Fever: The Aftermath

Sorry this has taken so long. it is not a stroke story. it is an exposition of what happened to Kirk and his family after the invaders took over, and how they eventually drive them out. knowing the last chapter left some with a bad taste, i hope this makes up for it. jb7

Fever 07

Kirk surveyed the field before him. Once it had been a wheat field; now, it was not much more than weeds and wildflowers. On the other side, nearly a half-mile to the west, just barely visible, he could see the remnants of the alien invaders. At the northern edge, the field was limited by a thick hedgerow of gorse running along the highway; the southern edge, a bluff overlooking the Missouri River.

It had taken nearly four years of forced attrition, but they had slowly whittled the invaders in this hemisphere down to this last force of roughly 300 aliens: officers, troops and breeding drones, plus nearly a thousand fighting drones. Similar results had been achieved in the rest of the world following his game plan.

The invaders had initially come in twelve ships, each with 24 officers and 288 'soldiers,' supported by 600 fighting drones. On each of the ships, there were 12 selective breeding drones, genetically altered so they could breed with up to five human females at a time, producing a viable drone in as little as four earth-months.

Based on their experience in other, similar, invasions, they counted on being able to fertilize a hatch of women every half hour, to produce up to 240 fighting drones every day. Once a week, barring interference from the female, they expected each breeder to produce another breeding drone.

In the years following the Vietnam conflict, the aliens had covertly landed advance scouts, surgically altered to resemble humans, who had insinuated themselves into positions of power and influence, where they could identify people with ESP abilities, hoping to breed the trait into the fighting drones. They had also seduced several hundred natives with false promises of wealth and status when they took over.

Erica's advisor had been one such quisling, not only identifying her to the invaders, but also participating in her capture. It had taken Kirk a bit over a year to find her, but he had finally been able to rescue Erica and eliminate the traitor during her third delivery of a drone.

That night, Orion Jones, PhD, her advisor, was serving as midwife, delivering the night's hatch of drones and placing them in the incubators where they would finish their fetal development. Jones had just caught Erica's latest delivery and was carrying it to the mechanical incubator when Kirk and his team suddenly materialized in the hatchery. The quisling opened his mouth to scream, but found his voice cut off by a thought from Kirk. The other members of the team released the women from the cribs where they were kept during their pregnancies, and readied them for their escape, aborting the unborn drones.

Kirk, with a mental shove, pushed Jones up against the wall and started a telepathic interrogation, gathering information about the drones and their masters. When he was done with the turncoat, Kirk slowly and methodically destroyed the mechanical incubators and their contents. He then sent a mental blast, similar to the blast Sonny had tried to use on him, at the collaborator, incinerating him, leaving only a pile of cinders.

He rushed to Erica, to assure himself she was okay. As he hugged her, one of his team sent him a silent alarm. A second later, two breeding drones walked into the hatchery. One was obviously older, adult. The other, developmentally, appeared to be an adolescent. Kirk felt Erica shrink in his arms, moving closer to him. Reflexively, he sent his killing blast at the two breeders. Seconds later, the hatchery was empty, Kirk, his team, and the rescued women, safe, somewhere in Central Illinois.

Erica still had her arms around Kirk. "Thank you," she sobbed. "Oh, god, thank you. I don't know how much more of that I could have taken." She tightened her grip on his neck, pulling him to her for a kiss of gratitude.

He gently disengaged and stepped back. With a wry grin, he said, "Careful, girl. Those bastards seem able to follow the smell of sex and track down recent participants without any problem. Let's get all of you somewhere safe, then you can tell us about what you've been through."

"Scan us first. Make sure they haven't implanted any kind of tracking devices; especially the non-telepaths, to make sure none of them were cooperating with those bastards. It seemed like some of them had easier times than the two or three telepaths who were caged with me."

"Thanks. I hadn't thought of that. Seeing what they've done to the men, I can't imagine anyone collaborating, but I guess, if conditions are bad enough..." Kirk called two of his team mentally and gave them some instructions. He turned back to Erica.

"This war has brought out all sorts of latent abilities and strengths. Before the aliens showed up, I wouldn't have bet a quarter that any of the people who traveled with Lorenz's troupe had any ability to teleport, or to blast an enemy, or exert any kind of mental control on an individual. Now, it's rare to find anyone who's been in a battle who can't do all three."

He had been running his hands up and down her sides and over her back and shoulders. "I don't...wait, what's this?" he asked, running his hands over her lower abdomen. "It looks like they left something in your uterus. Hold on, this may hurt a little."

"Just get rid of it, then tell the others where to look. I knew there would be something. Can you teleport them all to the Great Lakes or the Gulf? The drones don't like large bodies of water; anything over an acre in size, they try to avoid. When they moved us from New York, they could have gone along the coast, but they moved inland and traveled through Pennsylvania. It must have taken them at least a day longer."

At that moment, one of the members of the rescue team came up to them. "Kirk, all the women have some sort of chip in their abdomen, apparently in the uterus. Two of the women are giving off an aura of anger, like they don't want to be with us. None of us can get through the anger. Will you try? And what should we do about the chips?"

"Remember that subterranean lake up on the Wisconsin border? Send the chips to the large rock in the middle. I'll be over in a moment to check the women." He looked at Erica. "I'm sorry, sweets."

She felt a brief burst of pain, causing her to emit a gasping scream, echoed by all the women who had been rescued. "Oooh, shit!" she moaned. "Thanks, I think. I don't suppose there was another way, but, god!"

"We could have taken them out the same way they were inserted, but by then, they'd have found us. This way, they'll be walking into a pitch black cave with no outside light, and a large, deep lake, with no warning. One of the traits we've noticed is they have no sense of danger unless they can see the source, and with their eyes so deep set, they practically can't see what is in front of their toes.

"Come along and help me with these women." The five members of the rescue team were comforting and consoling seven of the ten women they rescued. Erica was number eight. The two remaining women, apparently of Slavic descent, were standing slightly apart from the others, arms crossed across their breasts, looking angry. Average in size and brunette in coloring, on a beauty scale from 1 to 5 (bulldog ugly to kitten cute), neither would have quite made it to 3. Calling them plain was being kind.

Kirk and Erica quickly scanned them, looking for evidence of either outright collaboration or sympathetic feelings for the aliens. What they found was manifest resentment at being removed from the best situation either woman had ever found herself in.

It appeared that they were one time prostitutes. Getting fucked two or three times a year was, to them, better than the ten to fifteen tricks a night they had to turn to avoid getting a beating from their pimp. They were warm, dry, and relatively well fed. So they had to deliver a baby every six months, and have their breasts milked every day. To them, it was a small price to pay for security.

Kirk scanned first one, then the other. He looked at Erica as he finished the second woman. She had the same puzzled look on her face he was sure was on his. Telepathically, he sent her a query. "Do you sense something odd here?"

"Mmhmm. They are both presenting the same information about themselves. And, frankly, I don't ever remember seeing them in the rape rack. Hang on a minute." She looked at the crowd of rescued women, focusing on the other telepaths. "Were any of you in the rack with either of these two women?"

One of the women, an older brunette,responded. "They didn't get racked with any of us. That bastard, Orion, saved them for him and that hogfaced squid to play with. I heard him hypnotizing them one night, and later saw them with Orion and his buddy. That freak had three of his snakes in one of them and two in the other while she sucked Orion off."

"Yeah," a second telepath added, "and did you see them the night Squido ran that snaky tongue of his up, I think her name is Shirley, her ass while Orion was screwing her. When she started to come, he pulled his tongue out of her ass and slid it in alongside Orion's cock." She laughed. "Big O pulled out in a hurry, with Squido's tongue wrapped around his thing; and O squirting cum all over Shirley's belly. They almost caught me watching, I laughed so hard."

Kirk chuckled. "Okay, ladies, thank you. That helps explain what we found." He turned to Erica. "Hypnotism. They've been programmed to respond a certain way in this situation. Think you can reprogram one of them, or should we just send them back?"

"We have to reprogram them. I wouldn't send my worst enemy's mother back there, even if it meant they wouldn't be born. Imagine if you can... remember the glass marbles you played with as a kid, the aggies, about a half or five-eighths of an inch? Okay, now imagine you have a hard on and someone is pushing one of those into your cock through your piss hole, all the way back into your sack. That's sort of what it was like to be fucked by, what did Minnie call him, Squido.

"Knock 'em out, or whatever you need to do to make them unaware of where we're going, but we're not sending them back. We can find out who they really are later, and put them to work as nurses or something.

"Now, let's get the hell out of here before we're traced."

They teleported to the same field Kirk and Lorenz had landed in a few years before, to approach the farm stealthily, on foot. Using some equipment stolen, errr...acquired from the invaders, one of the old travelers, an optical engineer, had cobbled together a holograph generator they were able to use to hide the farm house.

It wasn't totally foolproof if you knew what you were looking for, but Lorenz and his followers were well liked in the area, and had been able to keep the aliens out of the neighborhood.

Kirk cautiously approached the top of the rise. He could see the top of the barn and the silo. He hesitated, scanning the site mentally and visually, using binoculars, looking for anything out of place. He received a welcoming thought from his mother and rose up to run to the house. The other people with him saw his actions and followed suit.

Two shots rang out. One kicked up dust a few feet ahead and to the side of Kirk. The other was intercepted by the woman identified as Shirley. Two of the male members of Kirk's team used their mental skill and quickly located and immobilized the snipers. Kirk ran back to see if anything could be done for the wounded woman.

"Kirk," she gasped, as he approached. "I want to thank you for trying to help...I know it wasn't...your choice...to bring us along. Please, take care of...Susie...my sister-in-law...Our husbands...were killed...when the invaders...first got to...our town...She's a good girl...a little rigid... sometimes ...but she...does what's...right...when...she knows...who...to lis...ten to...Tell her...I said..." With a final gasp, Shirley joined her brother. Kirk bowed his head, and slowly shook it with remorse, recalling how he had prejudged the women based on no evidence. The sound of someone approaching brought him back to the current situation.

The two team members who had immobilized the snipers were approaching him with two men who were struggling to get free. When they saw Kirk stand, they immediately froze.

"But, I saw you go down; I got you! I know I got you!" shouted the younger of he two men.

"Sonny! You fucking sonuvabitch! And you, Ron! Godammit! As if it weren't hard enough to deal with the friggin' hogfaces, I have to worry about bastards like you! Tom, Rick, Jim! Move out and back about a hundred yards or so and do a mental search, Make sure these fuckers didn't lead any of the hogfaced bastards to us."

"See, Sonny," sneered Ron. "I tol' you he'd come back here. The hogfaces will pay us good for this..." He stopped, seeing the expression on Kirk's face.

The three men trotted off in different directions and returned a quarter of an hour later. They each shook their head. "Nothing, Kirk," said the one identified as Rick. I went back about a quarter of a mile. Noone behind us."

"Good. I contacted the farmhouse. Lorenz is there. He said to deal with them as I saw fit."

He turned to the would be killers. "Sonny, Ron, your own words when you got here indicated your intent was to kill me. At the very least, you are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon. The fact that you killed an innocent bystander elevates that to first degree murder in any state in the world. Nobody would blame me for executing you summarily.

"As much as you deserve it, I'm unable to deliberately kill a relative. Rick, take my cousins' rifles back about ten, twelve yards and drop 'em on the ground." Rick picked up one of the rifles and began to eject the unspent cartridges. "No, leave 'em loaded and charged," Kirk ordered him.

"Ron, Sonny. Here's the deal. You can go, but your rifles stay where they are. If you stop to pick them up, you'll be fried to a crisp. Now, get your traitorous asses outta here," he said turning away.

"C'mon," he said gesturing to his companions, "let's go."

As soon as he had turned, Ron motioned to Sonny and they ran back to pick up their guns. They straightened up, turned and were aiming at Kirk when the blast of mental energy consumed them. All that remained were two lumps of steaming, misshapen globs of metal.

"Damn, Kirk," said Jim, "I've seen you do that a half dozen times, and it's still scary as all hell. How come we don't feel the heat? Look at those fuckin' guns!"

"The mental power acts as an energy shield, absorbing all the heat energy and reflecting it back to the target, elevating the temperatures, aiding the process."

"You knew they'd try for the rifles?"

"Yeah. While you were scouting, I explored Ron's head. There's an alien outpost in Ruthorford. There are wanted posters up for me and Lorenz, dead, alive or information leading to capture. He planned to kill me to be able to convince the invaders he could produce Lorenz, to get more money for his information.

"We'll have to do something about that outpost. It's too close for comfort. We can't be too obvious about it; that would just advertise our presence and get them to send more drones. We'll kick around some ideas at the house." As he turned to walk to the farmhouse, he teleported the still hot remnants of the rifles back to the hatchery.

Lorenz was waiting on the porch when the group arrived at the farm house. "They're gone?" was all he asked.

"Like we should have done two years ago." Anger and weariness were evident in Kirk's voice.

"Well, it's done now. The woman was unfortunate, but her death was not something anyone could have foreseen. How is her sister-in-law taking it?"

"Talk about bizarre! Just after Shirley died, her sister, Susie, walked up, looked at the body and said, "Shirley's gone? Are you the boss? Tell me what to do." Since then, she's only been two or three steps away from me."

Lorenz gave a short laugh. "The burdens of leadership. Assign her to someone. You can't be a babysitter."

"We were going to send both of them down to the troop hospital in Joplin. Still seems like a good idea. A couple of the other non-telepaths have had nursing experience. She could be paired with them.

"But first, she may have some information for us about the breeders. I got to see a couple up close, but had to nuke them before I could get a real close look. Susie and Shirley were toys for one of the breeders and their human caretaker. One of the telepaths observed them one night and described it for me. Some freaky shit.

"Also, Erica wants to talk about what happened to her, too. Mostly just to get it off her taboo memory banks. You don't need to hear it unless you want to."

"Of course I'll be there, if she wants me to be."

They turned and entered the house, going to the living room where Erica and the other rescued telepaths, Minnie, Ruth, Anita, and T'sahn were talking with Susie.

She was saying, "I know I can't communicate like you guys do, but I have some information about the breeders I bet you don't have, and about how the eggs are started, and how the drones from that hatchery will be different from ones produced at other sites around the country."

"What do you mean, Susie?" Lorenz asked, alerting the women to their presence.

Susie blushed. "I guess it's no secret that Dr. Jones and Harr-1used Shirley and me for recreational sex, especially Dr. Jones. When we were captured, he told me, the aliens somehow cauterized our uteruses, or something, so we couldn't get pregnant, by anyone. I think it was the first time they raped us.

"One night he explained the whole process to me, and how our hatchery was different. That was the night I learned Harr-1, the one you all called Squido, was a hermaphrodite, with that aggregation of penicles, as he called them, and a vulva, just like ours.

"He could suck his penicles up into his abdomen, revealing the vulva, exposing it for penetration. That night I saw Dr. Jones..." she shuddered, "I'll say it, it's the only word. Dr. Jones fucked that creature, stimulating it to produce more eggs, but eggs with a human component, from Dr. Jones semen.

"Our part of the hatchery was to see how they developed and performed. I got the impression from Dr. Jones the aliens weren't very pleased with the results. The human-alien drones developed slower, and were harder to train and supervise in the field.

Kirk laughed. "Good! Erica, does any of this mesh with what you experienced?"

"Pretty much. I didn't know about the hermaphrodite, but it doesn't surprise me. The fertilized eggs had to come from somewhere and be stored in his body, err...her, oh, shit! Its body."

Kirk interrupted. "How did you get caught, Erica. When we talked, just after the alarm, you were packing to leave. You said they were at least a day away."

"Good ol' Doc Jones, that bastard! Right after you disengaged, he knocked on my apartment door and said he had a mini van and offered me a ride to campus where he said I could catch a bus home. I didn't have any reason not to trust him, so I didn't bother to scan him. I followed him downstairs, to the parking lot.

"There was a minivan with the side door open. I climbed in and everything went black. It was some sort of gas. When I woke up, I was chained in a crib, naked except for my panties. Jones was there, with Squido...sorry, Susie, but that's the way I think of h...it. It was telling the good doctor they had captured a pair or women for him, that he could not have sex with the breeding stock. They were reserved for him and the new breeders when they arrived."