The lights flicked on, and the radio promised that the streets were safe once more. The first thing Clayton and his family did was head outside and inspect the damage for themselves.
Several houses down, homes had been knocked down. A bent and crushed street light lay in a pot hole large enough to swallow a car. Some of the pot holes were filled with the rubble from the houses, and one contained the smashed frame of a pickup truck.
Clayton ran across the street to inspect the damage further. It was more of the same, and the thing he wanted to see the most, the White Bull, wasn't visible from the street. He jogged up the sidewalk, peering in between houses in hopes of catching a glimpse of the thing in person, but when he reached a piece of wood splintered by the White Bull, he stopped. The creature wasn't in sight, and he wondered how far it ran before the military fell it.
He could have gawked and gaped at the destruction until the sun went down, but he needed to know the precise story and details behind the rubble and also the fate of the White Bull that paid his neighborhood a visit.
In the living room, Clayton's father clicked the television on, and, as if all of the anchormen and women didn't sleep or didn't have lives of their own, they were in their news stations and on the field, filming shots of the aftermath and retelling the events of the last three days.
On one channel, a journalist stood before what looked like the remnants of a building after being sent through a giant wood chipper. She reported on the extensive damage caused by the White Bulls, estimates placed in the billions, and on the number of lives snuffed out, currently fewer than 200 but estimated to be as high as 4,000. Behind her, rescue workers walked over the debris and lifted up beams. A German Sheppard on a tight leash entered the shot, sniffing through the rubble.
Another channel replayed videos that captured the military's efforts against the White Bulls. Fighter jets dashed across the sky, delivering missiles aimed at a Bull's face. From the blooming red and orange flames, the Bull emerged, chunks of its flesh missing and its wounds oozing green blood over its remaining flesh, and continued at full speed, as if its gashes were pinpricks. Another jet or two flew over, unleashed their own missiles, and the Bull was motionless after grinding to a halt. This became a continuing trend, with two or three fighters launching their explosive projectiles at the Bulls in rapid succession and the creature dying instantly from the impacts or dying soon thereafter. One Bull ran into a river, which made an easy target for the two jet fighters that killed it. The river carried that Bull's body to a bridge, where the support columns caught it. The Bull that terrorized Clayton's neighborhood made it to the welcome sign on the east end before the military put it down.
Inside a hospital, its entire staff worked overtime to keep up with the tide of causalities but failed to do so. All of its rooms were occupied by people bleeding profusely, missing limps, or laying with a piece of wood or metal jutting from some part of their body. And the waiting room was still packed. But such hospitals were considered lucky, for one White Bull crashed through one city hospital. Yet its staff remained on the premises, performing emergency operations in the crowded parking lot.
One station managed to snag an interview with a scientist. He sat beside a large glass container divided into two sections by a trapdoor. The top half was clean, but the air in the bottom half was polluted by some silver substance. His university was one of several to have received samples of the carcass shipped to the labs; others studied the whole things where they lay. “We've discovered that the spore-like clouds the Bulls, as they're being called, were releasing were, in fact, eggs,” said the scientist. “It's a very appropriate description, spore-like, because that's exactly how the eggs act. When they're are released, they're carried on the wind to wherever a source of nutrients may exist, likely a landfill. What's interesting, we've discovered”—the scientist opened the trapdoor, and the substance floated upward—“is that the eggs are filled with methane. This allows them to float higher and higher into our atmosphere until they escape it, and the solar wind then carries them away. For this reason, we believe that these creatures came to earth from a meteorite or other passing asteroid.”
“Three days ago,” said the president before his podium, “this nation suffered one of the worst tragedies in recent years. We were ambushed by an enemy we couldn't have seen coming and were ill prepared for. Much damage was done, and many lives were lost. And the most tragic thing about lives cut short during events such as this is that they didn't need to die. We as a species weren't capable of detecting the enemy lurking beneath our soil, sleeping and maturing. Had we known of their existence, we could have dug them up and exterminated them, saving many human lives in the process.
“Thanks to the brave efforts of our fine military men and women, our alien enemy has been dealt with in the most effective and swiftest manner available. And thanks to the braver efforts of rescue workers digging through the rubble, they're able to find survivors and send them to the nearest hospital for appropriate treatment.
“If this tragedy has taught us anything, it is this: we are not alone. Somewhere out there is a planet from which these creatures originated. Though they have brought death and destruction to our planet, they have also brought with them enlightenment: knowledge that there is a species capable of interstellar travel and that we as a species, should we learn of how they perform such a feat, will someday reach the distance stars.
“Until that day comes, we honor those who are fighting for their survival and the survival of others, and we shall always remember those whose lives were lost.”
Flagpoles were stuck into piles of rubble across the nation, their flags hung at half-staff.
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