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  I N V A S I O N

  -DEAD TREES, BOOK ONE-

  An Underground Apocalypse Series

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book titled ‘Invasion: Dead Trees’, first published in 2012 by Eli Constant (under the title Dead Trees), contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, without express permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any locations, characters and entities are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously; they should not be construed as real in any capacity. Similarities to actual persons, living or deceased, organizations or locales are purely coincidental. Changes—contextual and grammatical—have been made to the first edition printing of this work, warranting this new edition. Eli Constant Books © includes works by Eli Constant & Eliza Grace.

  INVASION

  Dead Trees, Book One

  New Edition Print, eBook

  Original Edition Edits, Amy Jackson Editing

  This edition proof, NBH Editing

  Copyright © Original Printing 2012, 2016, 2019 Eli Constant Books

  Cover Design © 2019, Maria Spada Designs

  All rights reserved.

  I N V A S I O N

  -DEAD TREES, BOOK ONE-

  An Underground Apocalypse Series

  Eli Constant

  In an instant, an ordinary suburban life shatters. A devoted father is gone. And one mother’s desperate journey to save her daughters unfolds.

  Nothing will ever be the same... now that the beasts have left the underground.

  ***

  Elise was living her version of a perfect life. She loved her husband, loved being a mother, even loved the soccer mom minivan she once swore was never going to be ‘her style’.

  Then the undergrounders crawled their way out from the primordial soil that had reared them to sentient life. A species as native to this Earth as human beings…

  Fearful of the sunlight, undergrounders originally kept to the night. Humans have had the advantage of day.

  But that’s quickly changing, because the undergrounders adapt supernaturally-fast. Light becomes less of a savior every minute.

  The boundaries between ground and sky have blurred into hell.

  And all Elise can do is keep running. Keep praying. Keep her children alive.

  ***

  INVASION is 120,000 words of pulse-pounding apocalypse survival story.

  D E A D T R E E S

  Invasion – OUT NOW

  Lifelines – COMING SOON

  Hybrids – COMING 2020

  Futurity – COMING 2020

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Six Months Forward

  New Passenger

  Bridge to the Inn

  Flash to a Kill

  Gas & Go

  Circle City Lullaby

  Penthouse

  Course Change

  Michael Chambers

  Lost and Found

  Un-Amusement Park

  Parked-Out

  On the Road Again

  Processed Human

  Meeting Sheila

  Un- and the Ethical

  Jason Chambers

  Not a Mouse

  Control

  Releasing Sheila-2

  Long Nights in Sub-Lab 8

  Concussed

  Get With the Program

  Assimilation

  Third Daughter

  Viable

  Testing 1, 2, 3

  It's My Party

  NORAD Left Behind

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Also by Eli Constant

  Prologue

  I was already forgetting the nuances of my life before. The tenuous threads of memory were quickly, violently breaking. My family was no longer whole.

  The once welcoming house was dark in the wake of our erratic movement. I did not look back. In streams of sickness, my insides physically released that which was left behind. I listened to the splatter of the vomit across the paved driveway as I ran towards our vehicle with Kara held tightly in my arms. A few orange-hued flecks hit my daughter’s princess pajamas. Megan kept pace beside us, her small face ashy white.

  I wanted to stay here, where I’d felt safe for so many years.

  Yet I knew staying was impossible. Not running from the haunting inevitable wasn’t an option. And… And David was gone. I knew he was. I would have heard from him by now if he were still alive.

  From this point forward, it was my sole responsibility to keep our beautiful children alive. Every fiber of my being doubted that I would be strong enough for the task.

  I heard a bestial shriek as I quickly strapped in my youngest. Megan was already in her booster seat and buckled. She looked at me with wide, fearful eyes. “It’s going to be okay, baby. It’s going to be okay.” I tried to soothe her, but my voice shook.

  “I want daddy.” She whispered, almost inaudibly.

  “Me too.” My own whisper nearly melted into tears. My daughters didn’t need to see how scared I was, how helpless I felt. I had to be their rock. I couldn’t be sand, shifting and inconstant.

  Closing Kara’s sliding door, I glanced at the rear of the van. I knew I shouldn’t dawdle. Keep moving. Don’t think. Just get on the road. Yet, I couldn’t stop myself from freezing and staring a moment. The back window was fully obscured by things. Some of our belongings, everything that was important enough to pack, was shoved into the rear compartment.

  It seemed so measly—that small space serving as the accumulation of our lives to this point. I wanted to run inside and grab more—like my grandmother’s antique brooch or David’s collection of Civil War knives or maybe that family photo hanging over the mantel. It was taken last Christmas; we’d been all smiles in our holiday-themed outfits.

  I’d only brought one small photo album, although I’d debated several others. Especially the one full of our wedding pictures. Me in my white lace and David in his charcoal tux. I needed to save room though. So we only had a few of our technicolor photographic memories protected by glossy plastic sleeves.

  No matter what I saved, I knew it wouldn’t be enough in the end. To help us remember the way we were.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, I tried to steel myself. David had used the van last. Taking my time, savoring the movements, I adjusted the position of the seat, the mirrors, the steering wheel. I moved them knowing that I’d never again feel them adjusted exactly to my husband’s height and preference.

  I was saying goodbye, one adjustment at a time. My eyes were watery pools now. This time, I could not stay the tears. One by one, they ran down my face. Their saltiness touched my mouth and I found it comforting rather than unpleasant.

  “Mom?” Megan’s voice wavered, raw fear threading through the utterance.

  “Yes?”

  “I saw a big dog by the house. It was really big.” She knew it wasn’t a dog, but Kara was staring at her. She didn’t want to say monster in front of her baby sister. I loved her for that. My big girl, so brave.

  “Doggy!” Kara clapped her hands. “Mimi’s doggy!” She didn’t speak much. This was actually the first time she’d said ‘doggy’ and we had no time to congratulate her, to revel in her new found vocabulary.

  “Yes, sweetheart, Mimi has a doggy.” I was happy that my youngest did not understand, because I understood all too well.

  In the distance, I heard a chorus of screeching. My eyes caught a flash of a large form lurking along the left side of the house. We could delay no longer. Mentally, I said a final goodbye to our home and the happiness my family ha
d experienced within its walls.

  Easing the van out of the driveway so I did not startle Kara, I tried not to look in the rearview mirror. My heart couldn’t take a last sight of our beloved Victorian. But I looked. Of course I did.

  And there, ruining the vision of our perfect life lost, was a hulking form. Pale and charging after the van on all fours.

  Six Months Forward

  We'd been on the road for a while now. Forever, it seemed. The house we'd left, the memories there, resided so far in the background of our minds that we rarely discussed our old life anymore. But even Kara, with her few words, sometimes still asked for 'home'.

  Our rations, inside the large plastic paint cylinders you could buy for six dollars or so when Wally Worlds were still around, rattled in the rear of the vehicle. They tipped and rolled whenever I took a curve. I knew I had to do something about that. Scavenge for bungee cords and perhaps secure them to the back of the middle row seats. Anything to save me from the madness of their constant movement and irritating noise-making.

  Rubbing a hand across the back of my neck, I tried to work out a kink. It felt like I'd been driving for a year. In reality, we'd only been on the road an hour since my last pull over and nap. My eyes drooped slightly, threatening to close.

  "Mom." A pause. "Mom." A longer pause. "Mom!"

  I jolted into reality. My body awake, my mind only barely so. I'd been on auto-pilot, driving into the misty, early morning.

  "What, Megan?" I knew what she wanted though. It was always the same. The child had a bladder the size of a damn thimble. She gets it honestly though. David was the same way.

  "I need to pee."

  "Sorry, sweetie. Unbuckle and use the bucket."

  Megan groaned. "Mom! That's so gross."

  I shrugged my shoulders. There wasn't another option.

  Still very early morning, the sun only starting to crest; it was too dim outside to risk a pullover. Even in full daylight, I was still fearful of shadows and all they held within their darkness.

  I watched Megan release her seatbelt and get up. She was just tall enough now that she had to stoop over the tiniest bit to walk around. I remember when I could hold her in the palm of my hands. So tiny and fragile. As her willowy frame maneuvered between the second row seats, I looked forward again and focused on the road ahead.

  Megan groaned a little after the pop of the top releasing from the bucket sounded. Urinating in a pail was the least of our survival woes. She was a kid though. She didn't understand the full scope of what we had to do to make it. God, I didn't even really understand it. I just muddled along, doing whatever the hell I could, to keep us breathing.

  Often times, I'd feel depression sneak in, little tendrils of doubt that ate away at my resolve. If only David were still around, then I wouldn't have to be the only strong one. It was my fault we were still only a trio though. I'd turned down companionship more than once. I trusted people even less than the monsters.

  And those other survivors we'd met along the way just didn't feel... right. I knew the adage "safety in numbers," but I needed all my energy focused on our survival. I couldn't add a stranger, a possible incompetent, and have another hand to hold and mouth to feed.Or, even worse, a stranger could turn into an enemy. That enemy could take the small ray of hope we still had. I couldn't allow that. I wouldn't allow that. Yet, it felt like there were so few of us now... maybe I was being selfish, refusing to band together with the last of my extended human family.

  I glanced in the rearview again. My girls. The most important things to me in this world. No, I was not selfish. I was a mother. Eyes back on the road. Peering into the dawning day.

  That was my new life in a nutshell. Check on girls. Watch the road. Stop to nap. Stop to piss. Pray we have enough food until the next time we get lucky.

  All because of the monsters.

  The beasties that had been hiding right beneath us this whole time.

  No one suspected that the real danger, the true end of our world, was boiling and forming beneath. A scary prospect that humans could have lived so long without knowledge of them teeming below our collective footsteps.

  But it was fact:

  That at the beginning of our world, when some of the creatures climbed out of the primordial waters and became bipedal and human, others climbed out and scurried down a proverbial rabbit hole. And that rabbit hole bred another species of humanoids-the most dexterous quadrupeds on the planet, eerily efficient and highly adaptive once confronted.

  The TV news reports-not that we'd seen many of them before everything went to hell and we'd run for our lives-had said that it only took moments for these hyper-intelligent, blood-thirsty beasts to understand our weapons, our thinking, our responses.

  A while back, we'd hit an area in one state that was still broadcasting information for survivors. Tidbits of information that might help one survive if confronted. It was all stupid shit. Like-their eyesight still seems poor, stay motionless if you come in contact with one. Or-they're still avoiding sunlight, so stay indoors at night. But then the person on the radio had also said: "This is all a guide. We can't guarantee this information. These monsters are quickly adapting. They're unpredictable. There have been sightings in daylight."

  My pulse raced a bit faster thinking back to those words of warning. Unpredictable things scared the shit out of me. I used to have a schedule. A calendar. A life I could anticipate.

  "Did you re-cover the bucket?" I glance into the mirror, catch sight of my daughter as she's making her way back to her seat.

  "Yep." Her fingers nimbly work to latch her buckle.

  "Make sure it closed tight?"

  "Yep." Megan bent over and grabbed a small, hardback book off the van floor. It was ratty, weathered, and her favorite. A relic from a different life. I'm glad she has the small lifeline to the peaceful past.

  I nodded, but her eyes were already devouring words on paper and getting lost in the story. Glancing to the opposite side of the van, I watched my little one.

  Kara was still drooped limply in her seat, clutching a love-worn stuffed animal. It was wonderful that Kara could sleep like it was before and not now.

  I'm positive that I will never sleep soundly again. My mind is constantly bombarded with unsettling images. And I have killed. That blood stains my hands. Even though I have killed for the right reasons and those I have killed were monsters, it is still a reality that haunts me.

  Four. I'd killed four beasties so far to keep my girls alive. I had no doubt I'd kill more in the future. Each time was harder and I always came away a bit worse for the wear. Adaption. Prediction. Each time I faced one, it was like the knowledge of how I'd killed previously had been passed along to the other monsters.

  There was a term for that... I grasped for it, the word zapping about my mouth refusing to settle on my tongue; I gave up after only a few seconds of trying to pull the word forcibly from my mind.

  I was too exhausted to dredge up the knowledge. I always felt too exhausted. For anything.

  A soft sigh told me that Kara was teetering on the edge of wakefulness. Her short arms stretched to the ceiling as her small mouth gaped open at a slant. It was one of those care bear yawns that made me melt. I'd do anything to keep her and Megan alive.

  Anything.

  But when the enemy knows you better than you know them, what chance do you have of winning?

  Late morning. Kara is awake. Megan is reading out loud, her lovely voice filling the inside of the vehicle. It surrounds me and helps me keep driving. God, I love her voice.

  The world was clued in because people started disappearing. At first, when it was only a few at a time, the police were able to explain the incidents away with press conferences, official-sounding sentences, and minimized news coverage. Then the day came when hundreds were reported missing. Hundreds within a matter of hours. And that was just in our county.

  David had told me that the station phone rang perpetually that day. By the end of his s
hift, the grand total of missing persons was up to four hundred and fifty-three.

  Then the beasties let themselves be more daring-coming out in groups, murdering with a more devil-may-care attitude. They'd learned our ways; they were prepared. That was when we had witnesses; that was when we finally understood what the hell was happening.

  At that moment, I saw a form stretched across the pavement. Depressing the brakes to slow me down, I drove carefully around it. I didn't see human bodies often, but when I did, they were like vicious slaps to my psyche. My response was to be respectful, to remember my humanity, to not let my desperation to survive outweigh the reality that this person fought and lost their battle.

  The undergrounders only left the occasional corpse in their wake, it seemed they still preferred to take their killings back home and hide them away.

  No one knew why.

  Noon. Nothing to eat. Kara is crying. Megan is rubbing her shoulder. I have to find more food, food that doesn't have to be cooked. I can't always stop.

  The now-exposed tunnel systems were expansive and dark. When brave souls descended, they followed the deep pathways downward until they finally reached abandoned cavern rooms, signs of simple living, primitive fields of strange plants, and irrigation fields fed from dark, glassy lakes. Vernians felt validated; their idol's vision realized on a grand scale. It was amazing that the underground society hadn't been discovered earlier. Then again maybe it had, and the undergrounders were smart enough to hide further down towards the belly of the planet and remain undiscovered-until they chose to reveal themselves. In the bloodiest way possible.

  The existence of the beasties made me feel small and vulnerable. And I wasn't alone in this sentiment. We were being attacked, not by aliens, but by domestics. Our own planet was betraying us with an alternate version of ourselves.