Chapter Text
I gripped my rifle, fixated on the figure about 300 meters away, silhouetted by a house fire which had been burning uncontrolled for a few hours now. It was difficult to see this far away, but I could tell it had the characteristic weird walk of one of the monsters that walked on two legs, and had the weird green armor. The same kind that had basically tried to gouge my eyes out earlier in the afternoon. It had no idea I was there, and seemed to be walking alone. I moved my finger to the trigger, and steadied myself to take the shot.
I stopped, and pulled my finger back. It was too risky to start shooting at them. None of the monsters seemed to know that we were around, and I didn’t really know how many of them were out there, either. For all I knew, the one walking in the field could have been bait to get us to reveal our position. I couldn’t take that risk. I sighed and lowered my rifle.
With the power out, there were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen in my life. I didn't even have to look close to make out the slightly brighter hazy clouds of the galactic arm. It wasn’t anything like the pictures you’d see in a National Geographic magazine, but it was still breathtaking to be able to see it with my own eyes. It seemed so calm, partially obscured by the smoke rising off of the burning house.
The night sky was mostly clear and calm, just like the countless nights that had come before it, and the countless nights that would follow. The only sounds were those of a nocturnal desert which I had become very accustomed to after years of living in New Mexico. The thousands of crickets chirping in some patch of grass nearby and a strong, cool breeze, were the only things keeping me tied to reality as I watched either an alien or a monster - I still wasn’t quite sure what to call them - shamble across the farm field nearby. I was leaning more towards calling them monsters. ‘Alien’ didn’t really fit in my mind, as it implied some kind of higher thinking beyond an urge to mindlessly kill. The monsters had so far shown that killing was all they were capable of.
For the second time tonight, a small light streaked across the sky and then fizzled out within maybe a second. I was left wondering if it had something to do with the monsters appearing out of thin air - maybe it was how they were arriving on Earth - or if I was just able to see them because all the lights in the state had gone out.
As quietly as possible, I turned and crept back to the shed. The sounds of my boots on the dirt and all the parts of my kit shaking around were probably barely noticeable, but I felt like every step was deafening.
When I was within a few feet of the shed, distant gunfire echoed from the south, towards the rest of the town. It felt too far away to be someone close to the field, and the shots definitely weren’t going in my direction, either. Still, almost instinctively, I ducked and got low to the ground. From the last glimpse of the figure I got, I could tell it did the same. For maybe 30 seconds, I listened to probably a pistol, and maybe a hunting rifle, fire almost nonstop. All at once, the gunfire stopped, and I wished whoever they were good luck.
I slung my rifle over my shoulder before continuing on to the shed. I quietly knocked on it a few times, just to be safe. My knocking pushed the door open a little bit, since it was still loose from when I’d bashed it open.
The face of the Farmer appeared in the dim light, peering back at me. The metal barrel of his M40 rifle glinted as he held it pointed towards the sky, ready to blast anything that came by. Seeing me, he lowered his rifle and pulled the door open, nodding for me to come in. Across from him, the kid was sitting with his back against the wall.
“Did you see what it was?” The Farmer asked, almost whispering, barely audible above the sound of the wind rocking the shed. I didn’t know the wind was as constantly noisy as it was until now.
“Nope. I don’t think there even was anything.” I walked in and tried to kneel on the plyboard floor, before my exhausted body decided it would be better to just sit. “There’s one of those goddamn things out in the field, but it was way out there. No way it knows we’re here.”
“Please,” he asked, imploring me to not use the Lord’s name in vain. “But that’s good to know.”
“Sorry.” I owed him that much.
He sighed with relief, and tried to relax. To me, I felt like that would be impossible.
A lot of it was still a blurry mess. Parts of my Guard unit had arrived in town to evacuate anyone who didn’t have transportation. We were parked along the street by the police station and fire department, helping civvies get into our trucks. They were all pretty anxious to leave. Some of them said they’d been hearing gunfire for the past few minutes - that gunfire was our only warning before it all went tits up. A big group of those monsters, mainly the shorter ones with the green armor, just appeared from thin air. The one thing I knew for sure was that they attacked first, with the shorter ones firing lightning and the taller ones shooting bugs or some shit out of their hands. It felt like my mind simply refused to process what I was seeing when they first appeared.
Past that point, I couldn’t be sure what had happened. There were two empty magazines jammed into one of my ammo pouches, attesting to the fact that I had at least shot at some of them. I remembered watching one - one of the shorter, green armor ones - drop to the ground in the front lawn of someone’s house, yellow blood leaking out of a gnarly bullet wound. Maybe I killed it. It would’ve been the first time I killed anything. One of the short monsters got close and tried to claw my face. My kevlar had done a fantastic job of protecting me and took most of the impact, but I was still left with a nasty laceration directly under my eye. I was knocked to the ground, watching completely helplessly as the ugly piece of shit got ready to finish me off.
I remembered feeling absolutely certain that I was going to die then. Its four eyes - I could still see them incredibly clearly - were focused entirely on me, when it suddenly went limp, collapsing haphazardly onto my legs. I didn’t even hear the gunshot that dropped it.
While I was on the ground, I got a glimpse of Corporal Clarke, my truck driver, laying on the ground face up. Just a few minutes ago, he was letting me bum a few Slim Jims from his ruck.
My apparent guardian angel was the Farmer, who was crouching low by the fence, and still aiming his pistol. He might’ve said something to me, but I didn’t hear a single word of it. I scrambled to get free from the lifeless body of the monster and then broke into a dead sprint towards the Farmer. I wanted to stop and help, kill more of those fuckers for killing Clarke, but there was nothing I could do. Trying to escape was the only option, and I still felt like shit for it. From there, we just ran, maybe a hundred or two hundred meters, across some kind of park before ending up in another neighborhood. He made me stop so he could try to put a bandage around my wound, which was apparently bleeding pretty badly.
The farmer was an older man, and like most older guys in the Southwest, he wore a denim jacket and a matching pair of denim jeans that had been worn out after a good couple decades of use. Between that and the square-framed glasses, he would have been pretty unassuming, if not for the leather chest holster carrying what I believed was a 1911 and the M40 rifle slung across his back.
From there, we kept sneaking and running through neighborhoods, trying to get to the north side of the town, where the Farmer lived. Everything I was seeing was like something out of a movie. Independence Day obviously came to mind, for that matter. It also felt a little reminiscent of Escape from New York, though I couldn’t really explain why. Most of the people I saw were in their cars, also trying to escape, but I also saw a bunch of others who were out aimlessly running, god knows where to. Then again, so were we. At one point, I saw a fighter plane scream across the sky, tailing some kind of stingray-shaped UFO.
It was there that the kid ran into us. I wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing completely alone, but he barreled onto our street screaming for help, saying that he was being chased by something. I had no idea what, and I didn’t see anything, but we obviously weren’t about to turn him away. He couldn’t have been older than me. He was just dressed in some jeans and a t-shirt. It was probably a miracle he’d even made it far enough to reach us.
We made it past a field before just giving up on our goal of reaching the Farmer’s house. I wanted to hide in one of the houses, but the Farmer said it would’ve been too dangerous, trying to go door to door in the hopes that maybe one of them would be unlocked. We ended up finding a shed in someone’s backyard, and it seemed like the best we were going to get as far as a place to hide went.
I couldn’t say how long we had been here for, but we got there before sunset, and we were now well into the night. The three of us were too scared shitless to try moving, and so we decided to just hide in the hopes that somebody would come back for us. At this point, I was beginning to accept that nobody was. We were forced to sit and listen to gunfire becoming more and more rare as the hours kept ticking by. I could tell that whatever was happening out there wasn’t going well for our side, and rescue wouldn't be coming anytime soon.
The shed had a little window, through which we had a view towards the field and distant neighborhoods. The distant cars gradually stopped going by a while ago. A few hours after the sunset, I saw all of the street and building lights turn off at once. The fighter jets that would frequently fly over chasing the stingrays were gone now, and the stingrays were continuing to fly across the sky unbothered.
I didn’t know if the Farmer or the kid had realized that rescue wasn’t coming, and I would feel like a piece of shit if I tried to bring it up.
Just a few days ago, I was laying on my couch at home, channel surfing around between the random cop shows and Spanish soap operas airing at one in the morning. I had been trying to decide between rewatching Air Force One or Executive Decision, both movies that I was already on the verge of wearing the tapes out. That was more of a hazy memory at this point, but I could still clearly remember the next morning when I got the call that my unit had been activated. At the time, I felt pretty good about it - as far as I was concerned, it meant I would be getting a few days away from the jobsite, paid for by the government. That first day was fine, but it was today that shit had hit the fan out of nowhere. The drive up to Artesia, I had to listen to Clarke, running off weird gas station energy drinks, rant about Star Trek or listen to the weird electronic music he liked. Now, I was wishing I could go back and listen a little closer to what he was saying.
At no point had any explanation been given about what the hell was even happening, especially as monsters appeared out of thin air, hell bent on killing the first thing they saw.
I thought about my parents, and everyone else back in Roswell, too. All my friends, all my family, all the people I worked with. Whatever was happening in Artesia had to be happening across the entire state. Probably across the entire country, too. My mom was a doctor at the Lovelace hospital in Roswell, which meant that she’d be right in the middle of this whole mess. My dad was retired, and a part of me hoped that he would be in less danger, but I knew that he wouldn’t leave my mom behind and would be doing everything he could to keep her safe. I had no way of knowing how they were, and all I could do was just pray they’d made it out of the state.
Now, I was trapped in this town called Artesia that I hadn’t even known existed the day before. A town, I imagined, had rates of weird lung diseases far higher than the national average, thanks to the giant refinery right in the middle of it. There was no telling what I would give to just have another bag of doritos, or just a bottle of beer. I didn’t care what brand at this point.
It finally occurred to me that I still didn’t know the names of the Farmer or the kid. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if the Farmer was actually even a farmer. The denim jacket and jeans said to me that he was, but I had no idea. My dad pretty much dressed the same.
I didn’t know about the rest of them, but I was starting to get hungry as hell. I, and most of the other guys in my unit, tended to carry snacks in a spare mag pouch, which would come in handy during drill weekends which would otherwise be spent wondering why I joined the Guard and was doing this on a weekend instead of having fun. I had packed for this activation, mainly some Swedish Fish and a big bag of oven-roasted peanuts. I was still reluctant to dig into either, and I wanted to wait until it was absolutely necessary. I imagined water could become a problem, too. The Farmer had a thermos awkwardly looped around his belt, and I had two canteens, but there was no telling how long it would last us three, especially when the sun rose. And while I was partially glad to not have to hump my ruck since I’d accidentally left it in the truck, it meant I lost all the MREs I had in there, too. The silver lining was that I had lost a Menu 4, Country Captain Chicken, maybe one of the worst ones you could get.
I just wanted to get my mind off of things at this point. “Well… helluva time for icebreakers, but if we’re gonna be sticking together, I’d like to at least know your names.” There probably wasn’t anything around us for a bit, but I was still compelled to speak a little above a whisper. “You can call me Mark.”
“Stephen,” the Farmer said. “This is a real damn strange way for us to meet, I’ll say.”
I laughed lightly. “We’ve got a real motley crew going here, huh?”
“We sure do. Brings me back to a time when I was far younger.” He began working a shoulder muscle. “Are you Army?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Guard. Uh… just part time at the armory up in Roswell.”
He began to eye me suspiciously. “You’re saying I’ve got to carry an Army part-timer with me now?”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
He shook his head and laughed. “Oh, I’m just kidding. You bunch haven’t mellowed out one bit, that’s for sure.”
I waved dismissively and turned to the kid. “What about you?” My hopes were that this would distract him, but he seemed lost in his own mind. “Kid? Dude?” I said, waving, trying to get his attention. “You there?”
He looked up and began to speak. “Uh, Nathan… Sharp. I mean, just Nathan works.” He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“What’re you apologizing for? You haven’t done anything wrong,” Stephen said. I nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I just… I guess I hate icebreakers.”
“Yeah, no, yeah, I get you. Well, what does your shirt say, anyways?” He was wearing a t-shirt that had a picture of something I couldn’t really make out in the darkness, besides something I assumed was the moon.
“My shirt? Uh…” He stretched it out, like he was trying to remember what it said, too. “Carlsbad Caverns. Bats.” The little black shapes I was looking at like a caveman now suddenly made a lot more sense as bats.
“Carlsbad Caverns?” I’d mainly heard about this place in passing.
Almost instantly, he lit up. “Dude, it’s so cool. It’s this whole… underground cave. The gift shop is freaking underground. It was crazy.”
“Were the caves any good? I don’t really go to places based on the gift shop.”
“Oh, yeah,” he stated, pretty confidently. “They’re gigantic, and you can walk around everywhere. But, like, how many places have you been to with an underground gift shop?”
“I’ve been there before,” Stephen interjected. “It’s a damn beautiful place. I’ve been wanting to drive down again, but just haven’t had the time.”
“Well you gotta go again,” Nathan said. “Seriously. It’s awesome. And if you do, stay for this bat show thing after sunset. We did, and like…” He held his hands up dramatically. “So many bats come flying out of the cave in this crazy, gigantic swarm. Like, a thousand of them. And they go so fast, too. It was insane.”
“Bats?” I asked. I wasn’t really keen on the idea of watching thousands of little swarming rabid creatures fly out of a dark cave.
“Do you not like bats?” He asked, in a way that suddenly felt like I was being interrogated, for the second time this night.
“Yeah, no, I…” I stammered, trying to think of a defense. “No, bats are alright. They’re, just… you know.” I wanted to say they were weird, but I couldn’t think of a nice way to phrase it to a kid. Working in construction, and the monthly Guard drill days, had ruined my vocabulary.
“They’re a very misunderstood animal, just so you know. They eat a lot of the pests that kill crops. They pollinate a lot of those crops, too. They’re very important for the environment.” I could immediately tell he was going to be a park ranger or some shit like that someday. He sounded just like my older brother did about coyotes, and he was working as some kind of coyote scientist up in Idaho, around Yellowstone.
Even then, it didn’t make much of a difference in my mind whether or not bats were good for the environment - they were still freaky as fuck.
“Oh, do you drink tequila?” I hoped that this kid who was almost certainly underage wasn’t about to ask me for alcohol.
“Uh, no, I don’t.”
He shrugged. “Well, bats are actually the only pollinator of agave. You couldn’t have tequila without them.”
“Is that so?” Stephen said, looking up. “Huh. I’ll be sure to thank them next time I have a glass.”
“Dude, you sure know a lot about bats,” I said.
“And maybe a little too much about tequila for a young man your age,” Stephen added.
Nathan nodded proudly. “No, don’t worry, I’m not stealing my parent’s alcohol or anything. I just think bats are pretty awesome. I’ve got a whole part on my web page all about bats. I’ve actually been, like, writing this world where bats evolve instead of humans.”
“Really? How does it go for them?” I asked.
“About the same. They fight lots of wars.”
“Seems about right. If you ever need someone to tell you how guns work, I’m your man.” I pointed with my thumb to the rifle slung over my back.
He was about to say something when a harsh light suddenly filled the shed. I had just gotten adjusted to being in the dark.
It was always some shit.
While still struggling to see anything, I turned towards the window to try and see what the hell the light was. My initial hope was that rescue had miraculously come, and maybe it was a helicopter searchlight, or somehow a flashlight. Neither really made sense, but I was hoping for them to be true. Struggling to my feet, we all crowded around the window, trying to get a better look. The most I could say was that it was some kind of massive explosion in the sky.
“I’m taking a look,” I said. I didn’t even bother with trying to be quiet as I shoved the door open, drawing my rifle and gripping it tightly. They both followed close behind me, following as I stepped further away from the shed, trying to get a better view of the sky.
Whatever this was - the explosion - was coming from the west.
“Oh my god, what is that?” Nathan asked. “Is that a nuke? What is that?”
My jaw dropped as lightning streaked out from the explosion, spreading across the sky in what seemed like slow motion. The lightning illuminated the clouds as it passed, in a way that somehow made me incredibly disoriented. It made the clouds seem small. My brain somehow recognized it as a violation of nature. At the same time, it was beautiful, and I struggled to look away.
“No, it’s not a nuke. I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it’s not a nuke,” I said, struggling to stay calm.
The idea didn’t even seem that far fetched to me, though. I would not be surprised if the situation had gotten so thoroughly fucked that the president deployed nukes to stop it. Still, I could confidently say that whatever was happening was not something caused by a nuke.
As the lightning reached overhead, we heard the booming thunder, shaking the ground we were standing on and rattling nearby windows. “Holy shit!” I yelled, barely even audible over it.
The lightning seemed almost stable in the sky. Branches would shift and reach outwards in a way that almost told me it was alive - the death spasms of something I couldn’t ever hope to understand. The lightning continued across the sky, going so far out it went below the horizon, revealing its true scale. Watching gave me a feeling similar to when you stand right at the base of a tall building or a flagpole and look directly up at it. What could only be described as spiny red jellyfish were forming much higher in the sky, with disturbingly long tendrils reaching for the ground.
Trying to stabilize myself, I looked back towards the ground at the field. What I saw made my blood run cold - spheres of green light were appearing across the field. They had caught us completely in the open. There was no way we’d be able to hide in the shed anymore, and there would be far too many to fight. Trying my hardest to keep cool - and for the most part failing - I violently whipped around and scanned the horizon, searching for the closest source of cover. There was shit all we could use. I remembered seeing a trailer park earlier that didn’t seem to have any monsters around it. It was too far away to safely reach, but we were now way closer than we were before. It seemed like our only shot.
“We gotta get the fuck out of here!” I shouted, immediately getting their attention.
“Son of a bitch!” Stephen exclaimed, drawing his rifle high in the same breath. I was a little taken aback. I never really understood the people who would never be caught saying something like ‘oh my god,’ but would swear as good as anyone else. I’d met quite a few people like that in the Guard.
Nathan was left standing between us, looking terrified. I realized that, right now, he had jack shit to defend himself with. I unfastened my kevlar. It disturbed the bandage, but right now, that was the least of my concerns. “Kid! Put this on!”
I didn’t wait to see if he caught it - the sound of something heavy hitting the grass told me he didn’t - because I was reaching for my entrenching tool. After pulling it out from my belt, I unfolded it in one quick motion by thrusting it outwards. The helmet was a little too big, but he was able to quickly get the chinstrap around his chin. Not correctly, really, but there wasn’t time to teach him how to do it properly.
The sharp edges on the etool made it way more dangerous to throw, so I stepped over to give it to him. As he took it from my hands, I made sure to point out the serrated side. “Anything gets close to you, swing at ‘em with this side, okay? It can chop through wood!” I would save the story of how we put that to the test during a boring ass field drill for another day.
I didn’t know how much good any of it would do for him. I had to hope it was better than nothing.
“Get to that fenceline” I did my best to point towards a fence maybe 200 meters away. There was a garage, or a bunch of sheds or something, that we could use as cover. “Start running! I’ll keep ‘em suppressed!” I began to aim, and flicked the fire selector to fully automatic. “Move!” I shouted, seeing as both of them hesitated.
That seemed to be enough, and they both broke off running. I began moving sideways, and took some shots at a monster that was moving near some trees in someone’s driveway. Most of my shots missed, tearing through the tree behind it, but I seemed to manage to clip it in the leg. As I watched it fall to the ground, I wanted to shout - maybe tell it to go fuck itself, or that was what it deserved - but I just couldn’t muster it, too gripped by panic to try. It felt like I was going to get hit by one of their electrical beams, or maybe the bugs some of them shot, at any moment. The monster’s weird green armor glinted in the light as it fell.
The suppressing fire seemed to work. None of the other ones were even trying to get a shot at us. When my second magazine ran dry, I ducked and began running for where I thought the garage was. I had almost entirely forgotten that there was a short metal fence around the house, but I was able to vault it pretty easily, and sprinted the rest of the way. I ducked around the corner, and found Stephen and Nathan at the far side. Stephen was sitting cross legged in a sniping position. He took a shot with his rifle just as I came around the corner, making me duck instinctively at the ear-splitting noise. Nathan was kneeling right behind him, still gripping the e-tool tightly. He raised it, and then quickly lowered it, as I stepped around, probably thinking I was one of the monsters at first. I crouched into position behind him.
“I’m here!” I announced, catching my breath. “Fuck!”
The light from the explosion was now beginning to fade, but the lightning seemed to have left a weird glow in the sky. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but right now, it wasn’t important.
“Where -- where are we going?” Nathan asked, out of breath. “Where do we go? I…”
“There’s a trailer park nearby. It’s got good cover for us, and plenty of buildings to hide in. We just gotta --” I was interrupted by the deafening sound of Stephen’s rifle. “Just gotta be fast.” I shook my head. “God damn, Stephen! Where the fuck did you learn to shoot like that?”
“A rathole far from here,” he dryly commented, impressively calm.
“Alright. We gotta keep moving. Stephen, you take point, and Nathan, you stick behind him. I’ll be keeping you covered again. Keep moving up and around the fence. There’s a house, should be just right there. Got it?”
“Got it!” Stephen called.
I looked at Nathan, who still was trying to catch his breath. He was also probably trying not to hyperventilate. I wasn’t sure what I could do for him, but I figured there had to at least be something.
“You’re a fucking trooper, dude. Keep it up. We’re almost out of this, okay? Just stay focused on what’s directly in front of you. I have your back.”
“Okay. Alright.” He took a deep breath, and shifted the e-tool around in his hands.
“We good to go?” I asked.
“I’m good here,” Stephen called. Nathan just nodded hesitantly.
“Go! Go! Stay low in the grass!”
They both began moving quickly, pushing through some almost chest-height grass, in a way that reminded me of sharks in water. Peeking out from behind the garage, I fired at another monster that was slinking across a dirt road close to the garden shed we’d been hiding in. The bullets just hit the dirt around it, but it was enough to make it roll onto the ground and crawl the rest of the way. With that one suppressed, I detached from cover and followed close behind Nathan.
The grass helped to conceal me as I kept myself as close to the ground as possible. None of this was ideal, but remarkably, the monsters had yet to even try to return fire. I had a sneaking suspicion that firearms were a lot more accurate and deadly at these kinds of distances than whatever their lightning bolt thing was, but I wasn't going to put it to the test. In the corner of my eye, I could see a bunch of these tripod dog things with glowing blue stripes on their backs. I had seen a pack of these things earlier, too, still at a distance but close enough to realize that what I assumed were their eyes looked like blackberries. These things were running away.
We kept moving along the fence towards the house directly ahead. Thankfully, there was a gap in the old-looking fence that surrounded it that let us get through, out of view from the field. Stephen ran to take position next to a garage a few feet to our left. The desert was still completely indifferent as the crickets continued chirping.
The trailer park was now finally in sight, past a paved road, concrete ditch, and a small thicket of trees. The wires on the telephone poles ahead were swaying gently. I pointed this out to them both. We were just about to continue when Nathan suddenly began pointing at something to the right.
“Do you see that? There’s a car!”
He was right. Down the road, there was a car fast approaching with its high beams on. The feeling of relief I felt was immense. I hadn’t even been sure there was anyone else left alive in Artesia, and now, here was someone with a working vehicle coming our way.
“Let’s go!” I yelled. I didn’t wait, and ran into the road, waving my arms, trying to get their attention. They were still a ways down, but the light from their high beams was already blinding.
“Hey! Help us!” Nathan shouted, joining in at my side. I glanced over and saw that Stephen was doing the same.
The van swerved to avoid some unidentifiable lump on the road further ahead. It didn’t seem to be slowing down.
“Hey, I don’t think they’re stopping!” Stephen warned. I didn’t listen. I wasn’t going to give up the chance for us to get a ride out of here.
Unfortunately, he was right. There was a sinking feeling in my chest - the van wasn’t even slowing. I ran off the road, pulling Nathan with me, but still kept my arms high, doing everything I could to be visible. There was no way they couldn’t see us.
It finally passed by. I got a good look at a beat up Chrysler wood-panel minivan, missing its front bumper. The windshield was littered with cracks, and inside I saw that there were two people up front - and two very young kids in the back, probably both around five years old. One of them was looking directly at me as the van passed.
I didn’t want to be mad at them for just trying to escape while they still could, but a part of me was still fucking pissed that they didn’t even try to stop.
“Hey!” I shouted after them, still waving frantically. “Please! Stop!”
They just kept going, their brake lights slowly fading into the distance. I was almost sure that we were the only ones still in this godforsaken town, but a few distant gunshots to the north said otherwise.
We were left in silence for a few moments, all watching as the van continued away.
“They might not’ve even had room for us,” Nathan said, quietly. He was the first to speak. “I mean, I’m sure they… they would’ve stopped if they could.”
“Who cares if they don’t have room?” I spat. “For fuck’s sake, we could’ve just sat on the floor in there, for all it matters.”
“We can’t expect --” Stephen began.
I cut him off. “Fuck that! You see a bunch of people screaming for help on the side of the road and you don’t stop to help them?” Immediately, I felt a sharp pang of regret. These people were all I had right now, and I couldn’t be treating them like that.
I sighed and shook my head. “Whatever. Let’s keep going. They could’ve fucking stopped.” Neither of them responded.
We continued walking across the road in reserved silence, constantly watching for any other movement nearby. There didn’t seem to be any. I angrily kicked a big bottle of pop into the ditch, hoping it would help. It didn’t. I leapt across the drainage canal, but quickly turned, realizing that Stephen might not be able to do something like that.
He was climbing across at a slow pace. “You got it? You good?” I asked. Nathan helped keep him steady
“Yep. Young man’s got me.” I nodded, keeping watch as they both climbed up to me.
We jogged across another sandy dirt road before we reached the gravel path that ran around the trailer park. Across the field next to the park was some kind of giant gravel lot that was filled with all kinds of industrial… things. It was a little far away, but I could see the arms of those lifting trucks towards the far end, peeking above everything else like the tree-eating dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. Even though it looked like it was surrounded by a chain-link fence, I wondered about how cool it would be to just walk around a place like that and look at all the equipment. Maybe even take some of it for a joyride, considering there wasn’t anyone around to tell me not to.
I had to cut myself off before I got distracted thinking about how awesome of a movie Jurassic Park was, and how much I would love to be watching it right now, instead of whatever the fuck kind of mess I was in.
It looked like there was a whole line of generator trailers in the lot, too. Those would be awesome, but I wasn’t a sparky - I would, for sure, get myself killed trying to start one or hook it up to any building. I had my doubts that someone I assumed was a farmer, or a young kid, would be able to get one started, either.
Up ahead, there was a trailer with a decent looking fence. A tractor trailer was parked across the road to the left. “Go for that one with the metal fence,” I said, in a hushed tone. In fact, there were a lot of tractor trailers, these ones without their trailers, that were parked further ahead.
Calling them trailer homes probably wasn’t accurate, I thought. I just wasn’t sure what they were actually called - the types of houses you sometimes see getting moved on the highway, escorted by a bunch of trucks warning you not to hit it, as though it was even possible to accidentally run into it. Then again, they wouldn’t have those trucks if people didn’t.
It felt great to finally be in an area with four walls and at least not as many dark corners for weird monsters to hide behind. I found a spot next to some random plywood boards propped up against the fence and sat down. The dirt was uncomfortable, sure, but I didn’t care. I could feel that weird, coppery taste in the back of my mouth that came with running. One would think that working in construction and being a Guard part-timer would keep me physically fit, but apparently not. I didn’t want to think about how I was already getting old in my 20s. Stephen and Nathan eventually both sat down next to me.
“Alright, I just want to put it out there… I’m sorry for yelling at you guys earlier,” I finally said, resting my head against the fence.
“Oh, no, you’re alright,” Stephen said. It was reassuring to see that he was willing to let it slide.
“Agreed,” Nathan added.
“Yeah, no, it’s just…” I shook my head. “Feel shitty to get worked up over something like that. Especially right now.”
“It’s water under the bridge, young man. You shouldn’t worry about it.” Stephen said. “The both of you keep apologizing for a whole lotta nothing.”
“You’re running around with a rifle shooting bad guys and keeping us alive. I think protecting us matters way more,” Nathan added. I held back a comment about how I was just doing my job.
I sighed. “All that shit, and all we did is go across the street. Goddamn.” I held both hands up to my head apologetically. “Sorry.” Stephen nodded.
“Well, we still made it,” Nathan sighed. “Could’ve been -- woah.” I looked over towards him, wondering why he suddenly stopped. He was looking at the sky, and I decided to do the same.
“Woah,” I echoed.
The Aurora Borealis somehow seemed to be dancing across the skies of New Mexico. How we didn’t notice it earlier was beyond me. It wasn’t in colors I had ever seen - granted I’d never actually seen them in person - but in pictures, they were always green and purple. Here, they were more blue than anything. They were bright, too. The pillars of light were constantly moving and shifting slightly, fading in and fading out. There were little areas where new aurora would flare up and move quickly. I never even thought I would be able to see something like this in person.
“What is it?” Stephen asked.
“Look at the sky,” Nathan said. I was too mesmerized to talk.
Of all the things that I was unable to believe, or were unlike anything I had ever seen, or were right out of a movie - in this case, it reminded me of this movie called Frequency which came out last year - it had to be the most beautiful. I was hesitant to say that something good had come from this nightmare, but either way…
Another meteor, barely anything more than a little point of light, streaked across the sky in a moment. I really didn’t know meteors were this common.
“Look at that!” Stephen suddenly pointed up towards the sky. “Are there planes up there, too? There’s a little light. What is that?”
I strained to see it. Right now, there were an infinite amount of little lights in the sky. Surprisingly, I did actually manage to catch the little glint of light moving at a quick and steady pace across the sky. I had hoped for it to be a plane, maybe a sign that the military or the government were still intact, and monsters weren’t spreading across the country, but there were no navigation lights.
“No… no,” I said, maybe a little too dejectedly. “It looks like a satellite.”
“Now that is beautiful.” I wasn’t sure if he was admiring the beauty of human technology getting us into space, or just talking about the aurora again.
“You can see those with just your eyes?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah, sure can,” I nodded.
“That’s so sick.”
There were astronauts up on Space Station Freedom, and whatever the Russians called theirs, who were probably seeing this, too. Maybe they would end up like those Soviet astronauts who went up before the country collapsed and came back as Russians, only now they’d be coming back to the collapse of the world. If it had even gone that far - for all I knew, this shit could’ve just been limited to Artesia.
We kept watching the aurora for the next few minutes, comfortably unaware of our surroundings. As far as I was concerned, we were safe here, even if outside. Eventually, we’d get up, and I would try to find a trailer we could hide in, but for now, I was fine with this.
Nathan pulled out a little white digital camera from his pocket that I didn’t even realize he had. He tried to take a couple pictures of the aurora, but I had to imagine that they were coming out blurry and grainy in the dark.
“Hey, Nathan?” I asked, while he kept trying to take pictures.
“Yeah?”
“Just ignore all the swearing and stuff I did back there, alright? I don’t want you picking up on all my bad habits. I think running for my life brought out the worst in me.”
He nodded. “Sure, but I hear way worse stuff from my dad. The f-word is basically nothing to me.”
“Yeah, still. It’s not good for your soul. So I’m told, at least.”
I suddenly spotted motion around the trailer in my peripheral vision and instantly focused on it, fully prepared to have to shoot a monster. The door to the trailer was being pulled open, slowly and carefully.
I struggled to climb back to my feet, but still managed. “Oh shit, there’s someone in there,” I said, too quiet for either of them to hear. They both realized the door was opening, too.
The door was suddenly opened the rest of the way, making an uncomfortably loud squeak. A man with a rifle, maybe an M16A1, stepped forward. I noticed he had a goatee, too. Of course, out of all the trailers in this entire park, we happened to sit down in front of the guy who owned an assault rifle and probably wasn’t expecting visitors. He wasn’t aiming it at us, but was clearly trying to make sure we knew he had one.
I held my hands out, hoping to quickly show that we were friendly. “We’re --”
“Y’all wanna explain what you’re doing on my property?” They called out. He wasn’t loud, and he spoke with a definite Texan accent that seemed like it was worn down by a few years of living in New Mexico. A second man came into view, but was obscured by darkness inside of the trailer. The most I could make out was a white t-shirt that had a picture of maybe an explosion or something like that on it. I did notice the glinting gun metal of a pistol stuffed into his waistband, in a classic Mexican carry.
“We’re just trying to find somewhere to hide, dude. We don’t --” I had to cut myself off to try and compose myself. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“You’re sayin’ you’re not looters?” As he said that, the other guy leaned in and said something to him.
“We’re not looters. Swear to God, we’re not looters.” I looked to my side and saw that Nathan’s eyes were wide. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for him to constantly be going through shit like this.
“And you’re just looking for somewhere to hide ‘till this all blows over?”
I shook my head emphatically. “That’s right. We’re seriously not here to loot.”
“Hell, do we look like looters to you?” Stephen asked. A wounded soldier, an old cowboy, and a kid with a shovel apparently made for a pretty scary gang.
The guy with the rifle seemed to weigh what I’d said for a moment. “Alright. We’ve got room to shelter you three for at least a little bit.”
I was a little taken aback, having fully expected him to tell us to fuck off, or something to that effect. The three of us exchanged glances.
“I’m not keeping this door open any longer than I have to, guys. Move it or lose it. Come on.”
It wasn’t an offer I was going to pass up. Stephen seemed to think the same, and was already making his way towards the door. “This is really kind of you both,” he said.
“Yeah, thanks,” I echoed. The rickety metal platform that was their front porch seemed to shake concerningly as I stepped up on it.
“Just doing what I can,” he answered. They both stepped out of the way to allow us into their home. “Name’s Daniel. This is Oscar.” He placed a hand on Oscar’s shoulder and shook him playfully.
We quickly exchanged our own names with them, too. Daniel closed the door once we were all in - again making that weirdly loud squeak - and moved a tall piece of plywood over to cover the window. I somehow hadn’t noticed the board of plywood that I was standing right next to. It was already dark, but without the faint light from outside, it was basically impossible to see anything.
Oscar bent down to pick up an electric lantern from the ground and flicked it on, filling the trailer with a dim warm light. The trailer itself seemed nice - a relic of the 70s, with green shag carpet and wood panel walls. That pretty much described my own house, too. We were in the living room, with a kitchen and dining area over to the left, and maybe a bathroom to our right. I had my sights set on the floral-pattern couch just ahead. Still, with just the lantern, the shadows were harsh, and a little spooky. I could see that both the blinds and curtains were drawn, which probably wasn’t a bad idea.
“Try and make yourself comfortable,” Oscar said. “The water’s still running, but we already filled up a bunch of jugs and the tub before things really got bad. Tap water might be contaminated now or something, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t risk it.” In the light, I could better see his shirt - it was a parrot saying ‘drinko for cinco’ with a bottle of Corona. Definitely not my first choice of beer.
“Yeah. Sorry the place ain’t nice,” Daniel began, motioning around the room. “If I knew we’d have guests coming over, I’d’ve tried to clean up.” It looked pretty clean to me, especially considering our current circumstances. “Think I woulda made some cornbread, too.”
“How’d you know we were there, anyways?” I asked, seeing as all the windows were blocked.
Oscar spoke up. “I’ve been checking out the windows pretty regularly. Saw you guys and it scared the shit out of me.”
Daniel laughed. “Sure did. Yeah, I hadn’t thought there’d be anyone hanging around our yard much.”
Daniel carried his rifle - which I now figured was probably an older AR-15 - over to the kitchen by the handguard and set it on the counter in an area that seemed to have been set aside for all kinds of military equipment. There were more rifle magazines, some smaller ones probably for pistols, a bulletproof vest, and even a set of load-bearing webbing like the set I wore laid out. This was contrasted against a bunch of other normal kitchen stuff scattered around like some little cactuses in pots and random dishes that had been left out.
“We’ve been sitting inside of a garden shed for the better part of the night,” I said, already making my way to the couch. “This is a major step up. You guys, seriously, thank you.” The couch seemed like the most comfortable thing I had ever sat on in my life. I got to work unbuckling my webbing and flak vest, setting both down in a neat little pile on the floor. Stephen made a beeline to an armchair and similarly leaned his rifle against the wall as he sat down.
“Any time,” Daniel said, waving dismissively.
“He didn’t scare you all, did he?” Oscar pulled over a wooden chair from the dining room and sat it next to the kitchen counter, closer to us. He also brought along a small, brightly colored radio, and unfolded the antenna.
Nathan shot a look my way as I tried, and failed, to stifle a yawn. I didn’t even realize I was tired until now. Sitting on the couch, it was taking a lot of me to just stay conscious. I’d been awake for far longer than I wanted to be.
“I’ll just say that there’s a lot scarier shit out there right now.” Again, I tried, and failed, not to yawn. “Damn. What time is it?”
“Uh…” Oscar oriented himself away from the light and looked down at his watch. “Well, as of Mountain Standard Time… 3:26 in the morning. Oh -- 28 now.”
“Damn! Three in the morning?”
“Yep,” he nodded. “Probably not exactly, though.”
“Have you guys been running into a lot of looters or something?” Nathan asked. Nathan came and sat next to me, leaning back on the couch. He took off the helmet and set it down on the coffee table next to an old newspaper. The story on the cover was about an outdoor recreation project under construction, or something like that.
“No,” Daniel assertively stated. “And you better not think that I want to. I just don’t like listening to -- to gunshots and screams all night. It’s got me on edge, not knowing what’s happening out there.”
“Actually, this is probably a long shot, but… my family was driving through here when… all this went down. I don’t… really know how to describe any of them.” He laughed sadly. “Uh, my dad is named Ed, my mom is Caroline, and I’ve got a little brother named Alvin, but he just goes by Al. I don’t know how, but we got separated, and I haven’t seen them since. Have any of you? Like I said, we were at a gas station near, like, the main road.”
I muttered “shit” under my breath. He hadn’t told us about any of this. I already knew something bad must have happened for someone like him to be running completely alone, but hearing it made me feel especially sorry for him.
Daniel frowned and shook his head. “I’m sorry, I haven’t seen anyone like that. Me and Oscar were both at the refinery when all of this went down, and we just came straight home. You know there was a lot going on.”
“Are you sure?” Nathan pleaded. “We were close to the refinery, too. It was right down the street, I think. Our car is like a… kinda dark red SUV. I don’t know who makes it. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone like that?”
He just shook his head again. “I’m sorry. There was a lot happening back there. It was a mess.”
“I’m sure they’re still out there, man,” I said, trying to do what I could to console him. I hoped it worked, at least a little.
“Okay. Um… sorry, I didn’t want to make you guys sad. I know it’s kinda rude to ask this as a guest, but do you guys have any food? I’m so hungry.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Daniel said. “All kinds of supermarket cookies, cereal, and… various fruits. Help yourself. That said, I ask that you not open the fridge.”
“It’s like a hotel breakfast,” Oscar chimed in.
“That’s sick, thank you. We were gonna get food once we were in Texas, so, you know, it’s been a little bit since I’ve had anything.”
“Can you grab something for me too?” I asked. On another day, I might’ve been pickier, but right now I was happy to eat anything. “Is something wrong with the fridge? Why don’t you want to open it?”
“Power’s out, for one. Don’t want to lose the cold in case the power comes back on,” Daniel said.
“You think the power’s really going to come back on?”
He just shrugged. “I’m hoping it will. I don’t expect it to, but I’m hoping.”
Nathan came back with a paper plate full of those supermarket sugar cookies with the weird frosting and sprinkles. These ones were in very fluorescent pink and yellow colors, probably made with some shit they made at the refinery. But, like I said, I was happy to eat anything right now. Somehow, they were hitting perfectly.
Daniel and Oscar bunched up around each other, seemingly trying to work out something wrong with the radio.
“Is that thing not working?” I asked, working through another one of the cookies. My manners were already declining in the apocalypse.
Daniel shrugged and went to bring over another chair from the kitchen.
“It was earlier,” Oscar said. “They were repeating Bush’s statement and those emergency messages at the end.”
“He gave a statement?” I asked, already anticipating the worst. “How much weird shit did he say?”
Oscar exhaled sharply. “I’m sure he said something touching about putting food on your family and… pacemakers. Sadly, I don’t really remember… and all you can get now is noise.”
To me, it wasn’t a good sign that the radio was now entirely out, too. I hadn’t even known the President had given some kind of address. If it had gotten to that point, how bad was this shit? How far outside of New Mexico was it? With radios, phones, and power out, it was impossible to know, but the implication was very grim.
“Hey, do you guys have a phone?” Nathan asked.
The chances of a working phone were probably zero, but I wondered for a moment who I would even call. My grandpa still lived back in Omaha. He was probably asleep right now, regardless of whatever apocalyptic crisis we were in the middle of. Besides him, the news, maybe? Some talk radio show? I would’ve liked to call all the people I knew in Roswell but ideally they’d all have evacuated by now.
Oscar pointed to a landline sitting on the kitchen counter. “We do, but good luck using it. Lines went dead a few hours after the power went out. Before that, you could only get a busy signal, too.”
It seemed about right.
Daniel suddenly held a hand up. “Wait, somebody called us, right? Do you remember that?”
Oscar nodded. “Goddamn, that feels like it happened a thousand days ago now.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Oscar looked to Daniel, who then started to talk. “Uh, a little bit after we got back, I was going through all our food, trying to figure out whether or not we should run or hunker down for the time being, right? I’m going through the cupboards when the phone just starts ringing off the hook. I look at Oscar, he looks at me, and we’re both spooked, because we tried earlier and couldn’t get through to anyone.”
“Who’s calling us, right?” Oscar interjected.
“Right,” he said, continuing. “I think there’s a lot of people who would try to call one of us. I go over there and pick it up, but it’s just totally quiet from the other side. I wait for a few seconds, and then it just… goes dead. Voice comes on saying the call couldn’t be completed.”
“Weird,” I nodded. Over the last few hours, I had seen a lot of other weird things.
He laughed. “I guess to y’all it just sounds like I picked up the phone, right? Told like this, it’s probably not that scary. But, trust me, it was just horrible.”
“Nah, I think that’s pretty weird,” Nathan said. “Did they call back or anything? Whoever they were?”
“Nope. Either way, with an alien invasion on, we’re dealing with way scarier things than a wrong number call,” he said.
“So you’re calling them aliens?” I asked.
“‘Course I’m calling ‘em aliens. What else is there to call ‘em? They ain’t from Earth.”
“Yeah, no, I’ve been calling them monsters,” I said. “It seems accurate to me. I mean, they don’t have to be from Earth to be a monster, right? Space has monsters.”
“I’m voting monster, too,” Nathan added.
“Thanks for having my back, man.”
Nathan leaned forwards, now having gotten involved in this debate.
“Alien, to me, implies that they’re coming down in spaceships. These guys just teleport. That’s a monster thing, you know?” He said.
“It could be alien teleportation technology,” Oscar said. “Monsters don’t have technology, right? The implication there is that they’re a bunch of savage creatures.”
“Yeah, that’s just about what I’ve seen so far,” I said.
Daniel nodded resolutely. “I guess we’re gonna need, uh, Stephen, to be the tiebreaker here. Do -- oh, guess not.”
I didn’t know how, but Stephen had already fallen asleep. He was an old person in his natural habitat, sitting in an armchair, unaware of the world collapsing around him. If there was still electricity, we could leave the TV on, tuned to some news channel running constantly to complete the trifecta.
“We should probably keep it down,” Daniel said, quieting his voice. “Don’t want to disturb the elders.”
I yawned again. “Yeah, I hope I’m not putting you guys out here, but I’m feeling tired as hell, too. Would it be alright if we slept here?”
On any other day, I would never even think about trying to sleep in the house of a total stranger would be unthinkable for me. I couldn’t explain why, but right now, I felt like I could trust these total strangers with my life. It was pretty weird.
“Of course,” Daniel said. “Were you thinking we’d kick you right back out to the curb? Come on, now.”
“It’s a hell of a time to start a bed and breakfast,” Oscar commented.
“Yeah, I don’t think you guys are going to have much competition right now. I, uh… I lost my wallet, so just put this on my tab.” I stood up with a pillow in my hand, already planning to try and bed up on the floor. “You want the couch, Nathan?”
“Sure,” He said, quietly but enthusiastically.
Daniel was saying something to Oscar when he spotted me sitting on the floor, trying to find a good spot.
“You’re not about to sleep on the floor, are you?” He asked. “There’s a perfectly good bedroom right down the hall.”
“Oh, no, I don’t want to take one of your guy’s beds,” I said, shaking my head.
“No, don’t sweat it. You’re our guests. It’s a -- it’s a spare.” He seemed to hesitate like he didn’t want to say that.
“You guys sleep in the same room?” I asked. I had no idea how you’d be able to comfortably fit two beds in a trailer house bedroom, if that was the case. I didn’t really get an answer, anyways. “Well, okay, Nathan, you want the bed? I’m fully willing to take the couch.”
“Uh-uh, the couch is mine. I’m keeping it.”
“Whatever you say.” I’d been there before. Offer the couch to someone who has never slept on one and they’ll jump for it, and after, they would avoid sleeping on one for the rest of their lives.
Daniel led me over to the extra bedroom, which was one of the rooms I saw to my right after coming into the trailer. It was a pretty normal room - difficult to see much, though - with a dresser, bed, and the other usual stuff. There were a bunch of cardboard boxes stacked in one of the corners. Obviously, they were using the room partially for storage. The bed seemed like it had been recently made, and I felt bad for disturbing it. After taking off my jacket and boots, I went back to the living room to get a quick drink of water out of one of the canteens from my belt. I brought my rifle and flak with me back to the bedroom almost out of obligation. I wouldn’t feel comfortable sleeping without them at arm’s reach.
After navigating to it by the light coming in from under the door, I finally laid down. The bed felt like it was a small piece of heaven, especially after everything I’d gone through. The air was stale and uncomfortably warm, so I didn’t bother with trying to get under the covers.
I laid on my side, trying to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I was completely unable to. Something in my subconscious seemed to be keeping me awake, constantly screaming about how one of those monsters would appear in the room and try to finish the job. I could overhear a quiet conversation in the living room, and I had to wonder just how much of that could be heard by something outside of the trailer, too. Every few minutes - at least, it felt that often - I would hear a gunshot or several from somewhere in the distance. It was just as much of a reminder that there were still other survivors out there as it was that the monsters were still out there, too.
I wondered how many other people in America, or across the world, were sleeping too, completely unaware of whatever the fuck was going on in New Mexico. Maybe it had spread outside of the state, maybe everything was still contained inside of it. Maybe these monsters were already appearing across the country, or even the world. The uncertainty of it all was beginning to drive me crazy. I didn’t even know what was happening down the street, much less what was happening to all the people I knew and loved. I certainly didn’t know why any of this shit was happening in the first place. The rumors from friends-of-friends stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base or some missile silo in Wyoming were now the closest things I had to any actual information.
I was still struggling to wrap my head around the fact that this was our first meeting with extraterrestrials, too. I mean, I couldn’t for certain say whether or not they were ETs, but there was no way in hell those things were from anything close to Earth. For as much as I loved movies, I never really was into stuff about alien invasions, or aliens in general. Barring Aliens - which I had probably seen enough times to recite all of Hudson’s lines - it just wasn’t something that appealed to me. Of course, everyone who lived in Roswell had to have their own theories about aliens. Personally, I figured that they did exist somewhere out there, and it’d be cool if they did, but not really matter much to me if they didn’t. Whether they be the classic little gray guys with big eyes or some guy with shitty rubber on his forehead like Star Trek, I had to assume that they’d at least be friendly.
It really, really sucked that our first encounter with things from space began with them killing us.
At some point, I managed to finally drift into that weird semi conscious state, where I was still barely aware of the world around me. The light from under the door had vanished, and they weren’t talking any more. In my mind, I was thinking about the movie Aliens, specifically when the Marines enter the atmosphere processor thing and are wandering around. I imagined myself getting out of bed, and coming back into the living room to find that everyone else was now attached to the wall, covered in weird alien flesh.
I began to hear distant, indistinct shouting, sort of like hearing a movie playing in the other room. I was barely perceptive of it, and yet, I could still tell that it was getting closer.