A rectangle… or, the profile of a disc.
“That’s not a plane,” George said.
Arnold nodded. “Told ya.”
“Oh, jeeze,” Toivo said. “What da hell is that thing?”
Bernie shook his head in wide-eyed disbelief. “Sorry, Dad. Sorry. Guess there won’t be any news stories about a crashed plane.”
Arnold nodded. “Yah, that’s fine. Maybe you should look anyway, though. Check one of those news sites.”
Toivo crunched over to Bernie. “CNN? That’s a good one.”
Bernie stared, dumbfounded, at Toivo. “CNN?”
“Your phone,” George said. “You got signal, right?”
His own voice seemed oddly normal, when he knew it probably should have rang with panic. Something was very, very wrong, but Mister Ekola was standing right there and Mister Ekola was calm as could be.
Bernie twitched like someone had stabbed him with a fork. “Oh, shit, right.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen blazed, lighting up slowly billowing cones of breath.
“Oh, jeeze,” Toivo said. “Turn down da brightness, eh?”
Bernie ripped off a glove and tossed it down, not even bothering to put it in his pocket, then stabbed at the screen with the tip of his finger.
Arnold put his arm around Jaco. “Son, are you all right?”
Jaco shook his head. “No, sir. I don’t think I am.”
“Yah, I suppose that’s to be expected,” Arnold said.
George stared at the man. How could he be so damn calm? George knew he should be the one to say something, to get things organized, but all of the sudden he was twelve again, and so was Bernie and Jaco and Toivo; Mister Ekola was the adult.
Jaco’s dad had died when he was just a toddler. George’s dad had left when George was eight, had never come back. Toivo’s dad had beaten the shit out of him more often than not, had sent Toivo to school with long-sleeved sweaters to hide the bruises on his arms. That had happened since at least the fourth grade, when Toivo’s family moved in, until the summer after the fifth grade, when Arnold had paid a visit to Toivo’s house and given Toivo’s dad a lesson on how to dish out a real beating. After that, Toivo’s dad walked with a limp; he also never laid another hand on his boy.
Arnold Ekola and his wife hadn’t just raised Bernie, they’d basically raised three more boys as well. For George and Jaco and Toivo, Arnold wasn’t their biological father, but he was their dad.
Mister Ekola knew what to do—he always had, he always would.
Bernard looked up from the phone.
“Oh my god,” he said. “Oh, god, Dad… it’s everywhere.”
Arnold squeezed Jaco’s shoulder, pointed out at the green lights.
“Jaco, can you keep an eye on that thing for me?”
Jaco nodded. “Sure, Mister Ekola. I can do that.”
“Good boy,” Arnold said. He turned to Bernie. “Exactly what is everywhere?”
Bernie pointed to the lighted rectangle. “That is. I mean, those are. Milwaukee, Boston, New York, it even says there’s one in Paris. It’s fucking aliens, Dad. That’s what CNN says.”
Toivo nodded. “Was bound to happen someday,” he said. “There’s lots of stars, dontchya know.”
Bernie pulled the phone closer to his face. “They’re landing all over the world. They’re attacking, killing people in the cities. Air Force is fighting them, Army’s been mobilized… Dad, we’re being invaded.”
George took two steps toward Bernie, snatched the phone out of his friend’s hand. They weren’t being invaded, that was ridiculous. There was some other explanation for this, shit like this didn’t happen.
One glance at the web page confirmed what Bernie had said. George tried to poke the screen, realized he, too, was wearing gloves. He tore them off and threw them down. The cold sent needle-stabs into his hands, the same way it had been stabbing his neck and face—he just hadn’t registered it.
George tried Fox News. Top story: New York On Fire, London Destroyed.
He looked at Yahoo: It’s Not a Movie: Our World is Invaded.
NBC: Invaders Overpowering Militaries Worldwide.
George’s eyes fuzzed; the screen blurred into nothing. He was at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, so deep in the woods there weren’t even paved roads. He was 370 miles away from his family.
My son, my wife… I have to get to Milwaukee.
George handed back the phone.
“Bernie’s right,” he said. “I don’t know why this one landed in the Yoop, Mister Ekola… but that’s an alien ship.”
Arnold nodded. He hawked a loogie, turned and spat so it wouldn’t hit any of his boys.
“Yah, I figured,” he said. “Let’s get back inside da cabin. Dress warm, get your guns, and make sure you have as much ammo as you can carry.”
The five men turned away from the green lights and walked back to the cabin, their feet crunching in the snow. Bernie slid his phone into his pocket, cutting off even that small light.
They walked into the cabin and silently went about their business, Arnold’s calming influence somehow stopping any of them from freaking out. They all had families to get back to, yet without saying a word they all knew that wasn’t going to happen right away. It felt like at least one of them should go crazy, scream about how he had leave, right now, and the others would have to wrestle him to the ground, but that didn’t happen. They all knew they had to wait until morning, at the very least—going out at night was to fear death from the cold just as much as fearing anything the aliens might do.
Still, George wasn’t completely free of crazy. As he put on a second sweater, then a third, he kept one eye on his Remington 700 rifle, and couldn’t help one thought from repeating in his head over and over:
Maybe it’s good we didn’t shoot at any deer—we might need all these bullets.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times bestselling novelist Scott Sigler is the author of the Infected trilogy (Infected, Contagious, and Pandemic), Ancestor, and Nocturnal, hardcover thrillers from Crown Publishing; and the co-founder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his Galactic Football League series (The Rookie, The Starter, The All-Pro and The MVP). Before he was published, Scott built a large online following by giving away his self-recorded audiobooks as free, serialized podcasts. His loyal fans, who named themselves “Junkies,” have downloaded over eight million individual episodes of his stories and interact daily with Scott and each other in the social media space.
Jack McDevitt — ENJOY THE MOMENT
The party on my thirtieth birthday more or less opened the door to the end of the world. It was supposed to be a surprise, but my husband Warren, and a few other family members took to smirking and grinning during the preceding days. I was maybe two steps into the living room when the lights came on. They were all there. Uncle Harry and Aunt May with Liz, our eight-year-old daughter. Jack Camden and his wife, whose name I couldn’t remember, and probably twenty other relatives, colleagues, and friends. They burst into a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and applauded. My sister Ellen brought me a lime daiquiri, my favorite, and when the singing stopped I was led to the coffee table, which was piled high with presents.