. That was when they met with Captain Quentin.
The group, then four, proceeded to cross the railroad and continued onward to see an already completely extinguished ruined neighborhood. Fear and anxiety filled her mind as she no longer saw dead bodies on the new street, but instead several cracked holes and craters on the road with few very faint human-like shadow figures stamped on the sidewalks.
Based on how she described them, I assumed that while most of us would disintegrate completely into the air when a larger purple beam hit us, some or few might not disintegrate perfectly, leaving a little remain of what was left of us.
As their fatigues were getting heavier and that they could collapse at any second, they decided to take shelter at a nearby place, but not the one directly facing the street road. Their only options, was no other than an elevated train station. Fortunately for them, there was one not too far from where they were standing, and that was the vintage train station that we used as a hideout for the time being.
Looking back, I suppose that everyone who had made it to the train station alive were indeed fortunate to begin with. There was one thing that concerned me however. It was when Della mentioned that she remembered full well when they had first entered the station, she was sure it had not been fogging yet, but as the sun was about to rise, dense fog enveloped the whole area accompanied by several mild quakes.
It was neither the dense fog nor the quakes that accompanied it that concerned me. It was the time when the fog began to envelope the town. If the aliens decided that they had to envelope the city in fog, why not did it right when they had started to invade us?
Should they had a very important reason behind the timing, except for it was all a mere coincidence, then perhaps we could find another weakness of them that we could exploit, especially since we had only known one so far – their weapon's sensitivity to fire.
When both of us finished, we realized that we had already more than enough time of resting, and therefore we need to go to our second destination. Without any further delay, we stood up, carried our backpack and bag on our backs, and started to venture on the foggy street again.