The alarm was sounded the moment the two creatures broke through the fence into the safety zone. As soon as the powerful flashlights pinpointed their location, the taller creature, female apparently, started flailing her skinny arms, shouting something that came all scrambled over the microphones doting the area.
‘Turn it up’, Lt. Franklin ordered the duty guard who was already taking aim to shoot according to the established protocol.
‘No shoot, no shoot, boy no sick, boy healthy’, she was shouting through a lopsided mouth, one of the tell-tale signs of the plague. As if to prove her point, she rubbed furiously at the boy’s face, wiping away the grime to reveal healthy cheeks, unblemished by scars or signs of paralysis caused by brain damage.

Franklin motioned the soldier to hold fire, watching the two figures making their ways towards the heavily-fortified wall surrounding Base 14. The woman walked with difficulty shuffling her feet, but the child seemed to walk normally, his slow pace dictated by fear and exhaustion, not by the crippling disease that had almost wiped out the human race.
They had heard rumors of children being born disease-free in the slums the beasties inhabited, but given the filth in which they lived it was a miracle for a child to survive past infancy. With their brains turned to mush, it was hard to believe the beasties somehow managed to take care of their young ones. Even the children born on the military compounds seemed sickly, due to the lack of resources and the polluted air.
Still, if healthy, the child was to be spared and put into quarantine for three months. Every able-bodied human being was important in the battle that was to come. The metamorphs had made it clear they will be back and if the scientists’ calculations were exact, their ships will return in ten years time. The human race had to be prepared by then if it was to survive.
The two soldiers on night guard donned protective costumes and made their way towards the gate, shotguns at the ready. The creatures had stopped a few hundred yards, the boy huddled against the woman’s filthy garment, that might have been a fetching blue dress in times gone by.
‘Come closer, boy’, Lt. Franklin shouted, but the child wouldn’t budge. The woman pried loose the small hands grabbing at her ragged dress and shoved the boy forth. She raised her arms above her head and started to walk backwards never taking her eyes off the boy. Lt. Franklin could swear he saw tears in her eyes, but maybe it was just another side-effect of the disease. It was common knowledge that the beasties had lost all mental capacities that made them humans.
When the boy got to the gates, they pushed him inside the decontamination shed, which they still used religiously when returning to base, although some claimed nine years after the attack it was highly unlikely any of the survivors would catch the disease. The boy was skinny and had some bruises and scratches here and there, all consistent with the long trip they had taken to get there, as the closest beasties’ colony was 30 miles away. They had no clean clothes for his small frame so they gave him an oversized green T-shirt and a big towel to wrap himself into and marched him off to a former store room that now served as quarantine room. Not that they had many new-comers these days. It was at least three years since the last group of survivors had made it to the base. Those had been kept in isolation for six months after one of them died of what was later determined to be tuberculosis.

After cleaning themselves and putting on fresh uniforms the two soldiers returned to their post. The woman was still there on the safety perimeter, looking towards the gates, now closed once again. The protocol was clear, so rank soldier Johnson activated the wall-mounted machine gun and shot the intruding female. They could not risk her going to her tribe and guiding a pack of beasties back to the base. That posed an unacceptable security risk for the scouting and hunting parties. Even now they were waiting for the return of Major Willis and his team, who had been sent all the way to Base 7, housed inside a former medical facility where they manufactured the only antibiotics available that side of the mountains.

Nine years after the metamorphs had unleashed destruction upon Earth, scientists had not yet established how the alien virus worked, let alone come up with a cure. While the people on the base had been declared immune to the disease, they were plagued by all sorts of ailments and infections, due probably to their cramped living quarters and less than satisfactory sanitary conditions. After all, the former military training camp that was now Base 14 had been designed to accommodate five hundred soldiers at a time and now housed four times as many.
The image on the monitor showed the boy was sleeping wrapped in the towel, curled up in one of the beds, a sign that he was used to at least some degree of civilization. Nobody ever went near the beastie settlements, not only for fear of contagion, but also because it was thought best to have them forget about the healthy ones, the survivors. And, the beasties were known to attack and eat people that strayed into the now forbidden territories that had once been flourishing cities.
All laid in decay now, as, with so limited mental and physical capabilities, the beasties were unable to keep anything in working condition. They had sleek steel-and-glass skyscrapers at their disposal, yet they huddled in filthy basements and parking lots, feeding mostly on the thriving rat population.
The fate of the beasties had been the subject of fierce debate among the military. Some wanted to exterminate the beasties and reclaim the cities for the survivors. Technically, it could be done, but the real difficulty was defending vast areas against remaining mutants driven by hunger.
However, the real reason the beasties were left to themselves for now was that all available resources were poured into manning and defending the military bases that housed the weapons needed for the metamorphs’ second coming.

They had failed miserably at the first contact with an alien civilization. The metamorphs had tricked them by assuming a familiar shape, with elongated heads and almond-shaped huge eyes. The aliens had presented themselves just as the humans had expected them to look like. The whole Earth population was excited to see them finally here and things seemed to be working just fine for a while. But then, humans discovered the aliens brought no wondrous gifts and they would not share their space flight technology, as, they said, it was entirely dependent on their superior mental abilities. Essentially, the aliens fused their minds in a collective effort to move their ships on sheer will-power, something the humans were simply not equipped to do. Among world governments many doubted the so-called mental projection was real and it was just a matter of time until someone decided to verify the theory, by sneaking a team of four soldiers aboard an alien ship. When the ship took off to visit Australia, it left behind the horribly-mangled bodies of the four spies. It was their own-fault for messing around with a technology far beyond their capabilities, the aliens explained. Many would have believed them, especially the millions of peaceniks who hailed the aliens as if it was the second coming of Christ, had it not been for the disturbing video the spies had managed to send back from inside the alien vessel before their horrible deaths. When hidden on their ships, the aliens reverted to their natural shape - revolting insect-headed beings with multiple tentacle-like limbs that allowed them to move easily in every direction and juggle several tasks at the same time.
The myth of the friendly-alien had been busted and even though the invaders maintained they meant no harm, the two civilizations were now firmly on collision course. The alien ships took little damage from conventional weapons and by the time humans figured out they’d have to nuke them, the aliens had unleashed the deadly virus and left. Not before letting it known they would be back when the humans had had the time to come back to their senses.
No doubt they expected humanity all but wiped out by their return, with the remnant mutant population reduced to base primitive instincts. Easy to deal with.
They were in for a big surprise, as the survivors had vowed they won’t be making the same mistake again. This time they’ll nuke any alien ship out of the sky.

The three months passed uneventfully and the little boy was deemed fit to be released from quarantine. He had put on some weight and looked healthy. Now came the hard part of introducing him to human civilization, teaching him how to behave in a rational community when all he had known was the pack mentality of the beasties.
They called him Noah, the ultimate survivor, and the boy proved to be a quick learner, mingling easily with the other children. One year later, he was ready to start training with his peers, his humble origins all but forgotten.
Only Noah had not forgotten his early life in the slums and the daily struggle to survive in a place that had become alien to its unfortunate dwellers. He had not forgotten the old man that had become his mother’s mate or the day he had brought him a brightly colored train set, none of them knew how to operate anymore. Noah, of course, could see the toy needed batteries but didn’t say anything. It had been decided the mutants were to forget all about the technology that had come so close to destroying the planet. All of the alien crew left behind were here to make certain the mutants lived long enough for their bodies to adapt to the enhancement virus that would allow them to develop their mental capabilities. It pained him to see all the suffering, but it was unavoidable. The humans had to revert to basic animal instincts before they could be led on a different path. Every life was precious and he knew that a rescue crew had been at hand to save his adopted mother. If only for her will to sacrifice herself, the human race was worth saving.
The people on the base were past saving, unfortunately. Their belief they could nuke their ships was childish, his mission on the base was just to make sure they did not destroy the Earth before the aliens came back. Hard as it was for him to maintain a human form, he had to stay among them and use his brain power to mitigate their killer instincts. As individuals, they were not bad, as a group, though, they were deeply flawed.

Story written for @neoxian's Prodigious and Desolate Post-Apocalyptic Writing contest.

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Images: 1, 2, 3.