What if an Alien Invasion happened.....during an Alien Invasion?

Taken from a Reddit Writing Prompt. My story here can also be found here, as a comment on said writing prompt.

"The Waves of Warfare"




The boundaries between life and non-life are very, very fuzzy. There is great disparity between a man and a stone, true. But less so a cell and a virus. What is alive? What is not? If a Virus is not alive than how does it move about? How does it act?

Questions worth pondering for a Biologist, once upon a time. Something that could produce a pretty good thesis, maybe ever a career path, once upon a time.

Once upon a time is no longer, however.

Now, things are different.

The first wave had been organic. Actually, it had been only organic. It still remains a mystery how, exactly, the first wave got here; since they seem to have no technology whatsoever. We didn't notice they were here until we saw them the first time, after the 'assimilations' had started to get people's attention.

Oh, assimilations? Let me tell you all about it. Actually, no - lemme ask you. Have you ever seen a cat sprout three more eyes from its head? No? Then you've probably also never seen it, y'know, split its ribs open into wings like one of those gliding lizards from India. You've never seen its legs distend to a few feet longer, and then you've never seen it fly around making a noise that sounds like a cat being microwaved. I hope to God - the old one, Jesus or the Lord or whatever, not the Assimilating thing that some people took up worshiping - that they communicate verbally. That way I could believe those things were just talking to each other and the cat, cow, tree, person or whatever's been assimilated isn't alive and suffered beyond words. I wouldn't know - assimilated humans don't do a lot of talking.

I mean, beyond screams and gurgling and such.

It was like this for - what? Five years? Ten? It really doesn't matter anymore. Enough trees were infested and began pumping so much carbon dioxide that there's only been three things like winter since they arrived. They seem to like dark, warm, wet places like a fungus or certain insects, so of course the safest place is somewhere Up North; where most of the survivors (including myself) headed. There are sometimes dark, discolored clouds spreading through the sky - I got to examine some of the ashy, reeking detritus those clouds left behind and found they were some form of moss/bacteria hybrid these things have been using to darken the sky and thicken the air. Thankfully it takes a while before anything compatible with humans arrives, so usually we're able to be up and out of any places where that......stuff......starts appearing before the main biomass arrives there. I dunno if they can track us somehow, but even if they can it seems Alaska's a little too bright and definitely too cold for 'em.

Let's hope it stays that way.

Apparently New Zealand is the only place totally untouched and the drier parts of Australia haven't been seeing much issue. Northern Europe is doing alright, managing to hold its own against infestations. Any part of the world that used to be a jungle or rainforest has been devoured and replaced by their awful, pulsating abominations, and sometimes when the temperate regions - temperate regions being places like, y'know, Ontario, now - go cooler in winter, humans can pick among the various carcasses left behind for study. That's how we get most of ours nowadays. Cold showers and long, blindingly bright days are the norm. It gets pretty fucking depressing, but what the Infestations do to you would be hundreds upon millions of times worse, right?

Right.

It's cruel how used to it I was getting before the second wave arrived.

We thought it was them at first, the Infestations. We thought that we'd been set up when a radio relay asked for a hunting party, directing them to a small, nearby cabin. It seemed to be both impossible (well, as close to impossible as you get nowadays) and the confirmation of our worst fears: the Infestation somehow found a way to breach the safer, colder areas.

A Hunting Party of four was sent out to said cabin, which, it was found, was not under siege at all. It wasn't even inhabited.

Had they fled?

One survivor returned, badly shaken, starved and sleep-deprived. After a while we managed to get a coherent story out of him before he died. He said that something there - not one of the Infestation, not even a rival human faction or some combination thereof - had trapped them there. They went in and the doors locked, and the radio there relayed death and destruction from our end.......which was not happening.

And then the visions began.

The leader of the Hunting Party and the survivor's brother saw God, he said, and began channeling Jesus; the most popular deity of North America before the Infestation days. He got stigmata, he got miracles; but it was when he demanded suicides that the survivor tried to talk him out of it. From there, he was assailed with visions; with agonizing pains that he could not locate in his body or brain and with memories and dreams of people and places and things that are not real and never were.

He escaped and the whole way was drowned by things out of the corners of his eyes, things which he could only drown out with repeated mantras and speeches and bits of poetry and sayings he'd learned in school.

The second wave? We call them Demons. We don't know if there are numerous individuals or just one, multifaceted intelligence, but what we know is that they're nothing like the Infestation - this thing or these things? They aren't physical. It's noncorporeal, something that can possess and inhabit living things and objects and can whisper things and motives into people's minds. They're something like ghosts, if those things were ever real, in that they can manipulate radio transmissions. They can sound like dead loved ones or former celebrities or Gods; it was after a cameo appearance by former President Trump that this was revealed. President Trump, as we all knew, was publicly assimilated in the middle of one of his speeches. Arguably the only favor the Infestation has ever done for us.

We knew the two other sides were opposed to each other when we got the word from Europe that the Infestation there was beginning to descend upon itself; its various beings and creatures and reshapen organic abominations starting to devour each other. The clouds sinking into the sea and dissolving, the vertebrate ghouls eating each other (or sometimes themselves), the hideous masses deliberately going north and freezing to death before collapsing completely, all the while howling in their various ravaged voice boxes and former throats in what could only be unbearable agony.

The Demons were possessing the infested masses, and in Europe at least, it looked like they were succeeding.

So now we - and by we, I mean all the human species - have two big issues. Number one can take any organic mass and repurpose it towards a central intelligence, making any living thing from microbe to whale to grasslands a puzzle-piece to be reassembled for their own purposes and at their own whims.

The other does the same with the mind. The Demon(s) had an easier time subjugating the Infestation since the individual grotesqueries, at least, don't have much in the way of cognition. Humans can fight them off - somewhat. Electrical and magnetic signals of the right combinations, at the right times, can sometimes protect us from it or them; but this method is all too draining of energy and resources and all too unpredictable to make us invincible.

And us?

We can only hope one side is devastated beyond repair, and the other one gives up. We can only hope that maybe the Demons pass through worlds, and before leaving they're fine with taking out the Infestation for us. We can only hope that maybe we can find some way to keep them fighting, before one of them makes slaves of the other side and we're outnumbered and outranked beyond all and any chances for our survival - civilized or otherwise.

We can only hope.

That is the greatest weapon we have right now.

I know now my daughters will never see stars. Will never wonder and behold the awe and majesty of our universe like I used to. Even my memories are tainted now, knowing what was heading for us from some dead star; knowing what was coming. And now, in the wake of the second wave I can only wonder.

What else is hiding up there? Will we stand a chance against it? We barely survived these two and they don't seem done with us, this planet or each other by a long, long shot. What in God's name will the next wave bring?

The only thing worse than all of this can be the waiting. The waiting for the next wave. The waiting for whatever else is coming; coming to try and pillage one of the few lush and living isles of paradise, here in the endless wastes of silence we call the stars.

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