{copy}Copyright© 2014 John R. Vilnis. All rights reserved.

As I sit here in the wreckage of what used to be my home city, I keep asking myself who they were? And why did they come here? I have so many questions about what happened over the last couple days, I just don't know where to start.

We had no warning. None of the government space watching organisations saw them from what I heard. Maybe an amateur space watcher might have seen something but if they did they weren't able to get the news out fast enough to do any good.

Not that we could have done anything to stop what happened but maybe we could have saved more people. But who knew what was going to happen? We couldn't guess that it would happen.

As I take a drink of my water I think back to the day that they arrived.

I was just getting ready to knock off work when a news report popped up on the radio in the office telling us that the prime Minister had some breaking news for the country. I didn't know of anything earth shattering that our current crop of politicians had done and for a change there wasn't some group of freedom fighters/terrorists trying to take over from their government. In fact for a change we as a race had been pretty quiet.

I just knew it was too good to last. Unfortunately we weren't the bad guys this time.

We had a TV in the break room so I decided that would be better to watch than just listening to the radio. We might get to see some pictures of what was so important that they disrupted my favourite time of the day - Going Home.

Well the PM came on and I knew something serious was going on because he was disheveled and sweating like the AC was out on a hot summer day. If I didn't know better I would have thought he was scared out of his mind and that couldn't be true because we all knew he didn't have enough brains to be scared.

Yeah, yeah I didn't have much respect for most politicians but the PM was top of the list due to his pandering to any special interest group that would give a contribution to his party both before and after the elections last year.

Anyway, he started speaking and he was stumbling and bumbling his way through some type of bad sci-fi story about giant space ships coming down over some of our major cities and some type of force field being projected around major areas of them. It didn't make any sense but I was starting to get scared because the PM wasn't the type of person who would play this type of bad joke on anyone. In fact he didn't have a sense of humour.

I didn't catch the rest of his mumbling and I changed the channel to the 24 hours news station to get more info. It was worse than I could think of as they said that at last count there was over 350 ships detected and that was just the known ones. There was some news from NASA and the russian space agency about some type of disturbance out beyond the orbit of the moon but we didn't have anythign pointed that way that could see what was there. They had some instruments that detected gravity fluctuations but couldn't see what was causing it.

They were warning about strange tides occuring because of the gravity fluctuations but somehow I think that we had a lot to worry about because of the bloody big honking space ships over the cities. No one could see what was happening inside the force fields around the cities and we had no contact with anyone inside. It wasn't looking good because we just didn't know what was happening.

We had reports that there were ships above a range of different sized cities and towns and we couldn't see what patern they used to choose which one to block off. A couple of the state capitals had been blocked off yet others were ignored so far. I was just wondering when it would be Brisbane's turn.

Everyone still in the office was glued to the news either on TV or on the net. I was wondering how long that would keep going because most of the major cities were central nodes for communications and when they got blocked we heard nothing from them.

We were there for about four hour before we saw more flashing reports about breaking news. And if I thought the PM was looking bad before, then what had happened must have been bad because he looked like a broken man about two steps from droping dead. He introduced the commander of the Australian Armed Forces and stepped back to allow him to speak.

"People, I don't know how to tell you but we now know what has been happening inside the force fields that the alien ships have been projecting. About 30 minutes ago the fields started to vanish from around the cities and towns and it is horrendous. Those cities and towns are all gone. Everything and everyone inside the force fields when they went up has just gone. There are huge holes, up to 50 meters deep where the cities were, and it is all gone."

"The buildings, structures and people in those towns have vanished totally. The force fields just come down and the ships lift off into space leaving behind a hole where thousands of our citizens lived, worked and played. We don't know if they are still alive but first inspections of the remains left behind is not encouraging. We have found some human remains that look to be eaten or dissovled..."

"Do you mean to tell us that everyone has been killed in those cities?" a reporter called out.

"I'm sorry but we just don't know what happened to them but we don't hold out hope of them still being alive. We haven't found anyone left in the three cities we had forces ready to scout whent he fields came down. There is nothing left there at all."

He tried to continue talking but the signal just cut out. There wasn't any signal coming through on any channel and I thought I knew what had happened. It appeared that another wave of ships had come down and walled off even more cities and this time we lost the TV broadcasters in Brisbane.

I went up to the roof and tried to see where the ship was and just about shit myself. One hundred meters away there was a curved grey wall that went up to a massive ship sitting above where the CBD used to be. I saw that the force field was gradually curved until it met the bottom of the ship and we couldn't see through it or pass through it. It had cut a couple buildings in half from where I was standing.

My home was close to the city centre and inside the walls so I knew it was all gone. So man years of collecting junk and everything I thought I needed to make my life complete and it was gone in minutes. What a pain.

I didn't know what I should do and I was probably in shock as I went downstairs, walked out to my car and drove to the nearest 7-11. I really needed a drink but since the closest pub was behind grey walls I had to settle for some soft drink. Oh and a couple donuts. I had a craving for sugar and that is all I was interested in at the moment.

Sitting in my car, I was going through the radio stations trying to get some news and eventually got a broken signal on the FM bands. It seems there was still some coordination in the armed forces and their bases were mostly outside the walls when they went up, so they were still able to do something. Even if it was just to pull in troops and anyone they could find and wait.

So here I am, sitting in the carpark of the 7-11 and waiting for somehting to happen. There are quite a few people sitting around here with me and we just don't know what we can do. Someone said the army is building a refugee camp an hours drive north of town, but I don't have any energy to drive out to see if that is true.

The guy in the store has been good with letting us use the bathroom and we don't have to buy anything, we just take what we want. He just makes sure that no one tries to take it all. Seems some good shows up in the darkest times. Who would have thought it?

And it is a real dark time because it is just about time for the force field wall to rise and we are all dreading what we are going to see.

I still can't remember what I felt when the wall went up and all we could see for kilometers was this massive hole where thousands of people once were. There was nothing left. It went down about 40-50 meters in a 'ragged' curve to the bottom of the hole. It wasn't a straight cut or anythign like that, which I thought it might be but pitted and ragged as if everything had been dissolved by acid. Except it didn't really look like that. If looked almost organic when looking over the whole thing.