Rob was working in his downtown office on the 23rd floor rewriting security protocols for one of the big advertising conglomerates and he was not making the progress he had hoped. Feeling frustrated, he leaned back, and ran his fingers through his hair.
Somewhere in the distance, something rumbled that wasn’t thunder.
When the sirens started, they were too far away and not loud enough to matter. Just someone else’s problem. Madge from accounting kept typing. Greg from advertising didn’t even look up. Rob erased and retyped the same line of code for the fourth time.
As the sirens multiplied and got closer, several people got up and wandered to the windows. Then Madge ran screaming down the hallway.
Rob scowled and hit the button under his desk. The glass soundproof door swung closed. He wasn’t dealing with this today. He knew it was Friday, but there was real work to be done, and he didn’t want to come back this weekend to finish it. There was more commotion in the hall and Greg ran by with Stella slung over his shoulder, completely limp.
“This is getting ridiculous.” He shoved his chair back and flung the door open, ready to give someone a piece of his mind but was immediately hit by air raid sirens and people screaming.
“What the hell is happening?” he called to Gretchen, the mail clerk, who pointed wildly toward the plate glass window.
He jogged down the hall and looked down. People in the street were either running in every direction or standing frozen, pointing at the sky.
He looked up and his legs buckled. An enormous, silver cylinder hovered just above the building.
He grabbed the side of a desk to keep from hitting the floor. For a second, he thought he might faint, but adrenaline hit, and he bolted toward the lobby.
People around him were shoving, yelling and crying. They crammed into the elevators, pushing and shouting for those already inside to make room. He followed the overflow crowd into the stairwell and took the stairs two at a time. His lungs were burning before he hit the tenth floor. He was breathing so hard when he got to the bottom that he started to sink to the floor, but the panicking crowd engulfed him and carried him out the front door and across the entrance plaza.
He looked up again. The ship just hung there. It was huge and silent, and sunlight glinted off its silver exterior. It looked like gravity had taken the day off.
“Yeah. That’s not in the emergency handbook,” he muttered.
Police helicopters buzzed overhead like flies, and officers on the ground stood with their guns drawn, pointed uselessly at the sky.
People were running past him, bumping into him, screaming that the world was ending. He forced himself to look away and bolted toward the parking garage. When he got there he couldn’t remember where he parked.
Not the level. Not the row. Nothing.
He’d used the same spot for two years.
It didn’t matter. His mind was a complete blank.
He fumbled in his pocket, found his keys, and started jabbing the button, hoping for the faint chirp of a lock or the flash of headlights but the sirens drowned everything out.
“Come on,” he mumbled, spinning in place. Nothing.
Then he hit the panic alarm and the car screamed to life directly behind him.
Rob jumped and lunged for the door, killing the alarm as fast as he could. He yanked it open, slid into the seat, and turned the key. The engine roared to life and he backed the car out as quickly as he could, trying to maneuver around the other people searching for their cars. He pulled into traffic. Only to find most of the vehicles had been abandoned in the middle of the road, their doors still hanging open.
He drove onto the sidewalk, nearly clipping a bus stop, then swerved back onto the street and headed home, trying to obey at least some of the traffic rules.
By the time he reached his neighborhood, he barely knew how fast he was going. The car slammed into the driveway hard enough to bounce. He practically fell out of the car, ran to the porch, fumbled with the lock, then threw the door open and slammed it behind him.
He leaned against it, listening, feeling both safe and terrified that something had followed him home and was just moments from crashing through the door after him.
He made his way through the house, past the dining room with the fresh-cut flowers that he bought the day before, through the kitchen with the dirty dishes still on the counter from breakfast that he had promised himself he would wash after work and headed down into the basement, slamming that door behind him.
He dragged a ladder over to the window and climbed just high enough to see out. A few cars sped past, and across the street his neighbor, Bill Grayson, was shoving his wife and kids into their sedan.
Suddenly a siren cut through the air, so loud he jammed his hands over his ears. Then a thick white cloud began pouring down from the sky.
He slammed and locked the window, grabbed the plywood stacked in the corner, and went to work.
Hammer and nails on all three windows.
When he was done, he turned on the old tube TV that used to belong to his dad, fiddling with the antenna until he got a weak local signal.
The picture flickered, then steadied and a newscaster appeared on the screen, mascara running down her face, her hands shaking as she clutched a stack of papers.
“—repeat, do not go outside,” she stammered. “They’re… they are over the city. If you can hear this, hide. Lock your doors. We don’t know what they are. Or why they are here. If you have a weapon, get it. Just get it and—”
She stopped. Her head snapped to the side.
“Carl? Carl, where are you going?” Her voice spiked. “Jason—come back here! We’re still broadcasting! We can’t leave!”
Her chair scraped loudly as she stood. Then she ran after them.
The camera stayed fixed on the empty desk, papers scattered, a door slamming somewhere off-screen. Then the feed cut to black.
Rob stared at the screen. “Well,” he said out loud, “that’s reassuring.”
He didn’t have a gun, so if something came after him, he’d have to face it in hand-to-hand combat, and he was pretty sure he would lose that fight.
“Now what?” he asked the empty basement.
The basement, unsurprisingly, did not respond.
He closed his eyes and tried some of the centering techniques he’d learned from the at-work yoga instructor. It wasn’t working. He got up and paced, wondering how long he could stay down there. Then realized he had no food. There was nothing but tap water. Maybe a few days before he passed out from starvation. So unless he wanted to die alone in the basement, he was going to have to go back upstairs and get supplies.
He crept up the stairs and cracked the door open, peering into the kitchen, straining to hear anything that might mean something was in the house. Talons on the kitchen floor, deep ragged breathing coming from behind the fridge.
When everything stayed quiet, he grabbed cardboard boxes off the back porch, filling them with canned food and stuff from the fridge. Two trips for the boxes, a third for bottled water.
By the time he hauled everything downstairs, his arms were shaking. He plugged in the old refrigerator that had been down there since he bought the place and piled in the cold stuff. Now he was good. Until something found him and ate him.
After wedging the basement door closed with another piece of plywood, he curled up on the sofa and tried to sleep. He woke up every hour, sure he heard something breaking in. By morning he was exhausted and told himself a shower might help.
The basement bathroom was barely more than a closet, with an even smaller shower crammed into the corner. He stood under the water longer than he needed to, letting it rinse some of the tension away. When he finished, he realized he didn’t have a towel and ended up wandering around naked until he air-dried, pulling his old clothes back on because there was no way he was going upstairs to get clean underwear.
Back on the couch, he tried calling people he knew but only got, “All circuits are busy now, please try your call again later.”
He pulled one of the boards off the window and climbed the ladder to look outside, hoping to see the National Guard (or anything human) but the only movement came from squirrels raiding bird feeders and sprinklers watering empty lawns. A car sat in the middle of the street, the driver’s door hanging open.
Everything was eerily quiet. He wondered if the neighbors were hiding too. He wasn’t ready to go outside and start knocking on doors, so he re-boarded the window and retreated to the couch, continuing to try for some kind of signal on his phone or laptop. The TV was still mostly static, but one station was playing old movies, so he left it on to distract himself.
He stayed on the couch all day and slept there another night. By the morning of the third day, he was pretty sure this wasn’t a bad dream that was going to end.
By the fourth day, he had watched more than a dozen old movies, and the food was running out.
He stood at the bottom of the basement stairs, chastising himself for being a coward. Taking a deep breath, he marched up the stairs, removed the piece of plywood, and slowly opened the kitchen door. Still no talons or ragged breathing.
He crept through the kitchen, past the sink of stinky dishes, through the dining room where the flowers had died, petals scattered across the table.
He cracked open the front door, checking to make sure no one was waiting on the porch to hit him in the head. All he heard were local birds, so he stepped outside, took a slow breath, and headed carefully down the walk toward the street.
He gave himself a quiet pep talk, praising his bravery even as his heart pounded in his ears and his legs shook with each step. He made it to the sidewalk, where the neighbor’s little girl had drawn a hopscotch game next to his driveway.
It was still bright and untouched, like nothing had happened.
He looked around. Nothing seemed out of place, except George Fisher’s lawn was overgrown and that had never happened once in the four years he’d lived there.
His own car was still in the driveway. He patted his pockets and realized he’d didn't have his keys. He thought if he went back inside now, he might never come out again. But if he didn’t go back, he’d have to walk and that wasn’t happening.
He exhaled slowly. Reluctantly, he turned back, moving faster this time, through the hall, past the dining room, into the kitchen, and down the basement stairs.
The keys weren’t where he thought they’d be.
Of course they weren’t.
He checked the counter, the table, the shelf by the door. Nothing. “Where are you?” he whispered to the silence.
Just as panic was creeping in, he spotted them wedged between the couch cushions. He grabbed them and hurried back up the stairs, through the house and back out to the car. Cleansing breath in. Cleansing breath out. Then another pep talk out loud telling himself he wasn't a coward and he could do this. But also silently wondering how bad it would be to just live out the rest of his days alone in his basement.
Deciding that wasn’t how he wanted it to end, he marched to the car and got in. He turned the key, half expecting the car to explode, because of course the aliens would choose his car to sabotage.
The engine roared to life, and he felt a brief flicker of disappointment that he couldn’t use a dead battery as an excuse to go back inside. He backed out carefully, checking both directions out of habit, then headed toward the city. He stopped at each sign, looked both ways, and continued on.
The roads were completely empty.
A few miles down, he passed the local church where his grandmother used to take him. He remembered sitting on the hard wooden pews while the priest warned about judgment and consequences. His voice rising as he pointed at the congregation, practically yelling from the pulpit, Bible above his head, warning all the parishioners that 'God is always watching you.' Rob wondered what that priest would think if he were alive today and knew something—or someone—other than God was watching from the sky.
But that aside, if anyone was left, they’d go somewhere familiar where they felt safe. The church seemed like a good place to start looking.
He drove around back and pulled into a space near the rear door. After a quick look around, he got out and hurried into the courtyard, past the wrought iron gates and planters filled with tropical plants and small palm trees.
The door opened easily as he pulled the handle, and inside, a long, dim hallway stretched ahead, broken only by thin strips of sunlight spilling in from open office doors.
“Hello?” he called quietly.
Silence. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder. “Hello? Is anybody here?”
More silence.
He drew himself up and started walking down the hallway, peeking into each office as he passed.
Empty. Empty. Empty.
At the end of the hall, he turned right and kept going. He strained to hear something, anything at all that might give him a clue that someone else was alive.
The only sound was his footsteps on the dark red carpet and the loud throbbing of his heart in his ears.
At the end of the hallway was a door. When he tried it, it appeared to be locked.
He gave it a shake and heard something fall with a thud on the other side.
He froze, the doorknob still in his hand. Something moved inside.
“It's nothing. You're just imagining things,” he told himself.
Something moved again. Rob let go of the handle and started to back away. He decided he wasn't really interested in dying today. Before he could turn and run, the door burst open and a shapeless monster covered in red silk fabric flew at him, screaming and flailing.
Rob fell backward, covered his face, and waited to be eaten.
The monster landed on top of him, hitting him in the face, kicking him in all the places you didn't want to be kicked, and continuing to screech at the top of its lungs.
It rolled off him, still covered in the long, flowing fabric, and tried to get up and run away.
Instead, it tripped over the loose ends and rolled down the hallway in a crimson blur.
Rob peeked out from behind his hands and watched as the monster continued to roll and scream and fight with itself.
The longer he watched, the more he realized it wasn't a monster at all.
The relief was so great he started laughing.
He laughed so hard that the rolling mass of red fabric finally stopped struggling. It sat up and pulled the covering this way and that until the head of a teenage girl with wavy auburn hair emerged, staring at him, scowling and angry.
“What are you laughing at?” she demanded.
“Well, you mostly, but also me because I was pretty sure you were going to kill me.”
She stood up and stamped her feet, trying to shake the rest of the fabric off.
“I could have, you know. Killed you, I mean. I just didn't want to take the time.”
“Oh, yes. I totally understand. I guess I'm lucky then.”
“You damn straight.”
She turned and marched off down the hall.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“None of your business.”
“Okay, yes, that's true. But can you at least tell me if you know where everyone has gone? I haven't seen anyone in days.”
She stopped and looked back at him.
“Where have you been, hiding underground?”
Rob winced slightly because, yes, actually, that was exactly what he'd been doing.
“It's none of your business where I've been. Do you or don't you know where everyone is?”
She stared at him, trying to decide if he was being honest or maybe he was just stupid.
“Those things appeared in the sky last week. Do you at least remember that?”
“Yes, I remember quite clearly. I was right under one of them. But after that, what happened? Who or what was inside them?”
Her scowl deepened.
“I don't know. No one knows. My brother and I were at my high school for a game when that happened.”
She paused.
“Most of us ran into the gym in case whatever it was started shooting at us. We were all so scared. A lot of people were crying, even some of the guys.”
Rob listened.
“Then this horrible loud siren went off. All of a sudden someone started yelling that there was a cloud of white gas coming from the spaceships. It came down really fast and covered everything. It even came into the gym through the doors. Even the doors that were closed.”
“Gas?”
“Yeah. It smelled terrible. I've never smelled anything like it before. People were coughing and some people threw up. It was really gross.”
She looked down the hallway.
“As it started to clear, almost everyone in the gym had fallen down and were just lying there. But not me and Lucas. We were just standing there with our eyes watering and our noses running, staring at everyone on the ground.”
“There was another guy all the way over by the door. He was still standing too.”
Rob frowned. “He wasn't affected?”
“No.”
She swallowed.
“And then all of a sudden there was this high-pitched whine, like feedback from a speaker, and everyone got up. They just stood up and started walking.”
“Walking where?”
“Out of the gym. Toward the street.”
She shook her head.
“We tried to talk to them. I grabbed my friend Jenny, who had been with us, but she didn't even look at me. She just kept walking.”
Rob stared at her.
“Lucas and I followed them outside, totally freaking out. So did the other guy who hadn't fallen down. He started yelling and waving his arms and running through the crowd, shoving people out of his way.”
“That's when a giant blast of light came down from the sky and hit him.”
She paused.
“He fell to the ground.”
Rob didn't say anything.
“Lucas grabbed me and pulled me up to him and whispered really loud to be totally quiet. Like he actually had to say that. I wasn't going to say anything else because I didn't want to get zapped by whatever that was.”
Rob just stared at her, waiting to hear the rest.
“So we just started walking with the group. Pretending to be like them.”
“You walked with them?”
“We didn't exactly have a better plan.”
She shrugged.
“We walked for miles. It looked like we were heading downtown, but I don't really know because I'm not very good with directions. I could see the big buildings in the distance.”
“And then?”
“As we were walking, every so often we saw other people who weren't zombies. They were just standing there. Sometimes on the side of the road, sometimes right in the middle of it, with the zombie people just walking right past them.”
“What were they doing?”
“Nothing. Most of them were just frozen, not knowing what to do. After a while Lucas and I got tired, and we were so scared that we ducked into a park and hid in the trees.”
She looked toward the windows.
“We watched as the zombie people just kept coming and coming for what seemed like hours. I thought they'd never end.”
“But eventually the crowd got thinner and thinner. Then there were just a few stragglers, and by nighttime they stopped.”
“You never saw where they went?”
She shook her head.
“We never knew where they ended up. Since then we've seen a handful of people like us who weren't zombies. They all run away when they see us.”
She shrugged. “We've just been hiding and looking for food for the past few days.”
“What about the markets?”
“We haven't been able to get into any of them. There are bad guys with guns out in front.”
She glanced toward the door. “We came in here because it looked empty. Lucas went to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat.”
She looked back at Rob. “What have you been doing? And how come you didn't know about the zombie people?”
Rob didn't really want to admit he'd been too afraid to come out from underground until now. But the reality was that he was still afraid, and no amount of making up a different story was going to change that.
“I was at home. In the basement. Until today.” He took a breath. “I couldn't hear or see anything going on outside.”
There. He'd said it.
“Well, the gas should have gotten into every place. You should have smelled it at least.”
“I did see it coming, but I closed and boarded up the window before it got to the ground. I didn't know what it was. Listen, I'm sorry I laughed at you. You just scared the crap out of me. My name's Rob, by the way.”
He reached out to shake her hand just as Lucas rounded the corner. He obviously thought Rob was reaching out to grab her because he raced down the hall, waving what appeared to be a large stick.
“GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HER, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”
Rob recoiled, covered his head, and dropped to the floor. Jilly screamed and began waving her hands as Lucas barreled toward them.
“STOP! STOP!” Jilly hollered and tackled her brother just as he reached them.
They both fell into a heap next to Rob, who by this time was wondering how his life had turned into a series of him diving onto the floor to save himself.
Lucas shoved Jilly off him, jumped up, and lifted his stick above his head. His chest heaving, he looked back and forth between his sister and the cowering man on the floor.
Rob looked at him, hands up in surrender, when he suddenly started to giggle. It turned into a full-blown laugh.
“What the hell are you laughing at, man?” Lucas demanded.
“You're trying to beat me up with a loaf of bread,” Rob managed to get out.
Lucas looked up at his weapon and realized it was indeed a large loaf of Italian bread he'd found in the kitchen. He lowered it, still glaring at Rob.
“What the hell are you doing to my sister?”
“Well, at the exact moment you charged in, I was introducing myself.” Rob pulled up his knees and pushed himself off the floor. He extended his hand. “I'm Rob.”
Jilly shoved past Lucas and shook his it. “I'm Jilly, and this dumbbell is my brother Lucas.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jilly.”
Then he looked at Lucas, who reluctantly took his hand and gave it a shake.
"Rob was hiding in his basement when the gas attack happened. He seems really nice. Isn't it great to find someone else who will talk to us? Should we let him come with us? Maybe we can figure out where all the people went. It would be better to have another person with us, you know, in case a bad guy tried something. There's strength in numbers. Didn't you always tell me that?”
Lucas put up his hand. “Slow down, girl. My head is spinning.” He looked over at Rob. “She gets a little overly enthusiastic sometimes.”
“That's OK. You both are the first people I've seen since this all started. As she said, I've been in my basement, um, hiding. I finally realized I couldn't stay there forever, so I came looking for answers. Not really sure I wanted them.”
He glanced toward the hallway.
“I'm just glad I found you first and not some bad guys with guns. The analytical side of my brain still doesn't believe any of this.”
“Neither do I. Even though I saw it, my mind can't wrap itself around it.” Lucas looked at the bread still in his hand and laughed a little. “Sorry about this... We're all on edge.”
“That's OK. If I thought someone was trying to attack my sister, I'd do the same thing.”
“So…” Jilly was getting impatient. “Are you going to come with us?”
“I guess if you'll have me,” Rob said.
“You're welcome to join us,” Lucas said. “Though, to be honest, I have no idea where we're going or what we should be doing.”
“That'll make all three of us,” Rob laughed. “Do you guys have a car?”
“No, do you?”
“Yes. At least we can go faster than the people walking.”
“Unless the people who are walking have guns,” Jilly helpfully pointed out. “The bullets can go faster than the car.”
Lucas whacked her on the shoulder. “Not helpful!”