[#072] Planetfall

I was halfway to work on the eight o'clock bus when the first ship fell from the sky.

A crash of tangled metal cut the clatter in an instant, and only the screaming of a single babe broke the silence draped across the stretch of morning road as every car in sight squealed their brakes. I counted hours from the seconds between the squealing and the wreckage, as the bus turned sideways in the slow motion of my overwhelmed mind.

Memory skipped a few steps after the world began to tilt. I remember staring at the blood on my fingers in shock as I struggled to remember how I ended up in the median. Wheels spun in the air inches from my face. In the distance I could just make out the triangular shell of flashing lights and burning metal, and the bodies scattered in the field around it, all gray flesh and beaks and bones cracked and crackling in the fires.

Twelve more scattered across the state alone. Nobody saw them coming, and their wreckage took a hundred thousand lives across the globe without a single shot fired. First contact was a blood bath, even though none of the invaders lived to issue demands. None of them could tell us why they came or why they crashed.

Or why the scorches on their ships made it seem as though they'd been shot at from behind.