invade - part 01 - the beginning
Nov. 1st, 2006 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eWell, here it is, the first part. I hope I finish it. It feels like it could grow into a good story. I know some of where it is going, but a lot of it I'm hoping will write itself.
This, my first installment is not a great way to start, coming in at just 1,643 words. I need to get 2,000 words out each day to make the 50,000 target, allowing for off days. Maybe I'll get more done tonight.
I should get some work done for the rest of the day. This year I'm going to try to do the impossible: do NaNoWriMo and other things. :)
OK. Here is it, behind the cut:
It seemed everyone else was as astonished as she was. She just stood there, uncomprehending that such a thing could happen here. On the streets and footpaths all the other cars and pedestrians had stopped to stare, agape, similarly stunned. How could this be?
Inaction lasted only seconds, though it felt like it stretched for minutes. People began to move; some running. Cars started driving again. There was no screaming like in the movies. Though it might be different nearer the destroyed buildings.
She ran inside, up the stairs to her room, and started packing her things.
She could imagine how these things went. This was a major city. It would be high on the list of places to control, for any potential invader. And that had her frowning. Who could possibly want to make war? She couldn't believe it somehow. It must be some kind of mistake. But what kind of mistake blows up several multistorey buildings in a capitol city? She hadn't got a proper look in the fraction of a second available and the dark, but they'd seemed to be military jets flying in formation. Blowing up one building could conceivably be some kind of terrible mistake, but several? She couldn't see it being terrorists either. Terrorists might possibly steal one jet... perhaps even a couple... but several??
The suitcase was now full of clothes.
The lights went out. Oh great. She turned and looked out her single window. Outside, the city of light was a dark shadow. Perhaps the power station had been hit.
Carefully, she felt her way to her wind-up torch on her bedside table, clicked it on, and went to the kitchenette, got some candles, lit them, and pocketed the matches.
By candlelight she went to her desk, unplugged the computer, folded it up and slid it between the layers of clothing for protection, then closed the suitcase. The computer was her pride and joy. It had set her back a couple of month's pay -- even more expensive than her car -- and was less than a year old.
She filled her backpack with things that would be useful during the long drive -- snacks (biscuits, nuts, pumpkin seeds, and dried fruit), a 2 litre bottle of water, her wind-up torch, and on impulse, a large packet of powdered milk and a bottle of instant coffee powder. It was hundreds of kilometers to her parents' place, well out of the city, on a farm in the country. She should be safe there for as long as it took for this, whatever it was, to blow over.
Next she grabbed a shopping bag and put a couple of folders of mass-storage backups of her work in it. She pulled the feather doona from her small bed and tried to stuff it into the shopping bag. It wouldn't fit, so she crammed it into the backpack, leaving the top unzippered. Her handheld was still at her hip.
It made sense to go to the toilet before a long journey. She came back out with a roll of toilet paper and her toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and a cake of soap in a small bag. The small bag got forced down the side of the doona in her pack and the roll of toilet paper dropped in the shopping bag.
It occurred to her she hadn't called her parents, so she pulled the handheld from its pouch and tried to contact them. The cell network was down (of course -- power was out) so she tried the peer-to-peer, but it was so clogged she simply sent a text message saying she was OK and she was leaving tonight, that she'd see them tomorrow night or the following morning.
Angie was not tall, even for a woman. She was thick-set, but without any fat. Her physique was almost masculine and she didn't improve matters with her short black hair and tendency to wear t-shirts, jeans, and boots. Her face might have been nice, but for a habitual frown which thinned her mouth, darkened her eyes, and made her look intimidating. She didn't make friends easily because she was painfully shy and the falsely grumpy appearance tended to ward people off. In truth she was a sweet, straightforward, deeply romantic woman. Most people would never have suspected it though. Most people think they are experts at assessing people easily, when really all they do is prejudge based the shallowest of impressions. Angie was a long-term casualty of that.
She stood in the middle of the room and looked around. White walls with rainforest poster, grey carpet, imitation woodgrain desk, gooseneck lamp, bright little single bed which she'd never got to share (she felt a pang at that). Goodbye room... for how long? she wondered. Her eyes fell on the plants on the windowsill. Sorry plants.
The wind-up torch's neck strap went over her head, so that the torch hung in front of her, shining down at her feet. She blew out the candles. Then she slung the backpack over her shoulders, and taking the suitcase in one hand, pillow under one arm, and shopping bag in the other hand, she left her little apartment, letting the door click shut behind her.
She hurried down the corridor to the stairwell, then down to her little white car in the small apartment block garage. There were several people loading kids and suitcases into their cars too. Angie dropped the suitcase on her back seat along with the shopping bag of mass-storage, shrugged off the backpack and put it on the passenger seat for easy access to the nibbles, got into the car, started it up, and drove out onto the street.
The street was full of cars. In spite of the number of vehicles, traffic was moving well. It was strange to see the city like this: nighttime, but no street lights, the car LEDlights the only source of illumination. the roads were full of cars. There were almost no pedestrians at all. It gave everything a strange air of unreality, as if it was all a dream. Angie suspected the full realisation hadn't yet hit her. She felt like she was coping perfectly well, and that was good. Now was not the time to be paralysed with emotion. So she negotiated the traffic and dealt with the situation at hand, letting the car handle the fine points of driving, leaving her free to simply direct it.
On her way out of the city she saw a few examples of people who had brashly taken full manual override on their cars and had managed to crash them in their headlong flight, sometimes into other people's cars. She shook her head to herself each time. How could people be so foolhardy? It was because most people left their cars in control that the traffic moved so well. Traffic merged and parted like a mechanical ballet, cross-currents flowed seamlessly through each other at intersections, cars knowing when to speed up, slow down, give way, move ahead. And it was all done quietly in sleek, brightly colored electric cars, most of them wheeled, but a few legged.
It took Angie some hours to finally get beyond the sprawling suburbs, to the treed hills far to the west of the city. Out here cars were much fewer. It was almost midnight. She'd asked the car to check the net for news, with no luck. That puzzled her. Perhaps it was too early, she thought. The car had enough power to last it well into tomorrow so she'd had some biscuits and fruit, covered herself with the doona, and reclined her seat to try to catch some sleep.
She lay there inside her little car hurtling along through the night. Her mind wouldn't stop. She kept going over and over the evening's events. What happened tonight? Was our country invaded? Who would do such a thing?
---
Eventually she must have slept because she awoke to the grey predawn feebly lighting the dark land around her. The car had found its way across the hills and now flat plains stretched out before her. She had a drink of water from her bottle and a snack of biscuits. Checking the net maps of the area she realised her full bladder wouldn't wait for civilisation so she pulled the car over to the side of the road. After relieving herself, she stretched her legs a bit, walking back and forth in the cool, early morning. Birds were chorusing as if nothing was wrong with the world. The air was sharp and bracing, misting her breath, though she knew it would be quite hot out here later today. She turned to stride back to her little car when she heard that shrieking roar of jets in the distance. She searched the sky in the direction of the sound. Nothing. She found she was standing tensely, shaking, fists balled, teeth clenched, eyes wide.
She clambered back into her car and resumed the journey.
Somehow she'd felt the invaders would only attack the city, but there was no reason for them to concentrate their efforts solely there. Of course there was another possibility: this second lot of jets could have been defense forces. Her dread wouldn't let her believe that though. It was the bad guys. She felt sure of it.
This, my first installment is not a great way to start, coming in at just 1,643 words. I need to get 2,000 words out each day to make the 50,000 target, allowing for off days. Maybe I'll get more done tonight.
I should get some work done for the rest of the day. This year I'm going to try to do the impossible: do NaNoWriMo and other things. :)
OK. Here is it, behind the cut:
Invade
the beginning
Angie was arriving home after dark. It had been a long, long day at work. Standing on the front porch to the apartment building she suddenly heard, then saw, a group of perhaps six or seven low-flying jets roar over her head and disappear beyond the city skyline as a series of buildings blossomed into balls of flame. One second?... two? and she was hit in the chest with the shock waves from the explosions.It seemed everyone else was as astonished as she was. She just stood there, uncomprehending that such a thing could happen here. On the streets and footpaths all the other cars and pedestrians had stopped to stare, agape, similarly stunned. How could this be?
Inaction lasted only seconds, though it felt like it stretched for minutes. People began to move; some running. Cars started driving again. There was no screaming like in the movies. Though it might be different nearer the destroyed buildings.
She ran inside, up the stairs to her room, and started packing her things.
She could imagine how these things went. This was a major city. It would be high on the list of places to control, for any potential invader. And that had her frowning. Who could possibly want to make war? She couldn't believe it somehow. It must be some kind of mistake. But what kind of mistake blows up several multistorey buildings in a capitol city? She hadn't got a proper look in the fraction of a second available and the dark, but they'd seemed to be military jets flying in formation. Blowing up one building could conceivably be some kind of terrible mistake, but several? She couldn't see it being terrorists either. Terrorists might possibly steal one jet... perhaps even a couple... but several??
The suitcase was now full of clothes.
The lights went out. Oh great. She turned and looked out her single window. Outside, the city of light was a dark shadow. Perhaps the power station had been hit.
Carefully, she felt her way to her wind-up torch on her bedside table, clicked it on, and went to the kitchenette, got some candles, lit them, and pocketed the matches.
By candlelight she went to her desk, unplugged the computer, folded it up and slid it between the layers of clothing for protection, then closed the suitcase. The computer was her pride and joy. It had set her back a couple of month's pay -- even more expensive than her car -- and was less than a year old.
She filled her backpack with things that would be useful during the long drive -- snacks (biscuits, nuts, pumpkin seeds, and dried fruit), a 2 litre bottle of water, her wind-up torch, and on impulse, a large packet of powdered milk and a bottle of instant coffee powder. It was hundreds of kilometers to her parents' place, well out of the city, on a farm in the country. She should be safe there for as long as it took for this, whatever it was, to blow over.
Next she grabbed a shopping bag and put a couple of folders of mass-storage backups of her work in it. She pulled the feather doona from her small bed and tried to stuff it into the shopping bag. It wouldn't fit, so she crammed it into the backpack, leaving the top unzippered. Her handheld was still at her hip.
It made sense to go to the toilet before a long journey. She came back out with a roll of toilet paper and her toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and a cake of soap in a small bag. The small bag got forced down the side of the doona in her pack and the roll of toilet paper dropped in the shopping bag.
It occurred to her she hadn't called her parents, so she pulled the handheld from its pouch and tried to contact them. The cell network was down (of course -- power was out) so she tried the peer-to-peer, but it was so clogged she simply sent a text message saying she was OK and she was leaving tonight, that she'd see them tomorrow night or the following morning.
Angie was not tall, even for a woman. She was thick-set, but without any fat. Her physique was almost masculine and she didn't improve matters with her short black hair and tendency to wear t-shirts, jeans, and boots. Her face might have been nice, but for a habitual frown which thinned her mouth, darkened her eyes, and made her look intimidating. She didn't make friends easily because she was painfully shy and the falsely grumpy appearance tended to ward people off. In truth she was a sweet, straightforward, deeply romantic woman. Most people would never have suspected it though. Most people think they are experts at assessing people easily, when really all they do is prejudge based the shallowest of impressions. Angie was a long-term casualty of that.
She stood in the middle of the room and looked around. White walls with rainforest poster, grey carpet, imitation woodgrain desk, gooseneck lamp, bright little single bed which she'd never got to share (she felt a pang at that). Goodbye room... for how long? she wondered. Her eyes fell on the plants on the windowsill. Sorry plants.
The wind-up torch's neck strap went over her head, so that the torch hung in front of her, shining down at her feet. She blew out the candles. Then she slung the backpack over her shoulders, and taking the suitcase in one hand, pillow under one arm, and shopping bag in the other hand, she left her little apartment, letting the door click shut behind her.
She hurried down the corridor to the stairwell, then down to her little white car in the small apartment block garage. There were several people loading kids and suitcases into their cars too. Angie dropped the suitcase on her back seat along with the shopping bag of mass-storage, shrugged off the backpack and put it on the passenger seat for easy access to the nibbles, got into the car, started it up, and drove out onto the street.
The street was full of cars. In spite of the number of vehicles, traffic was moving well. It was strange to see the city like this: nighttime, but no street lights, the car LEDlights the only source of illumination. the roads were full of cars. There were almost no pedestrians at all. It gave everything a strange air of unreality, as if it was all a dream. Angie suspected the full realisation hadn't yet hit her. She felt like she was coping perfectly well, and that was good. Now was not the time to be paralysed with emotion. So she negotiated the traffic and dealt with the situation at hand, letting the car handle the fine points of driving, leaving her free to simply direct it.
On her way out of the city she saw a few examples of people who had brashly taken full manual override on their cars and had managed to crash them in their headlong flight, sometimes into other people's cars. She shook her head to herself each time. How could people be so foolhardy? It was because most people left their cars in control that the traffic moved so well. Traffic merged and parted like a mechanical ballet, cross-currents flowed seamlessly through each other at intersections, cars knowing when to speed up, slow down, give way, move ahead. And it was all done quietly in sleek, brightly colored electric cars, most of them wheeled, but a few legged.
It took Angie some hours to finally get beyond the sprawling suburbs, to the treed hills far to the west of the city. Out here cars were much fewer. It was almost midnight. She'd asked the car to check the net for news, with no luck. That puzzled her. Perhaps it was too early, she thought. The car had enough power to last it well into tomorrow so she'd had some biscuits and fruit, covered herself with the doona, and reclined her seat to try to catch some sleep.
She lay there inside her little car hurtling along through the night. Her mind wouldn't stop. She kept going over and over the evening's events. What happened tonight? Was our country invaded? Who would do such a thing?
---
Eventually she must have slept because she awoke to the grey predawn feebly lighting the dark land around her. The car had found its way across the hills and now flat plains stretched out before her. She had a drink of water from her bottle and a snack of biscuits. Checking the net maps of the area she realised her full bladder wouldn't wait for civilisation so she pulled the car over to the side of the road. After relieving herself, she stretched her legs a bit, walking back and forth in the cool, early morning. Birds were chorusing as if nothing was wrong with the world. The air was sharp and bracing, misting her breath, though she knew it would be quite hot out here later today. She turned to stride back to her little car when she heard that shrieking roar of jets in the distance. She searched the sky in the direction of the sound. Nothing. She found she was standing tensely, shaking, fists balled, teeth clenched, eyes wide.
She clambered back into her car and resumed the journey.
Somehow she'd felt the invaders would only attack the city, but there was no reason for them to concentrate their efforts solely there. Of course there was another possibility: this second lot of jets could have been defense forces. Her dread wouldn't let her believe that though. It was the bad guys. She felt sure of it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Sounds good!
Date: 2006-11-01 05:37 am (UTC)Re: Sounds good!
Date: 2006-11-01 05:54 am (UTC)Thanks. I hope it goes OK.
Are you doing the NaNoWriMo this year? (I'm so confused, I can't remember anymore who is and who isn't.)