Those Things'll Kill Ya

“Would you look at that!”

Vic did not want to look at that. He and Stacey had been going out for a couple nights now, and it wasn’t always easy for Vic to get his old man loaded and commandeer the Ford. Whoever invented sweater sets had a cruel disregard for young men unfamiliar with the mechanics of a standard Maidenform, but long labor had gotten Vic maybe a twist away from having something to brag about. “What’s up, doll?”

“Look!”

With a heavy sigh, Vic massaged the cramp out of his hand and squinted through the windshield. For the sake of propriety, nobody rolled into the local lovers’ lane with their headlights on, and the whole landscape seemed like a black felt cut-out dotted with streetlamps from town, pasted beneath a starry blue dome. With a pin in his progress, Vic fished an Emeral City cigarette out of the battered pack in his shirt pocket and started the lighter in the dash. “Help me out, here, toots, what am I missing?”

Stacey pointed. She had a great shape, and Vic took a second to remind himself of that before following those baby-blues up into the night sky.

There was another light amongst the stars. It was the wrong color, and moving too fast to be a planet, but too deliberate in its trajectory to be a meteor. Vic squinted, lighting his cigarette. He would offer one to Stacey, but he knew she didn’t smoke. “What is that, a Sputnik, or something?”

“It’s something else,” Stacey said, leaning forward against the dash. “It’s getting closer. Vic, start the car.”

The light—it was a cluster of lights, all green and blue—was coming closer, in a wide arc like a hawk descending on its prey. Stacey watched it, her eyes glittering with the strange light, urgently patting on Vic’s arm. “Vic! Start the car!”

“I’m starting the car!” Vic snarled, clicking the ignition back and forth. “Damn thing won’t start!” He looked up at the sound of a slamming door. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to find a phone!” Stacey shrugged into her sweater and hugged her arms against the early autumn chill, heels clicking on the gravel road.

Vic got out to follow her, and saw the unearthly light throwing car-shaped shadows across the lane. One or two other couples had ceased necking, looking out at the weird, green glow. Vic looked up and saw the ship—it was a ship—coming in closer and closer, surprising in speed and shocking in size, headed right for the look-out point. Vic started running, tennis shoes kicking up gravel, as several other couples discovered too late that their engines would not ignite.

Stacey felt Vic throw his arm around her just as the earth shook with sudden impact, throwing the pair of them to their knees. A massive disc of electricity and metal came scything into the hilltop, tearing up the terrain and plowing through Pontiacs as half a dozen teenage screams were suddenly snuffed out. Through the cage of Vic’s protective limbs, Stacey could see the gleaming hulk of metal shudder to a sizzling stop, its many signal flares washing out the devastation in a sickening lime light.

Rising up through Vic’s arms, Stacey watched as the veil of dust settled around the ship. It arched high above her, blotting out a thick chunk of Heaven, buzzing with energy under the cold metallic skin. Stacey went to take a step toward it, but Vic hugged tightly to her legs. “Let me go, I want to look.”

“Just…hang on a second.” Vic had his eyes squeezed shut, clutching Stacey in a little ball below her knees. “This is supposed to be the part where I wake up.”

Stacey pried his fingers off her dress, kneeling down to meet his eyes. “If this was a dream, I bet I’d be naked,” she reasoned. “Come stand up. I know exactly who to call.”

There was a reptilian hiss of metal on metal, and a panel in the side of the ship slid open. In the light of the semi-circular doorway, a hideous shape appeared, bloated, pulsating, the dark green of its soft body covered with a slug-like iridescent sheen. Crowning the gelatinous flesh were eight glittering eyes and a drooling, multi-mandibled mouth.

“Come on!” Stacey shouted, yanking Vic to his feet. “Run!” The two of them tore down the road, back down the side of the hill, plunging into the cold darkness. The alien creature moved to follow them, but the panel had opened a bit too high above the ground, and the invader fell face-first in the dirt, with its little tentacles in the air.

Down the hill, a lone cop had been roused from napping in his patrol car by the earth-shaking impact up above. Unable to see the source of the disturbance through the dark woods, the policeman picked up his radio, just as Vic and Stacey broke cover from the trees, sprinting down the hill at full speed, and the policeman tried to determine whether it was in his best interest to say the kids were vandals or victims.

Staring after the bend in the road where the dashing kids departed, the cop turned the key in the ignition, but his patrol car wouldn’t start. The cop cursed and helped himself to a cigarette before squinting under the steering column to see if his wiring was on the fritz. When he looked up again, he was face to face with eight beady, extraterrestrial eyes.

Racing down the hill, Vic heard a scream followed by six gunshots. Without looking back, he followed Stacey when she peeled off from the road, skirts flying toward a secluded house off the side lane. Stacey rapped her little knuckles on the front door, and didn’t wait for a response before trying the knob. Finding it unlocked, Stacey stepped over the threshold and pulled Vic after her, closing the door behind them.

“Christ!” Vic breathed, dropping against the wall as his smoker’s lungs recovered. “I think I might hurl.”

“Sh!” Stacey peered through the curtain. Vic stared over her shoulder, and saw two jiggling shapes slurping and slithering down the road. “They’re fast! No telling how many of them are out there.” She turned away from the window. “I need the phone.”

“Wait, wait a minute!” Vic hissed. “Who are you calling? You’re almost acting like you expected this to happen!”

Stacey snorted. “Of course, silly, why do you think I asked you out?”

A volley of shots startled the pair of them, sixteen bullets chewing up the wallpaper before the gun-toting home owner even got down the stairs. “Home invasion!” the man shouted, completely naked and semi-erect. “Home invasion!”

“Home invasion?” Bedroom doors opened up left and right as three teenage kids and one eight-year-old emerged from their private fortresses. The little ones only had nine millimeters, but the older boys had matching automatic rifles, exploding in a Fourth of July of light, noise, and raining plaster.

“Home invasion!” An elderly woman emerged from the mother-in-law suite, her grey hair in curlers, and a bandolier belt of pineapple grenades slung across her chest.

Vic and Stacey ran from the house, completely ignoring the approaching aliens, who turned to watch the kids run pell-mell down the lawn. The house erupted, the whole fire-armed family unleashing their best approximation of a rebel yell, and unloading round after round in a sprinkler-spray of bullets across the lawn. An upstairs window shattered, glass crashing down on the barefoot children below, as their mother leaned out over the sill, clutching a bazooka. “Home invasion!”

Sixteen alien eyes looked at each other, then two squishy bodies slithered toward the mini militia, their soft green flesh absorbing and digesting the delicious lead.

Half a mile down the road, the heel on Stacey’s shoe snapped. She went down skidding, the relentless road tearing up her knees as blood beaded on the palms of her hands. Vic slowed to a stop, panting, and threw a longing look down the road before jogging back. He pulled Stacey’s arm across his shoulders, hoisting her up and carrying her forward. “You're too slow like this,” Stacey told him, clutching tight to his jacket. “They’ll catch us for sure.”

“Well, then, watch my back, sister,” Vic instructed. “Cause I ain’t dropping you. What is happening? I had a very different plan for tonight.” Stacey looked up at him, her arms around his neck, and Vic got the impression she really didn’t know what all those other couples had been doing in their parents’ cars. Vic sighed. “Get me a nail, will ya?”

Fishing the Emerald City out of Vic’s shirt pocket, Stacey stuck it between his lips and held the lighter for him. “I don’t have a car,” Stacey explained. “Nobody walks up here, not without drawing attention. That look-out is the best place for southbound visibility. We knew the ship was coming, we just didn’t know it was going to crash.”

“That surprised me, too,” Vic puffed around the death stick. “What are those things?”

“They’re a race of aliens from a planet we have contact with,” Stacey told him. “The prisoners must have taken over the controls.”

“Prisoners?”

Stacey nodded. “This planet sends its worst criminals here. They usually land safely, drop the cargo, and fly off again. You might not want to mention this to just anyone.”

“Oh, they’ll love it at the looney bin.” Vic breathed out a stream of smoke. “I see a pay phone.”

The little glass structure was under the lone streetlight where the hilltop lane connected to the highway, with a little street sign advertising the once scenic view. Vic waited outside to finish his cigarette while Stacey fed her dime into the machine, talking in low tones to someone who needed a lot of repetition. Vic wished he had a watch to help tell him how much trouble he was in, if it was likely anybody had started looking for the missing kids, if he was still in his hometown and not the Twilight Zone. He crushed the Emerald City beneath his heel and glanced toward the narrow street. “Stacey!” he shouted, banging his fist on the phone booth. “They’re coming!”

There were five of them now, the street lamp glinting off their slimy skin, their quick slithering leaving a mucus trail glittering in a line down the road. Stacey pushed open the door and pulled Vic inside, the two of them pressed against each other in the tight space, the heat of their bodies fogging the glass. “They haven’t figured out doors yet,” Stacey whispered. “Just stay calm.”

The sinister green creatures swept over the sticky asphalt, circling the little glass box with their hungry mandibles quivering in anticipation. Their dark eyes searched the flimsy sanctuary for weaknesses, tentacles leaving smears of slime on the edges of the frame. Vic and Stacey clung to each other, barely daring to breathe, as one of those tentacles poked and prodded and wormed its way inside. Stacey clutched tight to Vic, her heart beating against his battered pack as the tentacle inched closer.

A gunshot cracked across the main road. The creatures pulled back from the glass to investigate, their squelching bodies parting enough for Vic to see a man in a tailored suit firing his weapon into the air. “That’s right!” the man shouted, firing off another round. “Come on, you slugs! Come get your dinner!”

The wobbly invaders slurped toward the gunman, greedily pursuing the man as he backed up a ramp and into a box truck. The slimy sponges oozed up the ramp in pursuit, but the man clambered up a ladder through a hatch in the box top, escaping his fleshy predators and jumping down to secure the back doors, sealing the trap.

“Daddy!” Stacey pushed open the phone booth door and ran over the asphalt in her bare feet, embracing the gunman as he turned from the bolt. Vic followed at a cautious pace, overhearing her say, “Thank God the truck works! I don’t know how many of them are loose in the woods.”

“That’s alright, sweetheart,” said the imposing alien hunter. “You’re safe, that’s what matters. Everything else is loose ends.” He raised his weapon, pointing the barrel directly at Vic.

Vic felt every muscle clench around his bladder, his vision blurring as his lungs seized. All the relief that washed over him once the aliens were caught was cruelly swept away, replaced with icy terror as the man who had space invaders for enemies counted Vic among the slugs.

Stacey giggled and pushed the gun away. “Daddy! You don’t have to worry about Vic; he’s a user.”

“Oh.” The cold-eyed man relaxed, pointed the weapon skyward, and fished around in his jacket pocket. He flicked a small square box in Vic’s direction. “On the house, kid.”

Vic caught the airborne peace offering. It was a fresh pack of Emerald City cigarettes.

The man rolled up the ramp and made his way toward the cab of the truck, while Stacey smiled at Vic’s shocked expression. “Daddy owns the factory,” Stacey explained. “That’s why I chose you. If you tell anyone, you’ll never taste an Emerald City cigarette again.”

Turning the packet over in his hands, Vic swallowed the urge to light one. “I’m handy like that.”

“We help the aliens with their prison population,” Stacey said. “And they make us the number one international best-selling brand of pre-rolled cigarettes. By providing a very addictive secret ingredient.”

The pack tumbled from Vic’s fingers. “The slime?”

“The slime.” Stacey stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Vic’s forehead. “See you at school.”

Vic hugged the arms of his jacket as he watched Stacey bound up to the right side of the cab. How was he supposed to explain any of this? The dead kids, the family in the over-armed house, his dad’s car? How was he supposed to get home? And how was he supposed to live with the knowledge that every cigarette he’d smoked from the age of twelve was laced with the snail trails of some intergalactic death-row convicts?

At the back of the box truck, a little green tentacle pushed and wriggled its way through a gap in the doors. It waved languidly in the air, absently reaching out for anything to hold onto.

As the truck started, Vic opened up the fresh pack of Emerald City cigarettes. He turned one of the innocent cylinders between his fingers, seeing how the finish on the filter caught the light in the exact same way the grasping tentacle did. Taking the old pack out of his pocket, Vic took hold of the wiggling tendril and squeezed the slime from it, scraping the slick residue into the crumpled cardboard. It left shimmering, slightly acidic trails on Vic’s fingers, and Vic really wanted to lick it. He really wanted to lick it.

The truck rumbled away, carrying the top secret and highly addictive cargo toward certain doom, but not before Vic had a chance to light up. And unlock the bolt securing the doors.