Alien Invasion

      I dreamed, vivid action packed dreams unlike I've had in awhile. The dream started with a two on two basketball game on the asphalt courts of my former high school. I was playing well, for a change, and my team won. We made our way into the showers, firing up the public ones for the kids, and us staff members taking turns in the private shower. When dressing I found a Greek or Roman tunic in my locker. I tried it on, decided I liked it, but though it a bit short, so tossed my jeans on underneath. I headed out to the parking lot after chasing the last of the kids out of the locker room.
      The parking lot lights hadn't come on yet, but the sky was getting dark. I noticed it was overcast and starting to get chilly, the wind picked up. I put one foot in front of the other, when my toes touched my heel, jets fired to life below my feet and boosted me a few inches into the air. It felt like I was riding the smoothest running skateboard you could ever imagine. I shot out into the parking lot, looking for my car.
      Instead I was attracted to a low structure in the parking lot. I glided over and ducked down to see what was going on. There was a big cat turd below the three foot high awning. The awning covered one parking space. I noticed there was a furball hacked up near the cat turd.
      "I'm not going to clean that up! Gross!" and similar comments drifted across the parking lot.
      I was more concerned about the cat. I looked around, did a couple of "here, Kitty, Kitty!" calls. No sign of a cat. I whistled, like I do for our cats.
      "Cats won't come to a whistle," someone commented.
      Little John jumped out from under a nearby car and raced over to me, crouching down between my feet. I carefully picked him up and walked him over to my car. "Who else is along on this little jaunt?" I asked him, but aside from bursting into a loud purr, he wasn't telling. I decided to cruise the parking lot and the bushes to see if any of the other cats had somehow tagged along. While I was cruising at low altitude I suddenly decided to try climbing higher, to see more of the parking lot. It worked, but only by saying "Up, up, I'm climbing ever up," over and over again in a sort of chant. When I stopped chanting the jets grew quiet and I drifted back down to the ground.
      The sun was completely gone from the sky, I just happened to be looking out over Black Mountain when there were four huge red and orange rips in the dark purple sky. Thunder knocked me out of the sky, fortunately I was only a dozen feet up and a juniper bush broke my fall.
      There were four spiked vessels in the sky where the rips had appeared. They hummed and groaned in a vast chorus of alien machine sound. I could see the lights of small vehicles detach from the main ships and spread out in all directions, several of them headed for the school. They stopped in the air above the parking lot, three legs jetting out from each, they stood silent, watching the panic in the parents and students who were leaving their afternoon activities.
      The parking lot lights came on. Two of the half dozen tripods fired at nearby parking lot lights. There was even more panic. One of the beams went completely through the lamp and housing and ripped a huge hole in the side of the hill above my head. The other beam struck the small lap pool vaporizing enough water to fill the entire pool area and 50 feet above with steam. I couldn't tell if I was bounced out of the bush by the sound of the thunder, or the ground actually quaked from the force of the blast. Being on the ground didn't seem like a good idea. I put my toes against my heal and drew my legs beneath me, sliding out towards the trees in order to sneak around behind one of the machines for a better look.
      There were no more shots from the alien craft. I looked for my car. It was only about 10 feet from one of the alien craft's legs. Little John was on the dashboard looking out the window trying to see the craft which was almost directly above the car. I found myself wishing I'd left him free. He started pacing nervously, and climbing up and down the steering wheel. I shot out of the trees and whistled. Since I was behind the car he climbed into the trunk to see where I was. I could actually hear him meow at me through the glass. I didn't want him honking the horn with trigger happy aliens about.
      One of the two craft that fired on our lights slowly began to sink down on retracting legs. Finally it was squatting like a giant red enameled spider just above JD's Corvette. I "up upped" over a car at the end of the row I was in line with and then ducked down between the cars to make my way over to my own. The aliens seemed either unaware of me, or uncaring. On reaching my car, shooting rapidly across the open lane to get to it. I pulled the tail open, glad I hadn't locked it up (the lights flash when you unlock with the remote.) John was quite willing to be held, and he buried his face in my arms as I shot down the aisle of cars weaving and hiding behind the taller ones. I heard noises from the landed craft, but didn't turn to look back until I'd reached an open classroom. John jumped out of my arms and raced to the darkest corner of the room.
      Looking out the doorway, I spotted several parents and students pointing to the aliens as they approached. Some ran into the room with Little John, but most kept running to get around the building and away from the aliens, who to look at them were in some sort of armored suit, enameled black and red, in opposite proportions to their ship. They were carrying long tubes with several cylinders near the end closest to their bodies, and several had some sort of dish antenna array they swept back and forth in front of them. I could not tell what they looked like, and got the impression that the suit was not exactly form fitting from the way the leg joints were obviously fully mechanical. The suits had for legs and somewhere between four and 6 arm/tentacle appendages. I only ever saw three working at a time as the swept across the parking lot. One stopped and checked out the open hatch of my car.
      John had come out and was again between my legs. When he stood on his back legs and asked to be picked up, I knew it was time to go. I boosted into the hallway and shot onto the campus, then out the back of campus down the access stairs. I could see lights in the sky, and heard the roaring of helicopter blades and jet engines. I knew I didn't have enough fuel to get home, so started to plan on how I could make my way to my parents house. I didn't think Little John would be willing to go back to the parking lot to pack up the car and go. So far the aliens had ignored all of the cars that were tearing out of the parking lot. I flew us up the hill, Little John settling into my soft briefcase, and made my way to the top of the street overlooking the school. The aliens had taken to the air, except the one which had crew on the school grounds. John was just quivering in the bag, now. So I raced down the hill into the parking lot and got us into my car, Little Red. So with Little John, in Little Red with little courage left, I put the car in gear and drove us out of there. I was scanning through the radio trying to find some news, but there was nothing but static, anywhere. I don't think that was a good sign.
      I stayed on surface streets as long as I could, not wanting to get caught on the crush on the freeway. Surprisingly, there really wasn't much traffic. Less than normal. I managed to get across the lake and off the freeway again in just a few minutes. I didn't see any more alien craft on the ground, but there were some flights in the sky, mostly being harassed by large helicopters or F-118s. The aliens flew circles around the Marine jets and ignored the helicopters. No one was firing at one another yet, I was hoping that was a good sign. As I pulled into town I could see the lights of one of the large mother ships headed over to where our local airport is.
      N was at home, glued to the TV. CNN was on, in fact most of the cable channels were still on. Only radio seemed to be scrambled. Most of the coverage was audio, and really low quality video. N explained that the ENG stuff wasn't working, so they were uploading video as fast as they could over the internet, but they had to find a land line to send it in to the station.
      "Stay in your homes, stay off the streets, don't shoot at the aliens, or aim bright lights at them. Both actions can have the same fatal results."
      There was video of an F-118 shooting down two alien craft, then itself being disintegrated in a beam like that which had taken out our pool and the hillside at the school. There were other reports of damage to structures or vehicles, surprisingly few deaths were being reported, and no one was reporting what I'd seen with aliens actually roaming around in small land vehicles. I tried to call their number, but all of the lines were busy. I shot them an email, figuring it would be hours before anyone would be able to pour through the mass of communications to find it. N wanted to head for the hills, take all the food and water we could carry and go. She calmed down a bit when I asked her about the cats.
      The aliens were acting very, well, alien. No one could seem to figure out what they were doing, and to be honest none had fired without being fired upon first. They were staying away from the fighter planes as much as possible, and there really weren't any more reports after the first few minutes of fatal encounters. By the time the dream ended, I was more worried about what my own government was planning to do to us than what the aliens were doing.
      I should have been more worried. I woke up in a white room, tubes everywhere, fluid surrounding me. I was able to speak quietly and found there were dozens of others within earshot. As long as we spoke quietly, we were allowed to remain awake. I started a game, what did we all have in common, other than being abducted by aliens. It turned out we had all seen the alien ground forces, we had all stayed fairly close to the action and had not run away, or armed ourselves. Most of the people were young, early twenties. For every two dozen young people there was a middle aged person like myself. There was no one over about 60, and that woman looked more like 40. All of the younger women were pregnant, or thought after a bit of grilling that they might be.
      I was buzzed to sleep as we began to talk more excitedly about what was happening to us.
      The next time I woke, I was one of the first ones awake. The oldest seemed to have awakened first. There were huge piles of goods, basically giant erector sets and piles of canvas. We would be able to make shelter fairly easily. Food was another concern. The fact that there were several moons in the sky was another. There were fields of crops just outside of where we were all laid out. I counted the number in our group and the number of groups, I figured about 50 to 60 thousand of us. I didn't see N. I didn't see any one that I really knew, though a couple of the younger people looked a little bit familiar. Many of us older folks were awake and looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. Other than ourselves, the caches of construction materials, and I found several animal pens, one with cats in it, there were no signs of the aliens at all. I had my MP3 player in my pocket. No headphones, though.