“These people aren’t the enemy,” John Cathey yelled at the guards behind the barricade surrounding the United Nations Headquarters.
“The enemy’s inside,” he shouted.
Multiple alien ships had been coming and going since his attack. The attack emboldened the masses, and the crowd around the UN had grown.
“You’re going to let us in eventually,” he continued. “Better to be with us than against us.”
The temporary fence rocked in places and some of the guards seemed nervous.
“It’s better to be with us than against us!” John yelled to those guards.
“Us or the aliens,” eventually became the chant and most of the very human guards, policemen, National Guard, and Marines, looked upset about the choice they appeared to be making.
“Us or the aliens!”
Stanley’s palms sweated. He didn’t think one could have such a physiological reaction to fear, but now that he had experienced it, he knew it was possible. His knees felt weak and he had used the bathroom three or four times.
The meeting time arrived.
He walked slowly down a window-lined corridor on the thirty-second floor of the United Nations Headquarters. No man’s land between human and Hrwang.
Long conference rooms with picture windows on either side gave the sensation of walking in a high and dangerous place and made Stanley’s already heightened fears worse. Only the Hrwang Second Colonel Grenadier walked with him. A squad of Hrwang soldiers waited at the end of the corridor behind them.
Likewise, President Hollis approached him with only one Secret Service agent. The remaining agents stayed at their end of the corridor, just like the Hrwang squad.
The corridor spanned at least half the length of the building, all of the windows designed to foster openness and cooperation between peoples and nations, but instead Stanley felt a little like a gunslinger walking a dusty road to his fate.
There were some solid doors scattered down the length of the corridor. Custodial closets, utility access spots, office supply storage.
When Stanley and the Acting President were about forty feet from each other, one of the solid doors between them opened slightly and a grenade rolled out. The door closed again.
Stanley had never heard of a concussion grenade before. That this was one of them, and not a normal fragmentation grenade, saved his life. The kill radius of the concussion grenade only being about six feet, and the quick thinking of the Hrwang soldier at his side, saved his life. Stanley would have simply stared at it and watched it explode had the Colonel not shoved him backward and down, taking the brunt of the explosion himself.
Stanley’s eardrums burst with the blast. Glass showered everywhere, interior and exterior windows blowing outwards with the over pressurization.
The attacker, who had chosen a concussion grenade because a fragmentation grenade would have shredded the metal door she hid behind, now emerged shooting in Stanley’s direction. Stanley caught a glimpse of Irina as her first shot hit the Colonel in the back of the head. Her second shot caught Stanley’s shoulder, spinning him around face down. He never saw her fall under a hail of crossfire from both Hrwang and Secret Service.