48 Years Later 2: Underground

The lone man runs across the field, which overgrows with grass and small woods the old, concrete roads and parking lots of the sprawl of the city limits of Prince George, sprinting at times, jogging at others. Most of the city homes are flattened. His pace is methodical. Light arms clothe his frame and the close fitting, neoprene jumpsuit he wears. At times he checks his watch, a compass, and temperature checking microprocessor, with data, and voice communication uplinks, while he runs. His destination is a forest that lines the field like a vast delineation marking the border between the exposed danger of the field and the safety of the woods. He nears the forest, runs across an old highway, one kilometer, 950 meters, 900 meters. Now he begins to maintain a consistent sprint, but he doesn't seem to tire. Now it is 800 meters, five seconds later it is 700 more.

Two kilometers behind him other figures run also. There are four of them, running tirelessly, as he does; the one in the back looks back. “Keep running,” he yells. He drops a small device behind him in the field. A quick look back shows that five kilometers behind them is the old, human city of Prince George, which is surrounded by a forest of taiga, old farming fields, rolling hills, and the Caribou Mountains further to the East of the city. They run past the grounds of the old University of Northern British Columbia up on the hills overlooking the city. Shorter, old-looking skyscrapers look like shadows rising from the ashes of the burnt, medium-sized city. One more look reveals what they are running from - the cars. Turning his head forward he narrowly misses colliding with an old car that rusts in an overgrown parking lot.

They call them “the cars” - large, sleek, hovering machines that buzz across the earth searching for free humans to exterminate. The Forsha, aliens that attacked earth in 2015 A.D., built large centers, Gizams, for their civilization, which harbour an estimated 700 million of these humanoids. A constant state of war exists between the human race and the Forsha, with uneasy alliances between the humans and the Forsha in Russia and China. The cities of the Forsha are nearly impenetrable fortresses that hide the secrets of their civilization. They have highly advanced abilities of space, atmospheric travel, and metals and their civilization spans a number of galaxies. Human efforts to penetrate the cities achieve some successes in technological espionage, and new knowledge of space, and other civilizations and non-human intelligences. Human beings often see the large, Forsha aircraft that ply the skies like the jetliners, and space liners, of the former civilization of the humans, but the cars bring the only contact between humans and Forsha. Their meetings are generally violent; if the Forsha do not wish to fully exterminate human beings, then it still, apparently, is their interest to keep numbers of human beings at a minimum. The cars roam, patrolling the earth, attacking human beings, and radiating defenses up to 1000 km from their centers.

Human beings live in small, underground towns, highly sophisticated technologically, but still, in many ways, inferior, technologically, to the population centers of the Forsha. The largest of the towns of the humans is Fouchou, China, with a population of around 77 000. There are many towns in North America with populations of 1000 to 5000, spread throughout the continent and usually underground, often near the old cities of the former era that existed before the attacks of the Forsha. Near the old American, and Canadian, cities of Seattle and Vancouver, there is a large, human town of 22 000. Rumors circulate among the humans that in Asia the Russians, and the Chinese, have begun forming trade partnerships with the Forsha, but in North America, the Forsha engage human beings only for the purpose of exterminating human beings. There are estimates that 24 million human beings survive forty-eight years after the Forsha invasion. Birth rates are only slightly higher than death rates.

Humans have little vehicle power, fighting most of their battles on foot and strengthening their bodies with steroid enhancements, which have increased the senses, strength, speed, agility, endurance, and mental processing of human beings, but these enhancements are reaching physical limits. The average human soldier can now run the 100 meter dash in five seconds, sprinting at speeds of up to 80 kilometers an hour, and jog marathons at over 50 kilometers an hour.

The soldier running last drops another small device, a bomb, and scatters two more bombs to the right and left, running a spread of explosive mines behind them, while he runs. He looks behind him; the cars are gaining ground. There are four of them and they spread out to catch up to the humans and surround them; two of the cars fire at the fleeing humans from the air. The cars are now less than a kilometer behind the humans and red flashes dimly colour the grass of the field, and the trees, as the Forsha begin firing at the fleeing humans. Blue laser lines erupt from the forest as the soldier running in the lead opens fire on the cars from the safety of the forest.