by Isaiah Lee
Does that mean always act like a dumbass? Jason sniggered quietly at his inner monologue.
The tracks led about two hundred feet before they stopped. There didn’t seem to be anywhere they could have gone. “It’s a clearing,” Hank said. He bent back, trying to light up the area with his chest. The light, albeit extremely bright, only traveled a few feet. It did little to show the clearing.
Jason turned his flashlight to the sky and saw that the tops had been ripped from the trees. Moonlight seeped into the clearing and debris lay scattered around the site. “Something came through here,” he said, waving his arm around. “Like something fell from the sky.”
Hank lit the ground. The dirt had obviously been excavated at some point recently. There was no grass growing and dirt had been displaced in such a way that something may have been drug along the ground. “Look here.”
Hank pulled The Decapitator from around his neck and locked the shovel into place. He began to dig with the awkward tool. He immediately wished he’d sprung for either the XL version or a standard shovel. He was beginning to think the hype was just that: hype. Be began to wonder how much good a flimsy, foldable shovel would do in a zombie apocalypse, anyway.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked.
“Digging, obviously.” Hank grunted. “Want a turn?”
Jason took the shovel and began digging in the spot Hank had left off. “What do you think we’re going to find?”
“Hell if I know. It’s worth trying, though. We sure as fuck haven’t found anything else out here tonight that makes me feel better about their deaths or even makes sense.”
Jason nodded as he continued to dig. The dirt came easily since it had been disturbed recently. His shovel suddenly hit something solid. A shock reverberated up the freezing metal handle. He lit the hole to find a large rock exposed in the dirt.
Hank climbed into the hole, which was now about three feet wide, and helped roll the rock out of the way. He wondered if they were digging up a fresh grave. Had Johnny and Stacy witnessed something nefarious, such as a murder, and gotten themselves killed? Maybe they were on the way to contact the authorities when they were pushed over the edge of the stone bridge. He thought about voicing his opinion but figured Jason would tell him to “shut the fuck up and dig”.
Jason and Hank continued to dig and roll rocks out of the way for what seemed an eternity. They had decided right after starting that they would at least try to hit the three-foot mark. Around two and a half feet, Hank heard a slight humming – or was it buzzing – noise coming from below them. They looked at each other in disbelief. They were determined to find the origin of the noise and kept digging. It was as if they were reinvigorated with energy upon hearing the noise.
Around five feet, the shovel hit something solid. This time it wasn’t a rock. They used their hands to clear off a small spot. The object appeared to be some sort of metal. It had small engravings all over its surface. Were they some sort of writing?
“Dude, what is this?” Hank asked dumbly.
“Hell if I know,” Jason retorted.
“What do you think we should do?”
Jason thought for a minute. “Truly, we need to figure out what it is. If it has anything to do with Stacy and Johnny…” He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he began shoveling dirt horizontally across the shape. He was determined to unearth this… what exactly could he call it?
Hank rolled another rock out of the way and began cleaning the surface with his hands. Designs began to emerge under his LED light. Intricate details, spirals, and characters had been etched into the object. They appeared to all be interconnected and loop into and around each other.
Finally, the last of the dirt had been removed. Hank had blisters forming on his hands from the repeated motions of the shovel. Jason wasn’t faring much better, but he didn’t stop long enough to take a look at his hands. Instead, he shone the light across the object.
It was round, flat, and a deep shade of grey. It was definitely some sort of metal, but he couldn’t tell what. Maybe some sort of iron compound, he guessed. He wasn’t exactly the connoisseur of metals. The light refracted on the metal unlike anything he’d ever seen, accentuating the intricacy of the designs carved throughout.
“It’s a space ship,” Jason blurted. In the center of the shape had a slightly raised area. Jason guessed it to be a hatch or some other way into the craft. There were no handles or cutouts anywhere to lift the hatch with so he had no idea how it opened.
Hank stood from his crouching position and stepped back to take in the entire picture. “That’s exactly what the fuck this is.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and swiped it on. A small crack webbed across the entire screen from his fall over the fence. He instantly regretted not getting insurance on the phone. He figured it was sure to set him back at least two hundred dollars. Why didn’t he just order a cheap pack of protectors online? Fuck Jason for being right again. Jason had, in fact, suggested a pack of screen protectors when Hank told him of the new phone purchase only weeks ago.
He disregarded the thought and began talking. Nothing to be done about it tonight, regardless. He clicked the video button and began recording. “We are here in Shepherd Park, on the night of January 21st, 2019. My friend and I have just uncovered what appears to be a flying saucer.” He panned the phone around to Jason who stuck his palm against the phone. Hank kept talking, not missing a beat. “It has taken hours to dig this thing up, but we have just made the discovery of the century. My name is…”
Jason interrupted. “Stop recording,” he said in a deadpan voice. He waited for Hank to stop the phone, then continued. “We do not want to make our names public.”
Hank shot him an eat shit look. “Why not? This discovery is huge! We could sell…”
“We’re trespassing.”
Hank thought about this for a minute. “But…”
“But nothing. We are trespassing.” He began to panic a little at that realization. “There were signs all over the place. I saw one that said something about a wildlife preserve. Imagine what all they could pin on us for this.”
Hank didn’t answer for some time. Finally, he spoke. “We have to share this somehow, though. We could still video and send it in anonymously.”
Sirens began to blare in the distance. Jason thought his heart might jump from his chest. “We’ll decide later. Get the pictures and videos and all now. We do need all the evidence we can get. We just need time to decide what we are going to do with it.”
He began snapping photos from all angles of the ship that he was currently standing on. The surface was perfectly smooth, save for the hieroglyphics – or designs, or whatever they were – etched into the surface. Surprisingly, though, the surface of the craft was not slick as Jason had expected. His shoes weren’t exactly new, so the worn tread didn’t offer much in the way of traction.
Hank listened intently as the sirens disappeared from earshot. He recorded the entire site, including the excavated dirt and rocks, then began photographing the craft. He made a point to get the intricacies of the marking on its surface. Maybe they meant something. Maybe scientists or archaeologists or somebody could decipher some sort of hidden meaning.
After they were satisfied that they got all the evidence they needed, Jason and Hank headed back toward the Pontiac. The fence proved easier to scale the second time, after Hank had a little practice from his earlier fall, but his tired body still ached in protest.
Jason again launched himself over, this time less gracefully and much louder than the first. His flashlight batteries had grown weak and the beam blinked intermittently off then back on. Hank’s LED bar across his chest was still going strong, but he knew not how long it had left.
They followed the three sets of tracks back toward the car park. One set ended right at the edge of the pavement. The creature must have walked out into the parking lot. The two other tracks seemed to end in the brown grass about twenty feet away from the pavement
.
There were drag marks and two distinctly different sets of footprints coming from the sidewalk out onto the grass. It could have easily been taken for a large dog or small bear had the men not seen the origin of the tracks.
The scene made Jason uneasy. He shone his light around and tried to make sense of the scuffle. It almost looked like somebody – two somebodies – had been pulled off the sidewalk. He guessed that there was a struggle of some sort, then the prints led back to the sidewalk.
The saturated ground easily preserved the markings from any animals or humans who walked onto the muddy, dead grass. Mark one for snow, zero for stealth, Jason thought. It was then that he thought about his own tracks in the mud. The ground was frozen and crunched with every step. Thankfully it was too solid to leave any prints that were identifiable. No sole impressions or otherwise identifiable markings.
Hank must have spotted the abnormal set of boot prints, too. “What do you think happened here?”
“I’m not sure,” Jason admitted, but he was pretty sure he had an idea. A kind of transformation had occurred where the creatures either shape-shifted into human form, or possibly something more sinister. He shivered, unsure if it was that gruesome prospect or the brutal winter air.
They eased back to the car, not without checking their surroundings, and popped the trunk. Jason hadn’t remembered to lock it, but no matter. All of the supplies appeared unmolested as they had been. “You got everything?” he asked.
Hank nodded. The glare from his light bar cast a ghastly shadow across his face as he pulled it from his shoulder. Next, he unstrapped The Decapitator and smacked it against the pavement beside him. The sound seemed to reverberate forever in that otherwise silent section of Syracuse, New York. Large chunks of dirt fell with a splatter from the makeshift shovel. He cursed as stray blots of mud stained his designer jeans.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jason suggested. He kicked the mud, or at least all that he could, from his boots and climbed into the driver side. He turned the ignition and silently thanked God that the engine roared – or, more appropriately clanged and ticked – to life.
Chapter 9
In the next twenty-four hours, Hank’s video had gone viral. The headline “ALIENS IN SHEPHERD PARK CAUGHT ON FILM” – in typical Hank fashion of all caps – had obviously caught a lot of attention. It had been misleading because, in fact, they hadn’t actually seen aliens themselves. The evidence had been pretty damning nonetheless. Conspiracy videos began to surface linking the transformer meltdown to the alien craft video. On the right side of the page, the list of “suggested videos for you” was entirely filled with these conspiracy-nut uploaded clips. There was one viral video of a kitten riding on the back of its owner’s dog, because obviously it was relevant.
Jason wanted to get the videos and photographs out there just as badly as Hank had, but he couldn’t decide the best course of action. Hank didn’t wait. He immediately used a VPN program to hide his online identity, then he created fake Facebook and Youtube accounts. He uploaded the six minute video to each social media account and waited.
Authorities were immediately made aware of the accusations and worked to discredit the accounts. They cordoned off Shepherd Park and forbade entry from the public and from members of the press. Local news stations were chomping at the bit trying to get any information they could about the apparent “alien invasion” as it had been dubbed.
New York State Police had even tweeted, “There is no cause for alarm. Aliens in Shepherd Park is just an elaborate hoax.” Comments exploded on the site claiming the state police’s ignorance and that they “should get their fucking heads out of the sand and see the invasion for what it really is!!” Other comments suggested that it was the end times of Biblical proportion.
Interviews began appearing from people claiming to have been abducted by aliens. These aliens had probed them and had inappropriate sexual contact with them, or so the claims went.
“They took me up into their spaceship. I was pulled through some sort of tractor beam, you know like in the movies. I was in a white room, laying on a steel table. Three aliens surrounded me with tools unlike anything I’d ever seen. Suddenly they began cutting into me and shoved a probe right up my [expletive deleted]. It felt like they were ripping my insides right out of my body,” one interviewee claimed.
“Sir, you’re saying they cut and probed you, but left no sort of markings or scars?” The interviewer’s voice nearly dripped with mockery. She struggled to contain herself for the sake of the interview. This was by far the craziest interview she’d been a part of.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Connie. When I woke up, I was in my own bed beside my wife and everything seemed normal, except for an excruciating pain in my [expletive deleted]. That, and there were four hours unaccounted for.”
The interviewer, Connie Young, scrunched her eyebrows. She allowed a tiny laugh to escape. “That’s what it feel like when I wake up, too.” She turned back toward the camera. “There you have it, folks. A firsthand account of the so-called alien invasion.”
Jason watched the clip from a news station in Boston on his phone. He rolled his eyes and tossed the phone onto the desk. He agreed that people should know about what they found. The bullshit that had ensued was exactly what he was worried about. Nobody seemed to be taking the severity of the situation seriously. That and the police closing the park.
He wondered if they found the ship. What other reason would they have for closing it? He and Hank had left it uncovered on purpose just for that reason. There were no suggestions that a ship had been found, at least nothing officially released to the public. This fact seemed odd to Jason. But would it really be that odd to find an alien ship and cover up its existence to keep the general public calm? Wasn’t this sort of behavior exactly what governments around the world were notorious for having done for years, despite claims otherwise?
Chapter 10
January 28th, 2019
News of the alien invasion had died down over the past week and Hank’s paranoia was still getting the better of him. Since uploading the video, Hank’s fake accounts had been shut down. He began to receive emails claiming that his account had violated some nonsense rule.
Hank nearly lost it. He began worrying that police or the CIA may come busting his door down at any moment. He’d followed what precautions he knew to but it hadn’t made him feel any better. He had even destroyed his computer in an attempt to discard the evidence. He knew to ruin the hard disk drive with a magnet – or so he had been told – but the efforts made him feel no better. The deletion wasn’t tangible; the hard disk looked exactly the same as it had before the wrath of the magnet had been brought down upon it. Hank ended up going to New Jersey to stay with his brother for a few days until the heat died down. It was in a random dumpster on the way to Ringoes, New Jersey, that Hank trashed the broken computer components.
Jason stayed in his apartment in New York. No sense in running and hiding now. If anyone knew who he was, they would find him. He went to work as usual – his packing job at the post office was mundane as ever – before returning home for the night. He ordered in a pepperoni pizza, complete with a two-liter drink and cheese sticks, and played a few hours of his favorite shooter video games.
Jason decided to watch the 11:00 news that night. It was something he had never done before. Tonight it seemed like a necessity. It was something he’d heard on the radio earlier that day. Something about a story that would be on the news. A story about Shepherd Park, or aliens, or some shit. He didn’t catch the entire headline, but figured it was probably necessary to see what was going on. He prayed they weren’t going to claim having found footprints or some other evidence that might possibly link him and Hank to the location.
After listening to the weather forecast claiming there would be at least twelve inches of snow in the next three days and that people should hurry and stock up on milk and bread, Amy Yun came on.
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sp; Jason recognized her face as being a local news anchor but he hadn’t ever really watched her live. It almost looked as if she had a Botox treatment or facelift. He couldn’t place a finger on it exactly, but something just seemed a little… off since he’d last seen her.
The news anchor began to speak and Jason was immediately taken aback. It wasn’t the usual mid-range seductive voice he was expecting. There was no introduction, no usual banter. The sound of gunfire filled Jason’s small living room. Return fire – it was a high pitched whi whi sound – blasted through Jason’s surround sound, then it was silent.
He had already turned off the Xbox, right? The power indicator light on the front was unlit. It couldn’t be his video game as he had first suspected it might. Was there truly gunfire sounding from the evening news at that moment?
Amy Yun, or what had once been her, turned around and found the source of the reports. She didn’t startle. She didn’t move. The cameraman and assistant were guarding the studio and killing anyone who came within range. Security guards with small handguns have proven little resistance.
After the blasts and the screaming subsided, she began. “I am Yikaslmer Perqindtru from the planet Qspol. Our ship has crash landed in what you humans call Shepherd Park.” The monotone voice sounded strained and foreign, but Jason did not have a comparison. It had almost a metallic clang to it. “If your leaders surrender to Qspol now there will be no excessive killings. We only require components to make repairs to our ship and we will leave this inferior planet.”
Sirens began to sound in the background on the television. Police had the news studio surrounded. Jason cringed. If this creature could be even partially trusted, police activity would have the reverse effect from what needed to happen.
Yikaslmer Perqindtru turned away from the camera and made noises in his native tongue. It was a series of clicks, grunts, and screeches that raised the hair on Jason’s arm. It was nearly a minute before Amy’s body turned around. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her face reddened to a shade between purple and burgundy.