The Storm

The Storm 

         It was happening again. Gina Torres stood on the back porch of her yellow vinyl sided home and watched as the storm clouds built up to the east. To any of her distant neighbors it would appear only to be a thunderstorm, a common occurrence of nature. To Gina it was the continuation of her nightmares. They would arrive with the storm and they would take her again.

         She ran into the house to her bedroom. With shaking hands she opened the drawer of her night stand and pulled out a revolver. Nervously, she flipped open the chamber and loaded the cartridges. What she was doing was a futile act. The bullets never stopped them. Nothing ever stopped them from coming. Nothing ever stopped them from masking their arrival with a thunderstorm.

         Gina’s husband, Alberto told her that she was nuts. He told her that there were no sky people. He kept telling her that she was sick and needed help. He didn’t believe her about what happened during the thunderstorms. No one believed her about the aliens. No one believed her about the greys, or her abductions.

         She ran back out into the living room and passed the forty-four inch flat screen TV hanging on the wall. It was still displaying the weather channel and was showing the line of thunderstorms that were passing through north central Wisconsin. She paused for a moment and looked at the report. The squall line moving towards Cheboygan was perfect cover for them. They would be here in a matter of minutes. Despite the hopelessness of her actions, she would hide in the cellar. She would hide down there and wait for the greys to come for her.

         The civil defense warnings started to sound just as Gina closed the cellar door behind her. Someone in Cheboygan had sighted a funnel cloud. A tornado was moving through the area and would tear a path of destruction through the Wisconsin countryside. The greys were serious this time. They were causing their weapons to bear down upon the land. They were angry with her for shooting one of them last time.

         She turned on the basement lights and proceeded into the cellar. Gina would cower in the corner, back behind the water heater. She would hide in that corner despite the fact that the greys had found her there ten times before. The woman of Hispanic ancestry huddled up into the corner and cowered like a little girl. She pulled the hammer back on the gun and waited with shaking hands. She waited for them to come and get her. She waited for them to take her away and perform experiments on her.

         The wind continued to howl past the house. She could hear the hail pounding upon the windows on the ground floor of the house above her. They always used the hail to mask their approach. The sound hid the humming of the space ship until it was directly over the house. When the hail subsided they would be here. They would come into her basement. They would take her.

         The hail continued. It sounded to her like the insistent tapping of a thousand fingers upon the windows. It drove her increasingly mad by the moment. She laid the gun down by her legs and put both hands over her ears. She closed her eyes and cried out in pain. The tapping wouldn’t stop. God almighty, why wouldn’t it stop? Why don’t they just come and get it over with?

         The tapping did actually subside as if in response to that thought. It was replaced with a hum of some sort of motor. She opened her eyes back up only to realize that she was in pitch darkness. The power had gone out. Somewhere the storm had knocked out the power lines. In her haste to hide in the basement she had failed to take a flashlight with her. Now she sat there in the darkness staring out to where she thought the stair case was that led up to the kitchen. They would come down to her now. They always knocked out the power right before they came down for her. She felt along the side of her leg and recovered the pistol that she had laid down only moments before.

         Her fingers unlocked the safety on the pistol with unflinching accuracy. She cradled the weapon to her ample bosom and waited for them to come. Despite their superior technology she would shoot at them. She would try and stop them from taking her away. She pulled her knees up close to her chest and held the pistol out in front of her.

         A door opened and a light shined down the stairwell at her. Her trigger finger tensed upon the weapon. A voice called out her name just as it had so many times in the past. She aimed for the light and pulled the trigger on the pistol. A shot rang out and an unearthly scream filled the air. The scream seemed to come from her lips. Her vision blurred in the blinding light shining down at her and she slipped into unconsciousness…

         Gina awoke to the sounds of a policeman. She tried to sit up on the stretcher and realized that she was restrained upon it. She was confused. Did the Cheboygan policeman just say that she had shot her husband? How could that be? Didn’t they see the aliens coming for her? Didn’t they see the greys?

         Two Cheboygan policemen watched with dispassionate eyes as an ambulance took her away. Both men were Caucasian and sported big bushy mustaches and side burns typical of the 1970s. Their grooming styles were an incredible fashion blunder considering that this was 2010. Other people on the force always joked that the two men were twins.

“We must remove her from the planet.” The first officer stated. “She knows too much.”

“Alberto will live,” the second officer commented as he turned to the first. “Only the shell has been killed. Although, we must secure a new host for Alberto in the next twenty-four hours if he is to survive.”

         The second officer glanced back at the retreating ambulance. He pondered the question of Gina for a moment. What would they do with her? The young that were in stasis would awaken soon. They would have to be nourished. Perhaps Gina would be the answer to that dilemma. “The female should be put into the incubator unit.”

         “Agreed commented the first.” He looked around at the Wisconsin countryside and smiled. “Soon they will all be put into incubator units. Earth will become a grand place for our young to hatch and feed. It is the perfect place to preserve our race.”

         Both of the policemen looked up at the sky. They stared out at the stars and the moon that had appeared once the storm front had passed. Their brethren were already headed for this world. Soon the colony ships would arrive and a new generation of Xerauns would be born upon the planet. The human race was on borrowed time. God help us all!