The General shook his head. “No. Just distracting them at best. Casualties are heavy as hell, but the aliens are taking smaller chunks out of the city than in L.A. and New York.”

“Hardly seems worth it, the loss of lives,” Conner said as he shook his head.

There was a long silence around the table before the general spoke up again. “Do you want me to order the civilians out of the area? I don’t know how many would obey . . .”

“No,” President Conner said, shaking his head. “No, I want you to tell them to get bigger guns.”

“Sir?”

“It’s their city, General. Arm them with the weapons they need to defend it.”

“Yes sir.”

“The same goes for everywhere else,” Conner ordered. “If we can’t get troops into an area those things are in, drop weapons. I want every man, woman, and child on this blue-green ball of ours armed if that is what it takes. Whatever it takes, people. Clean my country, clean our world, of those damn things.”

“Yes sir.”

DALLAS, TEXAS

THE SOUND OF the building as it began to topple was frightening, a steel screaming sound that shot to the core of everyone for blocks around. The fighting had been furious in the area as men threw themselves at the things that had crashed into the city from above, but the aliens just shrugged off their weapons with depressing ease.

The few Guard units that had made it into the area helped, their heavier weapons able to at least blunt the actions of the insect-like monsters that were tearing the city apart building by building, but they were too few and ineffective.

The skyscraper thundered into the ground, sending smoke and dust billowing out to cloud the vision and lungs of everyone for a mile. In the aftermath of the crash there was an eerie silence that seemed to echo as heavily as the crash itself, the shock of the moment outlasting the violence that caused it.

As the dust slowly settled, visibility improved until those who hadn’t been smart enough to take serious cover could see the rubble littering downtown. The collapsed building had taken out one of its neighbors and severely compromised three others, but it seemed that it had also taken out the things they’d been fighting.

Unfortunately, what seemed to be wasn’t what was.

The rubble moved, shifting as things crawled out from under it and began moving around again. The Guardsmen watched, dismayed, as the creatures began to crawl over the next building, tearing chunks out and literally eating the debris as they went.

NEW DELHI, INDIA