Dark Fall

Maxie

When the apocalypse began a few hours ago, Maxie Coleman was just sitting in his apartment watching a replay of last season’s ballgame on his television before noticing the glaring light shining through the closed blinders of his room.

Out of curiosity, he took a peek and noticed something falling from the sky. As an astrologist, he was able to quickly identify the falling object as a large meteor so he knew that if a meteor the size of a car struck New York City...

“Holy s**t!”

Maxie quickly dove for cover underneath his dinner table that was bolted to the floor as he braced himself for the explosion that came not long after just as he expected.

To his surprise, however, the explosion and the shockwave that resulted from it wasn’t as large or destructive as he had thought since it only broke his windows and blew away the blinders along with everything else in the room that wasn’t too heavy or bolted to the floor.

He expected the city to be partially leveled but after bravely taking a look outside the now broken windows, the destruction wasn’t all too bad to his surprise.

“What the hell? I thought it was a meteor…”

Maxie had been prepared to die earlier even though he had taken shelter. The meteor had landed not too far away from his apartment complex so, with his vantage point, he was able to get a good look at the rock.

What happened next, however, was beyond his imagination. The rock split open and a large figure walked out of it. From a single look, Maxie could tell that this figure was undoubtedly an alien.

“!”

However, it wasn’t friendly because as soon as it emerged from the rock, it began killing everyone around the crash site that hadn’t died or were getting close out of sheer curiosity to see what had landed with some kind of laser gun or with its malleable arm that could change shape into various weapons.

“s**t, it’s an alien! An actual alien!”

Maxie scrambled to his bedroom and took a camcorder that he bought to record his activities whenever he went out for stargazing. He never got anything too noteworthy to record but this time this was a big exception.

“A freaking alien from space! I can’t believe this. This ain’t a movie right?!”

Maxie arrived back at the window and immediately began recording the horrible spectacle below him.

He didn’t record for too long because he wasn’t stupid. If he didn’t hide, the alien might find him and kill him as it did with the other unfortunate people down below. He tried calling the police while he was recording but the line didn’t connect.

“...Is this an invasion?”

A loud bang that came from the air answered his question as he looked up and saw more balls of fire descending from the sky.

“I-I have to get out of here…”

He packed a few of his belongings, mostly clothes and food before he started running away. He didn’t know if it was effective or not, but Maxie did bring a gun with him. The U.S. had very lax gun regulations so even he was able to get a gun license and bring around a registered firearm with him.

As for why a young astrologist like him needed a gun...well, Maxie just thought that it was better to have one than not have one at all.

The first safe place he thought of was the subway since it was underground and the impact of the ‘meteors’ didn’t seem too devastating so there was little danger of it collapsing.

The closest one was only a block away but when he arrived outside of his apartment, it was like all hell broke loose and everything was on fire with people running and screaming.

Naturally, the things they were running from were the invaders that came from the skies and Maxie noticed that even the police were running after they cleared the streets from any civilians.

“PLEASE STAY INDOORS AND AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!”

Maxie heard this from one of the police cars but he didn’t listen to it. He saw that not far away, an alien rock had landed in one of the buildings and could hear the screams of terror from the people that were likely being killed by the alien that had emerged from the rock.

He wasn’t going to just hide and wait around for his death so he began running towards the subway station. However, even this proved a little daunting because he had to avoid a few of the aliens that had appeared in his path.

Thankfully he was quick-witted and resourceful so he was able to navigate past the aliens though he did this at the cost of passively using others as scapegoats. He hid in wait for the aliens to move away as they chased after another escaping person before he made his move. It was a scummy thing to do but his life was also on the line and he needed to do everything he could to stay alive.

The entire time, he had his camera recording everything as he had it strapped above his shoulder. It was probably an unnecessary thing to do but Maxie just felt like this was needed since it might become important in the future.

He had managed to save a family during the chaos of everything though he was reluctant to help at first because they would weigh him down but since the daughter, son, and father trio were so pitiful he let them tag along with him.

Right now, Maxie and his small group were resting in a building as they had just managed to escape from one of the aliens. They were previously part of a larger crowd making their way into the underground but an alien had found them and started killing people. In the chaos, they had escaped in the opposite direction of where the alien was moving and hunkered down in an abandoned building.

Aliens were still roaming around outside and even if they were able to take shelter, for now, it was still too dangerous so he couldn’t relax just yet. He felt that something bad might happen if he were to relax right now.

The others in his group were a middle-aged man named Jesse, his daughter, Diane, and his son, Josh. They were all currently eating and resting thinking that they were safe indoors but unfortunately for them, it didn’t matter where they hid, the invaders could detect them just because they were alive.

One such alien had found them on its internal radar and broke off from his squad to go hunt them down. The humans could barely put up a fight and thinking that it was going to be fine alone, it didn’t let the other aliens in its squad in on the fun it was going to have ‘hunting’ the helpless prey.

The alien began moving towards the building where they were hiding but thankfully, Maxie was standing near the window keeping a watch outside while he was eating and noticed the subtle vibrations caused by the alien’s footsteps.

He felt that something was wrong and his eyes widened in horror before he immediately jumped away from the window and pulled along Diane who was eating right next to him. The place he was standing at earlier was immediately blasted away as the alien outside of the building they were in had fired off its cannon.

“Run! One of those things is here!” Maxie yelled.

Jesse dropped everything he was holding and picked up his son before immediately running out of the room. Diane helped Maxie before pulling him towards the door.

“Oh no, my dad went upstairs!”

“Dammit, he should have run outside! Follow them!”

“Dad!” Diane called out.

“I-I’m here with Josh, what do we do?!” Jesse desperately asked.

“Keep running! We have to get to the fire escape!” Maxie yelled.

Jesse heard Maxie’s words and started running up the staircase with everyone else following behind him as he looked left and right for the fire escape.

“At the end of the hallway! Head into that apartment room!”

“A-Alright!”

Maxie could feel that the alien was already in the building and he was right. The alien was already on the first floor and it knew exactly where they were. There was no escape so the alien decided to hunt its prey slowly.

It blasted a hole in the floor above it and jumped through it. The alien continued to do that until it was exactly one floor below Maxie and the others. It didn’t blast another hole on the ceiling as it did earlier but instead opted to walk up the stairs and slowly hunt its prey.

Maxie could feel from the intensifying vibrations on the floor that the alien was getting closer and once those vibrations stopped, he immediately knew something was wrong.

“Oh s**t, it’s on the floor below us.”

“What?!”

“Hurry up and run!”

Maxie, Diane, and Jesse, who was carrying Josh, immediately started running towards the room at the end of the hallway, and just as they entered the apartment room, the alien arrived on the floor they were on.

Maxie caught a glimpse of the creature and it caused his skin to crawl but there was more bad news waiting for him.

“M-Maxie!” Diane called out to him.

He quickly closed the door and turned around, only to be met with a sight that caused all of the spirit to be drained away from him.

“...Fuck…”

The apartment they had entered was completely destroyed and the fire escape he was betting his life on had completely collapsed on the upper floors. If he had acted quicker and perhaps used the fire escape on the lower floors, then maybe they would have been able to get out.

However, in his mind, he was thinking about luring the alien upstairs before they quickly ran down the fire escape and towards the adjacent building to hide in there since Jesse made the blunder of running upstairs instead of outside the building. 

Unfortunately, for them, even if this plan worked, the alien would still be able to sense their presence so it would be all for naught in the end but at the very least, it would’ve given them some hope unlike now where all hope was lost.

“I didn’t think I’d die like this…”

Jesse hugged Josh and pulled Diane into his embrace as he sobbed thinking that they were going to die now. It was a dead-end and they were literally going to be dead in a few moments but there was nothing anyone could do. 

Maxie wasn’t convinced and tried to look for a way out of the situation but the door to the broken apartment room was smashed open, breaking his line of thought as he turned around and faced the alien that was waiting menacingly just outside of the room.

The family behind him tried inching away from the monster but there was nowhere else to go. The only way was down and if they jumped, they’d still die in the end. This really was the end but Maxie didn’t want to go down resigned to his fate.

No, he wanted to fight against it so he turned towards the alien that had just stepped into the room and flipped it off before aiming a gun he kept hidden which took from an abandoned police cruiser on his way to the subway station.

“Hey, you big piece of s**t!” Maxie called out.

The alien looked down at Maxie for a moment and stopped, waiting to see what its prey would do in a moment of desperation.

“f**k. You!”