Jason Jones and the Slicers

Jason Jones stood on the hood of the car as the invisible slicers closed in. He glanced over towards the bodies of the others, then jerked his attention back to the shorn corn. The attackers were within five feet of him. He cast his eyes toward the sky, seeing nothing but a dark speck somewhere high above, and waited for the end, utterly terrified.

He continued waiting.

When minutes had passed and he was still seemingly intact, Jason Jones looked around. The slicers or choppers or 'Ignicis Alvars' or whatever were either gone or no longer moving. Hesitantly, he took a step to one side of the hood. Instantly, he noticed the slicers chopping through corn to his left. Jason froze again - and so did the slicers. He walked right another step. The slicers followed.

Feeling somewhat more secure, now that the slicers were no longer threatening him (for whatever reason), Jason Jones slid carefully off the hood of the police car and walked over to the corpses. He looked at the faces of the people he knew - messily dead on the ground - and turned and vomited noisily for the next few minutes. Then he knelt down, carefully not on either corpses or bile, and picked up the sheriff's shotgun - still loaded from his last stand, Jason noted. He considered firing it at the slicers, decided against provoking them, and walked slowly over to the police car.

The slicers chopped through the engine block as they moved to follow him. Jason could hear the strain of metal as they pushed against it - and then heard it break with an awful snapping noise. He looked at the ignition column: empty. The key was probably still in the Sheriff's pockets. Even were the car still operable, Jason didn't think he'd be able to fetch the keys from... their likely location. He rose and started walking back the way the car came.

Thankfully, it was a cool day. The breeze blew gently, cooling Jason as he walked and the slicers trimmed corn all around him. He thought as he walked. He didn't do a lot of thinking, but he'd gotten some time, and had a lot to think about. He thought about the people he had killed, the terrorists in Canada and the 'militia' just over the border. He thought about Tina, killed by the centaurs. He thought about those centaurs (where had they come from?), and the slicers that so suddenly annihilated them.

Within hours, Jason was hungry and thirsty and tired. He saw a number of farmsteads as he walked, and repeatedly considered stopping there and asking for food and water. The sight of corn chopped as he walked stopped him every time. He'd seen them pursue the centaurs at incredible speeds. The fact that they'd seemed to stop, when only Jason was around, didn't give him any confidence that they'd treat anyone he approached differently than they treated the centaurs. He kept walking. Hours passed. He fell into a fugue of sorts, placing one foot in front of the other, following the car's trail. As the sun finally neared the horizon, he wondered about the old man at the Canadian gas station, and the bird he'd released.

As twilight fell, Jason heard an odd rustling sound. All around him, the corn was being trimmed unevenly - the slicers were shifting up and down oddly. Jason began paying attention and slowed his steps. The shifting slowly stopped - then, as full darkness approached, the slicers stopped altogether.

Jason paused in astonishment. He walked a few steps, very carefully. Nothing happened. He thought for a moment - and then, struck by inspiration, he knelt down and grabbed a pinch of dirt from the ground. He sprinkled it over the ground in front of him. For a moment, he saw the outline of a sort of zeppelin-shaped creature, lying on the ground - then it somehow absorbed the dirt, and was fully invisible again.

A plan began to form in Jason's mind. He looked at his shotgun. He looked at where the creature was. He put the shotgun down and picked up a handful of loose soil. Then, with no little trepidation, he sprinkled it over the slicer and - as it was momentarily visible - put his hand on it and began pushing it toward its shotgun. It seemed to stir for a moment, and Jason's heart jumped - then it subsided, and he breathed out again.

Jason repeated this for all the slicers he could find, pushing them from the ring they'd formed around him to a pile on top of the first one. As he moved them, he noticed more about their shape. They had two holes visible, one at each end, and a sort of thin slicing ring around the center of their bodies. There was a sort of thin triangle inscribed in the top of their bodies - seemingly purposeless. He couldn't see below the ring, and still had no idea how they hovered. They were very light. After twenty minutes of effort, all the slicers were piled in one place. Jason marked it with a circle drawn in the dirt around it, picked up the shotgun, and stepped back. He took careful aim at where he thought the slicers were and fired from four feet back. He heard a great number of pops but, to be certain, quickly fired another shot. Then he walked over to the circle of dirt and poured another handful of dirt down.

There was nothing left but scraps.

Jason Jones stood there a moment, suddenly very tired indeed. He resisted his fatigue and took his cell phone out of his pocket. While the slicers were surrounding him, there was nothing his parents could have done to help him - but now that they were gone, he knew exactly what he wanted from them. He dialed home. "Mom? I'm... I'm in a field, somewhere south of town. I need a ride home."

-

After the details were sorted out, and while his mother was en route to pick him up, Jason Jones stood there, thinking again. The centaurs and slicers might have been... dealt with, but there was still the question of where they came from, and if others might follow. The slicers in particular made Jason wonder. And there was certainly going to be some investigation of the others' deaths. Jason would have been nervous about that in any case, but his recent history was hardly spotless. He really didn't want to have the police investigating his recent actions - he'd been lucky the first time, and might not be so again.

Jason Jones considered the idea of taking a trip.