Puzzlement

"Where is Charles."

This was the first word I uttered after hearing the news that the ambulance we arrived in, our only viable means of transport, had disappeared. Or rather, had been taken, and the first suspect that came to mind was none other than Charles.

We searched the area and found no sign of Charles. The women were all accounted for and we still had one of the men with us. This means Charles and the two others left with the ambulance.

The ambulance was important because it housed all sorts of tools that could be used when any of us got injured. And now, it was nowhere to be seen.

And that wasn't all, apparently, all of the food that was in the house disappeared along with the ambulance. What were we supposed to do now?

"I knew we should have been wary of that guy." Karl said, clearly harbouring discontent about our current situation.

"Sorry Karl, I should have been more alert. All this was my fault for sleeping off on duty, and I was prepared to take full responsibility." I said apologetically.

"Some hero you are." Evelyn said. Her face filled with disdain.

"It wasn't his fault." Karl said, defending me from the approaching verbal onslaught from Evelyn.

"How isn't it his fault." She sharply replied.

"Anyone would have been tired after everything that happened yesterday. At least I don't recall you walking around yesterday night making sure everywhere was safe. No, you were sleeping peacefully on your bed." Karl said.

"That's…. Nevermind." Evelyn said. Her voice still expressing a bit of disapproval to Karl's stand on the matter.

"What are we going to do now?" The second woman said.

"Yeah, what are we going to do?" Evelyn continued.

The loss of the ambulance and food was a heavy blow to us. We currently had no mode of transportation, and no food. We were basically stranded.

Thinking back on it, I should have been more wary of Charles, especially after seeing him moving about at night. He seemed to be the cunning type and it was a grave mistake to be so lax when on guard duty knowing there was a fox among us.

As I was thinking about how much of a wild card Charles was and how it was stupid of me to take him lightly, a voice called out from behind.

"Hey, what's going on." The voice called out.

I turned back and to everyone's surprise, Charles appeared from a lower compartment of the house. Everyone was in complete shock.

"Charles!" Evelyn said in astonishment.

"Yeah…. Why does everyone look so surprised to see me." Charles said, visibly puzzled from everyone's reaction to his presence.

"We thought you left with the others." Karl replied.

"What… Left…. Where? What's going on." Charles said.

Karl relayed all that happened to Charles.

"What! Leave! Whyyyy! How are we going to survive all this if we don't stick together!?" Charles exclaimed.

"I don't know why but the fact remains that they left. With all the food no less." Karl said.

"Um... Charles…. where were you? The second lady asked.

"Oh me? I found a basement. It's nice and secure. I was looking around this morning and I found it. I've been in there for a while." Charles responded.

"That must mean there is an attic too." I said.

"Yeah, but what help is the attic." The other man said.

"There could be supplies and stuff in there." I replied.

"That's true, lets go check it out." Karl said.

I followed Karl upstairs and we found the attic. Unfortunately, there wasn't any food or supplies we could use. Just a bunch of bookshelves and random stuff. It was oddly spacious and had a lot of cardboard boxes in it. More than enough boxes to make those little castles children loved making.

We went back downstairs to relay the information to the others.

"We didn't find anything of value up there. Charles, did you perhaps find any good thing in the basement?"

"If you mean food or water, then nothing at all. But there were a lot of tools there though."

"Tools? That's gonna come in handy one way or another." Karl said.

"So we're basically stranded." Evelyn said.

"Yeah…We are." I replied.

"I'm going to see if I can find a working vehicle." Karl said.

Karl left, taking the tools with him and the rest of us were left to do nothing but marvel at the hopelessness of our situation.

Quite a bit of time passed and Karl still hadn't returned.

"Hope he doesn't leave us too." Evelyn murmured.

"Hey now, Karl's my best friend, there's no way he's going to abandon us." I replied.

"Oh yeah, then why hasn't he returned yet?" Evelyn said. Fear and paranoia were slowly eating away at her.

"I don't know, maybe he got held up in something." I replied.

"Or maybe he's dead." The other man said.

My eyes immediately shot back to the man and I stared him dead in the eye.

"He's not dead, Karl would never allow those cylinder things get the better of him." I replied. The tone of my voice slightly shifting towards aggression because this man just declared my friend to be a dead man.

"Really? From what I've seen, those things aren't extremely fast, but they are still fast enough to catch your average joe. And they don't need to be fast, why waste time and energy when you can fire those laser things. The way I see it, a human, against only one of those things, doesn't stand a chance." The man said.

"May I ask for your name sir?" I asked.

"Oh? My names Franklin, Franklin baker." He replied.

"Well Mr. Franklin, I think we should just wait and see, instead of jumping to conclusions. Don't fill your mind with any more thoughts than necessary. I'm no doctor, but I'm guessing that's bad for your health. I starkly replied.

At that moment, Karl burst into the room and was in obvious distraught.

"Karl! What is it?" I exclaimed as I inquired about what had him in such disarray.

"They're, they're coming!" Karl said, agitated and out of breath.

"What…. What's going on?" The second woman asked.

"Everyone to the basemen- "

Boom.

We heard the sound of an explosion coming from not to far away. Before we knew it, the front door was blasted open and two of those cylinders were in the room.

"Noooooooo!!" Evelyn screamed in horror as the cylinders cruised into the room.

"PZZUIII!!"

A cylinder fired at Franklin but barely made contact as the laser grazed his arm.

"Everyone run!" I screamed.

"Pzuii…. Puiiii" The lasers fired as we scrambled around trying to avoid its shots.

Charles, Franklin and Evelyn ran into the basement. The second woman tried to run in too but she was cut off by one of the cylinders.

"Vriiuuu, Vroouu." The cylinder made mechanical noises as it prepared to fire at her.

"Come here!" I grabbed her arm and pulled her away, barely avoiding the death ray fired at her from behind in the process.

"Come on." I directed her to the attic upstairs where Karl had already taken refuge. The cylinder following closely behind.

The cylinders used wheels at the side of their frame to move around so it was having trouble getting on the stair case.

"Haah... haaahhh …. It looks like we're safe." I said, panting.

"Kreeeee!!!!"

A sharp sound pierced through our ears as the cylinder reverted back into the spherical shape I had seen back when these things first crashed out of the sky. It reverted it's form and just dropped there at the bottom of the stair case.

"What's going on." The woman asked as we peered out of the attic to see what was going on.

"I don't know, It just…. stopped." I said.

Before I knew it, the sphere turned into a spider like figure and burst up the staircase. I quickly shut the door to the attic and went inside to hide.

"Boom boom boom." The arachnid knocked on the door continuously, trying to enter and end our lives.

The knocking subsided and we could finally catch our breaths. We heard the sound of the cylinder go down the stairs and we were relieved.

Suddenly, the footsteps got faster and the arachnid burst through the door. The feeling of terror that had dissipated a few seconds ago was back in full force.

We scrambled around the attic as silently as we could, trying to find good hiding spots. Luckily, there were boxes everywhere, keeping us out of the alien's immediate sight. I kept the woman close to me as I wasn't going to let the aliens get another person, not on my watch.

I watched from a safe corner as the arachnid looked around the room, trying to find it's next victims. It looked around some more and when it couldn't find us, another strange thing occurred.

Another claw came out from under it and was illuminating the room with a blue light. I was certain It wouldn't find me where I was hiding even if it illuminated the room, until it did.

The arachnid turned back into a cylinder and zoomed towards our location blasting away anything blocking it's path.

We were in a dire situation, and how we were going to escape such a situation was currently beyond our grasps.