Jim Thorn - Arrival - A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

“Please,” Maya said. “We’ve got to get out of here right now.”

“Where are we going to go?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe we can find somewhere to hide. Even back down in the tunnels could be a good idea. But we can’t stay here.”

“All right,” Reno said. “I trust you. Let’s go.”

“How’s your ankle?”

“I think I’ll be okay for now. Don’t wait up for me, though. All right?”

Maya nodded, but she wasn’t going to leave Reno behind.

Dozens of people had gathered around the group they’d been in earlier. Those who had powered off their devices to save the battery now turned the phones back on, pointed them toward the ship, and snapped photos or filmed videos. Others tried getting footage of the objects falling from the hatch of the spacecraft.

“Everyone take cover,” Maya said, eyeing the sights as she came close enough to the group to get their attention.

“Why?” a woman asked.

“This is amazing,” another said. “The army skydivers are coming to free us from the dome. U.S.A.!”

“It’s not safe out here,” Maya said.

Another man who had been insisting the ship was U.S. military spoke up again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” he said, apparently convinced that the ship had dropped Clarkville’s own 101 stAirborne into the dome.

“Sir, I know you’re convinced that ship is our military, but I can assure you that it’s not. Now, y’all need to go back into your houses and—”

“Then what is it?” the man asked, cutting her off. “If you’re so damn smart, tell us.”

Maya licked her lips. The words sat on her tongue, but she hesitated. What would these people think if she said what she knew was most likely true?

“I think they’re aliens.”

The word that Maya had wanted to avoid hadn’t come from her lips. It had been Reno who’d answered the man’s question. He stood next to his partner now, shoulders squared, facing the crowd.

Maya knew that Reno believed Jack was nothing but a delirious fool who needed to be institutionalized. To hear the word come from his mouth and to know that he believed in Maya enough to take this stand brought her a brief respite from the craziness. But Reno’s declaration did little to convince the people around them.

Instead of taking cover, they laughed. The group’s voices formed into a collective guffaw.

“You have to listen to us!” Maya shouted over the raucous crowd. She glanced at the sky again. Most of the objects that had dropped from the hatch had disappeared—probably moving toward them as she spoke.

“Yeah, okay, Agent Scully,” another man said.

An explosion shook the ground before Maya could respond. She ducked, and everyone around her screamed and turned toward downtown Nashville.

A dark cloud of smoke rose from the horizon, billowing outward in all directions, going toward the suburbs—toward them.

“What on God’s green Earth was that?” someone asked.

Maya grabbed Reno’s hand. She pulled him along with her as she started away from the crowd. She had tried. They were on their own now.

Another explosion, this one significantly closer.

The crowd scattered. People ran in all directions while some dropped to their knees in prayer. Maya watched a mother pick up her toddler and sprint toward one of the nearby houses, taking her other child by the hand and running so fast that she was dragging the little boy behind her.

Maya hadn’t even realized she had let go of Reno’s hand. She turned around and saw her partner limping, a good ten yards behind her. Yet another explosion came then, this one a mile away at most. The ground rumbled, and Maya covered her head as she went back for Reno.

He was waving her on as she got to him.

“I told you to keep going!” he said.

“I’m not leaving you!”

People ran past them, moving frantically in all directions. Someone bowled into Maya, sending her tumbling to the ground. She landed on her side, scraping the skin from her hip on the rough, concrete path.

“You all right?” Reno asked, reaching down to help Maya up.

“Yeah,” she said with a grimace, rolling the top of her pants off her bleeding hip. “We’ve gotta keep moving.”

She grabbed Reno’s hand and they ran into the night as explosions continued to shake the city.

Several people sprinted past Maya and Reno, most of them screaming or calling the name of a loved one. Some had picked up tree branches or garden tools—as if those could be effective weapons against a spacecraft that had descended into a massive dome.

Reno winced while trying to keep his injured foot from touching the ground. It slowed Maya down, but she refused to leave him behind. She’d get to her kids, and Reno would be with her.

Every three to five seconds, explosions rang out from different parts of the city.

“Why are they doing this?” Reno asked.

Maya didn’t reply. She had no logical answer. All that mattered was getting out of the dome and finding her children. She’d leave the alien invasion theories and interstellar negotiations to the scientists.

She glanced to her right, where people were running from their houses, seemingly unsure what they were running from or toward . A man in his thirties stood observing the chaos from his front porch—a boy and a girl on his right, and another girl on his left. Maya waved to get his attention.

“Get back inside! Now!”

Between the people in hysterics and the explosions throughout Nashville, the man couldn’t hear her. He furrowed his brow and squinted at her.

As Maya ran, she motioned to him to take his kids inside.

A parking lot erupted thirty yards away. Reno jumped onto Maya, sending them both to the ground. He lay on top of her, shielding her from the falling chunks of stone and asphalt coming down around them. Reno then rolled to the side, and Maya looked up at the house where the man and his family had retreated inward, the front door swinging shut. Maya sighed, realizing that the house had been spared the explosion.

“Come on!” Reno said, helping Maya to her feet.

Maya looked to her left, and saw fire and smoke rising from a crater that lay fifty yards away—with no visual indication of what had caused it. She looked around again, trying to find anywhere they could take shelter or, ideally, escape from the dome.

The man who’d been on the porch interrupted her thoughts, storming out of his house holding a shotgun. He loaded the shells and jogged through his yard, heading right for the crater.

He yelled, firing aimlessly into the smoke.

A whirring noise came from inside of the crater, and a yellow beam of light glowed from beneath its rim. The light beam hit the man and he vanished into thin air. Maya watched it all, the instantaneous disintegration of a human being playing out as if in slow motion, the man’s shotgun bouncing off the concrete a moment later. Specks of ash were all that remained of the man’s clothing, floating through the air like fiery pollen.

Maya felt a tug on her arm and turned to see Reno yelling at her. She saw his mouth move, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying, her ears humming at a constant, high volume. Reno pointed ahead, and she then saw six or seven people running for a concrete ramp.

“Maya!”

She shook her head and finally heard his voice, although her ears continued to ring.

“I’m with you,” she said. “Down there.”

They hurried down the concrete ramp and slid fifteen feet into a drainage culvert, joining the others who were already taking cover there. Like World War I troops in trench warfare, Maya and Reno huddled with the others and put their hands over their heads.