Part 2

Lights shone brightly from the window of a nearby coffee shop, but Leo saw neither customers nor employees.  Every storefront he passed was similarly abandoned.  Coffee cups sat steaming on tables, books lay open to the last read page, and dropped cell phones littered the street.  Red light filtering through the membrane miles overhead transformed everything earthly into an alien vista.

“Where is everybody?” Leo asked, jogging to catch up to Tane, whose long legs had carried him several feet ahead.

“Hidden inside their homes, or strangers’ homes,” he said quietly over his shoulder.  “Where you’d be if I had not come for you.”

“And why did you come for me, exactly?” 

Tane’s broad shoulders lifted into a slight shrug, and he turned around before saying, “We need to assemble the TWiT Army.”  Leo looked for any sign of humor in his face, but Tane’s cool, blue eyes were still as a sheet of ice.

“You know,” Leo said, giggling at the absurdity of Tane’s statement, “it’s not an actual army.”  Tane said nothing.  He simply turned around and continued down the street.  

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“We need the car.”

“My Mustang’s back at the cottage,” Leo said.  “We can go back and get it.”

“Not a car.  The car.  I’m looking for…ah…there it is,” Tane sighed with a hint of relief.  He’d come to a halt in front of a thoroughly unremarkable Ford Focus EV.

“You’d think aliens would have flying cars,” Leo mumbled under his breath.

“In fact,” Tane said, apparently able to hear Leo perfectly, “we are far less technologically advanced than humankind.”

“Really?”  Leo asked, surprised.  He’d always assumed any alien visitors would be advanced many millennia beyond humankind due to the necessities of long distance space travel.  “Then how’d you get to Earth?”

“We’ve always been here.  I don’t think you humans understand the nature of your universe as thoroughly as some of your scientists would like to believe.  You see—”  

But Tane never finished the sentence, because a high-pitched voice yelled, “STOP!”

“Get in the car,” Tane told Leo tightly.  Several hundred feet away, a woman sprinted towards the Focus.  Powerful legs propelled the woman’s large, blue windbreaker-covered frame at an almost unbelievable rate.  It occurred to Leo that, judging by the look of sheer ferocity on the woman’s face, he’d rather have a bear charging at him through a forest.  She closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds, just as Leo got into the car and swung the passenger door shut with a solid clunk.  From a dozen feet away, the woman jumped, feet first, into the windshield of the car.  Tane knocked her sideways scant inches from the front bumper, and she gracefully landed on all fours, using her momentum to roll over into a standing position.

“You don’t want to stand in my way,” she growled, only slightly out of breath after her sprint.  Jet black hair contrasted sharply with a lightly freckled, pale face, and thin nostrils flared out above bared teeth.  

“You’re right, Mer.  I don’t.  But I’m not going to allow you to harm Leo.”

“Get out of the way now, Tane.”

“We made a mistake coming here,” Tane shook his head, “and if you can’t see that, I will not be able to step aside.”

“Fine,” she snarled.  “Then you know what I have to do.”  She unzipped her blue windbreaker and let it fall to the ground.  Tane didn’t move as she stepped forward.

Mer swung her arm in a wide arc at Tane’s head, simultaneously bringing her knee up towards where his ribcage had been moments ago.  He fell to the side, ducking below her arm and taking the blow from her knee on his shoulder while reaching out to grab her leg.  Too late.  She’d already jumped up, using her her legs like pistons against Tane’s upper thighs.  Tane fell to the ground as Mer flew several feet into the air before landing in a crouch over Tane, her hands forming a ring around his neck.  

Leo watched from the car as Mer slowly strangled the life out of Tane.  From just twenty feet away, he could see the powerful muscles in Mer’s back rippling as she clenched her hands ever-tighter.  Leo reached over to the ignition button and pressed.  To his relief, the electric motor quietly stirred.  After snaking one foot over to the driver’s side, he rammed the accelerator hard.  Mer was too focused on the Tane’s now blue face to notice the car’s silent acceleration, and the bumper connected right at Mer’s lower back.  She yelled in pain.  Her grip loosened, and she got up, pivoting towards the passenger window before Leo could throw the car into reverse.

Mer’s fist punched through the glass like a hammer, and she grabbed Leo’s shirt with a bloody hand, pulling him out through the small opening.  Leo braced himself on the inside of the door, trying to pull back, but she was too strong.  Inch by inch, Mer pulled Leo out the window.  Leo looked to the left, where Tane had been lying, but he was no longer there.  He glanced up just in time to catch one glimpse of Tane looming over Mer with a metal chair, his face etched with animal intensity, before he brought it down with full force on her back.  Mer fell to the ground.  

“Move over,” Tane said, walking to the driver’s side.  His breath came out in ragged gasps, and his neck was black with bruises.

“Are you okay?”

“Move over now,” Tane demanded.  Leo pulled his leg back into the passenger side, and Tane slid in heavily into the car.

“Are you okay?” Leo repeated.

“No.  This is a human body, just like yours.  My air supply was choked off completely for over a minute,” he said as the smooth acceleration of the Focus EV kicked in.  The tires screeched briefly as he quickly rounded a corner.  “I think I am going to black out.  Follow the Ford Sync instructions to the destination, and don’t stop for anyone.”  Tane slumped forward on the steering wheel, unconscious.