The Death Angels > A Quiet Place fanfic

[James G]

The other year, I watched the movie A Quiet Place. I was a bit dismissive of the aliens in that as to how they managed to win big, so fast too.
I saw the sequel at the weekend then read some of the lore from the creator. I had some ideas. I've tried to make it all work in my head.

So, this will be a fictional piece of fanfic. Not sure how long it will be, whether I can complete it too but I will try.
Everything about the Death Angels and how they did what they did, and the human reaction at the start, shall hopefully be covered. I'll try to stick with what facts have come from the creator rather than speculation I've seen from elsewhere. 

[James G]

The Death Angels

It was June 2021. The world remained in the grip of a pandemic, one which had killed more than a million and a half people. Coming towards the Earth was a lone meteor spotted at great distance away. Military and civilian detection systems (the latter later moved under military control) spotted the approach. The initial course of the meteor was plotted to see it bypass Earth by over a hundred thousand kilometres: a close miss in astronomical terms. Then the unexpected, the unexplained happened. Firstly, it changed course at seemingly the last minute to take it directly towards Earth. Secondly, the one meteor became seven smaller meteors: all exactly the same size and shape. What approached Earth, the smaller pieces speeding up too, weren’t meteors. Governments discussed what was happening among themselves then each other without the public knowing. Earth was under attack, the consensus was there upon, yet there was no decision made on what to do about that. Intelligent life in some form was assumed to be guiding or even aboard those seven space rocks but what was to be done? More time was needed by those in power on Earth yet none wasn’t given.

With undue haste, the seven meteors entered Earth’s atmosphere and made crash landings. Earth was seventy per cent water and four of them struck the oceans. One landed in the North Pacific, another in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a third in the South Atlantic and the final one in the Arctic. Of the other trio, the first crashed in the northwestern side of the divided island of New Guinea (under Indonesian jurisdiction) not far from the sea either while the second landed in Russian-owned Siberia – some distance north of the city of Tomsk – and the third smashed into Mexico in the middle of the state of Oaxaca. None of those places on land were high-population areas. The devastation around each crash site was still major and did end up killing a lot of people. Impacts like those were major events with huge levels of destruction.

With each of the seven meteors, falling away from them as they entered the atmosphere and partially burnt up were between eighty and one hundred far smaller pieces. It was almost as if there was ‘seeding’ done where those falling pieces were scattered behind the meteor and not caught up in the terrific areas of destruction wrought by final impact. The four meteors, plus their seeds, which landed in the oceans were never seen again. As to the land strikes, all immediate attention on Earth was on the impact sites rather than what were at first assumed to have been burnt-up material being scattered about. The meteor impact in Mexico grabbed the world’s attention, less to the Siberian event… and barely anyone knew about New Guinea. Governments tried to clamp down on any information linking the meteor strikes together in any meaningful way. Questions were asked though subsequent events would make investigation and cover ups all a moot point in the long-run.

While the US State Department made a statement promising humanitarian aid for Mexico when news broke about the meteor strike there, the Pentagon put drones into the skies above south-central Mexico while redirecting satellites to look at the general area. The devastation from where the meteor itself had impacted was complete: a huge swath of mountainous forests had been levelled. Drones going in close, then also Mexican military helicopters too, experienced electronic problems. Those were overall unexplainable. Speculation back in the Pentagon was that there was some unknown metal core within the meteor somehow causing that via magnetic means. Scientists briefed those in uniform and then politicians about what that might be about. Their explanations were confusing and then couldn’t explain while the ‘blackout’ area expanded post-impact. Flight operations were dangerous and on the ground, the majority of electrical equipment, including those in vehicle systems, cut on and off at random times. To those who heard all of that, it sounded like a weapon was being employed.

Away from that impact site in Oaxaca directly, other military drones flown by the United States went into Mexican airspace without informing the Mexican authorities. They caught sight of devastation away from the impact area. Those falling pieces – eighty-three in the case of Oaxaca – hadn’t been bits of discarded space rock. Alarming, horrifying footage was fed back over satellite feeds to those in the Pentagon then shared with the President and his top people over at the White House too. Creatures had fallen from the meteor before it smashed into the ground. They were on the rampage. They attacked vehicles, buildings, animals and people. No initial plausible explanation could come from observing them from high above as to why they were doing what they did. Each one operated on its own, spreading further and further afield with its reign of terror. Close-up images of the creatures were sought and then gained. They were sort-of humanoid but on four legs as well. They were fast too, damn fast. They jumped and sprinted without abandon, smashing their way through anything but the sturdiest of obstructions to their path. On two occasions, the creatures were seen apparently chasing people into the sea off the coast of Oaxaca and then drowning. That seemed to be their own weakness. Footage was taken of them being attacked by improvised weapons and then guns too. None of that stopped them. Ambushes were observed where they laid in-wait for people and then struck at them. The creatures killed and moved on. They didn’t eat nor drag away their victims either human nor animal.

The Mexican Government was in contact soon enough with Washington. When the two presidents spoke, the American one related what he knew about the creatures killing Mexican people for no reason at all while not ceasing in that. The Mexican president had some information on that and requested help. His country was under attack by an unknown force. He was being told that the creatures were attacking sources of sound and nothing visual. Rescue teams and the military too in the area were being engaged, and nothing could stop the slaughter going on. He begged for help to come Mexico’s way. The United States promised that would come. In the meantime, Mexico began to prepare to fight a war. Their enemy was something which their president called ‘los angeles de la muerte’: the death angels. They had fallen from heaven and rained death upon so many so fast without mercy. The Army and the rest of the military was given orders to converge upon Oaxaca. Little information, nowhere near enough, was given to those sent in as to what they were facing on the ground down there. Even if it had, nothing could have been done to stop what was happening. Elsewhere in the world, the same was happening where more seeding had been done too. Scouts they were, those first wave of creatures, and they were out ahead of everyone else following.

[gillan1220]

Shit. That's one way 2021 went drunk.

[James G]

Jun 8, 2021 11:44:02 GMT gillan1220 said:

Shit. That's one way 2021 went drunk.

This won't be a nice story.

[James G]

Mexico didn’t have one of those initial governments made aware about the meteor – later seven meteors – heading towards Earth ahead of impact. Almost exclusively, those nations which did have them were rich, first-world countries. The United States was first among the pack with its closest allies in NATO, the Five Eyes and the Pacific nations in the know: Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan etc. The Russians knew also ahead of time and so did the Chinese. Cooperation between those two countries happened when the danger was first realised, when the then-one meteor changed course, where they discussed the matter extensively just like the West did. Indian found out late in the game while Israel discovered the big secret far earlier when, while spying on an ally in the West, they realised they had been left out.

When the one meteor broke into seven identical pieces, Russia’s foreign minister contacted his opposite number in the United States. Contact might have been expected in such circumstances to go the other way, for the Americans to have to tease something out of the Russians with those in Moscow full of paranoia about Western imperialist plots, but that wasn’t the case. The danger that the West saw, the East did just the same. More so because Russian scientists and military planners had extensively studied the threat and came to an even more dramatic conclusion than what those far away had. One of the seven meteors slammed into Russia itself while another hit Arctic waters Russia regarded as its own. That latter impact was thought to be something more than it was, a second landing against Russia: it wasn’t understood then that, like all water landings for the Death Angels, that was fatal for them. As to the Siberian impact, immense damage was done and a lot of death was inflicted upon Russia by it. Yet, unlike the Mexicans who sent in unarmed civilian rescue teams to the Oaxaca site, the Russians sent in military forces to the Tomsk area. Washington was informed of that alongside their Chinese allies: the Americans passed on that information to their own partners.

No one went to the UN, no one made anything public. Those in power told neither their people nor other governments what was going on. They thought they knew best of how to handle the situation and didn’t want to incite mass panic as well as believing that they were protecting those whom they served.


In bio-warfare suits, heavily-armed Russian military soldiers entered the Tomsk Oblast (Oblast: a federal entity within the Russian Federation) from transport helicopters and also armoured vehicles too. The Russians didn’t bring many tanks, it was mainly wheeled armoured personnel carriers, but they had a good few to hand. For the Russian Army to go to war – that it was – without tanks was unthinkable! The unknown threat was treated as if it required such a counter. Jet fighters and attack helicopters went in ahead of the troops. They too went looking for trouble but focused their attention where the meteor impact site was instead of where the real danger lay. It wasn’t appreciated that what had fallen from the meteor was the greatest threat to humanity ever known. However, from that lump of space rock, formed around a metal core unknown to mankind, a ‘pulse’ was emitted several times. It was an electromagnetic one and what the Russians regarded as a weapon. Several helicopters crashed and a few fighters nearly did. EMP shielding against nuclear weapons effects saved the majority of those airborne from destruction. That attack against Russian forces in the skies came just before those on the ground first made contact with the enemy invaders.

Moving up from Yurga past Tomsk in the direction of the meteor impact site was part of a brigade of Russian soldiers. The whole brigade hadn’t assembled in the rush to get moving though those missing were supposed to play catch up. The mission orders were to reach the impact site and engage ‘hostile forces’. Information which had come out of Mexico was joined by what little the Russians themselves knew about what was going on in their own country. It was believed that the threat was at that impact site, radiating from there, but it was a threat that they could handle using heavily-armed troops with air support. Further to that initial wave of soldiers, a battalion of airmobile troops from far away Ulyanovsk (on the other side of the Urals) was also dispatched to Western Siberia. The airmobile troops were delayed though and first into contact, heading into the unknown to fight foreign invaders, were those serving with that motorised rifle brigade.

They were massacred. The units involved were wiped out, pretty much to a man.

There was no fair fight. Those soldiers went up against an enemy while absolutely destroyed them. A retreat, a temporary withdrawal wasn’t made. There was no opportunity to do that. They blundered their way into a couple of dozen Death Angels who ripped into them. Armoured vehicles and tanks were attacked on the move. They were noisy and attracted attention. The idea that a creature, even one from outer space, could take on a T-90 tank and win was laughable… until it wasn’t. BTR-80s were ripped open and their crews & passengers inside massacred. Brigade-wide communications went down early before all command-&-control lower down, at battalion- & company-level were knocked out. Soldiers who did try to deploy and fight were ripped to shreds: literally. Bullets bounced off the armour that the Death Angels had. They raced around at lightning speed, jumping and leaping in their quest to kill. Not once did they show any fear on the attack. It was just kill, kill, kill. Soldiers ran for their lives when all order broke down, with many dropping their weapons. Most were hunted down when noise, even the smallest, gave themselves away. Many of those T-90 tanks were turned over on their sides or backs when those attacking them couldn’t wrench the turrets off as they did to others: a couple of the tanks were thrown into the Tom River. Rapid-firing multiple-barrelled guns with anti-aircraft platforms, tracked Tunguska vehicles, poured fire forwards. They couldn’t get a fix on the attackers at all, not at the speeds but more so how the Death Angels moved. Artillery support was with the Russian Army brigade. It never got the chance to come into play when the crews were slain and those big guns tossed aside.

In a foolish, stupid decision, when contact was lost with the troops on the ground, the deployment of those air assault soldiers still went ahead. Transport aircraft landed at Tomsk Airport, southeast of the city and in the opposite direction from where the enemy was, to disgorge soldiers and light armoured vehicles. Those difficulties contacting the motor rifle brigade were put down to electromagnetic interference and there wasn’t even any concept that a heavy force like that might have been defeated let alone destroyed. The passage of time was quick and the idea of that was just impossible. Such naivety didn’t last very long. Death Angels attacked the airport, long before the troops sent there could form-up. Monsters from hell, the stuff of nightmares, stormed the airport. Transport aircraft, lightweight BMD armoured vehicles and anything else in their way were tossed about. As to the soldiers, they fought. In the face of everything, riflemen fired their weapons. That did them no good. Using their own bodies, but also anything they could throw or kick, the Death Angels massacred those at the airport just like they had did out in the countryside. Nothing stood in their way and not one bullet nor one shell did them any harm.

What happened out there in Siberia took some time to be understood back in Moscow but when it finally did, there was action taken. The president and his top people were aghast at the seemingly easy destruction of Russian Army and Russian Airborne Troops units yet weren’t about to go into a cationic shock when faced with that. Russia would be defended regardless of one battlefield defeat. A decision was made to at once mobilise the entire Russian Armed Forces. The president got on the phone to his ally in Beijing: military aid was requested from China. Information was shared on what happened, an honesty shared with those in the United States too regardless of geopolitical difference, and Russia asked for help. That aid would include Chinese soldiers even! The thinking at that time there in Moscow, in other global capitals too, was that military might would work. The whole picture of the enemy faced still wasn’t fully grasped. China said yes after a short consideration. By the time China’s leader was back in contact though, more news reached the Kremlin. The city of Tomsk had been bypassed at first by the Death Angels yet after what they did at the airport, several of them went in there. The reports which came out, confirmed by aerial surveillance footage, were horrific. It was almost disbelieved… but the evidence was right there. Those in Moscow didn’t known that such horror of an almost unimaginable scale were being inflicted across towns & small cities in Mexico’s Oaxaca state, also in Jayapura in New Guinea too, yet they saw what happened to Tomsk. The far bigger city of Novosibirsk (third largest in Russia) wasn’t that far away and the president spoke of not sitting on his hands while the threat of that loomed over him. He wouldn’t stomach doing nothing. Orders remained for a conventional response yet another form of warfare was also given the go-ahead as well. The Chinese were told ahead of time and the Americans afterwards.

What they were informed about was the use of nuclear weapons on Russian soil by the Russian Government itself. Several midnight suns soon lit up the dark skies over Western Siberia as the Death Angels were given a bucket of sunshine atop their deformed-looking heads.

[gillan1220]

Will this follow the movie canon where the aliens would overrun the world?

[James G]

Jun 9, 2021 1:57:12 GMT gillan1220 said:

Will this follow the movie canon where the aliens would overrun the world?

They'll be undertaking a world tour, yes.

[lordroel]

Jun 9, 2021 8:02:07 GMT James G said:

Jun 9, 2021 1:57:12 GMT gillan1220 said:

Will this follow the movie canon where the aliens would overrun the world?

They'll be undertaking a world tour, yes.

If you want a spoller, seems in part two the alliens cannot swim, thus the United States Armed forces tried to evacuate as many people to islands.

[James G]

Jun 9, 2021 9:07:45 GMT lordroel said:

Jun 9, 2021 8:02:07 GMT James G said:

They'll be undertaking a world tour, yes.

If you want a spoller, seems in part two the alliens cannot swim, thus the United States Armed forces tried to evacuate as many people to islands.

I can confirm that is the case.
Not a good idea to invade a planet of 70% water when you cannot swim!

[gillan1220]

Jun 9, 2021 9:07:45 GMT lordroel said:

If you want a spoller, seems in part two the alliens cannot swim, thus the United States Armed forces tried to evacuate as many people to islands.

Jun 9, 2021 9:22:26 GMT James G said:

I can confirm that is the case.
Not a good idea to invade a planet of 70% water when you cannot swim!

The same with the aliens in Signs (2002) who were known to melt with water.

[lordroel]

Jun 9, 2021 9:22:26 GMT James G said:

Jun 9, 2021 9:07:45 GMT lordroel said:

If you want a spoller, seems in part two the alliens cannot swim, thus the United States Armed forces tried to evacuate as many people to islands.

I can confirm that is the case.
Not a good idea to invade a planet of 70% water when you cannot swim!

This is not the first movie that happens, Mel Gibson movie The Sign the aliens are allergic to water.

[gillan1220]

Jun 9, 2021 11:43:20 GMT lordroel said:

Jun 9, 2021 9:22:26 GMT James G said:

I can confirm that is the case.
Not a good idea to invade a planet of 70% water when you cannot swim!

This is not the first movie that happens, Mel Gibson movie The Sign the aliens are allergic to water.

If that was case, then bring in the water cannons and firefighter planes. Even a kid with a super soaker could defeat them.

[lordroel]

Jun 9, 2021 11:47:01 GMT gillan1220 said:

Jun 9, 2021 11:43:20 GMT lordroel said:

This is not the first movie that happens, Mel Gibson movie The Sign the aliens are allergic to water.

If that was case, then bring in the water cannons and firefighter planes. Even a kid with a super soaker could defeat them.

It says in the movie, this movie not the other one they cannot swim, not that they allergic to water.

Best would be using flashbangs and this vechile among others, a truck with a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) mounted above it.

[James G]

When I was reading about the Death Angels - not a name I made up - the film Signs was mentioned. These creatures aren't like those aliens though.
Unlike other alien movies, the ones in A Quiet Place don't sneak around, don't make probes. There is no clever strategy. They are a fish out of water, a bit like the creature in Cloverfield where it is just destruction they want.
Water doesn't harm the Death Angels and they can even cross small patches. In deep water they drown through because they've never met water before.


Anyway... nukes, nukes, nukes.

[James G]

The United States had used nuclear weapons against the Japanese in 1945. Until Russia did so to combat the Death Angels in June 2021, the two previous attacks a few days apart at the end of World War Two had been the only time that nuclear weapons were employed in anger. The Russian use on home soil was of a far greater extent than what the Americans had done seventy-six years beforehand. Two atomic bombs had been used in Japan: almost two dozen thermonuclear detonations went off in Western Siberia. Small weapons were used… if using a nuke could be anything less than ‘big’. It wasn’t city-busters employed but rather tactical nukes which the Russian Armed Forces set off. Surface-to-surface and air-launched missiles were fired from distance with detonations between fifteen and fifty kilotons of force. Dial-a-yield warheads were used to see detonations matching particular circumstances where the enemy was spotted. Conventional weapons hadn’t done the trick and so it was nukes instead.

What the Kremlin did was in many ways fight a ‘smart’ nuclear war. They didn’t blanket the entire Tomsk Oblast with massive weapons going for overkill but instead sought targets and wiped them out using immensely powerful blasts. It was quite the success too. Firing for over three hours at night against targets tracked from above, almost all of the Death Angels were wiped out. All apart from a handful of the blasts took out at least two of them at a time too (one blast even eliminated five at once) and there were very few wasted shots. In the end only three of the murderous creatures were left alive after the rest had been turned to atomic dust. Nineteen nukes targeted the creatures with another trio employed in a one-two-three fashion in quick succession against the meteor remains where the electromagnetic ‘weapon’ was.

The downside was the nuclear destruction of a massive portion of their home soil as well as all the unpleasant later side effects coming from using nuclear weapons. The land was poisoned for generations and, with ground blasts, there would be a lot of resulting nuclear fallout. More lives were lost by the nuclear attacks than the Death Angels had taken themselves too. Thousands of soldiers first then upwards of ten thousand civilians as well in Tomsk were taken when those creatures went on the rampage… yet the nukes killed more. However, the justification in the Kremlin, and chiefly from the president whose rule was wholescale, was that they saved more lives. Novosibirsk was in reach of those creatures where it could have been hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Their use of nuclear weapons was the lesser of two evils.

The trio of remaining Death Angels were left inside Tomsk. That city had been surrounded by nuclear fire but not attacked itself by Russian nuclear bombs. There were many, many civilians in there, those who’d wised-up quick as to how to survive. Many of them were wounded when trapped underneath buildings knocked down and fires started when the unknown beasts caused wanton, epic destruction. What was going on was not something they knew. All they were aware of was that noise attracted the creatures meaning death for them. Men, women and children, plus animals too, had been slaughtered mercilessly. Anything that made noise faced the fury of those wandering beasts: that included plenty of inanimate objects and had been why the Death Angels had ripped apart the city. No one had a radio or television on to hear announcements broadcast into Tomsk telling them to seek shelter from the nuclear fallout. That would kill them in time along with those who kept them trapped in-place too. The tragedy of what happened with Tomsk was unimaginable.


Yet the world didn’t know what happened in Tomsk. The Russian President didn’t go on television and tell his country what he had done. Other governments were either unaware or, with the ones which did, kept their mouths shut. With those in the latter category, that certainly didn’t mean though that they were in agreement with what had happened. The American President tried to get his Kremlin counterpart to cease those attacks when they were underway. He urged for a conventional response rather than the use of such weapons. From Moscow, those in Washington were told though that it was the only thing that would work. That was proved correct too. It did stop those creatures who’d arrived unbidden into Russia from continuing their reign of murderous terror against the helpless. Yet… what Russia did, in such a manner where they detonated twenty-two nuclear weapons was still widely regarded as completely over the top. When reports relayed to the White House from NORAD came – ‘nucflash, nucflash, nucflash’ – the vice president agreed with the president’s national security adviser’s comment about ‘burning down your house to deal with an ant infestation’. At the top tiers of other governments, even with Russia’s ally China, the whole matter was seen as completely over the top. They had heard and seen all that the Russians had to deal with, just the same as what was happening in Mexico, but didn’t believe that an utter scorched earth policy like employed around Tomsk was the right course of action.

In response, when governments in Berlin and Wellington found out, the German and New Zealand leadership gave serious consideration to going public with the truth. What Russia did was seen as ghastly, evil in fact, and they didn’t want to be caught standing alongside them sharing a hidden falsehood when the music stopped. Not coordinating, just separately coming to almost the same identical conclusion, those two governments almost took that step. The United States informed them though that there would be no nuking of Mexico. A firm promise was made, one which other allies, ones caught on the fence, didn’t think that the United States could honour. Coming from the Canadian government in Ottawa was a proposed solution as to what to do when it came to ‘handling’ what Russia had done. The news that nuclear weapons had been used in abundance in Siberia was certain to leak so the Canadians suggested that the West, working with Russia, claimed that a ‘nuclear accident’ had happened. Details would be held back and there would be massive outrage but it was far better than admitting the truth. Such a spin on things went down well almost everywhere among those in the know who didn’t want to share.

While agreeing, the Russian president once more urged his American counterpart to forget public opinion and reactions to come later and get on with the business of using nuclear weapons themselves in southern Mexico. Nothing else had stopped those creatures in Tomsk, nothing else would save hundreds of thousands of lives. It might take a week or two, but from the Kremlin there was assurance that if not stopped, the Death Angels in Oaxaca would eventually find their way north. That was a threat which the United States was prepared to deal with. They would use conventional weapons though, a lot of fire power, and do things properly… the Secretary of Defence bent the president’s ear on the matter that the Russians had gone about things the wrong way. It was promised that no repeat of Russia’s apparent mistakes would be made by American forces preparing as fast as they could to enter Mexico on what would be sold to the public as a ‘humanitarian mission’.


Mexico was in the know due to the landing of that meteor within its territory after disgorging its terrible cargo en route to the crash site. That put Mexico within a club of nations which it didn’t belong among and was only there by necessity. Indonesian joined that club too. At the insistence of Australia and Japan, they were told what exactly was going on out in New Guinea. There was reluctance to accept that, even when proof was offered. The Indonesians didn’t have access to their own information due to what was happening out there and didn’t want to rely upon outsiders who talked of ‘military aid’. In the end though, there came final acceptance from Jakarta. By then, even if the approach followed in Siberia had been repeated in New Guinea – which it wouldn’t – that would have been far too late. The Death Angels there had spread out too far in terrain where tracking them would have been nigh on impossible.

Poland too joined that exclusive club of nations. Their so-called allies in NATO didn’t tell them what was going on. Instead, it was the Israelis, who themselves had been first left out in the cold by whom they believed should have told them the truth. Informed, the Poles were angry at what happened. Their president was furious at the contempt his country had been treated with and very concerned about what he heard with Russia employing nuclear weapons. They had been used on the far side of the Urals, a long way from Poland, yet the fear in Warsaw was that Russia might find an excuse to use them closer to Poland somehow and their fair-weather allies would let them get away with that. Because he was a stupid, vain and angry man, the Polish president lashed out. When announcements came from first Moscow, then Washington and afterwards elsewhere in the world talking about a Russian ‘nuclear accident’, the Polish media were presented with a different set of facts. Those facts weren’t even true though. It was the era of fake news and the Polish President spread a lie about why Russia purposefully used nuclear weapons on its own soil: there was apparently some sort of military rebellion crushed using nuclear weapons!

All hell broke loose following the official announcements and then what lies were added by Warsaw to strike a propaganda blow against Russian enemies.