It was go time. All the plans and preparations had been made. The clans were on the move towards the Eastmont Town Center, and would be arriving shortly. Daniel couldn’t help but feel that all of the forces in the universe were pushing him towards an inevitable showdown with the Overlord. A showdown that he wouldn’t be returning from.

“What do you mean that you’re not coming back?” Olivia gasped. Just throw the damn bomb into one of the collection circles! You said the Overlord has just one complex.” Daniel had never seen her angry before.

“We don’t know how big his complex is, or how much his super-material will dull the blast. I have to go with the weapon and make sure that the Overlord is in the room when it goes off. We only get one shot at this.”

“Daniel . . .“ Her big tender eyes swelled with tears. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to finish what I’ve started.” He grabbed her hands. “I have to save Andrea. Promise me that you will take care of her.”

“Daniel . . .” She wanted to protest again, but was well aware of his unflinching resolve, so simply said, “Damn it. You know that I will.”

Olivia hugged him tightly and planted a long tender kiss on his lips, saying, “You will come back to us. I know it.” Then they set off.

Daniel and Paco took turns rowing to the old prison island. With the help of the tower lights, Daniel could see the silhouette of the large prison backlit in the light of a full moon. For a second, he shivered, thinking that it looked much like Dracula’s Castle had.

Daniel and Andrea had visited the spooky place while honeymooning in Brasov, Romania. His wife had a strong obsession with old monster movies and the trip had been a surprise for her.

When Daniel and Paco were a hundred yards out, they waited. A “zing” rang out, and with some sparking, the large light on the opposite side of the island went out. A second shot brought on more darkness.

Paco sat on the bench seat of the rowboat and aimed in with one of the two silenced .50 caliber sniper rifles that they had taken from Travis. He zinged off a shot, blowing out the third and final spotlight on the island. Alcatraz was now dark, save a few dim building lights visible here and there.  

“Me gusta mucho!” Paco whispered. Daniel didn’t understand his words, but was certain that they had something to do with the man liking the rifle.

The pair rowed the rest of the way to shore, landing on the same small beach that Daniel had landed on before. The clan leader opened one of the two long rifle boxes that he had taken from the special weapons locker at the airbase. Inside were two scoped rifles and several darts.

They were called “snoozers” and were one of the best kept secrets of the United States military. They were real “James Bond” level weapons. The rifles came complete with night optics scopes, and the darts could put a man down for eight hours. Daniel had no intentions of massacring a bunch of civilians and men that they might need later.

The two men could see three sentries at the gate that they had taken Daniel through on his first visit to Alcatraz. In the scope, the guards appeared to be having an animated discussion about the disappearing lights. “Pitthh” sounded from beside the commander, causing one of the men to grab his neck. “Pitthh” came from Daniel’s weapon, hitting the second man.

The third guard, a female, began to spray the beach with fire from her Uzi. Paco hit her with a dart. The guards fell down in a row; one, two, three, like dominoes. Daniel and Paco had to move quickly, now that the sound of gunfire had alerted the other residents of the island. Once Daniel and Paco were through the gate, they could hear several gunshots coming from the other side of the island. The pair rapidly headed straight for the Quartermaster’s Building.

When the two men arrived, they were relieved to see that they were the only ones there. A minute later, they saw four camouflaged men leading Ambassador Robert Rogers towards the building that they were standing in front of. Obviously, he was intent upon warning the Overlord.

Daniel and Paco took aim with their snoozers. “Pitthh” . . . “pitthh” sounded off, followed by two more “pitthhs” from behind the ambassador’s group. All four of the ambassador’s guards fell to the ground. Olivia and Hambone lowered their “snoozers” and came up behind the befuddled island leader and pushed him towards their commander.

Daniel had hated to bring the pregnant woman along, but she had insisted. Olivia had wanted to make sure that things went smoothly.

“If you fail, then we’re all dead anyways,” the young woman had aptly argued. Daniel gave up. When you argued with Major Olivia Reyes, you usually ended up on the losing end.

“What the hell is this all about?” Ambassador Bobby demanded to know, scowling angrily. They ignored his question and led the upset man to the iron key card door.

“Oh, hell no, I’m not going to open that. The Overlord is gonna wipe us all out,” Bobby sniveled.

Daniel sat the bomb case on the floor and slid the general’s card into a slot at the top. After pushing some buttons, a three-minute countdown was displayed on the black panel screen at the top.

“Oh no, Commander Dat. What’s that? What’d you do?” The trembling man was nearly crying now.

“This is a thermobaric vacuum pressure bomb. I set it to go off in just about two minutes and forty-five seconds. When it does, it’s going to suck your internal organs out through all of your orifices. You’ve no time to escape governor. It’ll take out this entire island. There’s only one way to get rid of it now. Get over there and open that door. Once we’re in, you’ll get the Overlord to open a power circle, or we’ll all be dead in just over two minutes,” Daniel calmly explained.

“Shut it down,” the former governor pleaded.

“Not a chance.” Commander Daniel stared at the weak man, unflinching.

Robert Rogers thought for about five seconds, staring at the countdown clock on the black screen of the case. Daniel wasn’t worried, he had known men like Bobby his whole life. There was nothing more important to his personality type than self-preservation. The man would open the door.

But a little encouragement never hurt, Daniel thought as he unsheathed his boot knife. “Don’t think for a second that I won’t rip that access card from around your neck and chop off your hand to gain access.”

The ambassador let out a loud sigh, then placed his hand on the print pad and pulled out his key card, sliding it into the slot. With a “whoosh,” the small group entered the room. Daniel noted that it all looked the same as the last time that he had been here, complete with the overseer in the corner. Bobby Rogers went over to the console and placed his hand on the DNA pad, stating, “He’s here.”

A moment later, a green power circle opened up in the same spot that it had last time. A jumble of thoughts came rushing to Daniel’s mind. He only had a couple of seconds to talk with his long-lost wife, and had planned out a couple of quick sentences, but now his mind was frozen as she came through and stood before him.

It was Andrea, only it wasn’t. He stared horrifyingly at his wife. Her eyes were milky white, and she wore the metal headband of the seekers. Her once beautiful skin looked withered and cracked, apparently from having been frozen for so long. He reached out to touch her, causing her to snarl at him like a rabid dog.

“Six seconds commander. You have to go, before that circle closes,” Olivia advised, her face distressed at his emotional anguish.

“Do you think that this’ll work? I mean if it does, I was always on your side Commander Dat. Make sure your people know that.” Robert Rogers smiled at him, failing to see the mental torment that Daniel was going through.

“It’s under committee review,” Daniel hissed out. With one fluid motion, the traumatized man shoved his combat knife straight into Bobby’s throat.

“That’s for lying to me about my family you piece of shit,” Daniel said. The man fell to the floor gurgling in his own blood. Former California Governor Robert “Bobby” Rogers was no more.

“Four seconds and that circle closes, Daniel. If you are going to do this, you have to go now!” Olivia shouted while the overseer in the corner came to life and began advancing forward, raising its baton. “I’ll take care of Andrea.”

Paco and Hambone began wrestling with the overseer’s arms. Olivia ran and jumped onto the robot machines chest, wrapping her legs around its waist. She pushed the helmet visor button exactly where Daniel had taught her. When the visor spring up, she shoved a fragmentation grenade into the empty face hole.

Daniel didn’t have time to see how that ended, because after taking one last longing look at his mind-erased wife, he dove into the green power circle just before it disappeared. With a fizzle, he was gone!

A second later, Daniel was galaxies away, standing in the Overlord’s room. Daniel set the metal case on the floor and looked at the screen on top of the thermobaric bomb. The red digits continued to count down on the black panel, “30 . . . 29 . . .  28.”

“Daniel Allen Taylor, with certainty you should not be here,” the Overlord’s voice was back in his head.

“27 . . . 26 . . . 25”, the countdown continued ticking away the precious seconds.

“With certainty I am here, and this time I brought you a little present, to thank you for mind-wiping my wife, crapping on my planet, and animalizing my race. But to be completely honest, I’m mostly here because I simply don’t like you.”

“24. . . 23 . . .22”

“This is not symbiotic Daniel Allen Taylor,” the voice said.

I personally can’t think of anything more symbiotic than you and I exploding into space together.” Daniel looked down at the bomb screen.

“21 . . . 20 . . .19”

“What about my species? My mate? My offspring?” the voice rang out in his mind, with the first hint of panic in it. Good, it fears death.

“Children are expendable.” Daniel used the alien’s own words against him.

“18 . . .17 . . .16”

 Death was coming . . . or maybe not. Daniel was running now, straight towards the Overlord and threw himself at the panel. Daniel reached for the top right button that he had watched the Overlord tentacle last time. The creature grabbed the man’s outstretched arm with the tentacles on its right hand. Daniel could feel the wet and slimy worm-like appendages sliding along his arm.

“15 . . . 14 . . . 13”

With one last effort, Daniel shoved his arm forward and pushed the button, opening a green power circle in the same spot that the last one had just closed at. Then something unexpected happened. The Overlord sprang across the counter with a speed that surprised Daniel. More surprisingly, the alien had four large stumpy tentacles, like an octopus, where its legs should have been.

“12 . . . 11 . . .10”

Daniel realized with a sickening feeling that the Overlord was going to try and push the suitcase bomb back through the power circle, where it would kill everyone on Alcatraz. The commander sprang into action with cat like speed. Daniel reached the alien and leapt on its back, just a mere foot from the bomb.

Both man and alien fell to the floor, with the latter still trying to crawl towards the case.

“9 . . .8 . . .7”

Daniel started to slug the Overlord in the back of its large head, realizing that it didn’t have a boney skull. It was moist and spongelike. With each punch, Daniel’s hand sank into the huge head at least four inches deep.

“6 . . . 5 . . .4”

The alien got its left-handed tentacles on the bomb and began sliding it towards the green circle. In one fluid motion Daniel swung his entire body about and landed a well-placed kick on the case, sending it sliding away from the pair of fighting humanoids. When Daniel let go of the Overlord, it scurried after the bomb.

“3 . . . 2 . . .1”

But Daniel could no longer see the countdown. He had rolled into the green power circle, fizzling away, a second before it closed.

                                                        *     *     *

A couple of months later, Major Reyes approached Commander Dat as he sat on the porch of the Commander’s Quarters on Alcatraz, relaying, “Scouts have reported another massive group of seekers coming in from the east. At least five thousand heading towards the Sacramento Colony.”

Olivia had moved into Daniel’s home as soon as they had moved their headquarters to Alcatraz. She had a way of handling him. The intelligent woman knew exactly how to steer Daniel in the best direction, and they were good together. Very good.

He stared into the cute woman’s big brown eyes, knowing that he loved her. Once he came to grips with the fact that his wife’s mind was gone and would never be coming back, he had allowed himself to feel those emotions again.

Daniel rubbed Olivia’s large belly, then looked over at Andrea, who was sporting a similar maternal package. Of course, he could never rub her belly. His former wife was sitting five feet away, which was fine. Any closer, and she would attack. Even though he would never have her back, at least his child would have a fierce defender at its side.

The seekers were a real problem. Not that there weren’t many other problems. But, once the overseers had stopped functioning, and all of the power circles had dissipated, the mind-washed bald men began rampaging.

Their free Overlord food tubes were now gone, and they were hungry. The seekers turned into flesh eating lunatics that were constantly sniffing out and tracking down humans. When they found them, they attacked without fear and devoured anyone that they could. What’s worse, they hunted in packs, like wild dogs.

Humans had killed each other at unimaginable levels in the post-invasion world, plus the Overlord had taken an unknown amount of pregnant women to his world. They had no way to rescue those poor frozen souls or their unborn children.

With about half of the world’s people now dead or missing, it left the numbers between seekers and survivors just about even. Unfortunately, many survivors were in pods and it was a constant race to rescue them, before they killed each other, or fell to the seekers.

Still, things weren’t all bad. Specialist Sterns said that he would have the power back up and running in the San Francisco area within a month. That would be huge for the Bay Area Colony. Daniel had done away with the term clan, as there were way too many bad connotations with those names.

“Call in the air calvary and have the mounted units head that way,” Daniel ordered.

“Already done, commander. The helos will be here in seconds.” Major Reyes never failed to impress him.

Commander Dat got up from his chair, feeling the many pains from his war wounds. He had received numerous broken bones, had been shot, stabbed, bitten, cut, and pronged. Neither his broken hand, nor his broken nose had ever quite set right, but he didn’t worry too much about those things.

He knew that they would wrangle this planet back into order. There was no way that they couldn’t with people like Major Olivia Reyes, Governor Jilly of the Sacramento Area Colony, Governor Tiana of the Bay Area Colony, Major Juan Carlos Cortez-Monteverde of the Mounted Horse Battalion, Hambone the Medical Specialist, Sterns the Engineering Specialist, Big Man Tiny the Communications Specialist, and Paco the former brothel owner and donkey show host turned alien slayer at his disposal. Who could oppose a crew like that?

Daniel climbed into the UH-1 Huey, and after nodding at Paco on the door gun, signaled Hambone to takeoff. Tiny turned and smiled at Daniel from the co-pilot seat. The helicopter climbed into the air, heading away from the island, taking them to their next great adventure.