CHAPTER ELEVEN
NO CRYING IN WAR
While the world slept, the Qadarians tried to pack up their curing tents. It had become clear that the residents of Earth didn’t want their help, even though they needed it. They wanted to avoid future conflict.
However, President Sinclair took their threat very seriously and placed soldiers at every tent. He knew that sooner or later they would return to the tents, and he wanted to make initial contact.
The Qadarians tried to explain their peaceful attempt to leave. The soldiers fired upon them before they had the chance to. Several Qadarians were killed.
As they retreated to their ship, jeeps swarmed the area and fired on the ship. However, their bullets had little impact on the alien ship.
As much as they didn’t want to, the Qadarians were left with little choice but to retaliate. The soldiers were no match for their advanced weaponry. With but a few blasts from their ship, the Qadarians had defeated the soldiers.
Ships from New York, Los Angeles and Dallas all returned to the mother ship in Washington, D.C. They told Tobias how they were attacked. They suggested that they need to take the offensive and convince the humans that they were wrong in their attack.
Inside the cube, the running group now consisted of two-thirds of the group. Michael pushed the twins around. He and Twyla were a serious couple, so he felt the need to be a father figure.
After lunch, Levi addressed the twenty-four. He was to make no mention of the attacks.
“Good day all. How are we doing today? A few days ago, we asked you to describe a moment in your life when you were happy. Now, we want you to tell us of a time when you were sad.”
“Marines aren’t supposed to cry,” Brody said, “but I cried Niagara Falls when my friend Samuel Gillespie was killed.
“We went through basic training together. We were deployed to Iraq together. We were even bunkmates. He was like a brother to me.
“Then, on a mission in Al Fallujah, we were ambushed by a group of Iraqi soldiers. As he was trying to gain a better angle, he stepped on a land mine. The explosion filled his body with shrapnel. He lost his left leg in the explosion.
“I ran to protect him. I stayed by his side until the rescue copter came. I rode back with him.
“He died as we landed. I took it upon myself to let his wife and children know the news of his death.
“I was never the same. I finished my tour, but I could never get the vision of his lifeless body out of my head.”
“When I was eight,” Tracy said, “I had a cat named Dude. I loved that cat. He meant more to me than any doll I owned. He was white from head to tail.
“He stayed in my room all the time. He never left.
“Then one day, I left the window cracked open. While it was barely open, it was enough for him to get out. By the time I noticed he was gone, he was already by the road.
“Then, I saw the most horrifying thing I have ever seen. He took two steps onto the road. He didn’t see that truck coming.
“I tried to turn away before he was hit, but I was too late. He was nothing but a red blotch on the road.
“I cried for two days straight. My mom tried to buy me another cat, but I was too heartbroken. There would never be another Dude.”
“Nothing could be more saddening than knowing a relative of yours is dying and being helpless,” Robin said. “That’s how I was with my mother.
“For months, I watched her suffer not only from breast cancer, but also from the chemotherapy. When she wasn’t in pain, she was sick from the radiation.
“A few months later, the cancer won. But my mother didn’t lie down and let it win. She fought it every step of the way. She never gave up.
“I grew strength from her. As the last ounce of strength was drained from her, so, too, was it drained from me.”
“You may think I hated my wife,” Quincy said, “but I loved her more than you will ever know.
“That’s why I was so sad when I came home one day and found a condom wrapper under our bed. I knew it wasn’t mine since I stopped using them on our wedding night.
“I thought of confronting her, but I was afraid if I did, it would only confirm my worst fears. Maybe if I had, she would still be alive.”
“Growing up, my parents didn’t have much, but we survived,” Neveah said. “We appreciated what we had.
“Then, we lost everything when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Our house suffered a lot of damage. What the wind didn’t ruin, the waters did. We lost everything. All of our clothes, belongings, pictures.
“The government took their sweet time in giving us the means to start over. We had to stay at the Superdome until then. When they did, it wasn’t nearly enough to reimburse us for our losses.
“We struggled, but we were able to rebuild our house. We built it to withstand anything. That was tested when Hurricane Isaac hit New Orleans in 2012.
“We rebuilt the physical, but we could never rebuild the memories from our old house. We could never regain that which we lost.”
“When I think of sadness,” Dennis said, “I am reminded of the story of Lazarus. When Lazarus became sick, his sisters sent a message to Jesus.
“By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days. Lazarus’s sister Martha told him that if he had arrived sooner, Lazarus would still be alive.
“His other sister Mary was grieving over his death, as were others from the village. Jesus was moved by this and wept with them.
“Jesus asked Martha, Mary and the other mourners to follow him to the tomb of Lazarus. They removed the stone that covered the hillside burial place. Jesus looked up to Heaven and prayed to his Father, closing with these words: ‘Lazarus, come out!’ When he said that, Lazarus rose from the grave.”
“9/11 affected all of us as Americans,” Chloe said, “but as a fellow New Yorker, it impacted me so much more.
“My neighbor’s brother worked in the North Tower. My boyfriend’s uncle was part of the harbor patrol that went into the South Tower trying to rescue people. Although he survived, he was never the same.
“Not to mention the constant reminder of that event. First, the sight of the towers missing, then the 9/11 Memorial built on the spot where they stood.”
“There’s always a risk you take whenever you pull someone over,” Wyatt said. “My partner found that out the hard way.
“We saw a car speeding and swerving left of center. We knew he was drunk. We pursued him to arrest him.
“After a mile-long chase, we were able to get him pulled over. My partner stepped out to apprehend him.
“He never saw the .22 the driver had sitting on the passenger seat. When he got to the driver’s window, two shots were fired, one in the shoulder and one in the chest.
“I got out and ordered him to drop his gun. He refused and fired on me. I returned fire and wounded him. I didn’t kill him; I just hurt him enough to where he stopped firing at me.
“I arrested the driver, then went to check on my partner. He was still conscious, but had lost a lot of blood. I called for an ambulance.
“By the time the medics arrived, he was gone. I had never cried while in uniform before, but I lost it when he passed. He was my partner for the past five years. We rode together; we hung out together. I was like a second father to his son.
“Now, I had to tell him that Daddy wasn’t coming home again. How do you break that news to a seven-year-old?”
“When I was in high school,” Christian said, “there was a girl I was dying to ask out. Her name was Harper Vaillancourt. She was everything I wanted to be. She was popular. She was pretty. She was smart.
“Now, I wasn’t attractive, but I was confident. I wasn’t afraid to ask someone out, despite my constant rejection, but I was terrified of asking Harper out.
“That is, until I overheard a conversation between her and her friends. I didn’t really pay attention until one of them told her I had asked her out.
“’I wish he wo
uld ask me out,’ I heard her say. I was so excited and nervous at the same time that I had to run to the restroom to shout it to the world.
“What I missed was the end of her sentence. ‘So I can laugh in his face.’ I didn’t find that part out until I actually asked her. I never saw someone’s face get so red from laughter.
“I was so depressed after that that I tried to commit suicide. I grabbed a bottle of my mom’s pills and was about to down them when she walked in and caught me. It took me years to get up the confidence to ask out another woman.”
“The day after Gary left me,” Twyla said, “I cried from sunup to sundown. No man had ever made me feel as special as he did.
“At first, I thought of ways to win him back. But I knew he was never coming back, and even if he did, it would never be as it was.
“Then, I realized that I would never love anyone like that again or be loved by anyone again.” She turned and looked at Michael. “That was until I met Michael. He made me feel special again.”
Michael started to blush.
“When Jack told me he wanted a divorce,” Barbara said, “I was devastated. I never saw it coming.
“We vowed to take each other for better or for worse. I would have loved him if he lost everything. Apparently, he couldn’t. He loved his money more than his wife.
“When I woke up that first morning in a strange place alone, I cried. My world was gone, and I couldn’t get it back.”
“When we were kids, Noah Faessler and I were inseparable,” Travis said. “We were more than best friends. We were like brothers.
“Then, just before we started high school, his dad got transferred to Minneapolis. That meant he was moving. I was never going to see him again.
“He did call me when he got settled in. We talked all the time, but it wasn’t the same. We couldn’t go to the movies together, to Blazers games together. And no one could replace him.”
“When I was in college, I was sexually assaulted,” Bella said. “I was at a fraternity party. A guy put something in my drink.
“When I woke up, I was in a strange bedroom, and my panties were thrown on the floor. I know I couldn’t have given consent. At least I don’t remember giving it.
“I felt so dirty. I spent the next several hours trying to scrub the filth off of me, but it wouldn’t come off.
“In retrospect, I probably should have reported it first. I washed away any of the evidence, so I was never able to find out who raped me.
“I couldn’t go to another college party after that, and I needed an escort home after dark. I got so depressed that I eventually dropped out of college.”
“My acting coach told me whenever I play a sad scene to visualize a sad moment,” Jessica said. “I couldn’t think of any of my own experiences, so I used some from other movies I saw.
“When Julia Roberts’ character died in Steel Magnolias. When Snoopy ran away from Charlie Brown in Snoopy, Come Home! When Travis shot Old Yeller.
“That’s how I got the lead in The Heart of America. They said my emotion was so realistic that they didn’t audition anyone else. I was even nominated for a Golden Globe for my performance.”
While the rest of them gave their sad stories, Howard was posting video from the attack earlier in the day in New York. Of course, he edited out the portion where the soldiers opened fire on the Qadarians. He just showed where they attacked the soldiers.
This lit a fire in the hearts of the detractors of the aliens. In fact, it added to his growing army.
The government, however, had finally had enough of his blog. He was instigating riots not only in the United States, but all over the world.
They took it upon themselves to shut down his website. If he couldn’t fan the fire, maybe peace could be salvaged.
Howard, of course, viewed it as a form of censorship. The First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech. The people of earth needed to be warned of the danger the Qadarians presented.
Since that forum was taken from him, Howard took his message directly to the people. He grabbed a megaphone and walked the streets of New Jersey, urging everyone to start their own blogs and voice their opinions.
After the last of the stories, the twenty-four were given a vegetarian dinner, complete with a tossed salad with choice of Italian or ranch dressing, stuffed peppers, kale, and corn casserole.
After dinner, Travis and Jessica went off by themselves and talked. They had become good friends. He wanted more, but was perfectly happy with friendship. For now.