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Nov. 18th, 2011 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liptonrm_backupI'm trying to psych myself up to write more of anything. Because work is mind-numbing and if I don't do something creative and stimulting my brain is going to lapse into a gelatin state. I am just so frigging tired.
So I'm going to post this. It's the beginning of a Band of Brothers/Falling Skies mash-up. Falling Skies was an alien apocalypse show that aired on TNT over the summer. It was fun, but the people were deeply, deeply stupid. I thought I'd inject a little competence into the equation.
Let me know what you think.
Dick Winters stared out at the Chicago skyline. Somewhere, far ahead of him, the serrated layers of the Sears Tower reached toward the clouds. Beyond the city’s skyscrapers loomed the hulking alien base ship, dwarfing one of humanity’s greatest engineering achievements. Lights swooped around the base’s upper layers, aircraft sweeping through Earth’s skies, unstopped by anything they’d been able to throw. Dick watched the sky and thought about everything they had lost.
Familiar boot steps crunched through stones on the roof behind him. Nix came up and stood to Dick’s left, his eyes inevitably caught by the far-off view.
“Any trouble?” Dick asked, voice crisp. They’d ventured into the once-crowded downtown area, empty streets littered with wrecked cars and fallen debris. They needed supplies—food and medicine and anything else they could find that might be useful—badly enough that the trip was worth the high risk. Evading the alien invaders was pointless if they all died of starvation anyway.
“Nah,” Nix drawled. “Perco and Luz are loading up the truck. Decent haul, we tripped over a sporting goods store that hadn’t been looted yet.” He grinned and lifted a glass bottle full of amber liquid gripped in his right hand. “And someone did his drinking at work.”
Dick shook his head, face not quite as stern as it could have been. He knew Nix too well. “All booze goes to the Doc, you know that.”
Nix hummed, one sardonic eyebrow raised. They both knew that the bottle would really end up in the footlocker in Nix’s bunk, buried under underwear and other ephemera. Dick was well aware of Nix’s opinions about using good liquor to sterilize needles.
A quiet moment passed between them, both of their gazes inevitably drawn back to the bulk straddling the horizon. Nix nodded toward the alien ship, “Sometimes I can’t believe it’s real. Hell, I feel like I’m looking at a goddamn movie screen.”
“It’s not a movie,” Dick replied, voice soft but firm. He turned his back on the view and strode over to the stairs, footsteps sharp and precise over the slates. He felt more than heard Nix follow him down.
A lot of people had thought that, back when the alien ships first arrived. You couldn’t go past one of those twenty-four hour news channels without hearing a comparison to Independence Day or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They’d learned the truth of it the hard way, they all had; in the movies the good guys never lost.
~~~
They pulled up to the high school’s loading dock, dust and dead leaves kicked up behind them. Gray twilight was falling as the engine clicked off. They were home.
Luz and Perco’s delivery truck pulled in after them. Perco backed up to the dock with all of the skill he hadn’t shown the first time he’d tried that maneuver. They were all getting better at this, adapting to their new lives.
A handful of Supply people spilled out of the high school’s doors, the room beyond the door carefully dim. Dick levered himself out of the SUV and moved around to pop the trunk’s hatch. It really had been a good haul; they’d scrounged enough supplies to fill up both truck and utility vehicle to overflowing. Dick pretended not to see the bottle that Nix slid into his jacket pocket as they were unloading, he’d sort it out when they were in private. He pulled the last box out and clapped a hand on the shoulder of the kid who stacked it on top of an already precariously over-laden dolly. They needed to work fast, before the light gave out completely.
Inside, he found Sally Rivers crouched down, flashlight between her teeth, marking down boxes on her clipboard. For all that Dick was the one in charge, it was Sally who kept things running, who kept up on all of the unglamorous little details of day-to-day life. She was an organizing dynamo and Dick knew they’d be toast without her. Their army, as ad hoc and ramshackle as it was, still ran on its stomach.
He didn’t bother her. She and Nix would sort everything out and then let him know where the camp stood. He’d learned the hard way not to get in the middle of things.
Rhonda Speirs was waiting for him when he stepped into the hallway. She stood straight, ready to move, and move fast, if necessary. Her gaze was direct and flat, the flickering lamplight throwing shadows on her face. Her hand rested casually on the butt of the gun in her holster.
“We’ve had an increase in skitter activity,” she said, falling into step beside him. “Buck’s squad ran into a bunch of them while they were out patrolling. They took them out but Malarkey got a little dinged up in the process. Oh, and they managed to shanghai one of those harnessed kids. I’ve got him locked up in one of the basement rooms with two guards for now.”
Dick nodded. “We’ll have to see what we can do with him. The last one didn’t work out so well.”
Rhonda snorted but said nothing. The last harnessed kid had cold-cocked Bill Guarnere and almost made it out of the school before Malarkey managed to tackle her. Unfortunately, she’d died on the operating table while the Doc was trying to remove the harness. It wasn’t likely they were going to be able to do much for this new kid, either.
They pushed through the swinging doors that lead to the infirmary, what in the old days used to be a block of science rooms divided by accordion walls. Now it was big and open, flimsy walls pulled back and desks removed. A bank of sinks ran around the outside of the room with bunsen burner stations on counters that dotted the open space inside. They found Donna Malarkey sitting on one of the counters, hissing as Roe stitched closed a long gash that ran up her arm.
“You should’ve seen the other guy,” Buck joked from where he was leaning against the wall. His tone was light but his eyes flicked, concerned, over to Skip Muck who hovered behind Malarkey. He looked tense, his normal jovial face tight with anxiety.
“Good work on the skitters,” Dick said.
Buck shrugged. “Eh, we just hit them harder than they hit us.”
“Speak for yourself,” Malarkey murmured, ending on a squeak as Roe pulled another stitch through her arm.
“Big baby,” Buck joked. “You should’ve seen her, Dick. She ran right up to that thing and stuck a shotgun down its mouth. Girl’s got more balls than most of the actual guys.”
Dick nodded at Malarkey, a slight smile on his face. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” He turned back to Compton. “Is the Doc around? I have some supplies for her.”
“She’s in the back, doing a check-up on Ellie.”
Dick grabbed Skip’s shoulder in passing, giving it a comforting squeeze. The man looked like he was going to pass out. He left Speirs with the troops and made his way to the curtained-off corner of the room that served as the Doc’s office as well as a semi-private examination room. They couldn’t afford a lot of privacy anymore, but even the appearance of it could help put people at ease.
“Come on in Dick,” Leslie Thompkins’ voice called through the partition as he came up to it. He stepped around and saw Leslie with a boisterous Ellie Cook in her arms, Ellie’s father looking on from the chair. Leslie had an easy smile on her face, deep lines radiating out from her eyes and around her mouth.
She handed the six-month old back to her father. “She looks good. She’s happy and healthy.” She tickled Ellie’s foot and the baby wriggled and kicked. “You’re doing a good job.”
“Thanks Doc,” Tom said, relief almost erasing the dark circles under his eyes. “I just worry, you know?”
“Of course, dear.” Leslie squeezed Tom’s hand as he left. She turned to Dick as outside the doors swung shut, the face of the kindly old grandma replaced by the seasoned trauma doctor. It wasn’t a surprise that Doctor Thompkins had made it through the initial assault. She’d spent years working in a clinic in the South Side, dealing with everything that was thrown at her. Her determination alone had held her neighborhood together during the invasion and her group had formed the heart around which their entire community had formed. “Any problems?”
Dick smiled. “Not this time.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a bag full of pill bottles, both wholesale and personal. “We found some antibiotics in a drug store,” he said as he handed them over.
“And some stronger pills, I imagine,” she replied. She set the bag down on the counter that served as her makeshift desk and pulled an inventory out of a drawer. “If not you wouldn’t have wasted your time bringing them to me yourself.”
“I never waste my time,” he said, voice sober. Leslie threw her head back and laughed, she knew him well enough to see the humor in his eyes.
“Heaven forbid the great Richard Winters ever waste his time,” she chuckled. She shooed him on as she opened up the bag. “Off with you. Go harass someone else.”
The upward quirk of his lips followed him as he stepped out of the infirmary, and stayed with him, right up until Liebgott ran up and told him that skitters were on the way.
~~~
comments at http://liptonrm.dreamwidth.org/38759.html.
So I'm going to post this. It's the beginning of a Band of Brothers/Falling Skies mash-up. Falling Skies was an alien apocalypse show that aired on TNT over the summer. It was fun, but the people were deeply, deeply stupid. I thought I'd inject a little competence into the equation.
Let me know what you think.
Dick Winters stared out at the Chicago skyline. Somewhere, far ahead of him, the serrated layers of the Sears Tower reached toward the clouds. Beyond the city’s skyscrapers loomed the hulking alien base ship, dwarfing one of humanity’s greatest engineering achievements. Lights swooped around the base’s upper layers, aircraft sweeping through Earth’s skies, unstopped by anything they’d been able to throw. Dick watched the sky and thought about everything they had lost.
Familiar boot steps crunched through stones on the roof behind him. Nix came up and stood to Dick’s left, his eyes inevitably caught by the far-off view.
“Any trouble?” Dick asked, voice crisp. They’d ventured into the once-crowded downtown area, empty streets littered with wrecked cars and fallen debris. They needed supplies—food and medicine and anything else they could find that might be useful—badly enough that the trip was worth the high risk. Evading the alien invaders was pointless if they all died of starvation anyway.
“Nah,” Nix drawled. “Perco and Luz are loading up the truck. Decent haul, we tripped over a sporting goods store that hadn’t been looted yet.” He grinned and lifted a glass bottle full of amber liquid gripped in his right hand. “And someone did his drinking at work.”
Dick shook his head, face not quite as stern as it could have been. He knew Nix too well. “All booze goes to the Doc, you know that.”
Nix hummed, one sardonic eyebrow raised. They both knew that the bottle would really end up in the footlocker in Nix’s bunk, buried under underwear and other ephemera. Dick was well aware of Nix’s opinions about using good liquor to sterilize needles.
A quiet moment passed between them, both of their gazes inevitably drawn back to the bulk straddling the horizon. Nix nodded toward the alien ship, “Sometimes I can’t believe it’s real. Hell, I feel like I’m looking at a goddamn movie screen.”
“It’s not a movie,” Dick replied, voice soft but firm. He turned his back on the view and strode over to the stairs, footsteps sharp and precise over the slates. He felt more than heard Nix follow him down.
A lot of people had thought that, back when the alien ships first arrived. You couldn’t go past one of those twenty-four hour news channels without hearing a comparison to Independence Day or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They’d learned the truth of it the hard way, they all had; in the movies the good guys never lost.
~~~
They pulled up to the high school’s loading dock, dust and dead leaves kicked up behind them. Gray twilight was falling as the engine clicked off. They were home.
Luz and Perco’s delivery truck pulled in after them. Perco backed up to the dock with all of the skill he hadn’t shown the first time he’d tried that maneuver. They were all getting better at this, adapting to their new lives.
A handful of Supply people spilled out of the high school’s doors, the room beyond the door carefully dim. Dick levered himself out of the SUV and moved around to pop the trunk’s hatch. It really had been a good haul; they’d scrounged enough supplies to fill up both truck and utility vehicle to overflowing. Dick pretended not to see the bottle that Nix slid into his jacket pocket as they were unloading, he’d sort it out when they were in private. He pulled the last box out and clapped a hand on the shoulder of the kid who stacked it on top of an already precariously over-laden dolly. They needed to work fast, before the light gave out completely.
Inside, he found Sally Rivers crouched down, flashlight between her teeth, marking down boxes on her clipboard. For all that Dick was the one in charge, it was Sally who kept things running, who kept up on all of the unglamorous little details of day-to-day life. She was an organizing dynamo and Dick knew they’d be toast without her. Their army, as ad hoc and ramshackle as it was, still ran on its stomach.
He didn’t bother her. She and Nix would sort everything out and then let him know where the camp stood. He’d learned the hard way not to get in the middle of things.
Rhonda Speirs was waiting for him when he stepped into the hallway. She stood straight, ready to move, and move fast, if necessary. Her gaze was direct and flat, the flickering lamplight throwing shadows on her face. Her hand rested casually on the butt of the gun in her holster.
“We’ve had an increase in skitter activity,” she said, falling into step beside him. “Buck’s squad ran into a bunch of them while they were out patrolling. They took them out but Malarkey got a little dinged up in the process. Oh, and they managed to shanghai one of those harnessed kids. I’ve got him locked up in one of the basement rooms with two guards for now.”
Dick nodded. “We’ll have to see what we can do with him. The last one didn’t work out so well.”
Rhonda snorted but said nothing. The last harnessed kid had cold-cocked Bill Guarnere and almost made it out of the school before Malarkey managed to tackle her. Unfortunately, she’d died on the operating table while the Doc was trying to remove the harness. It wasn’t likely they were going to be able to do much for this new kid, either.
They pushed through the swinging doors that lead to the infirmary, what in the old days used to be a block of science rooms divided by accordion walls. Now it was big and open, flimsy walls pulled back and desks removed. A bank of sinks ran around the outside of the room with bunsen burner stations on counters that dotted the open space inside. They found Donna Malarkey sitting on one of the counters, hissing as Roe stitched closed a long gash that ran up her arm.
“You should’ve seen the other guy,” Buck joked from where he was leaning against the wall. His tone was light but his eyes flicked, concerned, over to Skip Muck who hovered behind Malarkey. He looked tense, his normal jovial face tight with anxiety.
“Good work on the skitters,” Dick said.
Buck shrugged. “Eh, we just hit them harder than they hit us.”
“Speak for yourself,” Malarkey murmured, ending on a squeak as Roe pulled another stitch through her arm.
“Big baby,” Buck joked. “You should’ve seen her, Dick. She ran right up to that thing and stuck a shotgun down its mouth. Girl’s got more balls than most of the actual guys.”
Dick nodded at Malarkey, a slight smile on his face. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” He turned back to Compton. “Is the Doc around? I have some supplies for her.”
“She’s in the back, doing a check-up on Ellie.”
Dick grabbed Skip’s shoulder in passing, giving it a comforting squeeze. The man looked like he was going to pass out. He left Speirs with the troops and made his way to the curtained-off corner of the room that served as the Doc’s office as well as a semi-private examination room. They couldn’t afford a lot of privacy anymore, but even the appearance of it could help put people at ease.
“Come on in Dick,” Leslie Thompkins’ voice called through the partition as he came up to it. He stepped around and saw Leslie with a boisterous Ellie Cook in her arms, Ellie’s father looking on from the chair. Leslie had an easy smile on her face, deep lines radiating out from her eyes and around her mouth.
She handed the six-month old back to her father. “She looks good. She’s happy and healthy.” She tickled Ellie’s foot and the baby wriggled and kicked. “You’re doing a good job.”
“Thanks Doc,” Tom said, relief almost erasing the dark circles under his eyes. “I just worry, you know?”
“Of course, dear.” Leslie squeezed Tom’s hand as he left. She turned to Dick as outside the doors swung shut, the face of the kindly old grandma replaced by the seasoned trauma doctor. It wasn’t a surprise that Doctor Thompkins had made it through the initial assault. She’d spent years working in a clinic in the South Side, dealing with everything that was thrown at her. Her determination alone had held her neighborhood together during the invasion and her group had formed the heart around which their entire community had formed. “Any problems?”
Dick smiled. “Not this time.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a bag full of pill bottles, both wholesale and personal. “We found some antibiotics in a drug store,” he said as he handed them over.
“And some stronger pills, I imagine,” she replied. She set the bag down on the counter that served as her makeshift desk and pulled an inventory out of a drawer. “If not you wouldn’t have wasted your time bringing them to me yourself.”
“I never waste my time,” he said, voice sober. Leslie threw her head back and laughed, she knew him well enough to see the humor in his eyes.
“Heaven forbid the great Richard Winters ever waste his time,” she chuckled. She shooed him on as she opened up the bag. “Off with you. Go harass someone else.”
The upward quirk of his lips followed him as he stepped out of the infirmary, and stayed with him, right up until Liebgott ran up and told him that skitters were on the way.
~~~
