The Invaders (The Visitors Saga, #1)

by Jay Ford

  “All right,” I let out an exasperated breath. I already knew in my gut that it was useless. “You go search upstairs. I'll check down here.”

  Next thing I knew, Alex was already halfway up the stairs.

  When he was all the way up, I walked into the kitchen. I fell back against the refrigerator and slowly slid down to the ground; the cool metal of the fridge soothing my sore back. I placed my head on my hands and ran them through my hair. What was going on? Where were they? I silently sobbed. The tears began following down my face and coming to rest on my chin, trying to decide whether or not they wanted to plunge down onto my shirt. They ultimately threw themselves onto me like people jumping off a cliff and dashing onto the rocks. I found this fitting since that’s what so many people did just that last night.

  Then I realized something. Even though the tears “killed” themselves, they still made my shirt wet, the remnants of the tears being their “bodies”.

  I jumped up from my seat on the floor. I went through the living room and to the washroom where the door leading to the garage was. I opened the door, and my nostrils were assaulted by the smell of gasoline and rubber. I walked to the middle of the garage where my mom’s car was. I lifted the beige car cover off it in one swift motion. Sitting there was my mom’s maroon Camry. I moved from the Camry to my dad’s car parked next to it. I lifted the black cover off it and underneath it was Dad’s blue FJ Cruiser. I stood staring at the cars. They obviously did not hop in their cars to kill themselves. Then I remembered.

  Aunt Jesse.

  I lifted up the garage door that the cars went through to get outside, and sitting in the middle of the driveway was Aunt Jesse’s black Suburban. So how did they kill themselves, and where are their bodies? I asked myself.

  I made my way back inside, trying to figure out the answer to the question that I never thought I would ask myself. “Alex?” I called once I had made it back to the kitchen.

  “In here,” he called from the living room.

  I walked into the living room and saw him lying down on the couch. “No dice?” I asked.

  “No dice,” he replied.

  I let out a big sigh and dropped onto one of the recliners – not Dad’s, of course. That would always be Dad’s chair, and I was not about to start sitting in it.

  “I was thinking,” I started, hesitating because I didn’t know how to put it into the right words. “What…what if, they didn’t kill themselves?”

  Alex sat up, giving me a weird look. He raised his eyebrows, signaling for me to continue.

  “Well,” I continued. “I mean, you didn’t find any bodies upstairs, did you?”

  He quickly shook his head.

  “And I checked in the garage, my parents’ cars are still parked in the same place. I checked in the driveway, and your mom’s car is still there, also.”

  “What are you getting at?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Well…I’m not exactly sure, to tell you the truth. But I think it is safe to say that they didn’t kill themselves. Not here, at least.”

  Alex sat there, staring at me as if I was a Visitor. “Maybe they went looking for us?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. If they did go looking for us, they have taken one of the cars, right? I mean, if you just looked out the window, you wouldn’t think that the roads were as bad as they were. They would've thought that the roads were okay to drive on.”

  Alex, now sitting upright, stared at the wall with a glazed over expression on his face. Finally, he spoke. “What are we going to do?” He accepted the fact that they weren't here, and we might not ever find them or their bodies.

  “We need to go look for other people. You know, ones who didn’t kill themselves – or whatever it was that happened. We cannot be the only ones.”

  Alex let out a big sigh before standing. “Well, we better get to work.”

  I stood up and walked over to him. I pulled him in, and gave him a big bro-hug. “It’s going to be okay,” I reassured him.

  “Okay,” he said shakily. “It’s going to be okay,” he repeated. Then, he began to sob. He was crying harder than anybody that I have seen cry before. I couldn't blame him at all. He wasn't doing it because he was some wimp. He was doing it because his old life just got ripped away from him. I just stood there, holding him tight as his body shook from crying as a single tear silently ran my cheek before absorbing itself into Alex’s shirt.

  Chapter Nine

   

   

  The sun was low on the horizon when Alex and I made it back to the house. We had been going house to house, knocking on doors seeing if anybody would answer. I felt like I was a Boy Scout again. We canvased almost the entire neighborhood, and unfortunately, depressingly, disappointingly, whatever-is-worse-than-those-things-ly, we were the only ones – to our knowledge – still alive. It was so strange. I never thought in a million years that something like this would happen. I was very, very afraid. I wasn't prepared for any of this, and I had no idea how to survive. My parents were always there to provide for me, to keep me safe. Now that they were gone, I was lost without a compass. I was regretting not listening to them and not spending more time with them. I wished I could go back and not play on my Xbox as much as I did. I would've spent that time with my parents. I guess what I've heard all my life is true: you've never know what you've got until it's gone. That's one saying I wished I never experienced the meaning of.

  We went for the refrigerator before realizing that the food in it had probably already started to go bad because of the power outage. So instead, we raided the cabinets. We grabbed a bag of chips and some granola bars. I never realized how much of our food had to stay cool in order for it to be good to eat. “Tomorrow,” I said as I threw a granola bar wrapper in the trash. “We need to go to the store to get some non-perishable food.”

  Alex nodded. “And the food banks. Pretty much all of their food is non-perishable. I think it’s a requirement or something.”

  I nodded and grabbed another strawberry granola bar. I shoved that one down and then another. I realized that the two of us had not eaten since last night. Being in a car wreck, getting knocked out for an entire night, having just about everybody on planet Earth disappear – including your parents – and running around the entire neighborhood can be taxing on one’s appetite.

  In the end, we tore through two boxes of granola bars and a bag of chips.

  Once we were finished, I stood from my seat at the kitchen table. “I’m going to bed. I’m wiped.”

  “Well, where am I going to sleep?” Alex asked.

  “I’ll get the air mattress, and you can sleep in my bedroom floor.”

  I went upstairs with Alex close behind me, and I pulled the air mattress out of the hall closet. We laid it out across my bedroom floor. I grabbed some candles that were in some of the other rooms and lit them in my room so we had some light. The mixture of the different scents of the candles gave me a headache, but I tried my best to ignore it. It's not like we could fumble around in the dark. I went back to the closet to grab the air pump. We hooked it all together and aired the mattress up.

  When it was finished, Alex plopped on top of it. “Ahhh,” he sighed. “This feels soooo good!”

  I went to my closet and grabbed a pillow and a set of sheets. I threw them on top of him. “Here,” I said. “Put these on. I’m going to get ready for bed.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, reluctantly standing to put the sheets on.

  I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, put on some night pants – no shirt, um…ahem…”relived” myself, and put on my retainer. I never wore it, even though my parents always urged me to. I decided that I was going to start wearing it, no matter how uncomfortable it made me. I regretted not doing it when they told me to. I regretted a lot of things that I did – and did not – do with my parents. Now they were gone, and I was going to have to live with those regrets for the rest of my life.

  I sulked back to my room. Alex w
as passed out on his bed in a pair of red pajamas that looked a lot like a pair that I owned. I blew out all of the candles in the room and fell onto my bed.

  All the things that had happened today pushed themselves to the forefront of my mind, refusing to let myself sleep – my parents being front and center. I was surprised at how well I was taking all of this. I wasn't pretending everything was fine—it definitely wasn't—but I tried my best to accept it and move on. I pushed the thoughts out of my mind. I took a deep breath in, and let it out. In, and out. In, and out. My mind went blank, and I slipped into a dreamless slumber.

  ****

  The sun seeping through my blinds woke me up. I grabbed the watch off the ground beside my bed and looked at its face. It said it was nine thirty-two. I looked over, and Alex was not in his bed. I sat up, walked out of my room (successfully stumping my toe on the air pump), and jogged down the stairs.

  “Alex?” I called. For a split-second, I was scared that he disappeared like everybody else, and I was all going to be all alone.

  “In here!” Alex called from my mom’s study.

  I threw the door open and ran in. I had not been in the study in a long time, but it still looked the same. The walls were a dark grey, and bookshelves lined one of the walls. On the other side was a large glass and stainless steel desk that held most of Mom’s many notebooks, her laptop, and lots of pages covered in red ink. Sitting in the chair in front of the laptop was Alex, red pajamas and all.

  “Dude! What are you doing in here?” I exclaimed. My mom never let me come in here, and I didn't want to start.

  “Just playing Solitaire,” he breathed out.

  I forgot everything, and went to go stand by him. He wasn’t doing so hot. “Wow. You suck at this.”

  Alex laughed. “I'm not sure it's possible to suck at Solitaire. Mom was always way better at it than I was, so maybe I just don't have the 'eye' for it or whatever.”

  It saddened me that he was speaking about Aunt Jesse in the past tense. It made everything seem final, like they really were not coming back. Since Alex accepted it, I had to for sure, now. I felt a wave of sadness begin to grow in my stomach, but I quickly shut it down.

  “What are we going to do?” Alex asked, leaning back in his chair, giving up on his game.

  I looked at the ground. I tried not to think about what we were going to do. I always thought in the back of my mind that this was all some crazy dream. That my parents would walk through the doors and tell me what to do. But now I couldn't avoid the topic any longer. I thought about it for a moment, before replying, “I guess we can go get some food and supplies, or something. That’s where everybody else would be out. Maybe we can find out more about what’s going on.”

  Alex stroked an invisible beard on his chin. “Sounds good to me. It’s better than sitting here, letting the computer kick my butt at Solitaire.”

  I let out a laugh. “It's Solitaire, dude. You aren't playing against a computer. I think it's just because you suck at it.”

  Alex shrugged. “I have to come up with some sort of an excuse!”

  ****

  I pulled Dad’s FJ into Wal-Mart, parking right in front of the door. I didn’t think there’d be any police officers giving me a ticket for parking in the fire lane.

  “We need to get some generators first,” I told Alex, as we walked to the door.

  We walked right into it.

  “Oh my god!” Alex yelled, grabbing his nose.

  “That was painful,” I rubbed my nose.

  “I’m guessing the power’s out?”

  “Wow. Never would’ve guessed,” I said sarcastically. “We’re going to have to pry the door open.”

  I placed my hand on one side of the electric door, and Alex did the same on the other side. We pushed as hard as we could, and the door squeaked open.

  “Stay here,” I told Alex. He extended his arms and acted as a door stop. I grabbed a basket and put it between the doors, keeping them open so we wouldn't have to pry it open again, just in case it decided to close. “Let’s go,” Alex said

  We started making our way towards the generators. It was easy to see, thanks to the windows on the roof letting the natural light from the sun in. It was all so surreal. We were walking around Wal-Mart, by ourselves, no power in the whole store, and grabbing everything we could see. I never thought something like this would happen. I definitely was not enjoying it. I wished everything would go back to the way things were. I’d go to school and get yelled at by my teachers and Dad any day of the week over this.

  We made it to the aisle with the generators on it. “Let’s grab a couple of the biggest ones they’ve got,” I told Alex.

  “Sure thing, boss,” he said sarcastically.

  We stacked two generators in Alex’s basket and then did the same to mine. We grabbed a couple of gas cans, too, since these generators were gas powered.

  We started walking back to the car, our footsteps echoing in the eerie silence of the store that was always bustling with activity. The store that just a couple days earlier I was in with Mom and it was a total mad house. I felt a shot of pain shoot through me at the thought of my mom. I couldn’t believe she was gone.

  We pushed the basket that was keeping the doors open and replaced it once Alex and I squeezed through. We loaded the generators and gas cans into the back of the vehicle – having to set down the back seat in the process.

  Once the baskets were empty, we started making our way back inside.

  “Where to first?” Alex asked once inside.

  “Well, food, I guess,” I said. We started making our way to the food section.

  We grabbed all the food we could. The baskets were filled with cookies, chips, cereal, and candy; we also grabbed some soups, crackers, and bread. We were going to get some milk for the cereal, but that had already gone bad. That was fine with me, though. Frosted Flakes still tasted like little morsels of heaven, even without the milk.

  “Let’s get some paper, and stuff, so we have something to do, like draw,” Alex said, once the baskets were almost full.

  I was never good at drawing, but we went to get some paper anyways. I was grabbing some pens. There were so many of them. Every year when I would get school supplies, I would spend forever trying to figure out which pen was the perfect one. However, my pursuit for the perfect pen futile; I never found one.

  I was grabbing a couple of packages of pens when I heard a scuffling noise. My heart skipped a beat, and I immediately felt light headed. There was somebody else here! I slowly walked to the end of the aisle and poked my head around the corner. There was nothing there.

  I shook my head, blaming the noise on my stress, and went over to help Alex pick out which notebook he should get (although, he could’ve gotten any of them, really).

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  “Hear what?” he said, not looking up from the notebooks

  “Never mind. It was nothing. Hurry up so we can get out of here.” I was starting to get the feeling like I was being watched. And even though we were supposed to be looking for other people, I had a really bad feeling about this.

  “I think I’m gonna go with the blu–” There was a grunt. Alex stopped mid-sentence, and froze. He heard it too.

  What was that? he mouthed.

  I don’t know, I mouthed back.

  There was a loud bang, the sound of things being knocked over, and footsteps pounding on the ground in quick succession.

  Alex threw the notebooks down and took off running towards the exit. I took off after him, leaving the baskets behind. An un-earthly roar came from behind us and echoed off the walls. Fear and adrenaline coursed through my body, accelerating it forward. My legs were moving faster than they ever have before. Everything was streaking past me, but I did not dare look back. All I knew was that the man chasing after us was not friendly at all. He sounded demented or possessed. He was panting like a dog and grunting like some wild animal at the same time.


  The exit was right in front of us. Alex reached the cart first and barreled through it. He grabbed his leg, and grunted in pain, but kept on going. I squeezed through the doors as they were closing. I heard the man slam into the doors and start banging on them, trying to get them open.

  I ran to the driver’s side of the car. I jumped in the front seat and started the car. I threw it in drive and slammed on the accelerator. The tires spun, before gaining traction, and propelled us forward. I swerved through the parking lot as fast as I could, only slowing down enough to not flip the car as I turned onto the road.

  Chapter Ten

   

   

  Alex and I were driving through the streets. My body buzzed from the adrenaline that flowed through it. I started shaking slightly, and my legs felt weak. I looked over at Alex, and he had his head against the headrest breathing in through his nose and out his mouth. He moved his leg, and let out a whimper.

  “What is it?” I asked franticly. “Are you hurt?”

  Alex let out a sharp breath as he moved his leg up to show me. He had a long gash going from his kneecap to his upper thigh. “There was a piece of metal sticking out of the basket, probably a screw or something. When I ran into it, it cut me.”

  “You need some gauze for that. I don’t know whether or not Mom got some when she went shopping.” I looked up, and saw that we were driving by Cook Memorial Hospital. “Let’s stop in there. We can get you some bandages, and maybe get some medicine. Just in case.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Alex said as he put his foot down. “Let’s just hope there are not any scary dudes chasing after us.”

  Alex was trying to make a joke, but I didn’t laugh. It actually freaked me out a little. I did not want to go in there after what just happened, but we didn't have a choice. Alex’s leg could've gotten infected if I didn’t do something about it, and soon.

  I pulled into the hospital parking lot, again, parking as close as I could to the door. Man, I was getting kind of lazy! Oh well. I did just had the most traumatizing two days of my entire life (or so I thought at the time). The least I could do was park close to the door. Besides, my legs were feeling like Jell-O, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could walk.