John T. Forbes stared out of his Club’s front window and watched the waves of heat radiate off the bare concrete of formerly-busy Main Street. A year ago, downtown Fort Worth had been bustling and thriving.
Amazing how a sudden alien invasion could change things.
He didn’t turn to look at Darren. "What now?"
"Billy’s got a raid group out," said Forbes’ second-in-command. His voice was wary, as if he expected Forbes to pounce on him for something that wasn’t his fault. Not an unreasonable assumption; Forbes had to admit, he’d been lashing out recently.
"They’re stalking that patrol that busted through the barricade over on 22nd," Darren went on. "We’ve got reports of three more groups downtown, plus eighteen more inside the city limits. I forwarded the locations to the other Ranger commanders, but they’re got questions for you on–"
"What’s to question?" Forbes interrupted, his voice a low growl. "Kill the bugs, don’t get caught."
"I know, but–"
"Just tell them to get it done. I can’t babysit every Ranger in Fort Worth."
"Well, you’re the one who started this whole thing!" Darren snapped. "You got them organized, you picked the historical name! Who else are they supposed to follow?"
Except, it wasn’t my idea, he thought, sullen. She’s the one who wanted to do this, and I didn’t listen until it was too late.
"I’m not a leader, Darren," he muttered, moving away from the window and towards the bar. "I’m a businessman and a smuggler." He glared at his friend. "You know I’m no idealist."
He reached for the bottle of precious Jack Daniels, but before he could pour himself his usual single shot before breakfast, he came to a sudden stop and stared at the bar.
"What the hell is this?"
"Decorations, what else?" Darren said, a tiny bit of humor creeping into his voice. "Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July."
Forbes shook his head, trying to remember the last time he bothered to check a calendar. He vaguely remembered it being Easter. "Really?"
That means we’ve been married exactly four months tomorrow, he thought, a wave of grief washing over him. And she’s been gone exactly one hundred and eighteen days.
Darren knew what he was thinking, even if he was too polite to say it, so he changed the subject. "Billy managed to find some streamers and balloons in a crate in one of the closets," he explained. "Probably left over from a couple years ago."
"Longer," Forbes corrected.
"Yeah, you hardly decorated the Club for anything."
Forbes heard rapid footsteps squeaking on the floor in the kitchen, and pulled his M1911 from its holster.
"Forbes!" Billy said, bursting through the old-fashioned saloon doors, out of breath, his bright red hair flopping into his eyes. Of course, he wasn’t sweating. He never did anymore, not even in a Texas summer. "You have to hear this!"
Forbes pointed the gun in a safe direction, but entertained a brief fantasy of shooting the kid to prove the point he didn’t learn last time–nowhere vital, of course; the Rangers needed him. "Billy, you son of a bitch, I told you not to do that. You want to get shot again?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Come on!" And he turned around and sprinted for the back room. Forbes and Darren heard a crash as he slipped on the smooth floor and knocked over something metal in the kitchen.
Darren chuckled, but without much humor. "That kid. One of these days he’s gonna get his clumsy ass killed."
Forbes said nothing, but followed the kid’s path past a pile of metal serving dishes that used to be stacked neatly in a corner, and stepped outside into the heat.
The alley behind the club was littered with trash and crispy, dead leaves, but that wasn’t what was interesting.
Billy caught himself a collaborator…and not just any collaborator.
Forbes felt his face smile for the first time in months, but it wasn’t a happy smile. "Well, well, well, Peter McKendrick."
The man spat at Forbes’ feet, and the two Rangers holding him up by his arms kicked him in the knees to force him to kneel on the burning-hot pavement.
Billy suddenly had his adult face on, and was pretty scary when he was mad. "Talk," he ordered.
"Go to hell, freak," Peter countered. His words were slurred, and a little blood oozed from his mouth.
"Now, now, brother mine," Forbes said in a deceptively sweet tone, "that’s no way to treat Augments, you know that. They might decide to teach you some manners, and who the hell knows how that would end."
Billy’s hand began to glow as he used his ability to sheath it in blue-hot fire. He waved it under Peter’s nose.
Peter tried to sneer, but didn’t manage it around broken teeth. "You think you’re hot shit, just ’cause that portal leaked radiation all over Fort Worth last year."
Billy looked confused, and waved his still-flaming hand in front of the prisoner. "Well . . . yeah. Duh."
"It’s not my fault the radiation didn’t change you," Forbes said to Peter. "Why don’t you ask your bug friends? They might be able to explain it." He shook his head and turned on Billy. "I gave standing orders that collaborators were to be shot on sight, kid. Why are you bringing them to me?"
Billy’s eyes narrowed. "He knows something about Miriam."
Instantly, Forbes shoved his brother-in-law against the brick wall of the Club, and the two Rangers holding the traitor wisely backed away. No one stopped Forbes; collaborators were responsible for the atrocities they had all seen first-hand.
"Where. Is. She." Forbes demanded. He tightened his grip around his brother-in-law’s neck, and Peter’s face began to turn a disgusting shade of puce.
"Forbes," Darren said calmly, "I want him dead, too, but at least wait until after he answers."
That thought sunk into Forbes’ rage-filled brain, and he relaxed his grip just enough to let Peter gasp for air. "Talk," Forbes whispered, "or you’ll wish Billy burned you."
Peter didn’t need to be told twice. "At the Convention Center," he gasped.
"Liar," Forbes spat. "If she was in there, she’d either be a free winner or a dead loser. Either way, we’d have heard about it before now." His grip tightened.
Peter squeaked. "No! That’s what they want you to think!" Forbes let him talk. "The fights are how they control morale–you know, your champions against ours, if you win you go free, that kind of thing."
"Yeah, one-on-one against an urlan?" Darren shook his head. "It’s a fix."
"But that’s not all they’ve got in there. They’ve got prisoners–Augments. They’re trying to figure out where the abilities came from. The portal radiation never did that to any of the bugs."
"Dear God," Billy muttered. "They’re trying to get Augment abilities? We’re so screwed. They’re bad enough all on their own."
Forbes barely heard him. "Are you telling me…that my wife has been locked up in the Convention Center for the last six months…as an experiment for the bugs? And you knew it?"
"Come on, Forbes," Peter pleaded, "it’s not like it’s my fault!"
"You could have told me, or any one of my Rangers," Forbes snarled. "You knew, and you kept it as the ace you could play to save your neck if we caught you, you sniveling little–"
His grip tightened.
"It’s not my fault!" Peter barely got the words out and he clawed uselessly at Forbes’ arm.
"Your own sister!" Forbes bellowed.
Peter tried to gasp. "You know what the bugs did to cops! I had to help them!"
"No, you didn’t, and you know it. All kinds of cops are Rangers now."
"Go to hell."
Forbes answering grin was positively malicious. "You first."
Normally, he’d use his Augment ability for this. All he had to do was move the molecules of the collaborator’s body just enough to allow them to pass through solid matter. Forbes had done it to himself countless times; it was one of the reasons he was the city’s best smuggler, back before they found out that the strange radiation was a slow build-up of an alien portal. Walls and locks were nothing to him.
After the portal opened, it became his favorite fighting tactic, and one the invading bugs knew well enough to fear. He pushed bugs through solid matter and left them there.
Forbes shook his head. "Personally, I’d like to feed you to this wall as slowly as possible," he said to the quavering collaborator, "but she wouldn’t want me to." He drew his M1911. "So you get a better death than you deserve."
Calmly, he put a single round into Peter McKendrick’s forehead.
He holstered his gun, left the traitor’s corpse in the alley with the rest of the garbage, and walked back into the Club. He gave only one order:
"We’re getting her back."
Even the bugs had to rest part of the day, so the Rangers waited until dark to put their plan in motion. At times, it took physical restraint to keep Forbes from rushing out the door alone. It was after midnight before Darren judged that the bugs were probably out, and that Forbes had calmed down enough to not get any of them killed. They grabbed their gear and made their way from the Club on Main Street to the truck docks on the Commerce Street entrance of the Convention Center.
The doors didn’t last long.
With a blast of Billy’s plasma-balls to make an opening, Forbes, Darren, and Billy rushed inside. The place was barely lit, and there were only about a dozen dark-brown, seven-foot grasshoppers guarding the back door.
"I hate cleaning gert guts off me," Darren said, wiping some of those black, slimy guts off of his face.
"I keep telling you to shoot them from a distance, but you don’t listen to me," Billy said.
"Shut up, kid. Who asked you?"
Forbes ignored them and moved into the exhibit annex, reloading his Henry rifle as he went. The place was dark, but some light shined through the door at the far end.
"You should have asked Peter specifically where she was before you blew his meager brains out the back of his skull," Darren chastised him quietly.
"She’s not in the arena," Forbes said, his voice deceptively calm, "we know that. That leaves either the exhibit hall on this floor, or the second floor ballroom."
Darren considered it. "I’d bet second floor ballroom. They’re trying to hide what they’re doing, after all." He clapped Forbes on one shoulder. "Never mind. I’m glad you shot the sucker." After a thoughtful pause, he asked, "No offense to your wife or anything, but how the hell did a nice girl like that end up with such a rat bastard for a brother?"
Forbes only shrugged and continued on his way.
It was too late at night for one of the arena fights, so the place was free of spectators, human or bug. The three Rangers ran into a few gerts here and there, but all were squashed quickly and quietly. Having a telepath along meant no one could hide, and they’d had plenty of practice with raiding in the last four months.
Soon enough, they were at the escalator in the southeast corner, just north of what used to be the water gardens plaza.
Darren held up one fist, and the rest stopped behind him. "Four, headed this way, down the stairs," he reported.
Forbes motioned Billy forward as the rest of them crouched behind the corner.
"Let me know when they get down," he told Darren. "And remind me to give you a raise."
"Hey, not fair," Billy complained. "He might read minds, but I’m the one with the fire."
Moments later, Darren nodded sharply, and Forbes smacked Billy’s shoulder.
The kid’s fireballs had nowhere near the mass of a baseball, but Billy had pitched for TCU before the invasion, and old habits died hard. The lead gert had just enough time to register Billy’s windup before getting a facefull of superheated plasma. The other three screeched, but they, too, exploded into barbecued bug bits.
Darren gave them the all-clear, and they crept their way through the gory hallway towards the stairwells, Forbes in the lead.
Up the stairs, a right, then a left past the restrooms and the freight elevators, and they were in the long empty hall that ran along the back of the second floor ballroom. They’d been lucky so far, but it was too much to hope that it would stay empty for long. They crouched in a corner and listened.
The screams were the first thing they heard.
It was obviously a woman, and her high-pitched voice cut through the three Rangers like a sharp knife.
Before Forbes could even react, Darren’s heavy hand was on his shoulder. "Just wait," he said. "We can’t help her if we’re dead."
Forbes swallowed. "Miriam?"
Darren nodded once.
"I can’t pinpoint it exactly," he explained. "There are too many minds in here to be sure which one is her, but I can tell you when we get close."
"How many?" Forbes demanded.
"About thirty humans, and three or four times that in bugs."
"Crap," Billy muttered.
Darren shook his head like he was trying to sneeze. "There’s one in the group that’s . . . different . . . hold on–"
Then a frex came out of nowhere and spotted them.
Forbes fired at it, but missed as it ducked around the corner, and then came back blasting its energy weapon and screeching. Its praying mantis-like body was more maneuverable than a gert’s, and its head–like something H.R. Giger would have been proud of–was expressive enough to show its hate and outrage as it discovered the human attackers.
The Rangers tried to find cover, but there wasn’t much to be had in the empty hallway. There was no choice but to run–those energy weapons didn’t leave wounded behind–and managed to scurry inside the nearest restroom.
"I hate frex," Darren muttered. "They’re smart enough to call for reinforcements."
"Dammit," Forbes spat. We’re this close to Miriam, and I’m not leaving here without her.
"I know," Darren said out loud.
Forbes tried to come up with a decent plan. "All right. Billy, you’re up first. Think you can blast the frex?"
The kid swallowed, but nodded. "Yeah."
"Fine, we’ll cover you. Get him first, and then get back in here. There’s no place to hide in that hallway." He thought some more. "Make it a really big fireball this time. Basketball, not baseball."
"How about one of those stupid exercise balls?" Billy held his arms out.
Forbes managed a tight grin. "Even better. You might be able to get some gerts with it, too."
"Darren, is she in the ballroom?"
He shook his head. "Nope. More north, towards the conference rooms."
"Then we have to get all the way down this hall without getting shot."
"I wish you would," Darren said.
Forbes sighed. "Go, kid."
The kid took a deep breath and lunged into the hallway, fire springing from his fingertips as he hurled the flames at the approaching aliens. As soon as his back foot hit the floor, he was headed for cover again.
His slide into the restroom, silver alien fire blasting over his head, would have done his coach proud.
"Safe!" Darren yelled in his best umpire voice.
"Shut up," Billy said, pulling himself up. "Damn, I singed my shirt again. But I got the frex. And I think a couple of gerts, too."
"Good," Darren said. "Those frex are the only ones with enough brains to give us trouble."
They listened, and the hallway was quieter. "Fine," Forbes said. "Let’s go."
He went first, and the others followed. They were halfway down the hall with nowhere to run when something appeared at the end, blocking the way.
"Oh shit," Darren mumbled.
"They have a cave troll," Billy said in a perfect imitation.
"Kid, that joke was only funny the first time you told it," Forbes said, his eyes still on the gigantic urlan standing between him and his wife. Its grayish-green skin was full of pock marks and scars, and one of its eyes was missing. It could have picked any of them up with one hand and squeezed the life out of him without breaking a sweat, and would absorb bullets as if they were Nerf darts.
Forbes didn’t slow down.
"Uh . . . Forbes?" Darren called.
After two patient steps, Forbes broke into a run, headed straight for the bug. It seemed to like the challenge, and lowered its head like a bull ready to charge.
Then he jumped.
His aim was good, and that tackle would have impressed a few NFL players. Forbes got hold of the urlan around its big chest, and had enough flying momentum to push it back a step.
It caught its weight on its back foot and tried to continue forward, but its foot was melded to the floor.
Not being very bright, the urlan had to stop and wonder about that.
It gave Forbes enough time to finish what he started. He grabbed the bug by its pseudo-ears and pulled down, stuffing its head into the floor.
Darren and Billy ran up behind Forbes. "That’s a bit crude, don’t you think?" Billy asked, jerking his chin at the completely undignified urlan, folded in half with its feet and head encased in the floor.
Forbes said nothing, and took a left past the other set of restrooms, and a right, and another right, approaching the conference room doors.
"Which one, Darren?" he demanded.
"All of them," he said smashing one foot into the nearest door.
Inside was an Augment, some poor sap who immediately tried to zap Darren with lightning bolts from his eyes.
"Whoa!" Forbes yelled into the room. "We’re here to help!"
A few seconds of silence followed, and slowly the man crept out of the room. His head had been shaved, and he wore something that looked like a cross between a hospital gown and a prison jumpsuit.
"Well, it’s about damn time!" the man yelled at them. He was older, and had the personality of a drill sergeant. "Hand over that shotgun, sonny," he told Billy. "I got some comeuppance to dish out."
Billy glanced at Forbes, but complied with a smile. The man checked the shotgun, and chambered the round. "Name’s Phil." He stuck his head into the room. "Come on, then," he called, and three more men stumbled out, all looking disheveled and half-starved, but sane. Mostly.
"Billy, stay at this end, and watch for company," Forbes told the kid. He did as he was told, while Forbes, Darren, and their new friends started breaking down doors, handing out weapons to as many of the prisoners as they could.
"Miriam?" Forbes yelled as he went. There were men and women, and even a few kids in those rooms, about four in each, but she was nowhere to be found. "Miriam!"
Close to the end of the hall, one woman stopped him. "She’s not here."
"What happened?" he demanded.
She shrugged. "What do you think happened? She killed that gert that came for little Alice–only eight years old, can you believe those bugs?–and they took her away."
"When? Where?"
Another shrug. "Not long before you showed up. You probably heard her screaming. Keep going. Somewhere that way."
Forbes didn’t bother to thank her; he just ran and left the others to take care of themselves.
At the end of the hall, it opened up into an empty lobby, with more restrooms and another stairwell. Miriam wasn’t there.
Getting angrier by the second, Forbes sprinted down the stairs, not even worried that all his weapons, except his Bowie knife, had been passed out to the survivors. He didn’t care; he could shove bugs through and into walls.
Now he was between the arena and the main exhibit hall, across the building from where they’d entered. The exhibit hall was empty.
Had he been less angry or desperate, Forbes might have found that odd, but he wasn’t paying attention. He went straight to the gigantic doors into the arena.
With the exhibit hall at his back, he could see most of the thirteen thousand seats. The place was only about half-lit. Dark stains covered the concrete floor, and Forbes could only assume they were blood.
Then the floodlights snapped on.
Forbes was surrounded by gerts, urlans, and their frex masters on all sides, but he wasn’t paying attention to them.
His eyes rested on his wife, Miriam McKendrick Forbes, and the frex with its spindle-like hand wrapped around her throat.
She was dressed in the same rags as the other prisoners. Her long black hair had been shaved off, and she was far skinner than she used to be, which wasn’t good, because she’d always been skinny. There was blood on her face, but her blue eyes were alert.
Forbes had to stop himself from running straight to her.
The frex clicked, and Forbes assumed that was supposed to be a laugh. "Thisss one meansss much to you, yesss?" it hissed, giving Miriam a rough shake.
Its English was far better than most frex. "Yes."
It clicked some more. "Then you will sssurrender yourssself to usss."
"Don’t do it, John T.," Miriam called to him. "This one’s–"
The bug choked off her words and shook her again. This time, she grabbed hold of its arm with both hands, trying to relieve the pressure on her throat.
"You want a straight trade?" Forbes demanded loudly. "Me for her?"
"Yesss." The frex was choking Miriam too tightly for her to object.
"How do I know you’ll keep your word?"
"You do not."
"You’re not filling me with confidence, bub," Forbes said. "How did you know about me, anyway?"
"Prisssonersss talk much," it said. "They tell usss of the great Forbesss, who resssissstsss usss and leadsss othersss." It shook Miriam again. "We did not know at firssst that thissss troublesssome one wasss yoursss. Valuable. Very valuable."
Something occurred to Forbes. The frex were the leaders, and their gert and urlan minions were only about as smart as most dogs. That explained their top-down organizational structure.
"So," he said carefully, "you think that if you eliminate me, the resistance disappears?"
It tilted its head at him, apparently surprised at the stupid question. "You wassste time, human," it said. "Leadersss will fall. We will rule thisss planet sssoon. You only delay your inevitable dessstruction."
That was enough proof for Forbes that the bugs really didn’t understand humans. Of course, he wasn’t about to go on a monologue and let the bugs know that killing him would only make ten more line up to take his place.
"Send her over to me, then," Forbes demanded. "I’ll stay if you let her go."
Carelessly, the frex threw Miriam by her neck towards her husband. She flew through the air a good six feet before crashing into the concrete on her shoulder.
Forbes rushed to her, gently picked her up and cradled her in his arms.
"You humansss," the frex said. "Ssso sssentimental. Much weaknesss, yesss."
"John T., you stupid son of a bitch," she whispered, tears in her eyes. "Why did you do that?"
He grinned at her. "I said I’d stay; I never said my friends wouldn’t join me."
A loud shout came from behind him as Darren, Billy, and fifty Augment prisoners rushed the arena:
Having a telepath on staff really helped with dramatic entrances.
The air was alive with fire, lightning, ice, and blasts of wind, led by Phil, having the time of his life wielding a shotgun and lightning bolts. Another man had grown to well over seven feet and swung his arms left and right, catching gerts with his fists and flinging them into the concrete walls. Forbes barely caught a glimpse of a short blond kid rushing at impossible speeds into the stands and punching the nearest urlan in the head before sprinting away.
Forbes carried his wife to the exit, and the other Augments covered their escape.
As soon as they were out of the reach of the bug weapons, Forbes put Miriam down. "Wait here," he said, kissing her and standing up.
"Oh, no I’m not," she said, struggling to her feet. She wobbled, and Forbes caught her.
"Oh, yes you are."
She grinned. "We have to stop that frex," she insisted.
"Don’t worry, I’ll get him."
"You don’t understand," she said seriously. "He’s not just a frex. He’s the frex. He’s in command of all the bugs in Texas."
Forbes blinked, surprised, and slowly a huge grin spread across his face. Miriam shimmered, and in just a few seconds, she was replaced by the biggest black dog Forbes had ever seen, like a nightmarish combination of a Great Dane and a Newfoundland on steroids. She shook herself and growled.
"Fine," Forbes said with a smile. "Let’s get him."
The two of them rushed back into the fray, and Forbes yelled, "VICTORY OR DEATH!"
The answering shout from the Augments could have rattled the Convention Center off its foundation.
Forbes was busy, grabbing any bug he could put his hands on and shoving them deep into the concrete floor. Fortunately for his sanity, Miriam stayed close to him in her Hound of the Baskervilles form, ripping gerts to shreds with her teeth. Billy was flinging fireballs left and right, as fast as he could create them, his t-shirt covered in charred holes and soot marks. Phil’s shotgun had long ago run out of shells, and he was busy laughing like a maniac and zapping an urlan until it dissolved into a puddle. Darren stayed to the back, Forbes’ Henry rifle in his hands, and he was working the lever-action as fast as he could. The woman from the prison cells stared hard at a frex and then flung it up to the ceiling only to let it fall to its death. A little girl spread her arms wide and was joined by a flock of annoying little starlings who swarmed the aliens at her command.
Forbes saw the frex leader trying to escape through one of the other arena exits, so he ran after it.
The bugs were skinny and looked delicate, and they weren’t good at running on slick floors or pavement. Forbes caught up to him in no time, grabbing its long arm and fusing it to the wall.
He had to admit, he wanted this to last a good long while.
"Missstake," it hissed. "You will all die. We will rule thisss pathetic planet sssoon. You will d–"
Bored, Forbes shoved the rest of the frex into the wall, leaving just its head sticking out. "I wanted to take my time, asshole, but not if it means listening to your monologues."
Then he drew his Bowie knife and finished it off.
By the time he reentered the arena, it was over. The place was covered in bug bodies this time, instead of human ones, and only a few Augments were down. Darren and Billy were fine, and Miriam, still as a large dog, stood in the center of the room.
"’Victory or death,’ huh?" Forbes asked Darren with the first real smile he’d had for him in four months.
"Come on, Forbes," he said, annoyed, "it’s the Fourth of July!"
"Isn’t it supposed to be ‘give me liberty or give me death?’" Billy asked.
"That’s Patrick Henry," Darren explained. "What kind of history did they teach you in college? This is Texas; we have our own heroes to quote."
"But it’s American Independence Day, not Texas Independence Day," Billy countered.
"Nah," Phil said, joining the group with the shotgun balanced jauntily across his shoulders. "I say it’s Augment Independence Day."
"That sounds stupid," Darren objected.
"True, though," Phil said.
Forbes found his wife, now back in her usual form. "Did you get it?" she asked.
He grinned.
"Then it is Independence Day," she agreed. "With that bug gone, the alien troops in the whole state just lost their commander."
Forbes ignored the awed surprise of the others and stared at his wife. She smiled at him, and self-consciously rubbed one hand over her short-cropped hair.
"Leave it," he said, gently pulling her hand away. He picked her up again, and gave her a long, serious kiss. He heard some teasing "ooooohs" behind him, but ignored them.
Miriam wrapped her arms around his neck. "I knew you’d get here eventually," she said, "but I didn’t think it would take quite this long." She chuckled. "Dirty smuggler."
"Nah, these days, I’m a resistance leader."
Her eyes widened. "Really?"
He nodded.
"Well, John T., it looks like you have some stories to tell," she said.
"Later. For now, let’s get out of here before any more of them show up." Without putting her down, he walked to the door.
"Last one to Forbes’ buys!" Billy yelled, sprinting for the door. The super-fast blond kid beat him there, and all the Augments followed.
Forbes kissed his wife again. "Happy Fourth of July."

Check out the first Independence Day contest honorable mention, Hello Venus! by Brendan Kelly!