Dear Tristan,
I don't believe you'll receive this,
situation being what it is around here, but I thought it'd be best to
reflect on what little I've gleaned from my experience resisting the
invasion. To record it for posterity, with the hope that some clue
resides within my observations, that may be of use if society ever
reemerges from its current cruel masters.
In one sense this catastrophe is a
relief. My generation's been patiently, anxiously waiting our entire
life for the collapse of the global society. If it wasn't nuclear
war and winter, it was bound to be ecological collapse (whether a
lack of biodiversity – like the food chain collapsing when a
critical species goes extinct, or the creation of an inhospitable
earth through global warming, sea level rise, and a super-heated
atmosphere like Venus), antibiotic resistance, the second coming of
Christ, a devastating WW III occasioned by religious hatred in the
Middle East, a pandemic whether by Nature's invention or our own, a
White Sky caused by the disintegration of the moon by a rogue black
hole, an asteroid impact, a giant solar flare, a super-volcano
explosion like the caldera in Yellowstone, or an alien invasion from
outer space or some other humanity annihilating calamity.
With all these possible anxieties (and
more), it's a relief to finally experience the apocalypse even if it
only approaches inch by inch and yard by yard.
I noticed it first where my lawn meets
the woods. Down where the shade ceases and the sun reigns. In
retrospect I must have seen this alien before, but its existence had
failed to impinge on my consciousness. I didn't realize the
creeping, subversive threat was already spreading its tendrils across
the United States.
At first I gladly joined the fight,
enlisting my neighbors as allies against the invasion. We wielded
whatever we could find close at hand; shovels and shears. The enemy
seemed to die beneath our tools, but it was August and we didn't
realize its death was only slumber, for it needed the Spring and
Summer sun to fight with full strength. In this sense, the enemy was
like a strange permutation of those great Victorian villains of the
night.
The next spring it return, and we cut
it back again with great slashes, but this time, it resurfaced within
days, undaunted by our pathetic tools. In desperation we turned to
weapons of war, weapons of mass destruction. These inflicted a
significant number of friendly fire incidents, wounding those on the
front lines, but
When the enemy receded for the fall, we
began digging the earth, creating moats, between us and the enemies
fibrous fortifications. We thought our defenses would impeded its
movement in the spring, but was were wrong.
Next year they ambushed us. During the
preceding Spring, Summer and fall, the enemy'd dug tunnels and
appeared from behind, putting our trenches to naught.
It was some time in the second year,
that I was alerted to the progress of the foreign invasion across the
State. Enacted so silently, so skillfully, it might more rightly
have been termed an infiltration, as the enemy stood in plain sight,
beside other, more respectable citizens of the natural community.
But before the enemy had withdrawn its mask of peace and announced
the end of mankind as its ultimate goal. I was one the of the
minority, initiated as a witness the danger, one of the useless,
bleating, unheeded Kassandras. Indeed my former acquaintances, began
to believe me afflicted by some strange malady of insanity, but no,
it was they who couldn't see the end of the quintessential American
yard even though its end was approaching day by day.
In that third year we surrendered our
forward position, retreating with the vain hope of staunching the
invasion before it could reach our houses. It had become a flood of
green, lapping at the cement and cinder blocks which formed the base
of our fortresses. Outside only the tallest man could keep their
head above the new tide, while others swam beneath its waving
surface.
With their victory complete outright
war was abandoned. Now we were the minority, but resistance did not
cease entirely. The war became one of intelligence and
investigation. We would find out the alien's weakness and learn how
to destroy it. To do so we ventured out, swallowed up immediately by
the growth. But it was easier to study this way in an aspect of
peace. Bending down, I examined the roots. Red, wrapped in green as
if the plant had blood, coursing through it, the blood of the humans
it had displaced. For you see, the desperate and the well to do,
fled.
We thought the invaders would be
generous in victory, that they would let us keep our islands of
serenity in a great sea of green tinged with red. But no, it wasn't
so. The aliens began to remake the city in their own image. Roads,
sidewalk, driveways, other paved surfaces were the first to be torn
down. Reaching up out of the earth like bloodied fingers, our
overlords ripped our feeble asphalt and concrete coverings apart.
Still some held out hope that our shelters would be spared.
Then, one day, our compatriot and spy,
Ethan, reported what we had all feared. There were aliens in his
basement. They'd dug tunnels underneath his house and come up
through the cement. We sent out desperate calls on the few radios
available (our telephone poles had been toppled weeks earlier). We
learned that our location was the worst, but elsewhere the invasion
was proceeding just as surely. No one offered comfort for any
adults, but the town's children were offered sanctuary at distant
shores, and so they were sent away (as you well know). Then a former
mayor gathered the town declared his intent to return to direct
conflict. Since the enemy would show no mercy, he would lead any
willing to take up arms once more and fight even if defeat was
already our fate.
Some went with him, though less than
half, and we huddled in our shelters, whose fragility had been
revealed by our relentless foe. Outside we heard such monstrous
noises, of the hack of sharpened tools on flesh, the ghastly
spreading of chemical weapons, and the flash and hiss of fire. The
day turned early into night, as flame spread, and many within cursed
the foulness of those who resisted in vain, for some fortresses
caught fire, and the whole sky turned as black as charcoal. When the
day broke it was smeared with smoke and some warriors did not return
home from their ordeal.
Afterward their leader spoke excitedly
of the thousands of enemies mown down by steel, glyphosate, and
flame, but when the others spoke it was of the necessity of
surrender. He called us and them cowards, and when everyone
renounced his tactics, he left us. The next day he was found, tied
to a particular vigorous specimen.
Now we have scattered as our shelters
have been cracked like crab shells by a gull, and we seek only to
rise above these behemoths and see the sun. If you read this my son,
maybe you will see some clue, and if not know we have done everything
possible to slow this invasion where we stand.
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