Paul Jones - Extinction Point - The End

Emily recognized that, up until that exact moment, she had not fully accepted the whole extraterrestrial virus idea Jacob had postulated in their phone call. Now, as she stood defenseless in the shadow of an otherworldly tree, as a horror on legs sped toward her, Emily realized his theory was totally and utterly true. She was staring at the proof. This… this? What was it exactly? She may as well call it an alien because, although it may have been born here, it surely was not from this planet.

As the creature ate up the last of the space between itself and her, a single surprising thought passed through Emily’s mind: Finally !

She closed her eyes tight-shut and waited for the monster to fall on her and extinguish her sad little life.

Tap–tap–tap–tap.

The rapid staccato beat of the creature’s spike-tipped feet on the concrete grew louder as it rushed headlong toward Emily, then, just as quickly it had passed her by.

It didn’t stop. It didn’t tear her to pieces.

Emily opened her eyes and twisted her body to follow the creature as it continued along the boat dock. It ignored her as though she was not even there. It just kept on running.

Run Forest, run ! She almost yelled the movie quote aloud, and had to stifle a burst of terrified, relief fueled, laughter.

Abruptly, the creature made a ninety-degree turn. Its right legs simply stopped moving while the right side continued; just like the tracks on a tank , Emily thought. It moved on its new course up the grass embankment toward the alien tree. When it was within twenty-feet of the main trunk, the bizarre creature’s body suddenly dropped towards the ground and then it was flying upwards, launched into the air by its spindly articulated legs. It landed halfway up the trunk of the huge structure. There was no reduction in the creature’s forward momentum as it continued its lopsided leg-over-leg scuttle around the circumference of the tree until it reached the top of the structure.

Only then did it stop.

The highest point of the tree—at least one-hundred, if not a hundred-and-twenty feet up by Emily’s estimate—was nothing but a ragged unfinished edge, totally at odds with the natural flowing outline of the rest of the structure. It was almost as though whatever had built it had simply stopped midway through its construction.

Emily watched, her chin drooping almost to her chest, as the freakish thing began to crab-walk along the uneven lip, its eyestalks swiveling back and forth as if it was searching for something. After about a minute of scuttling along the lip, the creature reached out with its two spindly front limbs and pulled itself up into a space between two protruding crenellations on the ragged edge. It immediately began working itself down into the space using the fine streamers of its tale like an extra set of limbs until it seemed content with the fit.

Then something even stranger happened. The creature began to melt.

At least, that’s what it looked like to Emily. The eye appendages went first, dripping down over the creature’s body like glue. The liquid filled the few small gaps of daylight Emily had been able to make out in the spaces between the creature and the surrounding edges of the tree’s upper lip. Then the legs splayed out, grasping onto the protuberances on either side of it with its wicked looking claw tips. The spider-like creature gave a final wiggle as if it was ensuring it fit just right and then the legs melted into the structure. The tail was the last to vanish, fanning out in a final flourish before it too dissolved, vanishing into the main body of the trunk just below it.

It was all over in less than thirty-seconds. The creature had added itself into the tree, become a part of it completely, as if it had never existed. In its place was one more part of the structure sprouting up against the Manhattan skyline. Emily wondered just how big this thing would actually grow. Or was it being built?

Emily decided it was not a question she was interested in hanging around and answering. Her inquisitiveness was well and truly satiated; a human mind could only cope with so much information, so much change in one sitting, she realized. She gave the alien tree growing before her a final glance, then turned on her heels and began walking as quickly as she could back to where she had parked her bicycle.

Emily readjusted the bergen, the shoulder pads had shifted as she walked back to her bike and now the webbing of the right strap was digging uncomfortably into her shoulder. The painkillers had long ago worn off, and the dull throb had slowly returned. She turned her thoughts to what she had just seen to try to take her mind off the pain.

Where the alien-thing on the dock had appeared from, she had no idea. At the time it showed up her attention had been focused solely on the latest addition to her growing list of weirdness. It could have been wandering around the park for God-knew how long, gestating from some dead park visitor. Hell, there was over eight hundred and forty acres to choose from in the park alone. Or maybe it came from the city’s sewer system? With more than six-thousand miles of tunnels running under the city, it would seem like the perfect place for those things to congregate and move around.

How ironic was it, she thought, that in every alien invasion movie she had ever seen, every sci-fi book she had ever read, the aliens were always either intent on eating us or just misunderstood. No one ever seemed to consider the possibility they might just ignore us completely; that the survivors of the human race might be so very inconsequential to their plan.

Could it simply be that the creature had not been able to sense her presence? Emily didn’t think so. When she’d stabbed the one still in its cocoon back at the paper’s offices, she was sure it had seen her. It had, at the very least been aware of her, and yet, now that she thought back to that moment, it had not tried to stop her, it hadn’t even fought back. It had simply tried to get away from her.

Now that she had seen what had crawled out of one of those cocoons with her own eyes, there was little doubt left that what she had witnessed over the past few days was connected, part of some unfathomable plan. None of it made any kind of sense to Emily. Her head ached from trying to wrap her brain around the implications of the events, let-alone attempting to fathom any kind of structured motive to why this was happening or what the outcome would be.

The size of the assault on her planet was fantastic in its scale, she realized. The ease of its implication, the complete destruction of humanity and its replacement with this new life form, seemed to be as calculated and unemotional as she would feel calling in a pest-control company to rid themselves of a colony of termites or kill off a hive of bees.

She was just an insignificant survivor.

With the bergen strap once again resting comfortably against her shoulder, Emily swung her leg over the bike and placed her butt back on the saddle.

Her heartbeat slowly returned to its regular rhythm as she began riding once more toward home. Emily pedaled as quickly as she could, following Terrace Drive in the direction of the 72nd Street west-side exit, eager to get back to the apartment and put as much space between her and the park as possible. As she drew alongside the Bethesda Terrace, with its terra cotta stonework and now silent fountain, Emily again brought her bike to a stop.

This time it was only for a few brief moments, long enough to take in the view in front of her. Just beyond the Bethesda fountain, where the Terrace met with the body of water someone in their wisdom had simply called The Lake, Emily could see the shore was lined with more of the giant red, alien structures she had come to think of as trees. She counted twenty-three of them stretching out along the lake’s edge. There could even be more, she reasoned, but the ones she could see were so closely packed together it was impossible to see past the first row of them. Each one of the towering red alien monoliths was in a different stage of construction; some were far taller than the lone one she had seen earlier, with wispy leaf-like additions protruding from their summits, others had progressed little past the base.