Jonathan started by saying that about some time after we left the station, he had a suggestion on his mind regarding the pattern on the aliens' activities. He reviewed back about when the invasion had just started around three days before.
He supposed that it was a 'big move' for both the aliens and humans, as the invasion obviously stirred up an immeasurable amount of panic and fear for the humans. The following day, a new variety of either the aliens or their equipment showed up, which was the narwhal aircraft, and there were also two known retaliation moves made by the survivor so far– when he, Ryan, and I blew up the obsolete house boiler inside its basement, resulting in one alien casualty, as well as when we could fight back the aliens inside the museum which resulted in at least four aliens casualties.
As we had agreed previously, the aliens outside the museum became to know that there were in fact a group of survivors that could fight them back, and perhaps even instilling a little fear in them somehow. Therefore Jonathan coined the term on the second day as 'retaliate'. Both Captain Quentin and I agreed completely on the term and Jonathan continued with his supposition.
The third day, which was the worst and most mind-tiring day so far, was when the charred dead bodies rained down from the sky, as well as when three aircrafts suddenly stormed the station. At first, I thought that Jonathan would also consider the day to be the retaliation day, however to the least of my expectation, he considered it as a 'big move' day instead.
When I asked why, he explained to me that it was because the attack that took place on the third day seemed like it was planned by the aliens, as opposed to when we fought them at the museum which was almost obviously spontaneous. It was also the reason why when he just realized that the last aircraft was going to escape, he was so desperate to take it down quickly, so that they could not alert the other aliens about what had just happened to them, and therefore could not make the 'big move' again.
I had actually thought about the possibilities that the aliens would most likely dropped the dead bodies down from the sky for a reason. Based on what I had realized so far, they would most likely attempted to shake our psychologies first, therefore reducing our concentrations on our battle against them, and thus they had the upper hand in the skirmish.
Regarding Jonathan's statement about him chasing the last aircraft to wipe out the remaining aliens that stormed the station, I believed what he meant to say was, since they had most likely realized that we were targeting their weapons to take them down, he had to stop them from informing their own kinds about it.
Should they succeeded in escaping, and informed the rest of their others about our methods, they would consider us as retaliating. Since he was the only one who could use and had a weapon with a long range cartridge, he had to rush before they went out from his firing range completely.
Thinking back, it became clear for me that they had actually started to attack us by using a different method. As I had grasped it in my mind, I immediately understood on Jonathan's reason in categorizing the third day as a 'big move' day.
It seemed that Jonathan could read my mind, because right after I had thought about it, he also mentioned that he had been thinking about why the aliens stole the brain of the already dead. He supposed the highest possibility for the reason why the aliens took away the dead bodies that were not disintegrated was no other than to study our way of thinking, our emotions, how we could spontaneously react to something that happened so suddenly, and could even to the latest event that we knew before we died.
Captain Quentin and I did not argue on his supposition. For me, it was because I also had yet to try and figure out about the possibilities. Captain Quentin, on the other hand asked him about what he would suggest for the current day, and the day after since it would be the fourth and fifth day of their invasion respectively.
Jonathan continued by saying that the fourth day, which was the current day, was yet to be determined. That was because, aside from the fact that the four of us did not attack or attempt to take down the aircraft back when we had just gone outside the bike shop, we also came to light that another new variety of alien had emerged, although we had yet to fully see the new ones during the day.
Both of the fact did not satisfy the condition for 'retaliate', nor could be considered as 'nothing' since a new variety had indeed emerged. However, he did more or less emphasize that the aliens would definitely made the next big move right after we, the survivors retaliated. So in the end, it would be up to us on determining when the next big move would be.
"So, to put it simply," Captain Quentin responded, "right now we should not do the first blood, unless we are completely ready to face them…"
"Exactly," Jonathan replied, "and we have to be sure that in their next big move, we can wipe out a far greater number of them…"
"How should we do that?" I asked.
"We have to bait them…" Jonathan replied to me almost instantly.
I was still confused as to how would we bait the aliens and ambush them. I did not even know where we should ambush them in the first place, since the only safest place that I knew was none other than the station itself. But then, Captain Quentin said something that started to make me follow further.
"You sure, Jon?" he asked, "We really going to catch few of them to attract the others?"
"Do we have any other options, Gabe?" Jonathan answered, as he sighed.
For a brief moment, I had not seen it coming about Jonathan calling Captain Quentin's first name. That was also the first time ever for me to hear and see it directly, more so to someone who was much older than us. But more importantly, it seemed that the previous plan about capturing alien was not just a worst-case scenario plan. In fact, I just realized that it was the main plan all along.
"Very well…" I said, as I finally convinced myself that we had no safer alternatives after all.
"So what are the steps that we have to take?" I asked them.
"It seemed that you have few suggestions Gabe…" Jonathan responded me as he turned to Captain Quentin.
"Well I do have three… although I guess it is only one since we cannot fail on either of them…" Captain Quentin responded, as he began to breakdown his suggestions.
The first step suggested by Captain Quentin was to create some sort of an arena where we would force the aliens to face us there. The arena should be the one where we could move freely, but not for the aliens, at least not so much like we could, while it should also had a full cover from the skies since it would be pretty much not going to work if their aircrafts could support them directly.
The second step, which would be the hardest step, was to make sure that there would be not even a single human around the arena where we would face the aliens. Since there must still be definitely countless survivors out there, Captain Quentin could not be even sure about the rough numbers of them to begin with.
The third and the last step, which would supposedly to be the simplest step, was to capture at least one normal alien and one bulky alien. The easy part of this step was capturing the normal alien since we already knew quite well regarding their moves and their weakness. The hard part of this step was to capture the new kind of alien since we had yet to find out its strengths and weaknesses.
Just as Captain Quentin finished explaining all of the three steps, I immediately asked him if it would be also of importance for us to capture a T-shaped aircraft as well. He did not respond to me directly, as he might also be not really sure on the matter. However, Jonathan responded by stating that it could be necessary, but only if during the execution of the plan something was going too well or too badly, implying that it would only be important in the worst case scenario.
With all of the three steps had been spoken by Captain Quentin, he began to break down each of the steps one by one. Right before he started, he also said that in each of the steps we might have to improvise or change the course of actions should something unexpected happened, either for the better or for the worse. I nodded almost immediately as a positive response to it, and started to listen to him.
The arena that he had mentioned, would not be the decent type where we would cage the aliens inside and barraged them with multiple types of bullets from our firearms. He stated that it would be too risky to begin with, and the output would not be as effective even though it would not be too hard to make the arena.
Instead, Captain Quentin said that the so-called arena could be one whole building, perhaps even two or three. We would not trap the aliens inside a building by closing all forms of entrances and holes, but we would make traps that would not make them to be able to go anywhere aside from just standing there helplessly once they triggered them. Only then, we could take the aliens down one by one, either the ones who triggered the traps, or the others who were rushing to help their kinds.
"Oh, so we are going to make the urban environment version of the Vietnam hell…" Jonathan said.
"Yes, the indoor version to be more precise, while you are at it…" Captain Quentin responded.
If it was not for Jonathan to mention the Vietnam term, I would not have grasped it much quicker. Based on what I had understood so far, we were going to make some traps like hidden spiked pendulums, pitfall traps with sharp spikes protruding on its base, as well as a ceiling spiked traps, and conceal them inside one or few chosen buildings.
At first, I had no questions regarding the method since it would at least put the aliens in confusion, if not also instilling fear in them once they had entered the building. What came to my mind however, on how would we make the traps, let alone preparing the buildings at the very beginning while we only had so limited resources on our end.
When I asked Captain Quentin about it, he smiled a little as he said that all we had to find was some few sledgehammer powerful enough to break chunks of concretes. As for the alternatives of ropes, which were another essential type of resource, we could break open again the train car electrical compartments and take the cables.
As soon as he explained it to me, it became completely clear for me that we were not going to search for many blocks of woods in the first place. Instead, we would expose some of the metal rods inside the chunks of concretes as the sharp edges by breaking some part of the cement away using the sledgehammer.
Since the chunks of concrete with the metal rods exposed would be already very heavy in the first place, we would be using the cables to hang them some distance away from where the trigger would be placed on. Therefore, the trap trigger would also be in the form of a stretched cable connected to the traps, lied on the building floor.
Once one of the aliens applied enough force or pulled the cables, the traps would either swing down on them in the case of pendulum traps, or they would fell on top of them in the case of ceiling spiked traps. In the case of pitfall traps however, chunks of concretes with the metal rods exposed would be dropped into the base of the traps. Since there were no other alternatives, the base of the traps would be at the spots where the ceiling right on top of it had caved in, and the pit would only be covered by one or two broken down doors, which was barely strong enough to hold the weight of an adult.
With the detailing of the first step had in each of our minds, Captain Quentin proceeded to break down the second step more detailed. He started by stating his reasons for evacuating the other survivors as far as possible, in which he had two of them.
The first reason was none other than to avoid any casualties when the fight took place. There would be no telling on how many of the aliens along with their aircrafts would come to the fight once we had baited them by using the bodies of their own kinds.
The focus on that reason was that we had to keep in our mind that the aliens would likely to get furious about what we had did to their kinds, which could make them attack any humans they got to see then. Therefore, we had to remove all kinds of distractions, so that they would only focus on us,
The second reason was actually rather optional, but still important to mind nonetheless. Captain Quentin recalled that the caretaker we saved from near the bike shop mentioned that there were also still many more survivors out there. Assuming that the dense fog was indeed a thermal sensor for the aliens, they would come to notice immediately as soon as there was a sudden drop of detection on their sensor.
It would mean that evacuating the survivors from that area to another one would most likely result in the aliens to come to that area. Captain Quentin however, considered it as an early of luring the aliens to the traps instead. Therefore, we reached the conclusion that the numbers of aliens that would come to storm to us would likely depended on how many of the survivors that evacuated from that area.
With the three of us agreed on the reasons for evacuating the rest of the survivors, Captain Quentin continued to the detailing of the second step. He started by stating that in order for us to actually evacuate a lot of numbers of people, we would need some empty spots in the first place. In almost an instant, I had my minds locked on railroads, to which I told them about it.
"Are we going to we evacuate them to the elevated railroads?" I asked them.
Both of them stared at me for a little while, before Captain Quentin responded to me.
"We… have not actually thought about a specific place, but…" Captain Quentin responded, as he turned to Jonathan.
"Yes, it is in fact one of the most possible places for them to evacuate to…" Jonathan continued, as he nodded.
Jonathan said the only other option would be to evacuate them to few other vintage styled stations around the loop area, which would definitely consume more time, although it would be the safer option. However, he also mentioned that perhaps the first option was the more realistic one considering our food supplies and the morale of the survivors at the station.
Captain Quentin eventually decided that the original execution of the second step would be to evacuate the other survivors on the street to the elevated railroad. Should the first step and during the execution of second step went better than we had expected, we might as well try to get a hold on another station.
As the three of us agreed on the decision, I also asked on how we would evacuate the survivors when we could barely find any during the day. Jonathan was the one to respond me by saying that Virgil would be the one who would provide the solution for it, as he had been on his progress in upgrading the emergency communication system as well. At first, I did not really understand what he meant by that, but then Captain Quentin convinced me that he could be already done by the late afternoon on that day.
I convinced myself that it would be the case, and Captain Quentin continued by detailing the third step, which would be the last step in preparing ourselves to fight the aliens. I thought that it would be him explaining about his suggestions or ideas regarding its execution, but instead he asked Jonathan first if he had any idea about it.
Jonathan responded by saying that the aliens that we would use as baits, would be no other than the ones who came to the area of the buildings with the evacuated survivors. He could not explain it very detail, but he said that assuming Virgil could somehow create a verbal means of emergency communication that could be heard from a considerable distance then someone would first alert the survivors on the street to evacuate to the railroads.
As the survivors moved, two to three persons would go down to the street, and waited around there to hunt down the approaching aliens silently. They were not to be taken down by using firearms, as it would most likely attract unwanted additional numbers of the aliens to the street.
When all of them were already captured, we had to somehow bring them to each of the rooftops of the chosen buildings, and put them there. Once we had everything ready, we would bait the larger numbers of the aliens by shooting the captured aliens, but not on their weaknesses. The reason was none other than to conceal the fact that we knew what they were weak against.
Both Captain Quentin and I did not object anything regarding Jonathan's suggestion. For me, it was because I could not think of any other alternatives, let alone the more effective method. As for Captain Quentin, he probably just wanted everything to be done as quickly as possible as I saw him nodded quickly and heard him sighed in relieve just when Jonathan had finished suggesting his methods.
"There is one more thing…" Jonathan said, with a lower voice.
"What is it?" I asked him.
"Fiora…" he responded, "Something is not quite right with her…"
Jonathan explained that it was too strange for someone who had not been showering for more than a day to look like she had just came out on the stage of a modeling contest. He also mentioned that her eyes did not look like she had been struggling to survive at all during the whole events that had taken place until we had met her.
That, and the fact about the hospital which was strangely seemed to be very tidy despite her words that stated the possibility of her colleagues escaping the hospital without her did not make sense. Because if it did happen, then countless things like unused beds and medical stands would be scattered across each of the floor. Then again, he believed that none of her colleagues would leave her alone in the hospital anyway.
It was at that moment when I realized that everything Jonathan said was true. Even if Fiora was indeed fond of applying make up to herself, she would not have that much of a time considering the amounts of patients that she had to handle alone, all the more so if there was an apocalyptic event going on.
What surprised me more was that Captain Quentin also seemed to be already aware of the fact right from the start. It was shown by his expression on his face that seemed to be not surprised at all when Jonathan said the strange things on her.
"Just raise your guards against her…" Jonathan said, as he stood up and headed for the third train car.
"Well… guess that concludes our discussion then…" Captain Quentin responded, as he also stood up and headed for outside through the first train car.
I still sat on the second train car alone for a while, before I closed my eyes to take a couple of deep breath and released them. At one point, I admitted that I felt relieved and like some parts of my burdens were gone since I had a very clear view of what we had to do next. However, somehow I also felt that in each further step that we took, the risk was getting more and more dangerous for ourselves.
'More importantly for now, I have to look at how Virgil is doing with his upgrades on the power source' my mind suddenly reminded me about him.
I looked at my watch to see that the time was already at the exact 11.00 a.m., which surprised me a little bit since I felt like the discussion only went for around 15 minutes or less. Since I had no idea on when some of us would venture out again to the street for any additional necessities, I decided to go to take my lunch meal first.
I headed outside the train car, and crossed to the other side of the platform to get a pack of snacks and a beverage. As I was having my lunch, I glanced for a little bit towards the children, who were in the companies of Ryan and Kyle near one corner of the platform. The caretaker also seemed to be enjoying herself in the company of Della. Seeing many of us managed to get accompanied by our surroundings somehow put my mind to be more at ease…