The Time of The Cat 59
GETTING ORGANIZED
Liz and I finally woke up on our own. It was almost dusk. We’d slept through the entire day without waking. I stretched and realized that Liz was curled up against my side with her back to me. My stretching was complicated by the heavyweight that was holding the covers down between my legs, trapping them in a moderately uncomfortable position. I reached down to see what it was and felt a warm bundle of fur. My touch immediately elicited a burst of purring.
Jefferson stood up, stretched as only a cat can, and then walked up my body, carefully selecting the most sensitive spots to step on as he came. I tried not to flinch too much. His bed manners definitely needed fine-tuning, but I realized that sleeping with humans was probably a new thing for him. He’d always given the impression that he was an independent street cat.
I suddenly had the idea that I should try and contact his mind. It was more difficult than contacting Liz and also harder than touching the Pug-bears’ minds. I thought that the aliens were easy due to the way I’d been endowed with my abilities. The ‘Ancient One’ had inadvertently given me a deep insight into their mental structure, making it easy to locate them in the energy field.
Our cat, however, had a tightly wrapped, compact mental field. I’d sensed it before on the mountainside but never tried for a deeper contact. This time I reached for a level at which I could feel some of his thoughts. They were lightning-quick flickers without much depth to them, but I got a distinct sense that he approved of us and liked the comfortable bed.
I got the impression that he somehow could sense my contact. He turned and stared fixedly into my eyes and then walked up my chest and touched noses with me. I held my breath in astonishment as he gave me the ultimate cat sign of approval. He sort of kneaded my chest with his front feet and licked my nose. It was only a tiny flick of his tongue, but it was the most intimate sign of affection that he could give to a human. I read it in his mind as a warm glow of happiness that he was here with us now.
The amazing moment was ruined by his hind feet. They were, unfortunately, poking directly and uncomfortably into my solar plexus. I moved him gently off my chest and to my side where I could stroke his back. He lay down and begin a soft, steady purr.
The activity woke Liz up, and she stretched and murmured a little as I rubbed my right hand up and down her back. Shortly, she rolled over and looked into my eyes. We kissed, and then she happened to look over my head at the clock on the nightstand.
“Oh, my! We’ve slept through the whole day! We’d better get ready for the Mayor’s meeting,” she exclaimed.
I was more than ready to relax longer, like maybe until tomorrow, but I sighed and moved the cat so that I could swing my legs out of bed. I started to throw off the covers, but she giggled in a way that I’d not previously heard and grabbed me around the waist, pulling me back towards her.
“Maybe the Mayor won’t mind waiting a few minutes longer,” she whispered.
After a while, I found that she had her own purr. It was one that I wanted to hear repeatedly in the future.
We got out of bed, cleaned up, and got dressed. Jefferson watched from his perch on a chair and did his own wash-up routine, licking his paws and rubbing them on his face. When we were ready, we left the condo and knocked on our Florida friends’ door.
Mike stuck his head out after a little pause and invited us in. We stood just inside the door as he and his wife, Nancy, got ready, and then we all left the building and walked downtown to the meeting that the Mayor had scheduled for eight PM.
When we got to the Town Center building, there were a lot of people standing around talking. The Sheriff came over to us, saying that there were too many people to meet inside, so we’d have to speak to the group out on the sidewalk.
The Mayor came up, saw us, shook my hand, and then turned to the noisy crowd. He placed his index fingers into his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, which was loud enough to make my ears hurt. It forced Liz to take a firmer grip on Jefferson.
The folks quit talking and turned towards us, and the Mayor proceeded to start the meeting. He spoke for quite a while. I’ll summarize rather than try to quote him verbatim since he was rather long-winded.
He told them that he had new information that was important. Carefully avoiding any mention of atom bombs or aliens, he said that it looked like they were on their own and would need to get organized to have the best chance of survival in the months to come. He said that he knew that the townspeople had a lot of skills and there were resources that they could draw upon to help everyone get along.
He spent quite a bit of time on the concept of community teamwork and how everyone would have to share food resources and not hog food for themselves. He’d calculated things out, and he thought that they could get plenty of meat since the local elk herd was plentiful and there was a lot of lake trout in the lake that could be easily caught. Chickens were most valuable, not for eating, but for eggs. He allowed as how they’d have to let the chicken flocks that were owned by a few of the residents grow until they were numerous enough so that some birds could be slaughtered.
Some of the people were getting restive and fidgety. Finally, one older lady that looked like she didn’t take any guff from anyone interrupted him, “OK, Harvey, that’s just about enough organizing out of you. What we want to know is what’s happened with our power and the phones and TV. I’m missing my favorite program right now! I was given to understand that you had someone who could tell us what’s going on.”
“Now, Martha Perkins,” he said, “It’s just like you to interrupt me when I’m just getting started, but – ” Here, he held up his hand in a stopping motion as she was about to interrupt again. Then he continued, “This young man here has come over the pass from Estes Park, and he seems to have a complete grip on what’s been happening. In the interest of getting the information out as fast as possible, I’d like to introduce...”
He glanced at me and paused again, realizing that he didn’t know my name. I stepped forward and began to speak.
“My name is Declan Dunham. I’m going to tell you what I know about what’s happened. It’s going to be difficult for you to believe, but the proof lies in the fact that nothing that uses digital electronics or the power system will work.”
“Take it on faith that I’m not making anything up, and hold your questions until later. I’ll try and answer them when I’m done,” I took a breath and mentally tried to organize my thoughts. I hadn’t really planned on what I was going to say, and the presence of so many people made me a little nervous, but then I realized that I only had to tell them what they needed to know.
“The Earth has been invaded by aliens,” I started. This statement was met by a collective gasp and some quiet comments that didn’t sound as if they were convinced.
“Elizabeth and I have been fighting the things for several days. There are three types of aliens. The one that was killed in the street this morning right in front of where I’m standing was a member of the race that is responsible for the invasion.”
“There’s that kind of alien; we’ve taken to calling them ‘Pug-bears’ because they are somewhat bear-like in size, but the difference is pretty extreme. They’re hard to kill; their hard shell protects them from lighter caliber firearms, so it takes quite a few shots to slow them down. They also have a very deadly poison on all of their claws and in their bite. I don’t know what other parts of them are poisonous, but it’s best to kill the things and leave them alone after they’re dead. I’ve seen a man die from simply getting a small scratch from a dead one’s claw.”
“The second type of alien is humanoid in shape, and when they disguise themselves, they can actually pass as humans as long as you don’t look too closely. They don’t move like we do. Their movements give you the feel of a snake in some fashion, and their native speech is largely hissing sounds. They’re very tough. Pistol shots won’t kill them, even if you shoot them in the head. I don’t know about high-power rifles. We call this kind, ‘Pugs.’”
“The third type of alien isn’t something you’ll see directly. They’re a kind of parasite that grows in the Pug-bear’s head. It may be the species that is truly responsible for the invasion because it somehow gives the Pug-bears intelligence. Without the parasite, they’re no more intelligent, although more dangerous, than a grizzly bear. I’ve been calling the stupid ones ‘Feral Pug-bears.’”
“As part of their invasion, the Pugs set up a matter transporter network that connected places all over the Earth. These transporters worked just about like the ones you’ve probably seen in science fiction movies. They were using them to move cocaine and counterfeit money around in an attempt to soften up our defenses prior to openly invading. They have an unknown number of human collaborators, and the Secretary of State was one.”
I had to wait because that disclosure created an outraged murmur in the crowd.
“We believe the Pugs and Pug-bears eat humans. We know that they have been capturing a lot of people from all over and taking them to one of the moons of Saturn. We also know that the people haven’t come back.”
I had to wait again while the sound died out.
“That’s not the worst of the story. The Pug-bears lay eggs, and these hatch into foot-long, spider-like creatures that are poisonous. We’ve seen them feeding on corpses. Any left alive will eventually grow into Feral Pug-bears. If they have access to the parasite’s eggs, they can become infected and become intelligent. The intelligent ones have the ability to mentally dominate the Pugs and any humans they encounter.”
I surveyed the crowd. They were spellbound but unconvinced.
“I know this is a lot to swallow at once, but there is some good news in the story. We managed to blow up their base on Titan, the moon of Saturn I mentioned. Its destruction caused their entire matter transmitter network to blow up, and they can no longer travel on our planet without our knowledge. The loss of the transmitter network will keep them from bringing any more reinforcements to Earth. The parasite eggs have to be manually carried to Earth anyway. They can’t go through the transporters. There may be a store of them here, or there may not. I think that they had only gotten around to transporting a small amount to Earth before we blew up their main supply on Titan. If there aren’t any here, it should mean that the spiders that escape us and grow into Feral Pug-bears won’t become intelligent. They have to be fed the eggs anyway. They don’t automatically seek them out, so we may be OK, even if there are some already here.”
“The other good thing is that the Pugs, the humanoid aliens, can’t breathe our atmosphere without some kind of respirator. They will most likely die in the next few days when their supplies run out. They will shortly cease to be a problem for us. Since they’re responsible for feeding the eggs to the Feral Pug-bears, there should be fewer and fewer intelligent ones. Our main problem is that the Feral Pug-bears and spiders will have to be killed individually. If we don’t get them all, they may continue to breed. They’re dangerous enough that they could gradually dominate Earth, even without the parasite’s intelligence.”
“Now, here’s the worst news. The invasion plan included destruction of our ability to fight back. They planned to set off an atomic burst causing an electromagnetic pulse that would destroy our electronics and paralyze our society. The aliens were successful in launching a missile from Russia, and the bomb went off this morning. They may have shot other bombs over other countries as well. I simply don’t know.”
I looked around at the crowd. Now they were paying close attention to my words. They had seen the direct result of the EMP burst and knew that I was telling the truth.
“This EMP burst is going to cause the deaths of probably half of the people on the globe and maybe more.”
They gasped and began to talk to each other.
I shouted over the chatter, “Our society was not prepared for a disaster like this, and the cities are going to suffer the worst. Right now, cities are running out of water, and they’ll mostly be out of food in two or three days. There won’t be any trucks or trains of supplies coming. Most of the vehicles are inoperable due to the EMP burst. Older vehicles with a mechanical distributor will probably still run, though.”
“As the people in the cities begin to starve, many of them will try to walk out. They won’t get more than about a hundred miles. The countryside will be scavenged clean; there will be no food, so they won’t get far. There will be some of the city folk who form gangs and prey on the others, stealing their supplies. We’re located far enough here from any major cities that I don’t think many refugees will make it this far. However, given time for the gangs to sort themselves out, some of them may show up, and we may have to fight in order to keep our supplies and freedom.”
“We’ll need to do the following things: First, we have to take steps to make sure we have food and water enough for everyone that lives here. We’ll need to make our food supply sustainable by gardening, fishing, hunting, whatever, because there aren’t going to be any more trucks of supplies coming over the mountains. I’ve asked the Mayor to come up with a list of people and resources that we have.”
“Second, we need to organize a defensive force against any of the aliens that show up – they’re disorganized, and most will be feral, but they are still very dangerous. We’ll need the heaviest guns we’ve got to take them out, and we can’t afford to waste ammunition because there won’t be any more unless we make it ourselves.”
“Third, the defensive force must be on the alert for refugees. Hard though it is to think about, if we let a lot of refugees in, they can easily overtax our ability to support ourselves. If they have skills to offer that outweigh their need for our resources, we might consider letting them stay, but otherwise...” I paused to let that sink in. The audience was watching me with wide eyes as they realized what the practical aspects of turning people away would mean.
“The fourth thing we have to worry about is gangs. These will probably become more organized after a month or so. Some people are naturally oriented towards using force on others, and they will form gangs to stay alive by robbing or attacking anyone who has food. They will be a threat that we’ll have to fight off with our utmost ability.”
“I’m going to ask the Mayor and Sheriff to figure out how we can block the roads to keep refugees and gangs out of our area. I believe that we’ll have our hands full feeding ourselves. Medical supplies will also be scarce, so you’ll want to avoid accidents and try to stay healthy. There may not be much we can do for you if you’re injured or get an infection. Basically, we’ve just gone back in time to the seventeen hundreds.”
I stopped and looked around, then asked, “Any questions?”
There wasn’t a single one. They were too busy processing everything I’d said to think of anything to ask.
The Mayor stepped up and began to get them organized.