The sunlight gleamed off the water of the bay like sparkling glitter. It was beautiful and peaceful. I was sitting on the banks of a large estate. It was an old, grand home. It was the kind that you read about in the old, old, books, like the Great Gatsby. It was a palatial sprawling mansion with art deco architecture. The mansion was a dark gray color with white accents. There were over twenty bedrooms inside the house, and ten more small cottages around the grounds that were used for servants back in the day. Inside the mansion were chandeliers, marble floors, beautiful, luxurious furnishings, and a big library.
Outside the house was a small park just outside the west wing of the mansion. Here there were amazing gardens with big trees and flowering vines, herbs, and fruit trees. On the left side of the mansion, just outside the left wing of the home, was a large swimming pool with many fountains that had now turned green with moss and leaves. The front of the mansion, just off the main road, was a massive brick wall with large shrubs growing all over it. This large wall encompassed the entire property in a horseshoe fashion. The gate was strong, and at one point I am sure that many celebrities and movie stars drove in through those gates to come to this compound. On the open side of the horseshoe wall was where I sat. It was the back of the mansion that had a sprawling green lawn that faced the bay.
There was a long pier that jutted out from the lawn into the water. This mansion compound was a paradise, or was at one time. Now, Willow Springs was a sanctuary. The great wall was our defense against the Clenok cyborgs that had taken over Earth several years before.
The park with the fruit and herbs was part of our food resources. The bay protected us from the backside from the Clenok cyborgs that did not travel over water. It was also an evacuation point if the Clenok cyborgs were ever to assault us from the road side; we would evacuate onto boats and leave. We had been fortunate to find this compound and to never be attacked here. It seemed that the Clenok did not know of its existence and we counted our blessings every day for that truth.
There were only eighty or so people in this compound. It was more than the compound could handle, but we made do by having people share rooms, sometimes three or four to a bedroom to sleep, and turning the mini large massive rooms like the ballroom, the conservatory, and the parlors into bedrooms as well. We were lucky to have access to a library full of books, and an entire bookcase full of survival books that taught us how to create a well for water, treat the water, grow food, and make things like boats and other necessities. We had to all go back to the old ways after computers were banned—those of us humans that were left anyway.
We did not know how many humans were left on Earth. We were in isolation, and as far as we knew, we were the only humans within a one-hundred-mile radius. We did not dare travel more than thirty miles whenever we needed to go on a supply run, which usually meant breaking into other abandoned homes and taking what resources we could find. If we found a family hiding there, we would invite them to join us at the compound; that had happened two times before in the years that I had been living at Willow Springs with my twin sister Hannah.
Hannah and I came to the compound by accident. We were vacationing on Long Island in a bed and breakfast at the south end of the island when the first wave of Clenok cyborgs hit our home city of Atlanta, Georgia. We had lost everything: our family and our homes. The city was closed, and all travel had been stopped. There was no way to get home. So we just stayed where we were. At the time, we thought the cyborgs would be crushed in no time by all the militaries of Earth. We knew that eventually, we would be able to leave, but that was not what happened.
The battles raged on forever, and it seemed to be a stalemate between the cyborgs and the human army. Weeks turned into months, and before we knew it, New York and the entire East Coast was under attack by the cyborgs as well. We had to find shelter, and fast, that was when Hannah and I came across Willow Springs. It wasn't perfect, like a military underground bunker, but it was the closest thing we could find to something with a wall defense, resources, and other people. So that was where we stayed, and before we knew it months had turned into years and we had been living at Willow Springs while the entire Earth succumbed to the Clenok armies.
Now, this was my life with my sister and the only thing that mattered was survival and keeping a low profile so that maybe the Clenok armies never found us.
I sat on the pier overlooking the bay. But I wasn't sitting for leisure. I was waiting.
“Don't worry, Helen; she will come back. They always do,” Erick said as he came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.
A chill ran down my arm; I didn't like him touching me. It was obvious to me that he looked at me with desire, but I did not reciprocate that feeling. But it was a very complex situation because although Willow Springs did not have an official leader, it was obvious that Erick was in charge. He was an older man of about fifty. He had been a retired Marine, and when he came across Willow Springs, he immediately took charge. It was a good thing; Willow Springs needed structure and leadership just like any system, but the dark side was that he let the power go to his head. He started to act like a king with a temper; everyone was afraid of him, but no one wanted to be kicked out of Willow Springs and forced to survive on their own. So everyone was compliant.
But I had it harder than everyone else because he had set his eyes on me for whatever reason. I never spoke to him with romance in my voice. But this did not seem to push him away. It only seemed to make him want me more, like I was a challenge, and it was not my intention to make him think that. But he persisted.
“She and the others will return from this supply run. They will find their way back. Supply missions always do,” he said.
“Yes, but this supply mission is further than we've ever gone before. Besides, Hannah is my twin sister. I can feel when something is not right. It is twin intuition,” I said.
“Not with that again. I have told you many times there is no such thing,” he said.
“And I have told you many times you are not the all-knowing. Now if you'll excuse me,” I said getting up to my feet and turning around.
“Wait. Look!” he shouted. I turned back to him and he was pointing across the bay. I looked and saw a small dot coming down the shoreline. It was a boat, but not one of our boats.
“I'll take a look!” he shouted as he ran down the pier to the grassy area. That was where we kept a telescope and binoculars. I ran after him. My brown hair tied in a ponytail caught in the breeze because I was running as fast as I could. My heavy boots made a banging sound on the wooden boards of the pier. Finally, I reached the observation platform. Erick was already at the telescope aiming it in that direction. I grabbed binoculars and looked.
“But why is he alone? Where are the others? I don't see them. He is not in one of our boats either,” I said as I began to shake. This was not good. I knew that something awful had happened. Erick took off running down the shoreline in the direction of the boat. By now the commotion had gone through the complex and people were beginning to run out of the buildings and off of the lawn toward the bay. I ran after Erick down the shore as far as the wall went. We waited as Scott slowly paddled his way toward us. He did not look well. He was injured. Erick grabbed the boat and pulled it ashore. We helped Scott out of the boat.
“Scott! What happened? Where are the others? Where is my sister?” I shouted in a panic as he laid onto the grass trying to catch his breath. His arm was bleeding.
“Tourniquet!” Erick shouted. Others were by our side doing their trained responsibilities. We had all learned some survival and medical skills; we had to. As Erick and one other worked on tying off Scott's arm with clean bandages, I looked at him, searching for answers. Waiting for him to catch his breath and drink the water that was being offered to him.
“We were ambushed. It was the Clenok. I have never seen anything like it. We fought them off, but most of us died. Some ran off in directions into houses and the woods, and I don't know where they went. I ran toward the shore bleeding, as you can see. I kept running down the shoreline until I found this small boat tied to a dock. It was night. I was able to quietly paddle this boat back here,” Scott said.
There was panic and commotion all around as people began to scream in despair. Almost everyone had a family member or significant other that was on that mission. Erick had insisted that I stay and help him with the greenhouse projects that would prepare growing food for the winter season. I never should have given in to him. I looked at Scott, wanting to ask him the question that I did not want the answer to. Was Hannah among the dead, or was she one of the ones he saw run away in different directions? Was she lying dead on that battlefield, or was she wondering the wilderness and suburban areas alone?
“Scott, my sister? Is she dead?” I asked barely able to get the words out.
He looked at me strangely. “Neither. You are not going to believe this, but I specifically saw the cyborgs capture Hannah. I don't know why they would take her. She was surrounded by them, and they had every opportunity to just shoot her the way they were shooting everyone else, but for some reason they took her. They carried her off, and none of us were able to get to her. It was complete chaos. I am sorry, Helen,” he said.
I stood up in shock. I stood there not knowing what to make of this information. The Clenok cyborgs had never been known to capture humans as far as we knew. It was always a battle to the death on both sides. The commotion around me as people asked Scott about who had died and who had run away so that they could know if their loved ones were also missing in action or dead, had become an echo in the back of my mind. I was in a tunnel as I thought about Helen being in the hands of the ruthless Clenok cyborgs. They had no compassion or sympathy; they were machines after all. They did not think the way that we did; they were calculated logistically and not with emotion. They would not be kind to her, if they even understood the concept of kind.
“Look! In the sky!” someone shouted so loudly that it pulled me out of my hazy thoughts. Suddenly everyone began to scream in a panic and run in the direction of the house. I looked up into the gray cloudy sky. I was in shock by what I saw, and because of that, I could not move my feet. It was impossible, what I was seeing, therefore I did not believe it. I was still reeling from the fact that my sister had been captured and dealing with that shock, therefore I could not put myself in a state to react to the fleet of spaceships I saw in the sky coming toward us.
“It's the Clenok!” I heard someone shout as they ran for the safety of the house. But it did not look like Clenok to me. The Clenok did not have ships, as far as we knew. But what else could this be? It definitely was not human.
The five sleek white ships came to a stop above the estate and hovered. It was unbelievable. I watched as the door of one of them opened and out flew two figures. My mouth fell open as I watched these human-like creatures with large emerald-green wingspans fly into the air and circle above us. Then they flew down to the grass and landed. They were facing the house and did not see me standing on the side near the wall. I was amazed. These nine-foot-tall creatures looked like men, only they were bare-chested, and their skin had a glimmer to it. They wore skin-tight scuba-like material pants that were tucked into big clunky boots with all kinds of gadgets and guns on it. Each of them carried a blaster in their hands as they looked around standing silently. One stood out to me as sort of a leader. He had long black hair down to his shoulders and a physical form that would rival any professional athlete. I could not take my eyes off of him. Then he spoke.