ZQ Retold Chapter 1: Sunny with a Chance of Aliens (Arthur helped with the dialogue)

At long last, it was summertime…

Well, precisely, it's been summertime for eight days now, Abe Abraham thought to himself as he walked down the street.

It may have been summer for eight days, but the sky had only been that perfect shade of blue for the past six hours, according to Abe’s watch and WKFO Weather, which his neighbor Cy broadcasted 24/7 from a radio which she had hooked up to an enormous speaker on her porch.

“Ya gotta be prepared”, Cy had told Abe once. “One moment, the sun is shinin’, the next, a hurricane is tearin’ up the town.”

The clouds that had shrouded the town in a musty, grey pall for days had disappeared entirely and now the sun cast everything in a beautiful, yellow glow. Even the cigarette butts and beer cans littering Cy’s yard looked beautiful, basking in the warm sunlight. For a moment, Abe just stood there, drinking every last ounce of it in.

Then he realized that he had been standing in the street for over five minutes, and a green pickup truck was hurtling towards him.

In a single moment, his thoughts changed from awe to panic. He screamed, and hurled himself onto a strip of grass that lay between the street and the sidewalk.. Grass rushed towards him, and he slammed into it.

“You alright?”, Abe rolled over, and looked into the most nondescript face he had ever seen. Below it, he could make out a long brown trench coat. He had seen the man before, walking to the bus stop at the end of the street, but Abe could never think of anything that made him unique besides the trench coat. He never had any hint of emotion on his face, and didn’t walk or talk in a unique way. He was generic. A blank slate.

“Yeah”, Abe mumbled, more to himself than to the man.

“Then get up. Don’t want to miss the party”. Abe pulled himself up from the ground, and noticed something he had never seen before. A small badge was sewn onto the right shoulder of the man. On it were the initials IDC.

“Wait!”, Abe shouted to the man as he walked towards the bus stop, as he always did. “How did-”, but the man was already far away.

“Abe, What took you so long?!”, asked Caleb. “Pointless Slaughterfest™ 9 finally came!”

“Finally! It’s what, two weeks late?” Abe responded. He was in the house of Tyler and Caleb Jones, his best friends.

Abe went to Tyler and Caleb’s house almost every week, and their basement was refreshingly unchanged. An enormous flat screen TV sat on an old table that had seen better days, and below it were three video game consoles. A metal shelf next to the TV was stuffed with video games. Two sofas sat in front of the TV, and a computer sat on a desk in the corner. Next to the computer was a mini-fridge full of soda.

“I’ll get some chips. You two start the game.”, Caleb said as he ran upstairs.

“Here it is”, said Tyler, picking up a disc from a small table between the sofas. POINTLESS SLAUGHTERFEST™ 9 it read. Below it, PREMIUM PREORDER EDITION was written in smaller type.

“You got the premium preorder edition? Awesome!”, Abe exclaimed, taking a can of Plateau Dew from the mini-fridge and setting it on the table

Tyler was just putting the disc into the machine when Caleb ran in and crashed into the sofa, littering the carpet with chips and the combination of sulphuric acid, monobromide triuranium, and other acidic and radioactive compounds that was Abe’s soda spilled onto the carpet. None of them saw it, but the carpet was slowly melting.

“Caleb, be careful!”, scolded Abe.

“I don’t care! Some dude came here, and he’s got a bow! He broke two windows and-”.

Caleb was interrupted by a piercing wail. All three of them would remember that moment for as long as they lived: the moment they stopped fighting virtual monsters, and began fighting real ones. Abe and Tyler followed Caleb up the stairs, and into the kitchen. Inside, was a strange creature.

It was humanoid and quite short, probably less than four feet tall. It’s skin was green and mottled, as if it had spent the day in a bathtub. Two small, pointy ears jutted out from the sides of its head, and two beady, red eyes looked down at them. It’s eyes weren’t glowing red, like they always do in movies, but simply had red irises. Below a nose pointy enough to be confiscated by airport security, two fangs glistened in it’s mouth. It looked like a Goblin, those greedy little trolls that populated fairytales.

A tunic, made of strange animal pelts none of them had ever seen covered the Goblin’s scrawny body. A strap ran across its chest, attached to a quiver full of arrows on its back. In its hands was a slender, wooden bow. A loaded slender, wooden bow, aimed at Abe’s face.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, the Goblins bony finger releasing the taut string of the bow, the resounding twang! of the string as it sent a wooden arrow flying towards Abe, the arrow whooshing through the air, the screams of Tyler and Caleb. Abe whirling to the side attempting to prevent his untimely demise.

Abe did prevent his demise, by ducking. The arrow continued flying, until it finally landed in the wall behind Abe with a firm THUNK!

Abe had been taking karate lessons since he was five years old. His instructors had always told him to never ever ever use his karate skills unless he absolutely had to: if he was cornered by thugs who wanted to beat him up, if someone he knew was cornered by thugs who wanted to beat them up, etcetera. They had never mentioned if an alien tries to shoot you in the face with a bow, but Abe was pretty sure it was included. He kicked into the chest of the Goblin. In a tiny groan, it slid to the floor.

“We have to get out of here.” said Abe in his take-charge voice.

“What about the Goblin? Couldn’t we get him to the hospital or something?” asked Tyler. By now, the Goblin was unconscious, and its breathing was slowing down. “We can’t just leave him here to die!”

“He tried to kill us! Why would we help him?”,  Abe said defiantly. “What would they do with him anyway?”

With that, he strode out the door.