I’m not completely sane; we should just start there. So, when the aliens came, I was able to adapt and survive. Most people think that when the extraterrestrials invade, the sky will open and there will be a fight. Most people would be wrong. The aliens came from deep within the ocean, from under the earth itself, and when they came, it was no fight at all. It was an extermination.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. My story opens with one of many trips to my local hardware store. I was on the clock for another job and that meant purchasing things like tarps, duct tape and high-powered cleaner. Except Phil’s Hardware on 17th was all out of my favorite cleaner and I was left to peruse the aisles like some new guy on his first day of work.
I stood back, pursing my lips under the fluorescent lighting, debating what cleaner would do the best job: Ultimate Scrub or Deep Clean?
“Hello, sir,” said a perky kid wearing an ironed red vest sporting the name of Phil’s Hardware and setting him apart as someone who worked there. “Need a hand?”
I say “kid” because anyone in their twenties, heck even thirties these days, was a kid to me. He was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. One of those OCD people who probably took the time to fold his clothes and ate off real plates instead of the paper kind.
“Newman, is it?” I asked, reading his name tag I did my best Jerry Sienfeld impression. “Newman… haven’t seen you in here before.”
“No, sir, just transferred in from the great state of Tennessee.”
“Good for you. I’m all right, thank you.”
“Are you sure? You look confused.”
“I’ve been coming here for a while.”
“And you’re still confused?”
“You don’t have many friends, do you?”
“No, sir, but I’m here to help.”
I chewed my bottom lip and decided life was short, so why not have some fun. “All right. The normal cleaner I get is out. I need something high-powered to remove stains from upholstery and carpet.”
“I’m on the case,” Newman said, squatting down to begin reading through the labels. “What kind of stains are we working with here? Red wine, mold, pet urine?”
“Bodily fluid,” I told him.
Newman stopped checking the labels on the bottle. He turned to look up at me from his squatted position. For the first time, he took in the tarp and duct tape under my right arm. His bottom jaw dropped. “Oh my.”
The lights all around the store went out with a click. The usual white noise of other shoppers and workers picked up a few decibels as not yet panic, but confusion set in.
I wasn’t too worried about it. It was early morning right after breakfast; plenty of light came in from the front wall of windows just twenty feet to my right.
“Newman, can you go and check the—” a voice asked over the young man’s radio before breaking off completely.
“Ray, Ray, do you copy?” Newman answered, rising from his spot. He gave me an uneasy chuckle, trying his radio again. It was dead, not so much as static on the open channel. “Power outages usually happen around here?”
“That would be a negative, Ghost Rider,” I told him, reaching for my phone. “They do not.”
I pulled out my phone from my pocket to see that it, like the lights, was dead. I always left my phone on in case my daughter needed to call. The idea that something else was going on here began to gnaw at the back of my mind. I shoved fear to the side and tried to turn on my phone. Nothing.
“My phone’s not working. Why isn’t my phone working?” a woman the aisle over asked in a panicked voice. “What’s happening?”
I forced myself to remain calm as those around me began shouting about something outside. I tried once, twice more to turn my phone on. It was dead. I never left my house without at least fifty percent battery.
Screams and shouts picked up near the front of the store. I walked over to see what all the commotion was about. Shoppers and employees were headed outside, where a red hue covered the sky like a cellophane sheet. Not just the sky either. It came down right next to Phil’s Hardware to form a wall. About a block in front of me and to my right, the same red translucent barrier appeared, boxing us in.
“Oh God, oh God, it’s the end of times, we’re all going to die, we’re all going to die,” a woman with a cat shirt screamed, falling to her knees right outside the door.
Cars in the street had come to a stop as well, with dead batteries. It seemed half of the people were in shock, unable to do anything, and the other half were screaming and looking for direction no one had.
“I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning,” I muttered.
A voice that sounded artificial in nature boomed from the sky, somewhere on the roof of the red box that was about four stories above us. He was a jerk.
“Life as you know it has ceased to exist,” the voice said, as cold and unforgiving as the IRS. “In ten minutes, the human herd will be culled in the reaping. A forty percent survival rate is expected. We only need the strong. Kill or be killed. You are warned: they eat the weak. You have ten minutes to prepare. Beware, they eat the weak.”
That was it. Not so much as a goodbye. A massive digital timer appeared on every wall of our new prison, even the ceiling above us.
“No, no, I’m getting out of here, I’m getting out of here,” the woman with the cat sweater screamed. She raced to the red wall on our left. I had to give her credit; she could really move when she needed to. Her crocs ate up the sidewalk on the way to that wall in a hurry.
“No, don’t,” a big man with a thick beard urged her. “We don’t know what it—”
The old woman shoved at the red barrier with her hands first, like she was going to push open one of those doors with the long silver handles across their midsection. She hit it hard too, like she was the first one in line on a Black Friday sale for catnip.
As soon as her hands made contact with the red barrier in front of her, she was gone. I’m not talking she was shot or even melted like looking at the Ark of the Covenant. I’m talking straight finger snap ash. Her clothes fell where her body used to be. Cat sweater on crocs.
More screaming echoed through the square city block where we had been trapped. My main concern was for my daughter. But it seemed for the moment I was trapped. I had to trust that I had trained her enough to get through these next few minutes without me. I raised her like a warrior. Worrying about her now was only going to get me killed, and if I was killed, I’d never get to her.
A low whistle cut through my thought process. An older woman with glasses and tattoos on her forearms walked up to me and the bearded guy. “What a way to go. In crocs too? Come on, she deserved more than that. You two haven’t flinched. We should work together. We’ve got nine minutes left until whatever comes our way arrives.”
I glanced at the timer. She was right.
“Awww, you always shop for friends during life-threatening events?” I asked her.
“Usually,” the woman answered.
“Hold that thought, bestie,” I told her as I ran across the parking lot of Phil’s Hardware to my truck. Just for funsies, I wanted to see if it would work, and I needed something out of it anyway.
Like I thought, the battery in my truck was as dead as the cat lady. Not so much as a sputter when I turned the key. That was all right; it was only the second reason I was in my truck. The first was to grab a ragged stuffed wolf my daughter had crocheted me. It was grey and white and imperfect in the most perfect ways because it had come from her.
Some kids were into bead-working or origami, but crocheting just spoke to her. I was good with that. I never went anywhere without it. I know, call me sentimental. I’m a softy that way.
I exited my truck, making my way back into sheer chaos. People were all over the place across the spectrum of emotion. One guy had cowered in the street beside his car and peed himself. Another woman was shouting to be heard to bring some kind of order to a group, but no one was having it.
I joined more muscular Linda Hamilton and the big boy with the beard just in time to grasp the end of their conversation.
“I served, 82nd Airborne,” the man told her. “You can call me Skip. You?”
“Retired police officer, single mother of four,” the woman said, shaking our hands. “I still don’t know which one was harder. Name’s Vita.”
Skip and Vita turned to me.
“Oh right, how rude of me not to properly introduce myself while we have eight minutes left,” I said, taking a bow. “You can call me Gideon. I’m a competitive air drummer and I mime on the weekends.”
Skip cracked a smile.
Vita did not look amused.
“It’s the government, man, our own government is doing this to us!” a man screamed. He jumped onto a vehicle, hollering for all he was worth. “You have to listen to me. This has all been a conspiracy for years.”
“It’s not our government; it’s foreign actors. The other superpowers have invaded,” someone shouted to them as the two began arguing.
A big boy who didn’t miss many meals decided he wanted nothing to do with the madhouse and ran into the red barrier. Like the cat lady before, he ashed in a second, leaving behind only his clothes, which included a Sponge Bob Square Pants thong. Not judging.
“We should get something, defend ourselves,” Vita mused. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen when that clock hits zero, but I’ll bet your lives on it that it’s not going to be good.”
“We need high ground,” Skip agreed.
“And weapons,” I added.
“All right, Skip, see if you can gain access to the hardware roof,” Vita told him. “Competitive air drummer, was it?”
I moved my wrists like I was holding drumsticks in front of me. It was clear she didn’t believe me, but there was no time for questioning me further. “Weapons.”
“What are you going to do?” Skip asked, already jogging to the hardware store.
“I’m going to see if I can get a few more people,” Vita yelled, heading into the street.
I looked at the timer. We had eaten up all but seven minutes. I ran into the hardware store behind Skip, already knowing exactly where I was headed. Phil’s Hardware was a mom and pop shop, a little place I frequented weekly that never asked questions about my purchases. I knew the layout inside and out.
There were still a few people cowering inside. They looked at me with large eyes like deer hiding from the hunter. Newman was there staring at me, then outside, then at me again.
“Buckle up, twinkle toes,” I told him, throwing him an oversized backpack from a display rack on my left. “Come with me if you want to live.” ...
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