Cake Survival- Part III

(AKA Clues in a Cake. Shrinking Down.)

An Excerpt by Connor Seeker, 10
A May 2024 Monthly Story Challenge Winner

Previously, a crew of tiny astronauts in egg-shaped space ships explore Earth. Read  Part I and Part II. In Part II, they explore a grocery store, searching for the Dark Wizard until the building catches on caught on fire....

V

Inferno: Alyssa

“Amy get up! The store is on fire!” I shouted over the crackling. 

Amy jumped up and ran to the control room to look out of the windows. As Amy woke everyone in ship 1, 2, 3 and 4 over the intercom, I looked for a place to land.

”We need to fly over the ocean!” I shouted. “It’s the closest landing place.”

“Where?” Amy asked.

“Some place in California called Safeway!”

“Oh no! That’s far.”

”Well, at least it’s not on fire!” I shouted

”Fair enough,” Amy replied and informed the others over the intercom.

I found Safeway on the radar and started the ship. We flew up dodging flames flying through slide pieces and through old shelves. I saw the carts scattered everywhere. Suddenly a flame shot up from the floor to us. I quickly pulled up on the control stick dodging debris falling from the sky. Then a massive flaming beam fell from the roof. Amy pulled us down. We dodged all the falling rocks as the carts were crushed. The whole store shook and all the ships shot out of the door. I looked behind us to see the whole store explode in a cloud of dust and crumble to the floor. If we were 1 second late we would have been crushed. 

“That was close, how did that happen?” I asked.

“Maybe the minions started it!” Amy replied.

”Oh no, they really don’t want us here.” I said.

“Well, we are trying to defeat their master.”

“Ok. That is bad,” I said. “Let’s all check the protective shells.” The land began to fade away to the ocean as I swiped on the control panel to see how damaged the shell was.

”Outer protection 20% damaged interior 5% damaged.” said the mechanical voice of our spaceship.

”Oh no.” I said, “We need to repair it.” 

“I’ll check the other ones,” Amy said and the other 3 ships appeared on our radar and it spooled information. “Exterior 10%, 20%, 25%, 35% interior 3%, 5%, 10%, 15%,” Amy said.

“Everyone repair the ships.” I said over the intercom and slowly as we flew over the ocean the numbers got smaller. 

We started to approach land and flew over. I saw the massive city of Washington DC. The tall buildings looked amazing. We swerved around them and flew through alleys. At one point we decided to fly into a skyscraper. We flew through the door and up the stairs. At the top we circled the spike and flew up hovering over the edge. Suddenly something flew towards us at light speed. I slammed down on the button that disabled the hover mode and we plummeted to the ground. As we dropped like a stone, I looked up at the blur that missed us. It looked like a dart. The ground was coming closer.  At the last second, I switched on the hover feature. The ship stopped just above the ground.

”What was that? Why was it thrown at us?” Amy asked.  

“Don’t think the giants are happy to see their food flying. It could also be the minions again” I replied.

“Fair enough, but they are really annoying,” Amy said.

“True.” I took the control stick and pulled us through the clouds and far over the city.

Meanwhile the other spaceships were facing similar problems.

”What is that?”

“Outer protection cracked."

“We’re being attacked!”

The transmissions came quickly. I looked behind and saw the other ships also appear above the puffy clouds. I zoomed out on the radar marking the destination. I turned on the navigation and a line appeared on the radar connecting our location with our destination. We followed this line to California.

Amy pulled us down a few miles in front of our destination. California was beautiful. We were near the shore and I could see the ocean. The massive waves crashing against the sandy shores. I turned to the dot and saw it. A massive building named Safeway. We were all so excited to be there that we didn’t notice....the trees. 

Our ship crashed sending pieces of the shell flying everywhere. The rest crashed as well. The air was full of shell pieces. Suddenly, our ship started spinning so I couldn’t see anything. We flew forward slowly descending, I think I heard glass break and then we stopped.

VI

 Trapped part I: Alyssa

Once my head stopped spinning, I got up. The outer shell of the ship was nowhere to be seen and neither were any people. I looked around to see all the spaceships lying nearby without a shell. The inside was destroyed. 

Seeing nobody, I looked around. The whole place was mostly white, our spaceships were littered between a mountain of white powdery stuff and a lake about a litre full of white liquid. A dam was stopping the liquid from flooding the place. There was more but I couldn’t make it out. The other thing I could see was a huge metal thing in the middle of everything. It was really far, but it was so big, it was impossible to miss. Suddenly, there was a deafening noise and it began to move.

I ran away from the middle. I ran and didn’t look back. I ran for the spaceships and dove in the first one I saw. The ship was tilted so the interior was hard to navigate. I climbed up the floor and used the wrong parts of the stairs. I went to the cockpit to check for survivors but it was deserted. 

Suddenly, there was a huge crash. The sound of the metal cage thing got louder and louder until it was on top of me. My entire body was shaking as a metal bar cut the ship clean in half.  I jumped out and saw that the cage had almost finished a circle and was heading straight for me. 

I tried to run but the steel cage crushed our spaceship into a liquid and was chasing it around. I gasped for air as wave after wave hit me. The waves were stronger and were pushing me down. I could barely see since the liquid was so thick and dark.

I held on to a metal bar and pulled myself up over the spaceship debris. The waves made it slippy and I was sliding off. I got pushed down again but the cage stopped. 

I swam to a dry spot and looked around. All the spaceships were gone, they all turned into slush. The metal cage looked massive from so close and not very secure. Lots of steel bars crossed over each other and went up where I presumed there was a platform but I wasn’t sure because I couldn’t see.  I saw a bigger place that stayed dry and went over. It was kind of small but I had space to look around. I decided to stay here for a bit and then look for my friends.