Prologue

July 2015

The Plaza de Mayo looked eerily quiet as
Juan peeked out from beyond the white plaster walls of the Cabildo
Museum's balcony. Quiet, yes, but it would never be the same.
Debris and garbage were strewn across it, the Pirámide
de Mayo was no more, having shattered when a stray bomb hit it. Smoke
was billowing out of the Casa Rosada, across the way. In the last few
days, television, radio, the internet, it all went down. Juan did not
know whether the government was even in the building when it was hit
or if they had fled to safety, leaving the normal citizen to fend for
themselves.

But it could have been
worse. Just a few months ago, that was when they first made contact.
It was a distant, but horrifying thing for Juan to see on the
internet: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles...all destroyed in a flash of
light as debris rained down from space. At first, Juan felt shameful
relief. World War III was starting but surely their missiles would
not hit distant Argentina!

Then the ground quaked
and Juan took cover. His windows were shut, but he could smell smoke
and when he finally arose from under his table, he saw a horrifying
sight. Where there used to be countless homes making up the
South-Eastern districts of Buenos Aires, there was nothing but
mangled concrete and rebar.

Juan no longer felt a
shameful relief, but rather a guilt that ate away at his stomach. If
he had been just a few blocks closer to the impact zone, he would
have been gone. In fact, in an hour he was going to head out in that
direction to meet up with his family…

That was when he began
to panic. He took out his phone, furiously calling each of his family
contacts: his mother, father, brother...all silent.

Until he called his
brother's fiancee, Rosa, who stayed behind in their apartment in
downtown Buenos Aires because she was both pregnant and feeling under
the weather. Juan cried the whole time as he told her what happened
and vowed he would help her until his brother could return and he
must return!

The traffic was
unreal, but was mostly in the opposite direction. People were fleeing
the capital and into the countryside, fearing that the next bomb
wouldn't miss the city itself. No one had any idea who it was just
yet: with Juan's radio constantly blaring about the Americans,
Chinese, and Russians, but none of the hosts were able to answer a
basic question, “Why Argentina?"

Conspiracy theorists
began to fill the void and a popular subject of theirs became
“aliens," and worst of all, Juan began finding himself nodding
along with them in agreement.

When Juan met up with
Rosa, the city was declared under lockdown by the government and all
able-bodied men and women were to report to the nearest recruitment
station to take part in the nation's defense. Juan refused to leave
Rosa and stayed hidden in her apartment, the two of them arming
themselves with Juan's brother's hunting shotguns.

It would not have mattered. Come March,
the truth became clear: sightings of spaceships landing in an
isolated part of Angola were reported and alien beings exiting them.
Strange videos were uploaded on Youtube, ordering people to report to
new shelters, in direct contradiction with what the government had
reported and in a strange, almost growling voice giving the orders in
broken Spanish.

By the end of March, the aliens would
launch campaigns in North America, Europe, Russia, and China. Videos
of the aliens were first made public, most of them were Lion-like,
but they also had ones that resembled wolves, dogs, and foxes.
Shortly after, reports of the governments of the UK and France
collapsing spread across the world.

April, May, and June passed with the news
getting increasingly dire. The world powers: USA, China, and Russia,
had put up a fight, but by now they were effectively lost all in the
span of one season. Reports of POWs being executed or gone missing to
unknown fates began spreading, along with reports of atrocities such
as civilians being killed or mass-raped. Juan was now fearfully
waiting for the day when they'd come to Argentina.

Come July, they did.

Plaster exploded across the column,
inches away from Juan's face. He darted his head back behind cover.
He couldn't see where the sniper was, but they could see him.
Sweating, Juan pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

When the bombardment started again, Juan
had taken Rosa out of the apartment. She was nearly due, but it was
too dangerous to stay there. He tried to take her through the city
and find a way out, but they didn't get a few more blocks until
they had their first encounter with the Regulians, as the emergency
radio broadcasts started calling them before they shut down.

Juan and Rosa were staring at them from
an alleyway in shock. It was one thing to hear about them, but to see
about ten hulking lion-men taking cover behind wrecked cars and
firing at their countrymen with strange weapons, some sounding very
similar to normal rifles and others were firing...lasers was the only
thing Juan could think of.

The Regulians didn't know they were
there. Juan was about to drag Rosa away but a sharp explosion caused
him to clutch at his ears. One of the Regulians fell against the side
of an overturned car, his face shredded with buckshot. Rosa's
shotgun was smoking.

Juan grabbed her by the wrist and they
darted down the alleyway before the aliens could return fire. Even
over the popping of gunfire, Juan could hear their armored boots
trampling after them.

They had no choice but to take cover in
the Cabildo. Juan had to protect Rosa and his unborn nephew. There
were a few people who also had chosen to take their last stand here
but had fallen, they had shells for Juan to use. Both him and Rosa,
despite her pregnancy, fired down into the Plaza at the slightest
sign of movement until everything went silent.

They had been there a few days now. It
would only be a matter of time.

“Rosa," Juan whispered to his
sister-in-law. She was laying on the ground moaning, a circle of water
forming underneath her. She was still clutching her shotgun. “Give
me the gun, you're going into labor!"

Rosa tightened her grip on the shotgun
and held it away from Juan, “I won't let them have us! I will
kill them before they hurt my son!"

Juan swallowed, mentally counting their
ammunition. The thrill of victory had given way to a grim acceptance
of the truth: that he had not truly beaten the savage invaders back,
but that they didn't view him as a real threat. Any day now and
they would raid the building and finish the job.

But as far as Juan was concerned, this
was humanity's last stand. The only humans Juan saw occasionally in
the Plaza were being marched away at gunpoint or even more
concernedly, like one woman he saw, dragged around naked on a leash
by what looked like a Regulian officer. Whatever the aliens had in
story for humanity, Juan didn't like it.

“If my brother were here..." Juan
thumped his head against the wall.

“Shut up!" Rosa hissed. “Dammit
Juan, don't be a sadsack now! You've done everything right!"

“If my brother were here, I'd have
him hide you in the cellar and I'd give them a last stand to
remember!" Juan grimaced. Rosa couldn't give birth by herself and
even then, if the Regulians had thought for a second that he
abandoned his post, they might storm the building and take them
unawares.

“Then I guess we're all gonna give
them one!" Rosa moaned, clutching at her bloated stomach with one
hand while still keeping the other on her shotgun. “Me, you, and my
son! We're all going to go on a fucking safari and hunt some
lions!"

“My brother was always the hunter, not
me!"

“For a biology professor, you're not
bad!"

Juan smiled at Rosa. In the months they
had been together, he had grown attracted to the young woman, but he
refused to act on it in honor of his brother's memory, whom he had
now accepted was lost.

Pumping his shotgun, Juan shouldered it
confidently, “Alright, let's show those lions what we-"

Juan was knocked across the room as the
column they were behind shattered with a booming explosion. He felt
nothing as the back of his neck slammed into the wall and he was deaf
to the horrifying cracking noise it made underneath the ringing of
his ears.

“Rosa...Rosa...Rosa..." Juan mouthed.
He couldn't move anything except for his eyes, but they could see
nothing in the thick cloud of dust that surrounded them.

Finally the dust cloud began to fade and
Rosa was lying on the ground completely still. She was still
clutching both her stomach and her gun.

“No..." Juan rasped.

He tried to move, but his arms wouldn't
respond. His gun, it was just out of reach. He had to get it, he had
to stop them! He was the last hope for humanity! For his brother, he
had to grab it!

One of the lions stepped onto the
balcony, followed by a flank of bodyguards armed to the teeth, one of
which was another lion and the other one a slim canine, one of the
fox-like ones, Vulpeculans were what the radio called them. All Juan
could do was watch them with his eyes as they approached Rosa.

The lion knelt down, his tan longcoat,
the same color as his fur, flapped in the wind as he examined Rosa's
belly. He motioned for one of his men to come closer and Juan caught
a glimpse of a steel blade glistening in the evening sun.

“No!" Juan finally cried out. Some
feeling was returning to his hand and he desperately reached for the
shotgun, grasping it and beginning to raise it. “Get away!"

One of the soldiers, the Vulpeculan,
shook his head wearily but looked to his officer before acting. The
lion in the longcoat gave him a nod.

The soldier drew a pistol and fired.

Juan gasped as pain erupted from his
chest. Thick fluid began to fill up in his lungs, making them feel
like a wet paper bag when he breathed, which grew almost impossible.
Blood ran down his lips. The shotgun was on the floor again, but he
was still reaching for it.

The Vulpeculan sighed with a cruel smile
on his face. The Regulian angrily growled at him in a strange tongue
that Juan could not understand and the Vulpeculan flinched a little
bit, tucking his bushy tail between his legs.

“Won't..." Juan coughed up blood,
“...won't..."

Before Juan could lift up his gun, the
Vulpeculan sneered down at him across his long muzzle with a look of
contempt.

This alien...this animal...how could
he!?

Those
were Juan's last thoughts before the Vulpeculan raised his pistol
again, aimed it at Juan's head and pulled the trigger.