A Second Chance?

They had been waiting for generations. One group lined up behind the next, and the next. Sixty in all. Roughly thirty in each group. The clans had come together in what they hoped would be the final push to their independence. They were tired, they were angry, they were ready. The plan was to attack at noon. It was just after eleven.

Inside the farmhouse, they were nervous. They had never seen so many outside. Well, that’s not exactly true. They had seen this many, many times. Or more. Only before, they’d just swirled around in some random collection of black specks against the sky. But not today. Today they seemed prepared. Organized. As if they had some kind of plan. But that was impossible.

“What happens if worst comes to worst, and they attack in some kind of organized fashion?”

“Don’t be silly. There’s got to be an explanation. They can’t be organized. That’s impossible. That would mean…” he trailed off, not willing to complete his thought.

“Just supposing they do, what should we do? I mean, I have two shotguns, and maybe thirty, forty shells with me. There’s got to be a couple thousand of them out there. Even when they feed, shotgun blasts don’t bother them much. If they were organized somehow…”

“OK, worst case, we save our ammunition. We lock all the windows, the doors, seal up all the entrances. Just choose a spot, and pick ’em off as they come.”

He didn’t sound convinced of his own plan.

“And when we run out of shot?”

“Hunker down?”

“Why don’t we call the state police, they might know what to do.” She finally said. She had been quite the entire time.

“By the time they got out here, it would be too late. Sides, they wouldn’t us anyhow.”

They were all silent for several minutes. They were startle when the clock struck noon.

The leader felt the time was right. His kind didn’t need clocks or alarms. They just knew. They had developed a form of telepathic communication centuries before, and the elders of time past had agreed it would be best not to communicate with the humans. For what they knew about the past of the humans would plunge their world into eternal darkness.

For several thousand years they had allowed them to grow, to build, to prosper. To allow their cities to expand and envelope their own territory. But they had gone too far. They agreed they would never be able breach the communication barrier set up many thousands of years ago, for obvious reasons. It would mean certain doom. The humans had reached a critical mass, and the knowledge of they kept hidden would destroy not only them, but also everything else.

The elders had foreseen this, but had allowed them to flourish anyway. There had been hope they would see; that they would avoid what many thought was inevitable. But they hadn’t.

Now it was time.

The leader took off, sounding the cry of attack. Those that studied these particular species, had they been paying attention, would have noticed that his particular cry had never been heard before, never been catalogued in any scientific journal, never been studied and meaning determined.

This cry reserved for only the final battle. And to all those that heard it, and repeated it, it only meant one thing.

Kill them all. Quickly and without mercy.

“Jesus Mother of God!” He said, dropping his shotgun. The others stood, and outside the windows, off in the distance, the thousands of black figures took off as one, and formed a shape in the sky. A shape so terrifying and recognizable that it only meant one thing.

No hunkering down would save them, no running, no desperate call to the office of the state police. Shotgun shells, what little they had, would be useless.

The women among them fainted, and the men began to weep, and howl as children.

Death was coming. Fast.

The same scenario repeated, all over the world. Before sunset, the entire of humanity had been wiped completely off the face of the earth.

Almost.

There had been a few left alive. It was believed that the shock and horror of what they had seen sold wipe their memories clean.
They would be allowed to start over again. To spend hundreds of thousands of years wandering as nomads before inventing fire, and the wheel, agriculture, religion, and their gods. Perhaps it would be different next time.

Perhaps.

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