• Three years had passed since the sky burned and they came, but the memories still haunted her. She remembered the sound of their chattering and the shrieks they made, like creatures you thought you heard as a child in the darkness while your parents were asleep and only nothingness lay between you and the bathroom down the hall.

    She tried to let the pitter-patter of the rain outside her makeshift pit drown it out of her mind as she slowly brushed the dust of sleep from her head. The shadows of the trees outside were stark, but weakening, and as the minutes passed the sky grew brighter. If she had any hope of getting to the next town without being seen she would have to go now.

    A dingy old backpack went sailing out of the hole in the mud, then an old plastic tarp she'd used to wrap herself up before climbing inside as an attempt to reduce the amount of water that soaked into her clothing.

    It hadn't worked well, but trying was better than doing nothing at all. At the very least she'd prevented herself from getting muddy. The climb out of the hole fixed that.

    Out in the open, she could hear better but the silence was more than eerie. The next town was only five miles north of her and though it was sizable enough that she should have been able to hear at least some sounds of traffic, there was absolutely nothing.

    She'd seen someone try to start a truck about three months before. The man said he didn't care about the risks, that the vehicle could take them where he needed to go before they could even sort out what was going on. He'd been an optimistic fellow with a great smile. Very cute. When he asked her if she wanted to go with him she'd truly considered it. Companionship would have been nice.

    But she'd said no. The risks were too great and the idea that they could show up at any moment terrified her. So, when he climbed into the trucks cab and turned the key in the ignition she'd hidden herself in a ditch and watched.

    The truck was old but sturdy and he waited for a few minutes, just in case she'd changed her mind and decided to go along after all, before putting it in drive and heading down the flat, old country road towards that wound cut a northeastern path through the southern woods.
    And far behind him, she watched.

    She watched as it reached a bumpy section and slowed to carefully make its way over and when he leaned out of the cab for just a moment to give her a cheerful thumbs up. She watched when the shadow arched over the trees and settled above him and the sky around the great ship grew angry and red. She watched when his tires squealed and the truck lurched forward, a single beam of light stretched out and stopped it, and the creatures descended within it in swarms, screeching over the sound of his screams. And then, she did not watch. She hid.

    Now, she stayed away from the roads, away from anything that could possibly attract attention. Her legs were far more useful, and more dependable. Taking the pack from the ground, the young woman pulled it on over her shoulders, buried the plastic tarp in the hole she'd dug out for herself, and continued on with her journey.

    She was lucky enough that the earth was flat and the woods were thick, so it made travel a breeze. Every so often she stopped to look around herself, to listen to the sky before she continued forward again and after perhaps half an hour she could see the buildings ahead over the treetops and as she grew closer she heard the sound of rumbling and slowly came to a stop.

    Past the tree line, the town was not as still and silent as she had hoped. A group of people gathered in a mob outside of an old church that stood between her and the main street and grabbed wildly for a man who was clinging desperately to a generator that was running.

    "I can't take it anymore! It's mine and I'm using it! Let me go! You've got no right!" he screamed. Their cries drowned out his sounds and, suddenly gripped with fear, they began to pull even harder...and then began to fight.

    The generator continued to run until a man lept from the crowd and managed to turn it off. But, he was a moment too late.

    The shadow came and the lights turned the sky into fire again and though the people scattered she knew they had already been spotted and counted. A beam of light ripped through the air and touched the ground and once more the creatures came down in a small hoard, tearing through the town and dragging the townsfolk out of their hiding places and back to the light shaft that would take them up into the unknown again.

    And from her spot behind the trees and within the shadows of the forest, she watched.