The Rains (Untitled #1)

Two men harnessing themselves with climbing gear to the main towers of the Golden Gate bridge, leaning back into the great wide-open, and exploding.

And the small towns, too. Gym-ready housewives on church steeples. Accountants in suits scaling transmission towers. Streets filling with Hosts. Screaming children, fleeing and bloody, like something from the Vietnam documentaries Mrs. Olsen used to show in history class. Everything narrated by the panicked voices of reporters until the cameras, too, shuddered and fell, lenses cracking, screens turned to snowy white. As the broadcasts went down, Alex bit her lower lip and kept clicking through the remaining channels, chasing the thread of civilization. We watched in shock, glued to the images.

Dr. Chatterjee paced, rubbing his head. “After the meteorites hit the soil, the stalks took a week to grow in McCafferty’s field before they burst and infected him.”

At the mention of her father, JoJo stiffened. Rocky took her by the shoulder and said, “C’mon. You don’t need to see all this. Let’s play catch.”

Chatterjee removed his glasses and polished them on his sleeve, though at this point his shirt looked dirtier than the lenses. “It’s happening so much faster now. The process is accelerated. Why?”

My throat felt scratchy, the words coming out hoarse. “They found what they’re looking for,” I said. “Here at Creek’s Cause. We were a test case, maybe. For all we know, there were a thousand test cases on a thousand planets. But this one worked. And now they don’t want to waste any more time.”

“Doing what?” Chatterjee said.

“Taking over.”

“You’re talking about aliens?” Ben said. “You think they sent asteroids from outer space?”

“As opposed to asteroids from Wichita?” Alex said.

“I’m afraid Chance could be right,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “With the deliberate mapping, the directed actions of the Chasers, that squirming eye peering out of Ezekiel…” At this he shuddered. “It seems that they’re seeding Earth.” He placed his smudged eyeglasses back on his face. “Preparing it.”

He returned his solemn gaze to the television. As the rest of us stayed there, mired to the gym floor, the younger kids tossed the Frisbee around, wiping tears from their cheeks in between catches.

A bad throw bumped off Ben’s back, and he turned sharply. “Stop that,” he said. “We’re trying to watch the invasion.”

“Come on, Ben,” Patrick said. “Let them play if it distracts them.”

Ben didn’t reply. He kept his gaze on the television. After a cautious pause, the young kids resumed their throwing.

The rest of us couldn’t not watch the images on-screen. Throughout the day and evening, destruction swept across the globe.

Chasers ravaging the beaches of Melbourne, rolling young kids in their own beach towels and spiriting them away.

People shuddering on the floor of the Tokyo stock exchange, ash drifting from the spaces where their eyes used to be.

Factory workers buckling themselves to construction cranes thrusting out from half-built skyrises in Shanghai.

Mappers pacing through Red Square.

Sheikhs and their wives lying on the roofs of luxury high-rises in Kuala Lumpur as if suntanning, their ripe bellies exploding beneath the Southeast Asian sun.

A shoeless investment banker scaling the Tower of London.

Chasers storming the Louvre, hijacking a field trip of uniformed schoolchildren.

A man with a huge gut roping himself to one arm of the giant Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro.

The world was a very big place. We were finally getting to see all of it.

Just after nightfall we were down to the last channel.

Live footage showed Chasers wading into a grand fountain in Caracas, yanking children out from where they hid beneath the arcing water. The camera toppled over, giving a tilted view of the atrocities.

Then it went to static.

Alex clicked the dial frantically around and around, but there was nothing left to see. We had lost the outside world. Everything we knew had shrunk to within the four walls of the gym.

Alex sank to the floor and pressed her fists to her chin. The static kept on, a white-noise roar. Ben clomped up the bleachers and settled on the top bench, staring through the open windows at the darkness beyond.

Patrick moved to Alex, rested a hand on her head. “Alexandra,” he said.

She didn’t respond. He reached over and turned off the TV. The sudden silence felt even scarier than what we’d just seen.

The only remaining sound was the whoosh of the Frisbee as the young kids tossed it around. JoJo’s throw went wide, drifting up to Ben. He caught it and said, “Enough.” Then he flung the Frisbee through the open window.

JoJo cried out and scampered up the bleachers. She rested her hands on the sill and watched, then crumpled to the top bench. “It went over the fence,” she said. A few wisps of hair that the scissors had missed fell down past her eyes. “You threw it over the fence.”

Gregg Hurwitz's books