Chapter 23

It didn’t take much time for A’luhr to outfit the rest of the group with the remaining weapons and some satchels, which slung over their shoulders, and seemed capable of holding plenty of any supplies they might find. A’luhr remained equipped with her two daggers along with one of the three remaining impulse detonators, the other two of which she gave to Zoey and Steven. To Sarah and Adam, she gave them each a vibrator wand and demonstrated to the whole team how to attach their new armaments to grooves on the sides of their spiffy new outfits.

After making sure that all the gear had been accounted for and distributed, A’luhr pressed a panel on the side of the Brightdark, and the platform leading into the ship slowly closed. Satisfied that her ship was safely sealed from any would-be invaders, she rejoined the rest of the group near the tree line, and they set out through the sparse forest towards the city.

They marched in silence, straining their ears for any hint of approaching Krinis, while simultaneously doing their best to limit their own noises that might betray their location to the aliens’ acute senses. Even though they were now more well-armed than ever, they didn’t have so many resources as to be able to fend off numerous assailants, so A’luhr had stressed the continued emphasis on stealth before they left, not that the rest of the group needed much telling.

Brittle twigs snapped beneath their feet, small critters scampering away through the underbrush, and branches with verdant foliage whispered overhead in the fresh, earthy-scented breeze. Sarah felt some small comfort in hearing birds chirping in the trees above, glad to know that at least some lives hadn’t been completely upended thanks to the invasion. The pleasant, trilling songs filled Sarah with both a sense of longing nostalgia and bubbling optimism.

“I’m surprised that the Krinis don’t just blindly attack any animal that makes sounds,” Steven whispered, breaking the silence. The trees were relatively thin, and the ground was largely covered in dirt and scattered dead leaves, so unless the Krinis had recently mastered invisibility, it indeed seemed safe enough to whisper among themselves. Though judging from what they had already seen, Sarah wouldn’t have been too shocked if a huge tentacle monster did suddenly materialize out of thin air in front of them.

“Maybe they did at first, but quickly learned from their mistakes?” Zoey offered.

“Or perhaps their senses are now even sharper than we realize...” A’luhr breathed in a foreboding tone. “I myself have never seen a fully matured Krinis before, other than The Queen, so who knows how some of their physiologies may have developed by now.”

“Matured?” Sarah asked in surprise, raising her brows. “You mean to say that none of the Krinis we’ve encountered so far have been adults?”

“Hm, unless you consider the Kri-vesus, then no. The ‘tentacle’ form is simply an infantile stage, or perhaps a specialized role in the hive as Sarah Cassidy postulated earlier.”

“Interesting...” Sarah rubbed her chin in thought. “I imagine that all the other forms of the Takers we’ve seen until now have been these infants merging together to create larger body masses for better protection and hunting, even capable of flight as seen with the ‘dragonflies’. A clever strategy that makes sense for a highly communal species ... I think that- wait, the ‘Kri-vesus’?” Sarah looked up, snapped out of her streaming torrent of thoughts as she recalled the unfamiliar word.

“The ‘big flying squids’ from the start of the invasion,” A’luhr sighed. “I am fairly sure I mentioned them before.”

“Ohhh right right right,” Sarah moaned, scratching her reddened nose. “I completely forgot.”

“We really need to come up with our own names for these things,” Adam shrugged.

“What is wrong with the nomenclature established by my people?” A’luhr asked.

“Err ... nothing, nothing,” Adam coughed awkwardly. “The names just aren’t very intuitive for us, is all. We have a lot of room for creativity here.”

“And you believe that calling them ‘Takers’ is the better, ‘more creative’ solution?” A’luhr gave him an amused look.

“At least it’s intuitive...” Adam mumbled.

“So, what does ‘Kri-vesus’ mean in your language?” Sarah inquired, hungering curiosity practically oozing from her face.

“Ah ... w-well...” A’luhr stammered. “I believe it roughly translates to... ‘Krinis that grabs many’...” She seemed to blush slightly, and her r’emuli drooped. Adam suppressed a triumphant laugh while A’luhr leered at him.

“Well, jeez,” Steven let out a heavy breath. “So, this whole time we’ve just been running away from little babies? That makes it even more confusing as to why they haven’t all died off yet.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked, cocking her head. Was Steven privy to information she hadn’t considered before?

“I mean, why haven’t viruses and bacteria and stuff killed them all off yet?” Steven gesticulated his hands in frustration. “They should have no immunities to all the stuff we have here on Earth, right? So how come these babies are surviving? Is it due to their healing factor or something?”

“I’ll take this one,” Zoey said with a sigh, shaking her head mournfully and placing a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “My sweet older brother, you mustn’t believe everything you see in movies.”

“Wha- get off!” Steven grumbled, testily jerking his shoulder away from his sister’s condescending touch. “I’m just thinking logically here!”

“Maybe leave the thinking for the pros, okay?” Zoey snickered. “The Krinis don’t need any special powers or vaccines to be immune to our viruses–they’re already naturally immune because they came from space.”

“Ah, glad to see the introductory unit on coevolution stuck with you,” Sarah laughed, nodding in approval.

“Coevolution?” Steven asked, perplexity written clearly across his face.

“Exactly,” Zoey replied. “Viruses can infect our bodies because they have tools specialized for that job–tools acquired over the course of millions of years of evolving alongside us. The Krinis are just as alien to bacteria and viruses as they are to them. Any virus trying to infect a Krinis would be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”

“I suppose it’s vaguely possible given how we allegedly share the Krinis’s DNA,” Sarah mused. “But after such a long period of time spent evolving, it’s pretty unlikely.”

“I, uh, did not know that,” Steven admitted. “What, is it a crime now to not know everything?”

“If that were the case,” A’luhr chimed in, “I believe we would all be the most wanted criminals in the world.” Steven laughed, reassured.

“Speaking of crimes,” said Adam, pushing past a few last trees to emerge out of the forest and into the midday sun. “Who’s ready to do some looting?” They all stepped out behind him onto the side of a paved road, looking up over the several lanes of abandoned cars towards the towering, ooze-covered buildings of the city that stretched out towards the horizon.

As hoped, it seemed that the sparsely populated fringes of the metropolitan area had yet to be fully consumed by the Krinis’s fleshy corruption, with only a few visible strands of the slimy, pinkish ichor plastered on and between various structures here and there.

Looking around their immediate area, the group found themselves standing on the edge of a large outdoor mall, which Sarah recognized, but she hadn’t often shopped at, given its distance from her house. As such, while she did remember there being a Fiestavilla somewhere in the complex, she didn’t know exactly where it was off the top of her head. Luckily, Zoey seemed more confident.

“Oh, I know right where we are!” She announced, pointing towards the shopping center. “See? I was right! The Blue Gates Mall is just over there! That’s where the Fiestaville is!”

“Speak quietly!” A’luhr hissed under her breath, ducking behind a dead car, and gesturing for the others to follow suit. Zoey clamped her mouth shut in surprise and embarrassment before sliding down next to the alien woman. “Remember when I spoke of vigilance and stealth? Look.” She pointed down the road.

About one hundred yards away, silently lumbering its way around the vehicles, was a Taker. As usual, it was an imposing monster: tall, humanoid, and composed of countless writhing tentacles ... but something was different about it.

“Shit, a Taker...” Adam groaned, tightly gripping his vibrator wand.

“That’s strange...” Sarah whispered, looking the creature up and down. “Where are the human captives? I don’t hear any moaning or anything ... do the Krinis no longer need to use us as batteries?”

“I do not believe that is the case,” A’luhr replied, nervously eyeing the cars around them as she began analyzing the best route through them. “Look closely at its core.”

Sarah furrowed her brow and leaned over the side of the car to get a better view. As the Taker turned around to face their direction, it became clear what A’luhr was referring to. Instead of the familiar, fleshy torso they had come to expect to see several naked humans trapped within, there was now a large, solid-looking sphere made up of dozens of tentacles that appeared to have been grafted together. It gave the Taker the appearance of having a massive beer belly, however it hardly jiggled at all as it took its large strides.

To Sarah’s horror, she could see a pair of human legs sticking out from holes within the front of the tumor-like belly. The limbs met the Taker’s body at the knees, hanging limply in a sort of sitting position, but every now and then they would twitch slightly as the toes curled.

“The drones have begun encasing their captives inside of a protective layer...” A’luhr surmised, clicking her tongue while thumbing over the daggers strapped to her thighs. “This makes it harder to deal with them by simply severing their energy source...” She bit her lip in frustration and glanced over at the vibrator rod in Adam’s hands, clearly regretting her strategy of being the only one with mere daggers for protection.

“Look!” Steven whispered, standing up slightly to peer through the car’s windows. “Oh fuck! There’re more tentacles over there!” Sure enough, a dozen or so individual tentacles, each about the size of a small boa constrictor, had wormed their way out from under the vehicles and were now rearing up in the air towards the larger Taker. They swayed back and forth like hatchling birds begging their mother for a worm.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Zoey asked breathlessly, staring at the strange scene in morbid fascination. Her rhetorical question was soon answered, as a change started to take place within the portly Taker. Its large, rotund belly began to slowly split vertically down the middle like a giant walnut shell, with the crack passing between the human legs.

The crevasse slowly began to grow larger, giving the impression of a giant, grotesque rib cage that had been severed at the sternum, which was being pried open to get at the organs within. The human legs, now thrashing wildly, were pulled along with the movements of the Taker’s flesh, spreading them wide apart.

As the sides of the mouth-like gash grew further and further apart, strands of slime pulled taut between them, and viscous, white fluid began to trickle out from the seam until there was a creamy waterfall gushing out from the Taker’s insides.

The smaller tentacles below bathed and writhed happily in the downpour, hungrily slurping up the abundant pools of milky juices, even as more of the fluid splashed down onto their wiggling bodies. As the interior of the split-open Taker emptied of the liquid, the owner of the pair of human legs could finally be seen: a woman, likely in her mid-twenties, was nestled completely immobile deep within the pulsating, stomach-like chamber. The grotesque surfaces around her were covered in writhing feelers that tickled and teased her sensitive, slippery skin, worming around in her ears, armpits, and between her ass cheeks.

Her legs were now spread completely open, trapped in the Taker’s sides like a living gynecologist chair, and her arms were buried up to her elbows in the creature’s fleshy insides. Her dripping, flaxen hair draped down over her face, which was almost entirely covered by an opaque, membranous facemask-like tentacle. Sarah guessed that it likely supplied the captive woman with air, while also no doubt occasionally filling her throat with potent aphrodisiac.

The woman’s skin was glistening with the remains of the whitish fluid that she had apparently been recently submerged in, the source of which was now plainly clear. Inside the Taker were several long, penis-shaped tentacles, all of which pointed towards the poor woman’s naked form. They waved and squirmed around her, caressing her helpless body, smacking meatily against her quivering, flushed cheeks, and pressing up into her melon-sized tits, which were being hungrily milked by a pair of starfish-shaped tendrils that connected to the fleshy walls around her.

The tentacle cocks regularly ejaculated rich, milky alien cum all over her exposed skin, where it lazily oozed down, dripped between her gaping legs, and then splattered to the ground below to further fuel the tentacle worms’ feeding frenzy.

Several knobby tentacles were methodically working their way in and out of the woman’s swollen cunt, their bulges visible stirring up her insides, while two tiny tentacles lined with squirming cilia tormented her erect little bud. The woman’s head suddenly began to thrash, pulling at the tentacle grasping her face. Sarah thought she could hear a muffled scream as the woman’s body trembled in climax, her bound limbs desperately tugging at their restraints in a fruitless effort to escape the unwanted stimulation.

The tentacles slurping on her full tits began to swell as a torrent of milk gushed out from her nipples. Soon after, small sphincters embedded within the Taker started to spray white liquid all around the woman until the milking tentacles were no longer engorged. Sarah realized there was a high chance that this fluid now freshly coating the woman’s body was in fact her own recently extracted milk.

It was no surprise, then, that such a volume of fluid had amassed inside the woman’s fleshy prison. The Taker’s insides were constantly being filled with a mixture of alien spunk and human milk, keeping the bound woman helplessly submerged in the thick slurry until the chamber opened to spill its collected contents.

Sarah and the rest of the group could only watch in muted horror as the Taker’s sides slowly began to close, once again enveloping the spasming woman in a dark hell of endless pleasure.

“Guess it was chow time for the little ones,” Adam groaned, looking away in disgust while doing his best not to gag.

“We’re lucky that the smaller Krinis were drawn away towards that... ‘feeder’,” Sarah responded, slumping back against the car. “Otherwise, we could have stepped on one by mistake.”

“Thank you for your sacrifice, unknown lady,” Steven whispered, offering a salute towards the bulbous Taker, which was now waddling away from them. Zoey shot her brother a look as if she were going to chastise him, but remained silent.

“Let us move quickly so that her ‘sacrifice’ was not in vain,” A’luhr suggested, beginning to make her way towards the back of the car. “Follow me; I believe I have charted a clear path through these vehicles.” She slipped out towards the next car, taking care to not accidentally make any noise as she crept across the street.

The rest of the group followed suit, weaving between vehicles while keeping an eye out for any tentacle worms that may have been on their way back towards them after enjoying the sloppy feast from earlier. Fortunately, the path was clear, and everyone managed to safely navigate to the mall’s parking lot, hunkered down behind a large dumpster.

It was clear that shopping was not on most people’s minds when the invasion had first begun, as only a few parked vehicles remained. The nearly empty expanse of cracked pavement stretched out for a considerable distance between their hiding spot and the shadows of the cramped mall buildings.

“Shit,” Adam huffed, scanning the area with his eyes. “How on Earth are we supposed to get over there without being seen? We’ll stand out like sore thumbs in this empty parking lot.”

“Oh?” A’luhr looked at him, surprise evident in her voice. “Do humans emit some manner of distress pheromone when their fingers are injured?”

“What...?” Adam replied blankly. Sarah chuckled as she realized the misunderstanding.

“He’s using another idiom,” Steven explained.

“Ah, I see!” A’luhr gasped, nodding her helmeted head thoughtfully.

“The Krinis don’t really have eyes anyway, right?” Zoey offered. “As long as we aren’t running around screaming and yelling, we should be invisible to them.”

“Perhaps...” A’luhr agreed slowly. “Though it is possible that there may be Krinis drones nearby that have matured to a level where they can sense the vibrations of mere footsteps, or possibly even more.”

“Well, we’ll just have to be extra careful then,” said Sarah, trying to exude confidence. “Think of it this way: all this empty space also means the Krinis can’t sneak up on us, and we’ll be able to see them coming from a mile away. We got this.” She stood up and pumped her fist, doing her best to hype up the rest of the team. Her bold figure was diminished slightly as her stomach growled loudly. Sarah blushed and rubbed her aching midsection.

“We better hurry,” Adam replied with a hint of sarcasm, standing up next to Sarah with wide eyes. “If we don’t find food fast, Sarah’s stomach will alert every Krinis to our location within a five-mile radius!” Sarah’s blush deepened. But her embarrassment faded slightly as several other bellies within the group also began to grumble.

“Man, I could kill for a cheeseburger right now...” Steven murmured dreamily, his sight fixated on a fast-food restaurant at the edge of the mall.

“Canned or dry foods are probably our only real options,” Zoey sighed, patting her hungry brother on the shoulder. “You’ll just have to pretend.”

“Hopefully there will be at least a few snacks in the party store,” Sarah suggested.

“I am so very curious to see what manner of wares are offered in this ‘party store’.” A’luhr responded, surprisingly giddy. “If they so easily sell such treasures as helium for mere parties, one can only imagine what wonders you humans use for jubilation.”

“Is this the Feistaville that has the, ahem, ‘adult section’ in the back?” Steven asked, clearing his throat while looking side eyed at A’luhr.

“Jee-ZUS!” Zoey moaned in exasperation. “Being fucked by aliens for a couple months didn’t slow you down at all, I see.”

“Hey, to be fair, the damn Queen was just edging me for most of that time.” He shuddered as the memory of his ordeal visibly spread throughout his body.

“Sheesh. I’m impressed you didn’t go insane,” Adam replied, genuine respect reflected in his eyes. “I used to get crazy blue balls when I was your age if I didn’t cum at least every other day minimum.” There might have been a time when Sarah would have been shocked, or maybe even disgusted, by such candid comments, but the taboo of sexuality had already long begun to erode in the current world.

“Erm, well,” Steven stammered, looking away from A’luhr as his face began to redden. “I was allowed release now and then...” He mumbled some more unintelligible words under his breath, and A’luhr awkwardly looked away, shifting her feet uncomfortably. Sarah raised a brow and made a mental note to bug them for details later as a mischievous grin crossed her face.

“Ok enough chit-chat people,” Sarah said, holding up a hand to shush any further conversation. “Let’s just get in and out while the coast is still clear here in our exit route. Zoey, do you know how to get there from here?”

“I think so, yeah,” Zoey replied, her eyes shifting down towards the ground in uncertainty. “I mean, I didn’t come here often, but once we’re near the buildings I’m sure it’ll be easy to remember.”

“Just to be absolutely sure, let’s first stop that directory over there.” Sarah pointed across the parking lot to a large glass sign labeled “Info” next to a kiosk that sat adjacent to one of the main walkways leading into the mall proper. Even from a distance, it was easy enough to tell that the sign displayed a map of the mall’s layout.

Everyone nodded in understanding, and without further delay they all started to gingerly walk towards the directory, hunching over to keep a low-profile just in case. Sarah’s pulse quickened as they neared the center of the sparse parking lot. Even though there were no signs of any Krinis in the immediate area, she still didn’t like being so exposed out in the open like this. Every cloud looked like a flying Taker scanning the land, and every shadow beneath the occasional parked car threatened to hide dozens of horny tentacles.

She gulped and clenched her fists, doing her best to balance such distracting fears with focused vigilance. Sarah was sure that the cacophonic sound of her pounding heart would be enough to draw the unwanted attention of any nearby Krinis, but despite her exaggerated worries, they managed to cross the parking lot without incident.

However, when they were about fifty feet away from the kiosk, she didn’t just hear something approaching, she felt it.

thump. Thump. THUMP.

Heavy impacts that rattled the parked cars and shook the pavement began thundering closer and closer. Something had started to move. The cadence of the noises gave the impression of giant footsteps. It was impossible to tell where exactly the sound was coming from, as it echoed off the walls of the shops ahead of them, but it was better to risk running for cover in the direction of the potential threat rather than simply standing completely defenseless out in the open.

“What the-!?” Steven gasped, frantically looking around. “Do you guys hear that!?”

“Yeah,” Sarah replied in an urgent whisper. “And I’d rather not see it too. Hurry! Into the kiosk!”

They threw caution to the wind and dashed towards the information booth, vaulting over a row of planters overgrown with weeds. A’luhr got there first and quickly scoped out the interior of the kiosk, daggers drawn, before ushering the rest of the group towards the hiding spot. One by one, they all hopped over the counter and crouched down, holding their breaths, and hoping that they had gone unnoticed.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

Whatever it was was nearly upon them now. The vibrations from the “footsteps” caused a rack of pamphlets behind Sarah to shake and nearly topple over, but she managed to catch it just in time. The sounds came to a stop in the direction of the parking lot where they just were.

Silence.

Even after several minutes had passed, nothing else happened. They each eyed each other with questioning glances, gripping their respective weapons tightly in sweaty, gloved palms. Even with her suit’s latex-like fabric covering her fingers, Sarah could still clearly feel the button needed to activate the rod in her lightly trembling hands as if wearing nothing at all.

Finally, after another few minutes, Sarah’s curiosity started to get the best of her, and she began to peek over the edge of the counter. Adam, noticing this, was about to grab her arm and stop her, but after seeing the look of shocked horror on his girlfriend’s face as she looked out from the kiosk, he decided to take the risk and see what they were dealing with as well.

The flying octopus creatures at the start of the invasion had easily been the largest Krinis they had all seen up until this point, but what they saw before them now out in the abandoned parking lot was certainly a close second.

A quadrupedal creature with a body the size of two city buses and legs like redwood trees towered above the mall entrance. Like the other Krinis forms they had seen, it appeared to be entirely made up of interwoven tentacles, which stretched along its uncanny body like pulsating muscle fibers.

It stood at least 20 feet off the ground, but a long and girthy neck-like appendage branching out from the center of the creature’s body added another 30. The beast could have been mistaken for some deformed brachiosaurus if the onlooker was colorblind, squinting, and rather inebriated.

The monster’s neck waved in the air like a snake preparing to strike, clearly scanning the area from which Sarah and the rest had just vacated. The end of the appendage was lined with several glassy, purple spheres that almost seemed like rudimentary eyes. As Sarah stared into the cold orbs, she felt herself shudder involuntarily. Was this thing capable of sight? If so, they had made the right choice to swiftly make themselves scarce, but it still seemed suspicious of its surroundings.

Suddenly the tip of the creature’s neck-thing opened up like an anemone, revealing hundreds of smaller tentacles squirming inside of its “mouth” like living tongues. The appendage arched up straight into the sky, before letting out a loud bellow that sounded like a collection of lustful, human moans released all at once, which rattled the windows of the nearby buildings.

Sarah gasped and clamped a hand over her dry mouth as she saw dozens of tentacle worms slither past their hiding spot towards the hulking creature as if heeding the call of a summoning horn. As the tentacles drew near to the beast, its thick legs bent to allow the main body to dip down until it was only a few feet off the ground.

The underside of the behemoth had been obscured by shadows before, but now Sarah could clearly make out the shapes that were hanging beneath the thing’s “stomach”, which she had simply mistaken as being mere tentacles only moments prior.

The exposed, inhumanly enlarged, cocks, balls, and breasts of at least fifty or so humans dangled and swayed helplessly between the creature’s bent legs like a cow’s udders, with the rest of their bodies completely hidden within the creature’s flesh. Based on the way they twitched, the captives were all well alive and aware of their predicament, though as to what lewd torments were currently assaulting them within the monster was anyone’s guess.

The fate of their completely exposed genitals was less ambiguous. One of the first tentacles to arrive at the crouching monster slithered beneath an engorged black cock the size of a prize-winning zucchini, paired with a set of leathery, soft balls that dangled like ripe oranges.

The tentacle worm reared up and brushed against the man’s glans. Sensing this, he began to squirm around inside of the giant creature, doing his best to swing his genitals back and forth in an attempt to avoid the tentacle’s slowly opening, drooling mouth. His actions did little more than serve to entice the hungry worms even more, as if waving a treat in front of a stray dog’s face.

The tentacle coiled up and then sprang towards the man’s jiggling sack, wrapping around the base of his testicles, and pulling his plump balls taut against the veiny skin. Now secured onto the man’s genitals as it was, the worm was free to easily take its time in working its cilia-filled mouth around the helpless, throbbing penis before it.

From beneath the tentacle’s semi-transparent skin, an inner, sheath-like sleeve could be seen rapidly gliding up and down the man’s engorged shaft, until it suddenly began to twitch madly. Several huge, thick cumshots could be seen filling up the tentacle’s eager gullet, before being swallowed away.

More and more tentacle worms arrived, and one by one they began to latch onto defenseless cocks and tits, like hungry babies suckling milk from their mother’s teats. After a while, the feeding tentacles began to let go and drop back to the ground before slithering off, leaving milk and cum dripping from the well-squeezed breasts and penises. Once the last of the worms had taken its leave, the four-legged behemoth stood back up and began to slowly lumber away, the eyes on its neck still surveying the area while white fluids continued to rain down from the bouncing human flesh between its legs.

“Wh-what was that...?” Zoey squeaked, her face as pale as the pools of excess semen that remained on the pavement where the giant creature once stood, which rippled as its footsteps grew further and further away.

“I have never seen anything like it...” A’luhr breathed, still looking around to make sure no wayward monsters were headed their way.

“Did you see those little purple beads on its, uh, neck?” Adam asked as he slumped back against the wall of the kiosk. “They looked like fucking eyes, right?”

“I-I thought so too,” Zoey agreed, swallowing a knot in her throat. “Do you think it saw us?”

“I have a feeling that if it had, we’d all be getting intimately familiar with its innards right about now.

“Good point.”

“We should get deeper into the mall before it comes back,” Sarah replied, doing her best to quell the shaking of her voice. “I doubt it’d be able to easily fit between the buildings here.”

“Agreed,” A’luhr said, standing up and leaning out over the counter to peer around the kiosk. “But we must be wary of any other ‘surprises’ that may exist within this compound.” Once she was satisfied that there were no enemies in the immediate area, she gracefully leapt out from into the open, and the rest of the group followed.