Gulliver Be Damned
Gulliver Be Damned
By Patrick S. Barnes
Copyright 2021© , 2025© Patrick S. Barnes
All rights reserved.
Dec 29, 9:36PM
Here I am under my dock, bleeding in four feet of 38-degree lake water, holding a shotgun with nine fingers. My hands are so cold I won’t be able to use them in a few minutes. And using my hands will be very important since the two-inch blue aliens on the dock are firing lasers into the water, trying to kill me.
This isn’t how I planned my day to turn out.
Ten Hours Earlier
The second day of my fall vacation at the lake house began with a trip to see my neighbor Willy, a retired carpenter who lived a few miles away. Divorced and retired, he spent the entire year here. While he liked to make fun of my "fancy executive shack" as he calls it, he is always there to help with a drill, saw, or advice on keeping my small vacation home in working order. I pay him handsomely with steaks on my grill and all the microbrews he can drink. Even his German shepard, Trooper, is paid in bites of steak.
He noticed my chimney smoke on the first day and, being a good neighbor, came over with Trooper to check the cabin. We had made plans to go fishing this morning on the lake and he was strangely overdue. I decided to put on my hiking boots and check on him for a change. At 74, he was in great health and could probably hike all day and build a deck before nightfall.
I was also curious if Willy saw the same bright meteor that I saw last night. Orange-tinged and brilliantly illuminated, it streaked low over the lake and into the mountains to the north. While I saw meteors often and in different colors, I had never seen a meteor so bright and never an orange one.
The trail to Willy’s cabin was about a 20-minute hike. As usual, I took my pistol and holster since this was bear country. I had only seen bears a few times without issue, but it was always good to have a gun in case they started to wonder how internet geeks tasted.
I made the trek without issue. Willy’s cabin and truck out front were all in order. Then I heard sawing noise coming from the back of his cabin. It was probably a carpentry project in full swing. I hoped to get another Adirondack chair soon. I climbed the front steps onto the wraparound porch and walked to the back.
What I saw would stay in my mind forever. Willy and Trooper were dead. To be accurate, they were in pieces. Half of Willy was gone from the waist down, sliced cleanly like he had been placed on a deli saw. Willy’s normally bright blue eyes were a lifeless gray, staring blankly at the sky. All I saw of Trooper was his hind quarters, also cleanly chopped up. But what was more frightening were their killers.
There were dozens of little creatures about the size of my index finger with black and blue spotted skin. They were nude and had no apparent male or female anatomy. Nor did they appear concerned with the cold temperature. At first, they did not see me. They scurried all over Willy’s porch and were using tiny hand-held machinery to slice off pieces of Willy and toss it into a machine that looked like a 55-gallon drum. That's what made the horrible machinery sounds.
Shocked, I blurted out something unintelligible. The little alien murderers, as I now thought they were, were clearly surprised and scattered. Some of them ran into the processor spaceship, whatever it was, and others grabbed equipment of some kind. Just as I realized I had a gun on my hip, my vision went red, and I passed out.
I woke up much later laying on the porch. It was dark now. I could not move, and I was freezing cold. An orange glowing field on my chest, arms, and legs held me down. I could barely move and heard that loud machinery sound again. I turned and saw that these little bastards were all over the place like a bad fairy tale.
There were at least 30 of them coming and going, doing who knows what. Some of them were throwing things in the processor ship and others were using strange equipment on random objects from Willy's place, like his hearing aid, a vitamin bottle, and even an old bowling trophy. Willy and Trooper’s remains were nowhere to be seen.
What really scared me was that these creatures had cut off my jacket and sweatshirt and were cutting away the last of the left sleeve on my t-shirt. Like the rest of me, my arm was immobile. I started yelling at them. They all looked up, but quickly went back to their work. They knew I was stuck.
For just a second, I imagined what happened when they had Willy and Trooper like this, and my panic elevated to another realm. Then they held a device to my pinky finger, which started burning like hell and promptly fell off, cut all the way to my palm. Cauterized like surgery with a laser.
I went berserk. I pushed hard against the orange field holding me without success. My joints screamed from the effort. The aliens’ casual disinterest made me even more scared. They looked like they were discussing what was next while two of them carried my finger to the processor spaceship. I bucked and shook with everything I had, moving anyway possible. They ignored me as before and were about to continue when my movements against the energy field caused it to weaken and flicker. I redoubled my efforts to get free as the aliens ran to their processor ship and worked frantically at the controls, conferring like mad scientists around the device.
My efforts worked. Within a few seconds, the energy field broke and let me go. I flew up as if I had wings and tore into them like an angry, blood-thirsty cat. The first one I caught, I smashed into the porch deck, and he broke open, pouring blue blood. I grabbed two more, one in each hand, and hammered them into the porch, screaming like an angry giant. My left hand burned like it was on fire. I kicked the spaceship, smashing the entry port where my finger had been tossed in. While the port sustained damage, the remainder of the device was left unscathed. It was incredibly heavy, like a car.
Suddenly, I felt dizzy and saw a wave of red in my vision again. On the porch, three of the aliens were trying to point a device at me, which was probably the source of the sleep ray that took me down earlier. I moved fast and jumped right over them, heading to the front of the cabin. As I turned the corner on the porch, I saw my jacket and pistol holster lying in a stack of discarded clothing.
I grabbed my pistol and ran the slide, chambering a round, and crouched behind the front corner of the cabin. I didn't have to wait long. My escape and rampage on three of their comrades had clearly enraged the little aliens. They ran at me, firing handheld lasers. Immediately, I felt dozens of painful bee stings all over my body where the lasers were burning into me.
I fired my pistol in response, striking several of them and causing the others to take shelter on the porch. I was not great with a gun, but I fired and fired, emptying the 15-round magazine in seconds. Scrambling to reload, I felt the sleep ray again and saw them dragging the device around to get a better shot at me. I ducked again behind the corner and concentrated on loading the extra magazine, not easy with my hand missing a digit. When it was again loaded, I took aim and fired as best I could while they fired back. I was able to shoot the sleep ray device, knocking it over and killing one of the aliens. However, the lasers were taking their toll. I had been hit a dozen times and was bleeding profusely from several holes. It was just a matter of time before they hit my eyes or an artery, and then I was done.
So, I ran. I leaped off the porch and hit the ground running with laser hits striking me in the back until I was in the forest going as fast as my wounded body could take me.
My clothes were in tatters, but I found my car keys as I ran. The woods behind me made no noise. I was bleeding and needed my car's first aid kit. I also had to get the hell back to civilization. I doubted anyone would believe me anyway. I wouldn’t believe me.
I made it to my car unmolested, retrieved my first aid kit, and ran into the cabin to tape down the laser holes. Laser holes! Are you kidding me? From tiny aliens bent on my destruction! I laughed hysterically as I taped the numerous wounds. Most oozed blood from the laser burns, but a few bled a lot. The worst bleeder was in my leg. I patched it as good as I could. If it bled through, I would have to start thinking about a tourniquet.
I grabbed a box of bullets and reloaded my pistol. I had a shotgun in my gun bag in the closet that had a few rounds, but I wasn’t planning on aliens and had not bought ammo lately. I threw the gun bag over my shoulder and headed for the door. It was time to get the hell out of here.
Not a split second after coming out the door, two of the alien spaceships rolled down the path at me. I jumped behind my water tank as thick blue laser beams silently sliced the air around me. These weren't the hand-held stingers the little aliens had. These were large lasers fired from the ships themselves that could easily slice me in half.
The blue beams peppered the cabin in multiple places, some coming very close. I could see the laser fire coming through the cabin on the other side where I was hiding. Everything the beams touched seemed to be catching fire. Then one of the lasers must have hit the propane tank. From the far side of the cabin, there was an explosion which drove me off the porch and into my yard where I hid behind my shed.
I watched the cabin burn from my hiding place. The smoke from the fire seemed to provide some cover, but it wouldn’t stop them from finding me.
I had to get to my SUV, or I was finished. I was about to move when I saw one of the ships roll slowly through the smoke coming right toward me.
I aimed my pistol as well I could, remembering my single training class when I bought the gun, and pulled the trigger as fast and as accurately as I could. Holes started to appear in the hull of the ship where the rounds impacted without effect, but I kept going. The gun bucked in my bleeding hands, but I kept shooting, trying to keep it on target. Suddenly, like a lightning strike, the ship exploded in a blue flash. A wash of blue light and heat flew over me, knocking me to the ground and slightly stunning me. Whatever they used for energy did not like bullets.
As I stood up, the other ship rolled into view with a mass of little aliens in front firing their lasers, hitting me repeatedly. I had dropped my pistol and did not see it, but I still held onto the gun bag and hobbled toward the dock hoping to jump into the lake to swim or hide.
As I ran, one large blue beam whizzed by me painfully close. The small lasers were hitting me squarely in the back and legs, and I was stumbling along to the end of the dock. Even injured, I ran as fast as I could and threw myself into the water.
That was a bad idea. I surfaced, out of breath from the freezing-cold water, to see the aliens running down the dock at me with the ship following.
I glanced across the lake at the far shore a quarter of a mile away. I would die of hypothermia long before getting there, assuming the aliens on the dock did not laser me to death.
I had lost the gun bag jumping in the water and needed the shotgun, which was now underwater and nowhere to be seen.
I took a deep breath and dove under the ice-cold water searching the shallow depths for the now water-logged bag. While the lake is very clear the darkness blocked any attempt to see underwater.
I came up under the dock with my lungs on fire, hoping the aliens won’t see me. I was trapped. Thinking about where I went into the water, I took a fresh lungful of air and went under slowly feeling around.
Suddenly the water turned bright blue as a laser beam split through the lake not five feet from me. I leapt away underwater as another beam came into the water nearby. Luckily the light from their laser beam had illuminated the water like a flashbulb and there in water next to me was the gun bag.
I grabbed the bag and moved back to the dock without broaching the surface. With caution I slowly came up for air with my lungs screaming for oxygen and me trembling with cold. I was in four feet of water and able to stand. My extremities were in great pain, and I was shaking uncontrollably.
Struggling to concentrate I reviewed my nightmare. I would die if I did not get out of this lake soon. I heard the spaceship rolling back and forth across the dock as well as the little aliens running around. They were not looking under the dock, but I was sure that would change very soon. It was clear that even though they are tiny, these creatures were extremely aggressive and did not give up.
The gun bag in my hands was dead weight. Made of canvas it had soaked up half the lake.
As quietly as I could I lifted the bag and tried to unzip it. My hands shook terribly. I could barely hold onto it. The only saving grace was a simple string on the zipper that allowed me to slowly tug the zipper and open the bag. Shaking, I pulled out the pump-action shotgun. It was always loaded at the cabin with buckshot for bears. I prayed that this would be effective against the ship. However, I still needed to chamber a round with my frozen hands. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done.
It took two, incredibly painful minutes. Shaking, fingers half numb, half burning with freezing pain from the cold, I was finally able to hold the tiny slide release button while I racked the slide and saw a beautiful red shotgun shell raise into the receiver, ready to fire.
Holding the shotgun, I stared at the bottom of the dock and wasted precious seconds with my analysis. Would a wet shotgun even work? How do I get out of this water? Would my legs even work at this point?
I was out of time.
December 29 9:36PM
I formulated a quick plan and waited for the ship to move close to my location in shallow water. The seconds waiting for the right moment ticked by like hours. If I did not get out of this water soon, I would die of hypothermia.
After an eternity, the ship came right over top of me. This was my chance. I leaned out from under the dock, lifted the shotgun over the edge of the dock and placed the front of it against the ship and fired. The noise was deafening. The gun almost fell from my hands from the recoil and one-handed grip. The ship stopped moving the instant I pulled the trigger. Energized, I pumped the slide to reload and fired across the dock where the aliens stood. Those caught in the buckshot ripped apart like black and blue bowling pins. I fired two or three times covering as much of the deck as I could until all the aliens were still.
I stumbled to shore, holding the shotgun on the ship and the dead aliens in view. I could see that the ship was immobile with smoke and strange liquid pouring from the hole I blasted in it.
The aliens left on the dock were dead or in pieces still twitching. It was horrific. As I walked closer a hatch in the ship opened. Over a dozen aliens ran out, a few with weapons firing. I used the last two rounds from the shotgun on most of them and then using the gun as a club I bashed the rest to death. Down to the last one they never stopped attacking even without weapons. I went from body to body on the dock and smashed everyone to be sure. By the end I was covered in their blue blood.
Exhausted and half frozen I fell onto the cold ground shaking. I stared at my flaming cabin and the war zone in front of me. Then I used my burning house as a campfire to warm up so I would at least be able to move. It was surreal.
I looked for my pistol without luck. The shotgun I kept, but it was empty. It still worked as an impromptu bludgeon, so that was something.
Twenty minutes later I was driving through the dark mountains toward Seattle. The SUV's heater was at full blast slowly bringing the feeling back to my extremities. My leg wound and other injuries would hold until I got to the hospital.
In the back of my vehicle, I carried the hull of the ship, five of the alien bodies and their tiny weapons as well. It was the last thing I wanted to do.
Even dead these things scared the hell out of me. However, this story needed proof of the strongest kind. I had to bring them. I needed to get some help and did not want to spend three days in a psych ward telling this story over and over.
There was no phone for at least 20 miles. The fishing shop on the highway might have a telephone, but I was not stopping. I had my cell phone, and it would start working once I cleared the mountains.
As I drove on, I kept looking down at my cell phone, waiting for the signal bar to appear. I knew that at the end of Mountain Loop Highway the first cell signal would arrive, and I could call for help. I chanced a little more speed on the twisting mountain highway. I was in shock and driving erratically. Several times I almost lost control.
When I cleared the last turn and started the long downhill from the mountains I slowed down to a safe speed and pulled over.
I would not need the ship or the bodies in the back after all. The familiar lights of Seattle were now visible in the distance. In the sky above, thousands of orange-colored meteorites were falling across the horizon, and parts of the city were already burning.
My cell phone beeped that it finally had a signal.
The End
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Thank You!
By Patrick S. Barnes
Copyright 2021© , 2025© Patrick S. Barnes
All rights reserved.
Dec 29, 9:36PM
Here I am under my dock, bleeding in four feet of 38-degree lake water, holding a shotgun with nine fingers. My hands are so cold I won’t be able to use them in a few minutes. And using my hands will be very important since the two-inch blue aliens on the dock are firing lasers into the water, trying to kill me.
This isn’t how I planned my day to turn out.
Ten Hours Earlier
The second day of my fall vacation at the lake house began with a trip to see my neighbor Willy, a retired carpenter who lived a few miles away. Divorced and retired, he spent the entire year here. While he liked to make fun of my "fancy executive shack" as he calls it, he is always there to help with a drill, saw, or advice on keeping my small vacation home in working order. I pay him handsomely with steaks on my grill and all the microbrews he can drink. Even his German shepard, Trooper, is paid in bites of steak.
He noticed my chimney smoke on the first day and, being a good neighbor, came over with Trooper to check the cabin. We had made plans to go fishing this morning on the lake and he was strangely overdue. I decided to put on my hiking boots and check on him for a change. At 74, he was in great health and could probably hike all day and build a deck before nightfall.
I was also curious if Willy saw the same bright meteor that I saw last night. Orange-tinged and brilliantly illuminated, it streaked low over the lake and into the mountains to the north. While I saw meteors often and in different colors, I had never seen a meteor so bright and never an orange one.
The trail to Willy’s cabin was about a 20-minute hike. As usual, I took my pistol and holster since this was bear country. I had only seen bears a few times without issue, but it was always good to have a gun in case they started to wonder how internet geeks tasted.
I made the trek without issue. Willy’s cabin and truck out front were all in order. Then I heard sawing noise coming from the back of his cabin. It was probably a carpentry project in full swing. I hoped to get another Adirondack chair soon. I climbed the front steps onto the wraparound porch and walked to the back.
What I saw would stay in my mind forever. Willy and Trooper were dead. To be accurate, they were in pieces. Half of Willy was gone from the waist down, sliced cleanly like he had been placed on a deli saw. Willy’s normally bright blue eyes were a lifeless gray, staring blankly at the sky. All I saw of Trooper was his hind quarters, also cleanly chopped up. But what was more frightening were their killers.
There were dozens of little creatures about the size of my index finger with black and blue spotted skin. They were nude and had no apparent male or female anatomy. Nor did they appear concerned with the cold temperature. At first, they did not see me. They scurried all over Willy’s porch and were using tiny hand-held machinery to slice off pieces of Willy and toss it into a machine that looked like a 55-gallon drum. That's what made the horrible machinery sounds.
Shocked, I blurted out something unintelligible. The little alien murderers, as I now thought they were, were clearly surprised and scattered. Some of them ran into the processor spaceship, whatever it was, and others grabbed equipment of some kind. Just as I realized I had a gun on my hip, my vision went red, and I passed out.
I woke up much later laying on the porch. It was dark now. I could not move, and I was freezing cold. An orange glowing field on my chest, arms, and legs held me down. I could barely move and heard that loud machinery sound again. I turned and saw that these little bastards were all over the place like a bad fairy tale.
There were at least 30 of them coming and going, doing who knows what. Some of them were throwing things in the processor ship and others were using strange equipment on random objects from Willy's place, like his hearing aid, a vitamin bottle, and even an old bowling trophy. Willy and Trooper’s remains were nowhere to be seen.
What really scared me was that these creatures had cut off my jacket and sweatshirt and were cutting away the last of the left sleeve on my t-shirt. Like the rest of me, my arm was immobile. I started yelling at them. They all looked up, but quickly went back to their work. They knew I was stuck.
For just a second, I imagined what happened when they had Willy and Trooper like this, and my panic elevated to another realm. Then they held a device to my pinky finger, which started burning like hell and promptly fell off, cut all the way to my palm. Cauterized like surgery with a laser.
I went berserk. I pushed hard against the orange field holding me without success. My joints screamed from the effort. The aliens’ casual disinterest made me even more scared. They looked like they were discussing what was next while two of them carried my finger to the processor spaceship. I bucked and shook with everything I had, moving anyway possible. They ignored me as before and were about to continue when my movements against the energy field caused it to weaken and flicker. I redoubled my efforts to get free as the aliens ran to their processor ship and worked frantically at the controls, conferring like mad scientists around the device.
My efforts worked. Within a few seconds, the energy field broke and let me go. I flew up as if I had wings and tore into them like an angry, blood-thirsty cat. The first one I caught, I smashed into the porch deck, and he broke open, pouring blue blood. I grabbed two more, one in each hand, and hammered them into the porch, screaming like an angry giant. My left hand burned like it was on fire. I kicked the spaceship, smashing the entry port where my finger had been tossed in. While the port sustained damage, the remainder of the device was left unscathed. It was incredibly heavy, like a car.
Suddenly, I felt dizzy and saw a wave of red in my vision again. On the porch, three of the aliens were trying to point a device at me, which was probably the source of the sleep ray that took me down earlier. I moved fast and jumped right over them, heading to the front of the cabin. As I turned the corner on the porch, I saw my jacket and pistol holster lying in a stack of discarded clothing.
I grabbed my pistol and ran the slide, chambering a round, and crouched behind the front corner of the cabin. I didn't have to wait long. My escape and rampage on three of their comrades had clearly enraged the little aliens. They ran at me, firing handheld lasers. Immediately, I felt dozens of painful bee stings all over my body where the lasers were burning into me.
I fired my pistol in response, striking several of them and causing the others to take shelter on the porch. I was not great with a gun, but I fired and fired, emptying the 15-round magazine in seconds. Scrambling to reload, I felt the sleep ray again and saw them dragging the device around to get a better shot at me. I ducked again behind the corner and concentrated on loading the extra magazine, not easy with my hand missing a digit. When it was again loaded, I took aim and fired as best I could while they fired back. I was able to shoot the sleep ray device, knocking it over and killing one of the aliens. However, the lasers were taking their toll. I had been hit a dozen times and was bleeding profusely from several holes. It was just a matter of time before they hit my eyes or an artery, and then I was done.
So, I ran. I leaped off the porch and hit the ground running with laser hits striking me in the back until I was in the forest going as fast as my wounded body could take me.
My clothes were in tatters, but I found my car keys as I ran. The woods behind me made no noise. I was bleeding and needed my car's first aid kit. I also had to get the hell back to civilization. I doubted anyone would believe me anyway. I wouldn’t believe me.
I made it to my car unmolested, retrieved my first aid kit, and ran into the cabin to tape down the laser holes. Laser holes! Are you kidding me? From tiny aliens bent on my destruction! I laughed hysterically as I taped the numerous wounds. Most oozed blood from the laser burns, but a few bled a lot. The worst bleeder was in my leg. I patched it as good as I could. If it bled through, I would have to start thinking about a tourniquet.
I grabbed a box of bullets and reloaded my pistol. I had a shotgun in my gun bag in the closet that had a few rounds, but I wasn’t planning on aliens and had not bought ammo lately. I threw the gun bag over my shoulder and headed for the door. It was time to get the hell out of here.
Not a split second after coming out the door, two of the alien spaceships rolled down the path at me. I jumped behind my water tank as thick blue laser beams silently sliced the air around me. These weren't the hand-held stingers the little aliens had. These were large lasers fired from the ships themselves that could easily slice me in half.
The blue beams peppered the cabin in multiple places, some coming very close. I could see the laser fire coming through the cabin on the other side where I was hiding. Everything the beams touched seemed to be catching fire. Then one of the lasers must have hit the propane tank. From the far side of the cabin, there was an explosion which drove me off the porch and into my yard where I hid behind my shed.
I watched the cabin burn from my hiding place. The smoke from the fire seemed to provide some cover, but it wouldn’t stop them from finding me.
I had to get to my SUV, or I was finished. I was about to move when I saw one of the ships roll slowly through the smoke coming right toward me.
I aimed my pistol as well I could, remembering my single training class when I bought the gun, and pulled the trigger as fast and as accurately as I could. Holes started to appear in the hull of the ship where the rounds impacted without effect, but I kept going. The gun bucked in my bleeding hands, but I kept shooting, trying to keep it on target. Suddenly, like a lightning strike, the ship exploded in a blue flash. A wash of blue light and heat flew over me, knocking me to the ground and slightly stunning me. Whatever they used for energy did not like bullets.
As I stood up, the other ship rolled into view with a mass of little aliens in front firing their lasers, hitting me repeatedly. I had dropped my pistol and did not see it, but I still held onto the gun bag and hobbled toward the dock hoping to jump into the lake to swim or hide.
As I ran, one large blue beam whizzed by me painfully close. The small lasers were hitting me squarely in the back and legs, and I was stumbling along to the end of the dock. Even injured, I ran as fast as I could and threw myself into the water.
That was a bad idea. I surfaced, out of breath from the freezing-cold water, to see the aliens running down the dock at me with the ship following.
I glanced across the lake at the far shore a quarter of a mile away. I would die of hypothermia long before getting there, assuming the aliens on the dock did not laser me to death.
I had lost the gun bag jumping in the water and needed the shotgun, which was now underwater and nowhere to be seen.
I took a deep breath and dove under the ice-cold water searching the shallow depths for the now water-logged bag. While the lake is very clear the darkness blocked any attempt to see underwater.
I came up under the dock with my lungs on fire, hoping the aliens won’t see me. I was trapped. Thinking about where I went into the water, I took a fresh lungful of air and went under slowly feeling around.
Suddenly the water turned bright blue as a laser beam split through the lake not five feet from me. I leapt away underwater as another beam came into the water nearby. Luckily the light from their laser beam had illuminated the water like a flashbulb and there in water next to me was the gun bag.
I grabbed the bag and moved back to the dock without broaching the surface. With caution I slowly came up for air with my lungs screaming for oxygen and me trembling with cold. I was in four feet of water and able to stand. My extremities were in great pain, and I was shaking uncontrollably.
Struggling to concentrate I reviewed my nightmare. I would die if I did not get out of this lake soon. I heard the spaceship rolling back and forth across the dock as well as the little aliens running around. They were not looking under the dock, but I was sure that would change very soon. It was clear that even though they are tiny, these creatures were extremely aggressive and did not give up.
The gun bag in my hands was dead weight. Made of canvas it had soaked up half the lake.
As quietly as I could I lifted the bag and tried to unzip it. My hands shook terribly. I could barely hold onto it. The only saving grace was a simple string on the zipper that allowed me to slowly tug the zipper and open the bag. Shaking, I pulled out the pump-action shotgun. It was always loaded at the cabin with buckshot for bears. I prayed that this would be effective against the ship. However, I still needed to chamber a round with my frozen hands. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done.
It took two, incredibly painful minutes. Shaking, fingers half numb, half burning with freezing pain from the cold, I was finally able to hold the tiny slide release button while I racked the slide and saw a beautiful red shotgun shell raise into the receiver, ready to fire.
Holding the shotgun, I stared at the bottom of the dock and wasted precious seconds with my analysis. Would a wet shotgun even work? How do I get out of this water? Would my legs even work at this point?
I was out of time.
December 29 9:36PM
I formulated a quick plan and waited for the ship to move close to my location in shallow water. The seconds waiting for the right moment ticked by like hours. If I did not get out of this water soon, I would die of hypothermia.
After an eternity, the ship came right over top of me. This was my chance. I leaned out from under the dock, lifted the shotgun over the edge of the dock and placed the front of it against the ship and fired. The noise was deafening. The gun almost fell from my hands from the recoil and one-handed grip. The ship stopped moving the instant I pulled the trigger. Energized, I pumped the slide to reload and fired across the dock where the aliens stood. Those caught in the buckshot ripped apart like black and blue bowling pins. I fired two or three times covering as much of the deck as I could until all the aliens were still.
I stumbled to shore, holding the shotgun on the ship and the dead aliens in view. I could see that the ship was immobile with smoke and strange liquid pouring from the hole I blasted in it.
The aliens left on the dock were dead or in pieces still twitching. It was horrific. As I walked closer a hatch in the ship opened. Over a dozen aliens ran out, a few with weapons firing. I used the last two rounds from the shotgun on most of them and then using the gun as a club I bashed the rest to death. Down to the last one they never stopped attacking even without weapons. I went from body to body on the dock and smashed everyone to be sure. By the end I was covered in their blue blood.
Exhausted and half frozen I fell onto the cold ground shaking. I stared at my flaming cabin and the war zone in front of me. Then I used my burning house as a campfire to warm up so I would at least be able to move. It was surreal.
I looked for my pistol without luck. The shotgun I kept, but it was empty. It still worked as an impromptu bludgeon, so that was something.
Twenty minutes later I was driving through the dark mountains toward Seattle. The SUV's heater was at full blast slowly bringing the feeling back to my extremities. My leg wound and other injuries would hold until I got to the hospital.
In the back of my vehicle, I carried the hull of the ship, five of the alien bodies and their tiny weapons as well. It was the last thing I wanted to do.
Even dead these things scared the hell out of me. However, this story needed proof of the strongest kind. I had to bring them. I needed to get some help and did not want to spend three days in a psych ward telling this story over and over.
There was no phone for at least 20 miles. The fishing shop on the highway might have a telephone, but I was not stopping. I had my cell phone, and it would start working once I cleared the mountains.
As I drove on, I kept looking down at my cell phone, waiting for the signal bar to appear. I knew that at the end of Mountain Loop Highway the first cell signal would arrive, and I could call for help. I chanced a little more speed on the twisting mountain highway. I was in shock and driving erratically. Several times I almost lost control.
When I cleared the last turn and started the long downhill from the mountains I slowed down to a safe speed and pulled over.
I would not need the ship or the bodies in the back after all. The familiar lights of Seattle were now visible in the distance. In the sky above, thousands of orange-colored meteorites were falling across the horizon, and parts of the city were already burning.
My cell phone beeped that it finally had a signal.
The End
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