by Jay Ford
I realized I still wasn’t breathing, and started again. My pulse raced, and my entire body oozed sweat. “Can you believe this?” I asked Dad.
“I…” he paused. “I can’t. I really can’t.”
I starred at the TV screen, but I wasn’t paying attention to what was on it. All I could think about was Aliens Over America.
****
I laid back in my bed and stared at the ceiling. So many things were rushing through my brain, I could not even think straight.
I heard my phone vibrate on the table beside my bed. It was Jared.
“Hey,” I spoke into the phone.
“Dude. What the—”
“I have no clue,” I interrupted.
“Bro, my ‘rents are freaking out! They’re packing all of our stuff! Apparently, my Uncle Bill has some nuclear bomb shelter that we’re moving into!”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” I said nervously. The fact that he had an uncle that had a nuclear shelter didn't even surprise me. We all have that weird uncle.
There was a silence. It was followed by a sigh. “Dude, you aren’t seriously freaked by this, are you?”
I paused before answering. “Well, it is a little bit…weird.”
“Man, I thought you had some balls or something! This isn't something to be scared about!” Jared said.
“Chill! I mean, seriously. You’ve seen the movies!”
“Yeah, I have. I’ve seen the dudes shooting up the bad guys and daring them to mess with us! That’s what I’m doing. I’m not gonna sit around in some fallout shelter with my parents and my dope head freak uncle! I’m gonna go kick some ass!” He was practically yelling now.
“You aren’t being serious, are you?” I asked, concerned. I've never heard him act this way.
“Dude! You’re turning into a chick! Grow a pair, why don’t you! Wasn’t your dad in the Air Force or something? You should come with me and be a hero like him!”
“For one thing, my dad hasn’t fought in a battle in his life! For another, I’m not an idiot! You do whatever you like, but I’m not going anywhere near that ship. You have no idea what’s in it, anyways! I might not be bad guys.”
It was silent for a few moments before Jared spoke up. “Whatever, dude. I’ll call you sometime.” And with that, he hung up.
I threw my phone against the wall. He was so dumb! How was he even going to fight them? It’s not like you could walk up to the ship and be like, "Uh, hey, Mr. Ship, could I please shoot you?” And it's not like the government was going to hold up signs saying “We need teenagers to help us shoot these bad guys because we don't know what to do even though we have an army.”
I laid back down in bed, my mind swirling with frustration and confusion, until eventually, I fell asleep.
Chapter Three
At ten in the morning I was woken up by the sound of somebody opening my squeaky bedroom door. I jumped up out of bed, breathing hard. I couldn’t see because my eyes had some gunk caked over them. I started to freak. I rubbed my eyes really hard, trying to get the stuff off. When I could see again, I was expecting to see an alien standing in the doorway with a phaser, waiting to take me to their ship. Instead, I saw Alex standing in the doorway. He looked really tired from lack of sleep. His jet black hair was long in the back, kind of short in the front, but still really thick. It was like China’s version of a mullet. He had black, thick, square glasses that made his hazel eyes look larger than normal.
“Oh, bro, you scared me big time,” I said, taking big breaths.
He dropped the bag that he was holding in the middle of the doorway. He shuffled over to my bed, barely picking his feet up – successfully kicking some of my things across the room – and fell face first at the foot of my bed.
“Uh, hi,” I said.
“I’m hungry,” he said, lifting his head off my sheets and looking me in the eye.
Something was off. Alex’s eyes look hysterical, and not the funny hysterical.
“Do you taste good?” he asked and inched closer to me.
“Uh, bro, chill dude.” I looked around my room for an escape route or some sort of weapon. My breathing became erratic. I grabbed a pen that was on the table beside my bed. It was not much, but it was better than nothing.
He slowly got closer to my face. I inched as far back as I could, my shirtless back meeting the wall.
“Just back off, dude. Something’s going on. Maybe you caught something in D.C., but you’re not yourself.”
He ignored my orders and started licking his lips. Something was definitely not right in his head.
The next second, he lunged for me. In mid-air, he turned into a creature that had a hundred eyes. It had legs all over its body like a centipede and sharp teeth with saliva connecting his top and bottom teeth. He let out a blood-curdling roar as he lunged for my face. A scream lodged itself in my throat, refusing to come out.
Right as he was about to sink his teeth into my head, my scream un-lodged itself. I sat up – screaming – in my bed faster than a speeding bullet. I looked around me; my room was dark. I grabbed my phone next to my bed. It was two-thirty in the morning.
It was a dream. It was just a dream.
I let out a deep sigh and fell back into my bed. That alien idea was really starting to get to me. I decided that I was going to wait up for Alex. Well, at least that was what I was telling myself. Really, I was too scared to go back to sleep. But sleep eventually won out, and I finally fell into a dreamless sleep.
****
At ten in the morning I was woken up by the sound of somebody opening my squeaky bedroom door. I jumped up out of bed, breathing hard. I couldn’t see because my eyes had some gunk caked over them. I started to freak. I rubbed my eyes really hard, trying to get the stuff off. When I could see again, I was expecting to see an alien standing in the doorway with a phaser, waiting to take me to their ship. Instead, I saw Alex standing in the doorway.
Talk about déjà vu.
I inspected his body for extra legs. Nope, none.
“Uh, hey dude,” I said cautiously.
He dropped his bags in the doorway and sleepily walked to my bed, his eyes barely open. He dropped face first at the foot of my bed.
I reached for my pen.
“Imsh shost tisshred,” he mumbled. I could barely understand him because he was speaking into my sheets.
He was lying on my feet, so I pulled them out from underneath him, and sat up in bed before replying. “What did you say? You were kinda talking into my bed,” I said.
“I said, ‘I. Am. So. Tired!’” he screamed, emphasizing every word. He didn’t move his head, though, so he was still yelling into my sheets.
It took me a few seconds to decipher what he had said. “You’re so tired?” I asked.
“Yesh.”
“You didn’t sleep in the car?”
“Nosh.”
“Why not?”
“Too scarshed. Andsh Ish can’t sleepsh in carrsh.”
“All right, dude. I’m going to get up now. You can use my bed if you want.”
“Thanksh.”
I jumped out of bed and quickly left the room, just in case he turned into one of those centipede monsters. Again.
I ran downstairs and heard Aunt Jesse talking in the living room. “Hi Aunt Jesse,” I said as I entered the room.
“Hello Charlie,” she said with a fearful voice.
Mom and Dad were sitting around her on the couch with grim looks on their faces.
“So, any news?” I asked.
Dad shook his head. “It’s still just sitting there. The White House is totally overtaken though, which worries me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, that means the U.S. probably are not the ones behind this. If we were, we’d be taking back the White House. Instead, we’re leaving it alone.”
I looked at him, confused. “What does that mean?”
“It means
the government is to busy trying to figure out what to do about the ship and figuring out where it came from, so they don’t have time to worry about a house.”
I sat down on a chair next to the couch, taking in the gravity of what this meant. If the we weren’t the ones who built it ship, that means someone probably parked it over the White House, and is probably preparing to attack. Unless it was just to show their power, but that still would lead to a war. No doubt about it. They basically invaded America, and no way the government was going to let that slide. But if this did mean war, I wasn’t so sure we could fight a country that had that technological capability.
But then I remembered what I saw yesterday: Aliens Over America. Who or whatever was inside that ship, I knew it wasn’t going to be good for any of us.
Chapter Four
I was reading theories about the ship at six in the afternoon when Alex woke up.
“Dude, I had the weirdest dream,” he said sleepily, as he sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“Whatever it is, I’ve had weirder. I guarantee it,” I said without looking up from my laptop. “Why’d you guys get here so late? I thought you were going to get here early in the morning.”
“The roads were crazy. It was bumper to bumper until we finally got out of D.C. Even then, we had to go twenty under. Anybody who isn’t a raving loony, or has a death wish, is leaving town.”
I sat there for a moment, mulling over telling Alex my theory about where the ship came from. I decided to tell him. I just had to get it out there. “Do you think that maybe the ship was actually an…” I struggled to get the words out. “Alien ship?”
Alex’s face brightened. “You too?! That was actually the first thing I thought of.”
I felt so relived. I knew other people thought the same as I did, but having someone right in front of you say they believed you validated my thoughts. “Why do you think they’re here? Assuming they are aliens, of course.”
Alex shrugged. “I have no idea. Everything I think of sounds crazy, like this is some scifi movie or something.”
“Yeah, I feel the exact same way.”
There was a moment of silence as we both thought about why they could be here.
“What do you call them?” Alex asked.
I was slightly taken aback by his question, but I didn’t realize until just now that I had just been calling them The Aliens. “Nothing, really.”
“I heard someone on the news call them The Visitors. Calling them that makes the idea seem less crazy than it is when you call them aliens.”
I chuckled. “It sounds crazy no matter how you say it.”
After that, we talked for a while, throwing out crazy theories. Some sounded like they could actually be true, while others were just plain ridiculous.
“I’m starving,” Alex said after we had been talking for a while. “I didn’t get to eat on the way up here. We just drove. And drove. And drove…and drove.”
“Let’s go see if somebody’s cooking anything.” The two of us left the room. We ran downstairs to see what was cooking. When my feet met the cold wooden floor at the bottom of the stairs, I froze.
My mom was cooking in the kitchen.
“Oh, no. Oh please God, no,” I whispered to myself.
Apparently, Alex heard me because he responded, “I thought Aunt Reese was a good cook?”
“She used to be, but she’s on one of her health kicks right now. She’s probably making rice cakes of death right now.” Every once in a while, Mom used to get on this health kick. She would cook the most ungodly things and expected us to eat them. Secretly, she thinks it’s disgusting, too. That’s why she only does it every once in a while. She would start feeling guilty for over-indulging on soft drinks and candy snd go on a strict healthy diet. Thankfully, she only subjected Dad and I to this torture on the rare occasions when she fixed supper. “We have to get Dad. He’ll give us money to go get some food. We gotta be sneaky about it, though. Mom wouldn’t be happy if she found out.”
Alex nodded. We tiptoed across the family room and into the living room where Aunt Jesse and Dad were talking.
“Dad,” I said quietly so Mom would not hear. “Mom’s in the—”
He held up his hands. “Way ahead of you, son.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two twenty dollar bills. “Call me when you get to wherever you’re going, and I’ll tell you what your Aunt and I want.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I turned around and snuck out the door, with Alex right behind me.
“Are you sure we should be going out right now?” Alex asked as we walked to my car.
“Everybody who wants to get out of town have left already, so everybody else is probably holed up in their houses. Besides, there’s literally every fast food restaurant you can think of just a couple miles away. We’ll be there and back in less than thirty minutes.”
The two of us got in my Jeep. Alex still looked unsure about the whole thing, but he probably just didn’t
I reached into the cup holder and grabbed my keys. “So, what do you want?” I asked Alex as I started the car and backed out of the driveway. I pushed a button in the Jeep that opened the big gate that led to our house. Our house was in a really high-class neighborhood where every house had a large gate and fence surrounding it. Our fence wasn't cement or some other rock like most of the other ones, though, it was iron rods.
“Uhhhhhhh,” he said, thinking. “I don’t care. What do you have?”
“Well, they have, uhhh, you know…stuff.” I sighed. “We’ll just see once we get there.”
It didn’t take long, as my prediction was right. The highway was relatively clear. There were just a handful of cars.
“All right,” I said as I pulled up to a stop light after exiting. “There are your choices. Take your pick.”
He sat there for a moment, thinking. “Honestly, I don’t care.”
I let out a grumble. I hate indecisiveness. “McDonald’s it is.”
“Well, I don’t really like McDonald’s,” Alex whined.
“Dude, you said you didn’t care.”
“Yeah, I know, but now I do.”
I pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot.
The inside of the McDonald’s wasn’t very crowded, so it didn’t take long for us to order our food. We decided to eat here, and call Dad before we left. Miraculously, Alex found something to eat.
We were almost done eating when the few voices that were quietly talking were silenced. They were all staring at the wall right behind me.
“Dude,” Alex whispered as his mouth fell open.
I turned around to see what they were all gaping at, and I let out a gasp when I read the news headline flashing on the TV behind me.
The Visitors are gone.
Chapter Five
Everybody sat there in silence as the news reporter told us what was going on. “This news is just coming in from our sources in the capital, but apparently, the ship has vanished. There has been no indication as to where it has gone to. All of this began when a ship appeared over the White House on Friday evening. Now, after making no contact, they have left. There is no word as to who is responsible for the ship, as no one person or country has stepped forward. The ships operators are simply known by most as ‘The Visitors’. We will have some footage of the ship leaving for you momentarily. We are still awaiting an official statement from the president. This story is developing.”
Once it went to a commercial break, people in the McDonald’s started to cheer. I, on the other hand, just stared at the television screen. They were gone. The things that plagued my dreams, my every waking thought, were finally gone. It was as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I let out a big sigh and sunk back into my seat. I let a smile escape across my face. I look over at Alex, and the same look of euphoria is glazed across his face.
I got up from my seat and called Dad. It rang a few
times before he answered.
“Hello?” he asked.
“Dad,” I said with glee. “Did you hear the news?”
“Yeah, I saw it.” He didn’t seem too happy about it.
“It’s pretty awesome.”
Silence.
“Well,” I said awkwardly, “what do you want? We’re at McDonald’s.” Dad told us what Aunt Jesse and he wanted.
“Be careful, son,” he said before he hung up. “This isn’t over yet.”
“I know, Dad. I’ll be safe.”
I hung up, and I went to order the food. Once I got the it, Alex and I left.
“I am so glad that they’re gone” Alex yelled once we got in the car.
“Oh, yeah dude, totally. I knew they weren’t going to do anything to us,” I lied.
“Bull! You were more scared then I was!” Alex laughed.
“I don’t think anybody could be more scared then you were, but you’re right, I was maybe just a little freaked out.”
“Whatever,” I heard Alex say beneath his breath. He let out a chuckle.
“You think this is it?” I asked.
Alex didn’t say anything. “I don’t know. Why? Do you?”
“It’d be stupid of The Visitors, or whoever it is, to do all this for nothing. It definitely isn’t over yet.”
Alex said nothing. He just sat there, pondering what I’d said.
We got on the highway and started cruising towards the house. The news was on, but there weren’t any new developments. The talking began to fade out, replaced with static.
“What the heck?” I said as I beat the dash of the car. “Stupid radio.”
A couple of cars in front of us, a truck lost control, and slammed into the cement barrier separating the two roadways.
“What in the world?” I yelled. My heart beat quickened and my legs felt like they turned to jelly. “Oh shit.”
All of the cars started losing control. Some crashed into each other, some crashed into the cement barriers. An explosion lit up the sky on the other side of the highway. An eighteen-wheeler carrying gasoline crashed into some other cars, blowing them all up.
I couldn’t think. I froze, not paying attention to where I was going.
“Get us out of here!” Alex screamed, breaking me from my trance.
