Landing

Zain and Devin, working together on a summer night, meet someone who will change their lives forever.

Zain and Devin hung out at the same spot all the time, and there was nothing very unusual about that. It was at the top of a hill, surrounded on almost all sides by forest. Down at the bottom of the steep slope was the town that they lived in, which Zain had nicknamed “The Pit of No Return. Ever.” Not something Devin found very clever.

Maybe “hung out” was putting their relationship generously. Mainly, Zain would just drive Devin up to the top of the hill, so he could get away from his house after helping his mom and get credit on Devin’s work at school. The two of them really could not stand each other most of the time.

Zain was laid out in the bed of his red pickup, his eyes closed. He had short brown hair that he needed to keep cut. It was too messy, otherwise. He didn’t go to the gym, but he worked around the house a bit for his mom, who was sick a lot, so his body was pretty athletically built. He wore a dirty tank top with torn up blue jeans.

On the other hand, Devin was looking through a little telescope he had set up by the truck and making notes about things he was observing. He wore contacts over his hazel eyes, so the lenses of his glasses would not interfere with his study. He had acne that he hated, with long blonde hair. He wore a pair of shorts and a red shirt that showed off his thin arms.

Devin looked away from his telescope repeatedly to plot notes in his spiral-notebook, tracking the course of what looked like a comet. He had found it by accident, and it seemed to be running on a weird course, quickly going from massive object to massive object, and taking longer than needed to pass behind them. Almost like it was afraid to be seen by something. So far, nothing had been reported on television of its approach, so maybe that was working. The latest course had been from behind Mars, where it got behind the moon and stayed behind it.

There was a snore from the bed of the truck, interrupting Devin’s train of thought and making him put down his book to look into the bed of the truck. He found Zain, asleep in a ball. He huffed and bent over, picking up a rock. He tossed it right at Zain’s head, missing by a foot. Still, the loud clank the rock made woke him up instead.

“What the heck?” Zain asked, getting up and inspecting the non-existent damage to his truck.

“Your snoring is disrupting my research!” Devin complained, pointing at his telescope.

“Your research is disrupting my snoring!” Zain shot back, pointing at the jacket that had made up his pillow. “Now quit throwing crap at my truck.”

“You know, instead of sleeping, you could pretend to care about this stuff. It’s part of your grade!” Devin pointed out.

“Tenth-Grade science ain’t my thing,” Zain stated, laying back down. “Besides, isn’t there some Skype page linked to that Hobble guy, so you can see the universe like he does?”

Devin’s stare was blank. “I don’t know which part of that to correct first. Hobble isn’t a guy-”

As the pair argued, Devin missed the first clue that their lives were about to change. The comet Devin had been tracking moved out from behind the moon, streaking across the sky-

“-and that’s why we’re-”

 

KA-BOOM!

 

Devin was thrown off of his feet as the comet veered down and smashed into the ground a few hundred feet behind the hill. He felt hot chunks of dirt falling on him, and he scrambled back up, brushing them off quickly.

“What the f**k was that?” Zain asked, jumping over the side of the truck and looking in the direction of the crash.

There was a dull red glow coming from the trees. Devin could not take his eyes away from it. His lips formed a silent “Whoa,” and repeated it over and over again. He put down his pen and closed the notebook, letting it drop onto the ground.

“I think the comet just crashed…” Pointing out the obvious was all he could do.

“Well…” Zain was equally lost for words. “What… uh… what should we do?”

Devin looked at him. “What are you asking me for?”

“Aren’t you the expert on… that?” Zain pointed at the glowing site. “Like, meteors and explosions and stuff?”

“Let me just start by saying we are extremely lucky,” Devin lectured. It was a way to keep him calm: reciting facts in stressful situations. “That thing must have been really small not to have made a bigger explosion. Any bigger, and we both would have been killed.”

“Oh….” Zain breathed. “Well… that’s good to know.” He stood up and hopped out of the bed of his truck, moving to the cab and taking out a baseball bat.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Devin said, quickly stepping in front of Zain. Then he had second thoughts and settled for just walking beside him. “Where are you going?”

“This thing could have killed me,” Zain said simply. “I’ve got beef with that.”

“Why do you always have to pick fights with stuff!” Devin asked. “Let’s… let’s just go home, okay?”

“Don’t you science guys love this crap?” Zain looked at him as he began to walk down the hill. “Let’s go check it out!”

Devin was nervous, looking towards the impact site. There were all sorts of dangers: flash fires, radiation, falling rock debris. He did not want to rush into anything like that.

“Well, can we just wait a minute first?” Devin reasoned. “Just until things calm down over there.”

Zain lowered his bat and shrugged. “Alright, you’re the smarty.”

They waited, too. Only for a few minutes. It appeared that nothing dangerous was actually going to happen. No falling rocks, no fires. But the glow was still there, though growing fainter. If they were going to go and get a look at it before everyone else did, it would have to be now. Devin looked back and saw headlights already on their way.

“Okay, okay, let’s go now,” Devin said.

“Right, but let’s get into the truck.,” Zain said. One of the few gems his brain came up with every now and then. “We’ll take it down there and back.”

“Good idea,” Devin said.

They hopped into the cab and Zain started up the engine. Turning on the lights, he drove down the steep hills, weaving in between the trees as he steered to the site. He reached a slight berm created by the impact, the site just over it. The light from the crater shone over it, pretty creepy. The two of them hopped out of the truck and slowly approached it. Devin had a notebook in one hand, and a pen in the other. Zain had his bat...

“I don’t think we’ll need that,” Devin said, clutching his notebook close to his chest.

“Never say never with weird stuff,” Zain said, walking slowly forward.

“I thought you didn’t believe in aliens,” Devin pointed out, sipping behind him and feeling a little safer.

“Never said it was for aliens,” Zain stated. “Weird stuff brings weird people. This is for their skulls.”

The odd pair walked up the berm of the crater. The dirt of it was smoking slightly, and they could feel the heat radiating from it. Devin, who was used to rooms filled with AC, began to sweat. They crested the berm, and the light made them squint. It was a white light, tainted with just enough blue to change the hue.

Together they squinted past it. Zain was used to seeing in the blazing light of the sun, while Devin usually looked at things in the glare of a computer monitor. They both could see a vague shape. It was rather wide and ovular, with no wings or corners. A rectangle of light opened in the oval, and there was the shape of a person filling it. A person clutching their side and limping out of the thing.

Devin was speechless, trying to figure out was he was looking at. Zain had no such wonders. He saw a guy who was probably hurt. He ran forward down the berm, gravity taking him down in leaps and bounds. Devin tried to yell after him, but Zain wasn’t listening.

Zain kept running up to the object. His eyes were fixed on the person, now falling to his knees only feet away from the door. He skidded onto his own knees but the person, the light blocking out most of what he could see of him.

“Hey man, are you alright?” he asked, trying to grab his arm.

The person shoved the aid away, flipping onto his back and grabbing something from his beltline. Zain swallowed hard. Even in the light, he could see what it was…

A gun.

“Zain!” Devin yelled, running up beside him and panting hard. “What-?”

He saw the weapon held in the stranger’s hand, his features still masked. He sucked in his breath, afraid it would be his last. The hand did not tremble, merely moved the gun between them, ready to strike at the first one to make the wrong move. Or any move.

There came a screech from inside the shape. Devin could not make out it was a craft of some kind. The screech coming from it was inhuman. The stranger began to unload into it. Sweee, sweee, sweee! The muzzle of the weapon emitted no clash, only straight lines of blue lights that shot deep into the doorway.

Inside, another shape began to appear, heading at them and writhing about. The stranger kept his weapon held directly at it. The thing was also ovular… but several multi-jointed legs were spouting from it. The person shot off several of them. A red light pulsed from the middle of the monster, but the person rolled away in time to avoid the red shot that blew a deep hole in the ground. As the red pulse started to disappear, the person took one last shot, right into the middle of it.

The thing emitted one last scream before bursting apart. Smoke emitted from parts inside it, giving off the smell of burning flesh. The person stood up, his gun pointing at the ground. He stumbled back but maintained his footing. But now he was out of the light enough for Zain and Devin to get a better look at him. He wore a red uniform, like khaki pants and a blazer over a white shirt that looked like silk. On his blazer were a bunch of black dots on one side of his chest, like ribbons. On his other side was an insignia that Devin guess was a rank of some kind since there was a different one on his arms. His free hand was covering a patch of his white shirt that was soaked with something black and spreading.

Then they saw his face. It was green, with four eyes, and a metal patch over where each ear was supposed to be.

Holy Christ… Zain thought, dropping his bat to the ground… It’s an alien…

Reviews

[Christoph]

There's something endearing about this spacecraft--apparently not designed to be in any way subtle, giving off massive amounts of light and leaving behind a tail like a comet--shyly hiding behind worlds on its approach.

The chapter moves along very intently, like it's adhering to a strict schedule and trying to hit all the bullet points. Normally I would complain about that, about not giving anything much room to breathe before the plot shoves it forward, but it actually sort of works here. I don't know, if it works, it works.

I'll say that the two characters don't feel distinct to me. Thinking back on it after having read it, I can't remember two characters at all, as if it was just one guy asking himself nagging questions along the way.

But I didn't hate that guy, and I did take an interest in what was going to be over the crest of the hill (or berm, as you called it what, three or four times, jarring me momentarily out of the story without fail), so I can't complain about that either.

With the pacing of this, it had better be going off on one heckuva long, strange trip. But if that's the plan, hey, alright, I'll check it out.

[E. M. DuBois]

I wish I had more to give you. I haven't worked on this in years. I only updated the format. I've tried to continue, but I could never settle on where I wanted the direction the story should go. There were other projects that held my interest and focus. I lost my way on this one, sadly.