Static

As the car radio emitted nothing but a steady stream of static, Alice made slightly insincere promises to the twins that they would all be just fine. “Sure we’ll be fine,” she assured herself, “why wouldn’t we be?” But try as she may, she couldn’t turn the damn thing off, and it was unnerving her. In fact, the high-pitched buzzing sound was maddening. “Think of it as white noise,” she kept telling herself, “just white noise.” That helped a bit. In any case, she had no choice but to keep driving—what else could she do? It was Provision Day. And they needed to eat.

With the scenery rushing by, she thought about the day she first noticed that something was off.  She woke up as usual that day, roused by the twins who wanted their breakfast. Everything seemed fine except the ringing—no buzzing—in her ears. What was it called—tendonitis or something? Whatever it was, it was making her a bit crazy.

Later, when she turned on the TV after lunch, she realized she had no internet. “That’s weird,” she thought. She walked over to see if the cable was plugged in—maybe one of the twins knocked it loose—but it was. As she got up, she realized that the TV was making noise—like white noise she thought. But no picture. She went to find her cell phone to see if she could get a signal on it. She turned it on and waited a minute. “Satellite mobile” flashed across the screen, but there was no reception just that same humming—no buzzing—sound. “So much for that fancy-ass dish in the yard,” she thought.

Said dish had been something she had insisted on. “If we’re gonna live so far from base—on a godforsaken farm,” she had told her good-for-nothing husband, “then we need one of those big satellite dishes.” “Fine,” he had said, “we’re saving so much living here, it’s worth it.” Here was his late parents’ farm, complete with a WWII bomb shelter and all the prepper shit anyone could ask for. Alice thought it was gross—all the dirty cans and jars. She wouldn’t eat that crap for anything. “Botulism in a Ball Jar,“ she thought, “no thanks.” What were they afraid of anyway, UFOs?” she asked Mr. Good-for-nothing one day with more than a tinge of sarcasm in her voice. “UFOs are real, Al, I know it for a fact,” Mr. Good-for-nothing had insisted. Yeah, like anyone in the damn Air Force would trust him with that information. “Whatever,” she had snickered back.

By the time Provision Day rolled around—that’s what she called the day she made her dreaded sojourn to the base commissary for groceries--she was very much looking forward to it. “As soon as we get cell service, I’ll call someone to come fix that damn dish,” she thought.

The journey to the base started as they always did. She piled the twins into their car seats, turned on the tablets in front of them to their favorite cartoon, and began the 2-and-a-half-hour drive.  She was surprised at first at how few cars she saw on the road. But it wasn’t until she passed Hank’s, the popular truck stop, that she grew concerned—the typically overflowing parking lot was nearly empty. “How can that be?” she thought. “Could it be a holiday?”  She tried to think, but that damn static made her head pound. 

Now she was fiddling with the radio dial for the hundredth time—but it droned on. She jerked the knob so hard that it broke off in her hand. “God damn piece of shit!” she thought as she flung it to the floor.  She could feel her anxiety rising. “We must be close enough for a cell signal by now,” she told herself. She reached for her cell phone, but it wasn’t on the seat where she had laid it. “Shit, it must be on the floor,” she thought. As she tried to scan the floor on the passenger’s side, she realized that it was getting dark. “Oh great,” she thought, “a storm—just what we need.”  She quickly switched on her headlights. But it didn’t feel like a storm. A sense of foreboding filled her as the sky quickly darkened. For a second, she wondered whether aliens could black the out sun, then quickly brushed the thought aside. 

“We need to pull over,” she said out loud. She was talking to herself in a shaky voice. “Yes,” she reassured herself, "we’ll pull over and wait for the storm to pass." Besides, stopping would give her a chance to stretch her legs. It was then she realized that the car had stopped.  “What’s happening?” Alice screamed. The twins were screaming now too. The radio static grew louder now, as if to match their screams. She put her hands over her ears, but it was so loud, it was nearly tearing her head apart. 

For a second, she was frozen. But then her mind reengaged and all she wanted was to get to the twins. She tore off her seatbelt and just as she was opening the door, two large men quickly approached the car. One of them yanked her door open. He was filthy and reeked of death. Alice screamed. He reached in for her. She reared back trying desperately to elude him, but he grabbed her arm and jerked her out of the car. Alice tried to fight but he easily overpowered her, pinning her to the side of the car with one hand. The other man opened the back door and reached for the twins. Alice was screaming and frantically trying to get away from the man holding her, but she couldn’t move and the noise continued to mask her screams. The second man was leaving with the twins—she could see them screaming too. She knew that they were calling for her, but she couldn’t hear them over the deafening static. 

The man pinning her now picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. She pounded her fists into his back as hard as she could. Blood began running down his back. Finally--to her horror—one of her fists punched through his flesh. She shrieked and jerked her hand out of the hole she had created. The man dropped her. She had hurt him, but not enough, and he was reaching for her again. There was a large rock a few inches from her hand. Instinctively, she picked it up and flung it at his skull. The blow tore away the side of his head and face. He reeled back and pawed frantically at the gore that was his face. She scrambled to her feet and ran. She kept running into the darkness until she finally passed out.

When Alice came to, there was a small middle-aged woman crouched over her, peering closely into her face. She’s coming to, the woman whispered.  Alice immediately began to scream. “My babies! The twins! They took my babies!” The woman’s expression turned to horror. She lurched back away from Alice. “Are you crazy?” she whispered angrily. Alice pulled herself up. She was in a full panic. 

“THEY TOOK MY BABIES!” she exclaimed. “I’m not crazy! They took my twi…”

A large hand came from behind her and covered her mouth. She tried to get away, but this person—who was every bit as big as the goons from the car--looped his other hand around her waist. The more she struggled, the more he squeezed. 

“OK lady,” he was whispering, but he clearly meant business. “I don’t know what rock you just crawled out from under, but I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here.” By now, Alice’s eyes felt like they were bulging out of her head, and between his hand over her mouth and his arm constricting her waist, she was dangerously close to passing out again.

“Now here’s how this is going to go,” he whispered. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth and if you let out anything more than a loud breath, I am going to break you in half like a twig.” At that moment, Alice realized that there was a small circle of people around them, all staring desperately at the unfolding scene. “So tell me ma’am, do we have a deal?” Alice moved her head up and down as much as she could. “Just to be clear now,” he continued softly, “I’m going to move my hand and you are going to be quiet as a church mouse. Or I will kill you.” She managed to nod. “OK, nice and easy…” he whispered as he slowly moved his hand away from her mouth. He still had her pinned to him but at least she could breathe. 

She started to say something. “Wha…” is all she managed to get out and his hand shot up to cover her mouth again. “You crazy bitch. You wanna get us all killed?” came an angry whisper from one of the onlookers. The man holding Alice calmly whispered back, “she obviously doesn’t know what’s going on, Ben. Do you ma’am?” She shook her head vigorously as tears began streaming down her cheeks. 

“So let’s try this again,” he whispered. “I’m gonna take my hand away again and ask you some questions…so that we can get acquainted. Then we’ll explain everything. You got that?” Alice nodded. “But you need to say everything quietly—like I’m talkin' to you now, got that?” Alice nodded again. The man slowly lowered his hand again. He let go of her waist and turned her toward him.

“What’s your name?” “Alice,” she whispered. “Hi Alice. I’m Rick. We’ll introduce you to the rest of the group later.” Alice looked at the faces staring at her—they were dirty and scared. She was sobbing now. Rick pulled the scarf he was wearing off his neck and gave it to her. “Here—cry into this—please, you need to be quiet.” She took the scarf, buried her face in it and cried.

“Look, you have obviously been somewhere isolated for the past week or so, yes?” She nodded without looking up. “Ok, so this is going to come as a shock, but there’s no way to sugar coat it. Aliens landed 6 days ago.” She jerked her head up but before any words could escape her, he pushed her head back down into the scarf. “Alice, remember, you need to be quiet,” he said softly.

“Why?” she whispered back through her tears. 

“There’s something about our voices that pisses them off. We don’t know why, but we do know that it’s best not to piss them off.” 

“Why, wh…what do they do?” 

“Well, let’s just say it ain’t pretty.” 

Rick kneeled down in front of her and took his hands in hers. “We understand how hard this must be for you—believe me, it was for all of us. But we’ve had time to get used to it and we’ve figured out how to stay alive. So if you have any chance of finding those babies of yours, please listen to what we’ve learned.” Alice nodded and sobbed into the scarf as quietly as she could.

For the next hour or so, Rick and the others told her the story. Aliens had landed over every major city on Earth. They communicated telepathically. 

“Like we all heard the same message in our heads” a youngish man whispered. “And at first, they seemed—well—reasonable. They said they had technology that could heal people and reverse pollution.” 

“We ain’t seen none of that,” the small woman interrupted quietly. 

“Yeah,” the young man agreed. “In any case, they said that in exchange they would take what they needed from us.”

“At first no one knew what any of it meant,” Rick continued the story softly. “We didn’t understand what they wanted. And pretty much before anyone could react, they took out everything--the internet, comms, satellites, the electrical grid, everything. We were completely cut off.” Rick swallowed and took a deep breath. “Then they took…” he hesitated, “hostages.”

“Hostages?” 

“Yeah—that’s what we call them—the aliens took over people’s bodies and is forcing them to do things.” Alice thought about the two men she had encountered outside her car and shuddered.

“My husband was on base when they took him,” the small woman added. She put her hand over her mouth and sobbed silently. 

“Is that why the men that caught us were in that—condition?” Alice whispered in horror.

“Yes, the bodies they’re in are beginning to decay.” Rick answered. The thought of a decaying Mr. good-for-nothing flashed in her mind. “Oh god. This isn’t happening. Please tell me this isn’t happening.” 

Rick put his finger to his lips and stared into her eyes. “Shhhh,” he said, “easy now.”

But it was happening. It was quiet for a few minutes while Alice took it all in. She realized now that she was sitting inside a van. It was moving slowly down the highway. 

“So why didn’t I hear the message?”  she whispered finally.

“I was wondering that too,” Rick said quietly. “Maybe you were far enough away?” 

“So, what do they want?  Do we know?” she whispered. She noticed a couple of nervous glances. 

Rick kneeled in front of her. She was still holding the scarf. He gently took it from her. “This isn’t easy to say, but as far as we can tell, they’re using the hostages to take babies and children.” Horror-filled recognition flooded Alice’s face. Rick thrust the scarf into her mouth just in time to mask the scream.

The group in the van, Alice later learned, were from the same church. They explained that they had picked her up from the side of the road where she had collapsed after escaping the hostage. They were defying a “shelter in place” order issued just before the comms blackout and instead were trying to flee to the desert. 

“We all decided it was best to get out of Dodge,” a young husband was explaining quietly (Alice assumed the woman clinging to his arm was his wife). “They don’t seem to notice us--unless we scream or yell or cry out. We don’t know why--it seems to hurt them or something, and that makes them mad.” 

“Like crazy-ass-out-of-control mad,” a young woman whispered. It was Rick’s teenaged daughter. “Hostages show up out of nowhere and all hell breaks loose,” she added quietly.

When they stopped at a rest stop Alice noticed that she was still hearing the radio static even though she was far away from the van. She thought it was her imagination. “Nah, we all hear it,” Rick said, “it’s been that way since they landed. It’s like they’re drowning out the sound of our voices—at least that’s one hypothesis.”

“So why can’t we fight them?” she asked when they got back to the van. “There must be something we can do besides running.”

“What?”, the young husband whispered angrily, “you think we’ve been sitting on our friggin’ hands for a week?”   He took a deep breath. “Sorry, it’s just that we lost our kids too.” His wife began sobbing quietly. 

Tears streamed down Alices face. “So we wait?” she cried softly, “we just fucking wait?”

“What do you suggest?” Rick asked, his voice quiet and calm.

“Let’s go to the base—see if…” The small woman cut her off. “They’re all gone.”  

“Gone where?” 

“They were all taken as--hostages,” she replied. An image of decaying Mr. Good-for-nothing flashed in Alice’s mind again and she winced.

“Look, we told you, we agreed that the best chance of surviving is to hole up somewhere and wait a while,” the man named Ben whispered. “And if the hostages are rotting, they’re gonna need replacements.”

“So that’s the plan?” Alice’s anger was clearly rising. 

“You got a better one?”

“Yes, how about we try to find our kids?” she hissed through clenched teeth. 

“Where Alice?” Rick asked quietly—he was still calm.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice rising slightly. 

“Hush!” the small woman shouted in a whisper. 

Alice was staring into Rick’s eyes now. She modulated her voice, “Rick, we have to try, please promise me we’ll try.” 

Rick sighed. “Ok, but it’s gonna take time—we don’t even know what we’re dealing with.” 

Alice sobbed. “We need a plan,” she whispered. 

“Yes--as soon as we find someplace safe—where we can think. You said you didn’t hear the message, that means that their reach is limited,” Rick whispered. 

Of course! Why hadn’t she thought about this before? “I know a place we can go,” she whispered excitedly.   She told the group about the prepper farm. It meant backtracking some, but they agreed it would be a good place to hide for a while. 

“And then we’ll make a plan, right Rick?” 

“Sure,” he whispered, trying to sound sincere.

Arriving at the farm made the pain of missing the twins worse for Alice and she refused to give up trying to find them. The pain also hardened her resolve not to let those creatures take the baby boy now growing in her belly. Her role in the group reflected this resolve. She refused to give in to despair or let the others succumb to hopelessness.

But it was at night that her fears took over in the form of a recurring nightmare. In it, she’d wake up with a start and look around. “Oh, thank God, thank God!” she would say, “it was all just a dream—a stupid dream!” Then she’d leap out of bed and run to the nursery where she’d find an empty crib. She’d scream for the baby over and over. But the steady din of static would drown out the sound.