Apocalypse Earth, page 1
Apocalypse Earth
The Aliens Arrive
By J. T. Skye
Copyright © 2021 J. T. Skye
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual historical events or people is unintentional coincidence. Really. Despite what you may have heard or read in the tabloids, this story isn’t true. Please, enjoy it as it unfolds.
Copyright © 2021 by J. T. Skye
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Trigellian Universe - Warrior Series
Warrior Dawn - When alien first contact goes horribly wrong
Warrior Creed – Win the day… or die
Warrior Born – Vengeance awaits…
Warrior Elite – Tor Benet
Battle Born - Peebo Lim
Constellation - Battle at the Rim
Trigellian Universe – Delphus Series
Delphus Paradox – End of Earth
Trigellian Universe – Short Stories
Cren Siblis – Slave Planet
Planet Delphus – Rite of Passage
Morgan Fox Adventure Series
Weapon of Honor – He is a legendary salvage expert, she is a retired assassin
Weapon of Justice - He is a legendary salvage expert, she is a Chinese assassin
Nuclear Revenge - A German Bomb 75 years in the making
Nuclear Extortion - They stole a U. S. nuclear weapon and they are going to use it
Tour of Duty Afghanistan – Morgan Fox Prequel - The Legend Begins
Introduction
Thank you for selecting my first book in the Alien Apocalypse Series. While this book may feel like it has a foundation of human growth in our very real human world, it is actually part of the broad Trigellian Universe. It also feels startling real to me... how we might react and grow if we were accosted by aliens who simply looked at us as cattle or “product” to be harvested as slaves or meat to feed their animals.
I don’t know about you, but it kind of bothers me that we aren’t considered sentient just because we are not a space faring society… yet.
I know we feel we are super-strong and confident, but the reality is, aliens may have evolved to a point where we won’t even understand their motivations, goals and technical reality.
Think about this for a moment… in whatever country you live in... just how easy would it be for us to communicate with our ancestors, say, a thousand years ago?
The gap we face may be many thousands or tens of thousands of years bigger than that. Even using mathematics as a core language, there may be nuances to their math and how they evaluate calculated solutions that are way beyond us at this point.
Their perceived spirituality will likely be vastly different from ours, and our spiritual or religious beliefs, regardless of what we each believe. It will be an interesting time when we finally meet them.
This first story is about a very strong and difficult character arc. Please do NOT be put off by the protagonist at the beginning. He may think he is fine. He may think he is God’s gift to life, but he has a loooonnnnggg way to go... and many hard lessons to learn.
Please journey with him as he grows and arrives at the interesting and unexpected ending.
Chapter 1
I was still fuming when I arrived at Kelly’s. Well, more accurately, titanically pissed off would be appropriate, as I slid onto my usual stool and tapped the bar. Ed, sitting next to me, just nodded as he always did, a man of few words in the beginning. I smiled to myself thinking, ‘Wait until the third beer and then the flood opens and he regales us with his time at war.’
Jack finished another patron and grabbed a clean, tall glass without even looking at me. I smiled again inside at the comfortable familiarity of my home. He filled it and quickly set it in front of me with a nod. I don’t do no fancy crap, just a plain Brooklyn IPA. I hate the “I” in IPA, but what are ya going to do about it. It’s part of the damn history of the beer. Anyway, it’s not like it’s actually imported from India. I guess that makes it still American if they make it here, right?
Danny slid in next to me with his usual, and often irritating, smile. I don’t get him. He’s always happy, like nothing ever bothers him. He is always smiling and humming. Weird.
“Billy Todd, how’s it hangin’, today? Glorious day outside.”
I gently shook my head and took another sip of the Brooklyn. “Tough day at the warehouse, now they’re bringing in the damn immigrants from the South. Can’t barely speak English.”
He just smiled and nodded at Jack who smiled back and collected a glass to fill.
Danny had both of his arms on the bar and turned to me, “BT, that’s progress, you can’t go against the ‘Man’ or you’ll get squashed. Just figure out the seams and slip through. That’s what you got to DO. Figure out what you can do and concentrate on that. Don’t let the other stuff beat you down.”
I was already half done with my first and just warm enough to start to talk, “They took one of the factory girls and let her start driving a lift. She took some kind of training course and now she’s, like, an expert high-lift operator or something. They got this new lift and she’s the only one who can use it. Such bullshit.”
I paused to take a sip, “It pays more and should rightfully go to me. I talked with the rep and he wasn’t any help. He’s a company hack… no help at all. Something about qualifying to drive it. What’s this world coming to? I got the seniority, I should get the lift and the pay. That’s the way it is, right?”
Danny gently wrapped his fingers around his beer with his pink-tanned hands, took another sip and smiled gently, “If they offer training, you should take it. That way you got skills, man.”
I retorted a bit too loudly, “Skills! I have the SKILL. I’ve been driving their lifts since I left highschool. They owe me. They owe me, Danny.”
He shook his head with a small frown and took another sip, “No one owes you anything, BT. You have to make your own road. I keep telling you that.”
“Don’t start sounding like the man, Danny. I hate it when you do that. I was fine until you started sounding like the man.”
Ed moved his two glassed toward the back edge and motioned to Jack for a third, “Billie Todd Benson, you’re a whiner. You want to drive the truck? Challenge the job. Go to your rep and challenge for the job, that’s the ticket. You got the skill? You got the seniority? If she doesn’t have what it takes, challenge the job. You drive the truck - they gotta give it to ya.”
I got home later than normal. My small flat is just one bedroom… well, barely that. I didn’t need much after Norma left. Bitch. Left me for a Westerner, someone from California with a white-collar job and a pay raise. I opened the fridge and took out yesterday's take-out leftovers, dropped down onto my low sofa and turned on the TV. It buzzed and clinked and the image came into focus. I didn’t own any fancy stuff. It wasn’t one of those flat ones and worked fine, ‘just took a bit to come into focus.
I didn’t really follow the news much, but there was some kind of activity and enthusiasm or concern or something for some kind of asteroid or something in space. Damn scientists hogging the airwaves again with their useless space crap. They needed to focus on crap down here, not some pie in the sky.
I woke up at ten PM and crashed into bed, glancing quickly at my clock to make sure the alarm was still on.
The next morning I threw my clothes on. I’d tapped that snooze once too often and was already running late.
When I got into the warehouse I was already fifteen late for my shift and getting frowns from the Supervisor. Screw her. She didn’t know how to drive a lift anyway. I climbed into the next available lift and frowned. They’d left me the pig. The only one left and the one no one ever wanted. It was the oldest one and was harder to drive than the others.
At break, I went to find the union rep, “Dean, I need to talk to you?”
Dean Watson was my same age of thirty five, but he looked a lot younger, likely for sucking up to management all of the time. He was looking out at the broad warehouse with a thin smile and a nod. ‘Just like Danny, always smiling. That meant everything was moving smoothly. I was likely going to ruin that. But that is okay, he owed me. The union owed me.
“Dean, I ought to be driving that tall lift. She aint got nothing on me, it’s discrimination. You all got in bed with the company and are persecuting white people now.”
Dean was Irish and had a temper if you got him riled. I was starting to tread on that toe and wondered why he wouldn’t back me up.
“Billy Todd Benson. I told you yesterday. Everyone got the same notice to take the three week high-lift class to qualify for the rig. She is the only one who did. She did great, so she gets the rig, the class, the rating and the pay. You want to ride that rig? You need to take the class in the fall when they offer it again.”
“Bullshit, Dean. I can drive it now. I have the seniority. Don’t we have some kind of union challenge I can sign up for?”
Dean just raised his eyebrows. “Billy Todd, if you challenge, you have to drive the rig just as good as she does. If you can beat her, every time at every step, you can then petition for the rank and role. That’s how it is. Do you understand that?”
&nbs p; Of course I said yes. She is a… what is the politically correct word? She is a Hispanic. Talk about going over the edge! They preferred training a Hispanic immigrant or something over me. Well, her parents came here as immigrants anyway. She’s young and a female anyway. They have no right to put her in front of a guy. Just some PC bullshit is what I can figure.
Dean walked over to a forms station on the wall next to the time station, rummaged through the forms and pulled out a form for me to fill out, “Here you go, Billy Todd, fill it out… all of it... and hand it back to me. I’ll schedule the test. You can go online to our union website to look at the criteria. The Assistant Plant Manager and Senior Supervisor are going to want to watch as well, just so you know.”
I smiled confidently, “Then I’ll show them how it’s done.” My break was over so I had to wait until lunch to fill out the damn form. They already knew this stuff about me anyway, but I did what Dean said and put it all back down again, signed the form and handed it back to him. He just gave me a curt nod and went back to work. Jerk.
Friday came around for the lift test and I was starting to feel a bit nervous. I mean I can drive lift trucks. They’re all the same, right? I looked at the damn criteria for the test. It wasn’t just a drive, it was a safety test, a knowledge test and a drive test. Of all the frickin’ B.S., I just want to drive the lift truck and get the rating. They owe me the money.
There was a group there when I walked up. I had hit the toilet so was late. She’d already started, completed her safety check and was already moving to show how to lift high. Her name was Maria Lopez and she was young, just mid-twenties or something. I could tell she was good, but too slow up high. I had my plan, I can show them I can be faster than her. That was my ticket.
Several minutes later, she had moved the tall stack exactly twenty feet and restacked it perfectly. I started to get some butterflies in my stomach. She was very good. But, I’d show them.
She got out and walked back to the group barely nodding at me, no smile, no acknowledgement of rank, nothing. Bitch.
I looked at Dean and he nodded. I went over and quickly checked the truck out to make sure she hadn’t sabotaged anything. It was still pretty new and looked fine to me, so I got in and started it up. I looked for the brake and fumbled a bit to figure out I had to hold the pedal down to disengage the parking brake. I reddened a bit at her cheekiness of having left the parking brake on. I grimaced a bit and then started over to grab the top pallet thirty feet up.
I missed with the first attempt and the forks punctured the boxes. I shrugged. Everyone does that. I was a bit more careful, dropped them down a bit and nudged the lift forward to line up perfectly. I lifted the load and tilted the fork back. Now I’d show them my stuff. I tapped the gas… well the electric motor anyway... and the truck pulled back smoothly. I hit it again to show how I could turn it quickly and beat her time, but something happened at the top and the lift began to tilt while I was turning. I stopped quickly and barely caught the lift truck before it fell over by steering into the fall. It just saved the truck and pallet from falling over. I smiled. They would love that I had the skill to save a fall like that. I decided to go a bit more slowly and continue to unstack, move and restack. I pulled up and turned off the switch that provides power to the lift and got out.
I didn’t see any smiles and was surprised. What was going on here. I showed them I could drive it and even saved a fall. What the hell was going on.
They conferred for about two minutes, nodded at each other and walked away. That girl, Maria Lopez, got back in it and drove off, to continue her stacking.
Dean walked over to me to give me the good news. “Billy Todd, you failed the test.”
“What? I did great. What do you mean I failed the test?”
Dean frowned, “First, you didn’t safety check the rig correctly. Second, you hit the pallet product puncturing the boxes…”
“Everybody does that, everybody.”
He continued, “No, Billy, everybody doesn’t. You did, she didn’t.”
I started to complain and Dean held up his hand, “You clearly didn’t know the lift, you didn’t operate it safely, your stack is off set and crooked and she beat your time by more than a minute. She keeps the lift and the rate.”
“This is all, bullshit, Dean. You make up a silly test to give that immigrant a job I should have.”
“Carefull, Billy, or I’ll write you up. First, she was born here, just like you and me. She went to school here, just like you and me. She may have hispanic origins, but she is an American… just like YOU and ME. You’re pissed off because she is better than you and a female.”
“This is crap. I’m a man. I’m owed. I have bills and rent.”
Dean rolled his eyes, “Billy Todd, you are everything that is wrong with our union. You think because you are a man that she shouldn’t have the job? You have a RENT payment? She lives with her parents and her brother and is the sole provider to help feed them and make her MORTGAGE payment. Don’t give me crap about being a man. She deserves this more than you do, she trained for it, worked for it and qualified for it. You didn’t.”
“Why don’t her parents have jobs? Why doesn’t her brother have a job? See, they are just here milking the system to get free benefits…”
Dean was clearly angry with me. I didn’t understand that. I was just stating it the way it was.
“You are stupid, ignorant and bigoted. Do you know that? You think everything is against you and that everyone who is not white is milking the system. Her parents were both hurt in JOBS they had here by companies that didn’t CARE about their safety. Her brother is deaf and going to school so he can get a job. Jeez, Billy Todd, but you are a piece of work.”
I can’t stand it when people insult me. I may not be a big guy but I don’t like it when I’m insulted and it sounded like he was starting down that road, “Dean, don’t you start that. If you start to insult me, I’m going to get mad…”
Dean had already walked off ignoring me, just shaking his head as we went.
That afternoon, I shared the bad news with the beer gang. I was really disappointed that I didn’t get more sympathy from my bar buddies. I’d earned it.
The next day, Dean called our warehouse lift crew together. Maria Lopez was standing next to him with a thin, tentative smile. I’d like to wipe that off her face, I would. Dean motioned everyone to pay attention. “Good morning. You all know Maria. She has qualified for the Senior Lift Lead position and starts today, so you’ll all be taking your work and jobs from Maria going forward. Maria, do you have anything to add?”
Maria confidently stepped forward, “I am happy to work here with all of you. We’ll make a great team. We are fortunate that you all have so much experience and expertise with these lift trucks, we’re going to be safe and timely. I have your lift stations here and we’ll get started.”
Well, needless to say, the day sucked. I wasn’t going to give her any reason to disparage my work, so stayed focused and as safe as I could. I noticed the others were done before me and just knew I was going to get comments.
Sure enough, others chuckled when I finished last, but Maria stepped in and shook her head. “Team, it isn’t about finishing first. It is also about finishing safely. We have a lot of product to move, but you can’t move it if you’re hurt, someone else gets hurt, we damage the product, or hurt the trucks. Thank you, Billy Todd, for being careful and safe.”
