When Clayton Conner saw a pale eyeless caterpillar sticking to the side of a dumpster, he thought it was some alien species. That might have been the imagination of a high school student at play, however. He wanted it to be an alien species, but he knew with utmost certainty that it was something entirely explainable. He received his explanation several months later when gutting the seed-packed centers of honeydews at his job. In the trashcan, he noticed something of familiar appearance. About three inches long each, with a score or so of plump, boneless legs, he learned that his alien species from before was the funiculus of a honeydew.
His discovery came months after a meteor exploded over Orange county in California. Fewer than three years after the Chelyabinsk meteor, the public suspected the end would hail from the heavens, even though the extent of the damage was to melon farms. Many melons were destroyed, but those that weren't were plucked and shipped across the nation.
Now attending college, Clayton thought about the Orange meteor, as it was called, only on the sparsest of occasions, and even then briefly. He also heard little of its mention from others, so he figured the world had forgotten about the event. So when his mother knocked on his door four years later, he didn't recall the meteor. In fact, he didn't think about it once for the next three days.
“Have you seen the news today?” Clayton's mother asked him.
“No. Why, what's up?” he asked from his bed, where he had been outlining an essay for class.
“Come downstairs and look.”
Clayton knew it wasn't good news. Whenever his mother in the past had asked him about the news, it was about the worst events: school shootings, terrorist attacks, a serial killer on the run. He wondered which it might be as he headed downstairs to the living room, where his father sat on the couch. His mother stood behind the couch. He stood behind his father and saw what he suspected at first was the damage from a large-scale terrorist attack as seen a news station helicopter. He thought it was 9/11 all over again, but the extremists this time were targeting suburb neighborhoods.
Piles of rubble lay where houses once stood; trees had been bulldozed into yards and houses, and splintered, as if stomped upon; cars were little more than twisted piles of steel and shattered glass; streets were dotted with round holes. Yet the destruction was aligned along a linear path, as though a giant bowling ball had been rolled.
Clayton was no hawkeye, but he swore that he had seen some bodies laying amongst the rubble.
At the top of the screen, the camera panning to center it, was the cause of the destruction: a pale eyeless caterpillar barreling through homes and trees and cars as fast as a speeding car on a highway. Except this caterpillar was huge—about the length of a blue whale, perhaps longer, still, and as tall as a three story edifice. Along its humped back were protrusions belching a silver spore-like cloud into the air, the tendrils faint against the cloud of dust and dirt kicked up whenever it smashed through a structure.
“—are rampaging through the neighborhoods, destroying anything that happens to be in their way,” reported the anchorwoman. “They're releasing some sort of gas from their backs, which authorities aren't sure yet is poisonous. Nobody knows where they're going or what their purpose in all of this is, but they seemed to have originated from the Philadelphia landfill, but not just this one. Reports are coming in from all across the country of these creatures digging their way free of landfills and trekking across the landscape, stopping for nothing. The Air Force has been ordered to scramble their jets to combat these creatures, but they won't be ready for at least another twenty to thirty minutes.”
Clayton was familiar with the anchorwoman's voice and the news station logo in the corner, but he asked, “This isn't real, is it?”
“Yes, it's real,” his father answered. “Look.” He flicked through the channels with the remote. Each of them, including ones that didn't usually broadcast the news, discussed the creatures and the havoc they wrought.
Footprints trailed up and down the mountainous terrain of Orange county, where seven of the creatures scattered in different directions.
“—some of whom are heading for residential areas—”
Pricey homes lost their value—and possibly their residents—as one of the creatures plowed through a cal-de-sac and into a river. Two more joined it seconds later at various points in the snaking river.
“—asking that residents find shelter—”
Chunks of a freeway were imbedded in the roofs of nearby businesses, and several cars were lying about, with smashed ceilings and car doors. The cars still on the highway plugged the flow of traffic at the missing section of road.
“—incredibly powerful—”
Garbage had been spattered around a tunnel entrance in the ground, as though a bomb detonated underground. As the camera panned, several such new entrances were revealed.
“—had no idea they were buried beneath our—”
The screen blinked black. White pixelated letters were layered from to bottom, and a series of blares accompanied them. No matter how many times the channel number at the top-right of the screen changed, the text refused to leave.
639Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbzIK2GuxEs
Emergency Alert System
Civil Authorities
Issued
Emergency Action
Notification
639Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFRRoplRyEL
Some additional text crawled beneath the top line: Civil authorities have issued an *** Emergency Action Notification *** for the following areas: cities with 50 miles of a landfill. Effective Until Further Notice.
A male, electronic voice spoke: “We interrupt this program. The Office of Civil Defense has issued the following message: this is an attack warning. Repeat: this is an attack warning. Attack warning means that an actual attack against this country has been detected and that protective action should be taken. Important instructions will follow in thirty seconds.”
Three more blares followed, then silence. Clayton and his parents waited, the tension thick.
“At 5:31 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, civil authorities detected that a biological attack had commenced against the United States. These attacks are thought to be but are not restricted to any city within 50 miles of a landfill. This warning applies to areas receiving this broadcast. As biological hazards can spread over a large area, immediately seek shelter that can protect you from biological hazards; a basement, if you have one. A fallout shelter is best. Tune to 770 AM for important information during your stay in the fallout shelter. This is an Emergency Action Notification.”
Three more blares, then the message repeated in another language.
Clayton's mother started pushing her son soon as the message concluded. “Hurry, Clayton, we have to get to the basement. Honey,” she said to her husband, “get the radio. The hand-crank, too.”
“Where's the hand-crank?” he asked.
“It should be in the closet. Please be quick.”
Clayton hastened his pace so that his mother wasn't pushing him, but his speed was still too slow for her. He was about as panicked as his mother, but his mother's pushiness wasn't helping him maintain his composure.
Clayton opened the basement door and hurried downstairs.
“I'll be down in a minute,” his mother said to him. To her husband, she yelled, “Did you find the hand-crank?”
“Yeah,” he yelled back. “Head down. I'll be right there.”
A bunch of holiday decorations and summer yard supplies were shoved beneath the wooden staircase of their basement. Clayton took the advice he learned in school about how to survive a tornado. He pulled out a large box for a Christmas snow globe blow-up and huddled against a stack of boxes containing more Christmas-time blow-ups. The floor was cold, and the decorations all had a musky scent that plugged his nostrils. He wasn't too fond of his family's unfinished basement (unfinished because it flooded whenever it rained), but at the moment, he welcomed it with open arms.
Clayton's mother ran down the stairs, then his father followed less than a minute later. His mother took up a spot too close to him for comfort, while his father set the radios on the washer. The hand-crank was a tiny thing—about the size of a walky talky—and stuffed into a box. The radio his father pushed the dryer aside to plug in was a hand-me-down from his older brother, who got it from his grandfather. Its color was faded, and it displayed the channel via a needle, but when he plugged it in and tuned it, it played a mostly crisp sound. He took the hand-crank and joined his family beneath the wooden staircase and waited.
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