Read Online Earth vs. Everybody by John Swartzwelder - Free Book Online

and stuck to this opinion even when it was pointed out
to them what the “fireworks” were, and that their homes and places of worship
were gone. “Whatever it is, it looks great,” one of them said, stubbornly, with
what was left of his head.
    Alien ships began
landing all over town. Troops poured out of them and began systematically
taking over all of the city’s most important buildings. Many of our citizens
hurried over to screw them out of their money, but were rudely slapped aside.
    Our local
military men were taken aback by this sudden onslaught. They hadn’t had
anything to do since 1945, and had gotten complacent. They weren’t as ready for
a fight as they were in, say, 1946. Central City Air Force Base managed to
scramble a few fighters, but most of our planes were destroyed before they
could get off the ground. Our ground forces were mostly destroyed on the ground
too—though some of them managed to get part way under the ground before they
were destroyed.
    After the first
few hours, it was obvious that we were no match for these invaders from space.
They were superior to us in every way. And didn’t they know it! They brushed us
aside like we weren’t important at all, usually adding some derogatory comment
like: “Stand aside, runt!” or “One side, shorty!” or sometimes even “Go home,
boy! Go home!” which was possibly the biggest insult of them all. The real
fighting that was going on was between the aliens themselves over who was going
to be taking over the Earth and who was going to be taking their sorry green
asses back up into space where they belonged, while our men mostly just stood
helplessly off to one side, like the runts they were.
    Similar battles
were raging all over the globe. All of Earth’s major cities were being taken
over just as easily as ours was. And nobody seemed to be able to do anything
about it.
    Occasionally,
somebody who thought he was wise and important, and could handle this all by
himself, would go out alone to talk to the aliens, carrying a copy of the Holy
Bible or A Folk Guitar. But none of them ever came back. When we looked out to
see what was taking them so long, what the big holdup was, we saw that there
was nothing left out there but their sneakers, with little wisps of smoke
coming out of the top. So being wise doesn’t work. We know that now.
    Our scientists
were very excited about all this, of course. They love stuff like this. Now
they had proof there was life on other worlds. It was right here, wiping out
the life on our world! It was breaking in to the scientist’s laboratories and
beating the daylights out of them, knocking over their experiments, punching
them in the belly, and twisting their scrawny necks for them. You can’t have
better proof of life on other planets than that.
    Through all this,
Buzzy’s trial continued on determinedly. Central City wasn’t going to let
anything stop this great trial we had going. This was the goddamn trial of the
century, God damn it. But most of the spectators and reporters had already lost
interest in the proceedings, and were outside watching the interplanetary war
instead.
    To revive
interest, the prosecution tried charging Buzzy with additional crimes,
including weird sexual felonies of a highly titillating nature. Buzzy’s lawyers
didn’t object too strenuously to this. They wanted to see where this was going.
They wanted to get a good look at whatever sex evidence the prosecution had
before they started objecting.
    Since all the
aliens were fighting among themselves and seemed to have completely forgotten
about us, our military men decided the time was right for a counterattack.
After all, this was the kind of military situation—where your enemies are all
looking the other way—that generals dream of when they’re kids.
    Our counterattack
had a chance. On paper, anyway. We had the element of surprise on our side.
Everybody thought we were beaten already. In fact, they’d forgotten we