In Search Of Home - One-Shots

Zach

This wasn't how Zach expected his Tuesday to end.

The day started out crummy. He couldn't find his keys or his packed lunch, even though he knew he put it on the counter like he did every night. So he was late getting to work.

It was just his luck that his piece of shit car died on the ramp into the highway, but at least it had enough juice to pull off to the side. He barely noticed others doing the same, too caught up in his cursing and misery.

Then his fuckin' phone stopped working. It wouldn't turn on no matter how hard he pressed the button. Slapping it did nothing more than soothe his anger. His boss was going to bitch at him for hours when he finally went in.

"Come on!" he groaned in exasperation, kicking his car tire and looking skyward.

And that's when he saw it.

"What the fuck," was the only thing he could say when his eyes landed on the huge spaceship hovering just above the hazy clouds. He watched with some sort of detached alarm as several smaller specks broke off of the larger ship and dove down and out of sigh.

"Did you see that?" yelped a woman down the ramp. It was only then that Zach realized he wasn't the only one stranded.

"It's probably a fucking Korean jet," Zach heard her partner grumble. He tuned out the racist bigot as he started ranting about the current political climate. He had bigger things to worry about.

Like getting his god damn car to start.

He popped the hood, rolling up his sleeves and enjoying the hot waft of air that helped warm his chilled bones. It was quickly washed away by the freezing wind, though. Zach could never be so lucky.

Checking the starter plug first and throwing himself into diagnosing the problem, Zach barely noticed something thumping onto the highway until people started screaming.

He couldn't see it from here, but whatever... car that was on the highway unnerved him. Something feral prickled in his hindbrain, and he scrambled to get out of sight, quickly ducking behind his car. He was in the worst position possible - stuck on a ramp with a thirty-foot drop behind him and nowhere else to run.

It was probably why he was so easy to capture.

Some ugly motherfucker - and Zach had watched plenty of alien movies in his time; fuck, he was practically raised on them - tromped down the ramp, grabbing and shoving as many people as it could with the largest gun he's ever seen. Zach scrambled against his passenger door, tugging at the handle. If he could get his gun out of his glove compartment...

"Ro!" the alien shouted as soon as it saw him. It leveled the gun at him and gestured toward the ship it landed in. "Pora, pora."

Whatever the fuck that meant, Zach was not going to stick around and find out.

The alien stepped forward before he could even get his hand in the glove department, grasping him around the neck with its sharp claws. His arms went up and struggled to find purchase against the tough skin, but the alien let him go before he could even blink, tossing him onto the hard asphalt.

Knees and hands burning, Zach quickly got to his feet, whirling around to face the alien with a glare. "What the fuck!" he yelled.

"Byr!" the alien shouted back, gesturing with his gun again and taking a step forward. Reflexively, Zach took one back. The alien took another. Every time Zach would edge to the side, the alien raised its gun a little higher. It even shot off a blast - plasma and hot - when he got too far off to the side.