My instinct told me to ready my submachine gun right away as soon as I realized that something strange was definitely going on. I could also tell that Billy was doing the exact same thing even though I did not glance at him. The two of us also slowly closed our distance to each other as we kept ourselves on full alert towards any other possible sudden and unnatural changes in our surroundings.
The atmosphere was tense and heavy, yet our hesitation to step out of the rock hole to find out what had happened did not help our curiosity to be answered. Since we were left with no other option, we forced ourselves to muster up our courage and stepped outside. Although, I also had to admit that I did not really expect Billy would actually stepped out with me since I thought that he would stay inside to protect Jessica.
Then, as soon as I had both my feet outside again, there was another unusual thing that bothered me. It was the fact that the rain had somehow stopped, but only in a small part around me and in the shape of oval, or rather the shape of a water droplet where one end had a rounded edge and the other a pointed edge. It almost as if like something right above me was blocking the rain water from falling down to the ground. Billy also apparently realized it as well, since he almost immediately looked up and seemed to have his attention locked for a brief moment.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was jumped by the sudden breaking of a stone on the ground just a couple of feet away from me. I aimed my submachine gun towards it in reflex, but since I realized that it was nothing of a threat, I quickly lowered my weapon. However, Billy apparently still had not lowered his guard in the slightest as he gently took me back several steps and seemed to begin to pay attention on any strange occurrences on the ground.
I believe it was not until ten seconds after the stone had broken when I started to hear that the rain apparently began to somehow get unblocked again. I was about to ask Billy about it when I noticed that the covered area around us also had somehow moved, and strangely towards the direction where we were supposed to go.
"You are seeing this, right?" I asked Billy with a very low voice.
"If I am not, then I must be blind…" he said in a low voice as he tightened his grip, aiming his firearm up and down continuously.
The sound of the rain also was progressively getting louder until I could feel the rain water dropping on top my head, indicating that I had been outside from the blocked area by that time. I did not know what I should feel, but Billy looked like he demanded answer right at that time since he shook his head towards me the second he was drenched in rain again.
As if our current situation was not confusing enough just yet, another unusual phenomenon followed right after I approached Billy. It happened right after a lightning occurred in a rather long time, lightening the sky for a brief moment and revealing the very cause of all the strange phenomenon earlier.
It was an unidentified, obviously unearthly mechanical object, hovering and making a turn no less than ten feet above the ground and no more than eight feet from where we were currently standing, and it indeed was heading towards the direction of our next destination. It did not take long before the sky above us went almost all dark again, but fortunately I managed to take and memorized at a glance the overall physical appearance of the mechanical object.
First of all, the hovering object instantly reminded me of the narwhal shaped flying object three years earlier in Chicago. However, the major difference was that the current object did not resemble any sort of animal, at least not that any that I had thought of. It was also significantly smaller than the former, perhaps as small as roughly two thirds of the size of the narwhal flying object.
If anything, perhaps the closest resemblance it had would be a stag beetle, if not very faintly, but only with the right pincer on its head, and without any legs on its body. Instead of legs, it apparently had four pairs of what looked like extruded wheel fenders on the lower part of its body. Aside from that, the bottom part of the body was not flat, and instead had a boat hull-like shape. It was also worth to note that the upper part of it, particularly the head, had an aerodynamic shape which faintly resembled a truck cap.
Two thirds of the size of the flying object back in three years ago was only a rough estimation, and therefore I could barely thought of any numerical sizes of the object. However I did recall the exact size of the narwhal flying object that was shown to me when I was still recovering in hospital a couple of years earlier.
If I were to approach the probable size of the hovering object from there, I would say that it had the height of around fifteen feet from the bottom hull to the top head, thirty to thirty two feet of length, and twenty five feet of width on the widest part of the object. The rounded end seemed to be the head part where the pilot, if any alien was operating the object from the inside, would be while the pointed end seemed to be the rear part.
"Travis…?" Billy then called me from behind, with his clearly terrified expression as I turned.
"Follow me…" I told him with a low voice as I tried to calm him down a little. "Do not make any noise…"
I crouch-walked on the direction where the object was heading, and with my head feeling heavier with each step that I took. I was not sure it was fortunate or unfortunate for the both of us, but by the time another lightning occurred again and revealing our surroundings briefly by a sudden bright sky, the hovering object was no longer seen again. I could clearly hear Billy sighed and breathed heavily right behind me as the unseen menace was no longer nearby us.
"What… the hell…" Billy said, as he turned his head down, bending both of his knees and still breathing heavily while rainwater poured down his body.
"I guess that was how the aliens go from each area to another…" I responded to him as I wiped the rain water off my face.
I then signaled Jessica that it was already safe for her to come out, and as she approached us she noticed right away that Billy was still in absolute shock of what he had seen. Apparently, just by noticing her presence, he could somehow alleviate his fears and quickly regained his composure.
"Nggak, nggak. Gue nggak apa-apa." he said to her, saying that he was already okay.
Just then, I realized right away something that might make us know more about the hovering object. It was none other than the stone that was suddenly broken out of nowhere earlier. I quickly rushed back to the same spot, and found out that the stone had been broken to three pieces. I proceeded to pick them up and glanced at them for some time before putting it inside my backpack.
"What are you going to do with them?" Billy asked me, finally with his calm tone again.
"It was only a hunch of my own, but perhaps we can have a rough guess on how the object hovers from the stones." I told him as I zipped my backpack.
Whether he got an idea on what I was thinking or that he was just going plain okay with it, he only responded with a nod and did not show any expression of curiosity or confusion. We were then just standing there, right in front of the rock we used to shelter ourselves earlier. For a moment, I had a complete blank thought inside my mind on what to do next, that I just asked both of them if we should just continue on to our next destination.
"Well? Shall we go now?" I asked them.
They did not give any respond, but they did start to head to the direction of our next destination, which was also where the hovering object had gone to. At that time, I took the initiative to lead them, as I realized that we had uncovered another threat before us, and the kind of threat that only I had faced before.
With every step that we took, I tried to recall as many details as I could about the narwhal flying object from three years earlier, ransacking every bit of my memories about it as much as I could in order to guess what kind of purpose that the object might have, as well as what was its weaknesses. However, no matter how hard I tried to remember it always ended up with the details that were only shown to me once back when I was still hospitalized. I ended up assuming that the beetle hovering object was only utilized as a means of transportation.
Before I knew it, we had then spent about thirty five minutes of walking in total silence. Even if we had not started from the center of the jungle, I was pretty sure that we must have covered more than half of the needed journey before we reached the outer section of the jungle by then. I glanced a little towards my back, and found out that both Billy and Jessica was still right behind me, barely with any signs of fatigue on their expressions.
"Something wrong?" Jessica asked me.
"No." I answered her plainly. "I just wanted to make sure if I was walking too fast."
The atmosphere was lightened up for a brief moment when Jessica finally spoke something out, but it very shortly went back to total silence as there was nothing else that I could respond her with. Since she might also be thinking the same and there was no other way, she eventually asked me about the hovering object earlier.
"By the way, Travis…" she said to me from behind.
"Yes?" I responded to her.
"You looked like you have some experiences in facing that scary object in the past." she continued, literally to the point. "Is it true?"
"Yeah…" I answered her, unable to avoid her question.
"Then, how dangerous do you think it will be for us if that object attacks us?" she asked me again.
"I honestly still do not know…" I told her. "But, I can describe the danger that you would face if you were attacked by the similar object that I encountered three years ago."
"Yes, please do." she pleaded.
I began by mentioning the T-shaped aircraft and the narwhal flying object that I had encountered during the invasion of Chicago three years earlier. I explained to her how a single shot from the aircraft would evaporate a person, and how heavily armed the aliens inside the aircraft were that a single shot from its beam rifle could kill a person clean off.
I could sense that she was extremely terrified the moment I mentioned the terrors that I had faced back then, probably instilling the mindset of how far superior the aliens then compared to the ones we were currently facing. However, I also proceeded to tell her that the aircrafts and aliens were not without weakness. When I told her that they seemed to be insensitive against obsolete firearms, I sensed that she could not believe what she had just heard, more so when I told her that their beam rifles were so sensitive to fire that shooting a few rounds to it would result in its explosion.
"Wait, really?" she asked me in a disbelief tone.
"I would have the same reaction as you if I had not experienced and seen it myself." I assured her.
"Bill. Elu udah tau?" she then turned to Billy, asking him if he had known about it.
"Iya…" he confirmed it.
By then, I finally understood why he was terrified when he found out that we had been standing right under the similar threat earlier. He did not tell us when he had learned about it, but I supposed that it was either some time before we met with each other, or when he was communicating with his Commander General through his watch.
"So… that hovering object, is more or less a smaller version of that narwhal shaped UFO?" she asked again.
"I cannot say anything about it for now." I said. "But I guess the object has a significantly different feature to enable itself to hover like that."
I continued by explaining that both the aircraft and narwhal flying object had a similar turbine-like parts that made them able to fly in the air, and that shooting them with one or two rounds of a .30-06 Springfield bullet to each of the part was enough to seriously damage it. As for the case of the current hovering object, the weakness might be located on the wheel fender-like parts.
"So the next time we find it, we just have to shoot those parts?" she asked to make sure.
"Not quite just yet…" I took her back. "It may not be their weakness after all. If we are mistaken and it is alerted by our presence, there is no telling how high of a threat we will put ourselves into."
Jessica fell silent, and Billy had his head looking down a little bit the entire time I explained everything to her. However, I also gave them another light that we can look into in our current situation. It was the hint on how powerful the force that they used in order for them to be able to hover in the air by looking at the broken pieces of the stone that I had picked up. I also said that once we got the clue on how big the force was, we could take a rough guess on the radius of the object's explosion should it explode once its sensitive parts had all been destroyed.
"Will that be any useful for us now, though?" she asked in full doubt.
"For now, apparently no." I confirmed. "But who knows, it may be useful for some other times…"
I had not expected that our journey would eventually be filled with explanations on the extraterrestrial objects and their weaknesses. Nevertheless, I suppose that it was still better that way than to spend the rest of our way to the outer section of the jungle in complete silence. When our conversation finally ended, it did not take us until ten minutes before we reached the outer jungle.
Just like the information that had been given by Billy, we could clearly see a waterfall in the distance. In fact, it was actually very clearly seen since the outer section of the jungle bordered directly with a gorge that the waterfall was technically a river that was falling down to the bottom of it. Realizing that we had reached the first checkpoint of our next destination, we immediately proceeded as suggested to the next one. The time was then 01.26 p.m., and somehow I felt like the sky had become less dark…