This is the way the party ends...

My Grandpa always said he could remember exactly where he was when Kennedy was shot. My Dad talked about where he was when the Towers came down on 9/11.

I will always remember where I was the day the aliens invaded.

I was at a party—more specifically, a party I wasn’t invited to, or really supposed to be at.

Now, I’ll be honest, I’ve always viewed parties as a place to have fun, or more importantly, a place to meet girls.

At least that was how I imagined them, since the type of people I hung out with were never invited to parties… including this one.

So, when we showed up, we were patently ignored as non-entities.

Jeb, Gordon, and I had been hanging out near the punch bowl. I suppose we were hoping some cute girl would have a sudden thirst that would necessitate a rescue—because that was our only hope of actually speaking to a girl.

You see, I am not afraid to admit that we’re nerds.

Not your Hollywood style nerd with taped glasses and high GPA’s…

Ok, I did actually have a 4.0 GPA, but that is beside the point. Being smart doesn’t help you get girls in High School. Real life wasn’t like the movies; no cute girl had ever asked me for help with her homework, so the whole “I’m really smart,” thing wasn’t helping me much.

As a matter of fact, I was supposed to be home, working on an extra credit paper that I didn’t need to maintain said GPA. However, in a fit of adolescent rebellion, I had snuck out of the house, and convinced the others to sneak out of theirs as well, so we could join the party—thus saving our lives.

You see, I was a 16-year-old senior in High School that had never really spoken with any girl except my mom and teachers. This was my last chance for some beautiful young woman to realize that I was a great guy that she should date… or at least realize that within 5 years I would probably have a six-figure income while the various jocks and grunts that were normally popular would be flunking out of college and end up making minimum wage flipping burgers or working in a factory.

But either way, we would talk for a while and leave the party together—maybe even go out and have a fun night on the town…

But let’s move on.

The first inkling we had that there was a problem was a tremendous flash that lit up the night sky like a strobe.

“That was from town.” Gordon offered thoughtfully, “I…” He trailed off as the lights went out.

By this point in my life, I had seen my share of power outages. Most of the time it was because of a major storm—we had a lot of thunderstorms here—but this time there was no storm.

Just a big flash of light and everything was off.

And I mean everything. As the darkness enveloped the yard some girl shrieked in fright. The only light left was coming from some of those tiki-torches that the host had put out to dispel some of the pesky mosquitos that were inevitable on a humid spring evening.

My first impulse was to turn on the flashlight app on my phone, just in case one of those cute girls I mentioned needed rescue from the dark—like maybe the one that shrieked—but my phone wouldn’t power on.

“Hey,” I muttered, “My phone stopped working.”

“You probably forgot to charge it.” Jeb offered, “Let me…” I could hear a tapping noise, “Wait, mine won’t power on either.”

My eyes cut to the southern sky. You see, probably 99% of the people at the party were checking their phones and questioning what could have possibly happened.

I was seven steps past that and had already compiled the data into a hypothesis.

Now, I may have mentioned that we are nerds. Given that large flash, loss of power, and the sudden loss of two electronic devices that were independent from the power grid, I was certain that whatever it was had created an electromagnetic pulse.

And that wasn’t a good thing.

The conversation had already increased in volume, so I had to speak loudly to make certain the others heard me. “Something is wrong—that was an EMP.”

As I said, we were nerds, hence none of them told me the hypothesis I had postulated was stupid or the product of my imagination. They simply started discussing the variables to either prove or disprove it.

“Well,” Jeb started off, “It’s not nuclear. A mushroom cloud expands upwards at almost 350 meters per second. That would be highly visible from this location.”

“Maybe something smaller scale? Like one of the main transformers in town exploding? If it overloaded, it may have produced a short scale pulse that could have affected us this far out.” Gordon wondered aloud.

“Possibly,” Jeb agreed hesitantly, “But I’m not certain whether it would generate an EMP, and if it did, we are…” He thought for a moment, “approximately three miles away. That would require a significant pulse.”

“True,” I offered, “And there is only one way to find out.” I had no interest in postulating any further theories without more data. I slowly started to feel my way toward the corner of the house. As I recalled, the driveway offered a less impeded view of the southern horizon. If a transformer station exploded, we would be able to see the glow of the fire from there.

It looked like the rest of the party had moved closer to the tiki-torches while they waited for the lights to come back on. But we were moving in the opposite direction. As we came around to the front of the house, my eyes were starting to get used to the dark, so that made it a tad easier.

“Who’s there?’ A girl’s voice questioned from the darkness by the driveway. I couldn’t make her out—she was in the shadows closer to the house—and her voice wasn’t familiar.

“Dennis Sharpe—and I’m with Jeb Nesbitt and Gordon Wolters.”

“Ah, the nerd pack.”

Her flat statement sent a quick shot of disappointment through my system, but I recovered quickly. “We wanted to get a better view of the southern skyline.”

“Oh?” She stepped from the shadows, a vague form in the dim light. “Why is that?”

“Dennis thinks the power outage was caused by an EMP.” Gordon spoke confidently—probably because it was my theory at stake. “We wanted to see what made the flash.”

Silence for a moment, “Interesting. Well, I was inside, but I saw some of the flash… there’s a good view from the driveway about midway down.” She moved closer to me. “I think I’ll tag along.”

I shrugged and felt my way past the cars. Once we moved away from the house, there was enough light from the stars to light up the driveway. “Sorry, it’s hard to see—who are you by the way?”

“Jessica Lynn, I’m Andrea’s older sister.”

I immediately knew who she was. She was a few years older than us—she had graduated like two years ago and joined the Army. She wasn’t as cute as Andrea, she looked more like a bulldog—a dangerous, plausibly rabid bulldog—but that was fine with me. She had always been a lot nicer than her sister, and no one was going to mess with us with her tagging along.

“I thought you were in the Army.” I asked as we moved down the driveway.

“Home on leave. My next assignment is in Germany, and I’m taking a vacation first.”

“Oh, that’s…” I trailed off, my line of thought completely sidelined as we cleared the trees and I saw a huge… thing in the sky, blocking out the entire southern horizon. I stopped and pointed, “What in the world is that?”

Of course, it was so dark that no one could see my hand when I pointed, but no one had to; they were all focused on the thing over town.

“Is that a spaceship?” Jeb asked unnecessarily. His voice had risen a full fourteen octaves and he sounded like Michael Jackson having a panic attack. “That’s a spaceship. Are we being invaded by aliens?”

“Crap!” Was all Jessica had to offer the conversation, and she took off toward the house.

Well, at that point I was drawing a blank as to what to do, so we stood there watching the spaceship—we had all mentally agreed that it was in fact a spaceship by this point. There were numerous glowing things that were swarming around it, and I could see flashes of light shooting toward the ground. “It’s an invasion,” I muttered slowly.

Thirty seconds later a light shone from the house toward us. “Ok, nerd pack, follow me.” Jessica had evidently found a flashlight, “We need to get control of this party, now.”

It wasn’t that she scared me… ok, it was partially because she scared me, but mostly because she had an aura of authority that I started toward her immediately. As I got closer, I could see her in the halo of light from the flashlight. She was wearing a pistol on her belt and was carrying a large shotgun along with the flashlight.

She turned and started moving toward the back yard. Nothing much had changed—most of the kids were standing around the tiki-torches, and a group had started a fire in the barbecue pit at the back of the patio. That light was enough to see most of the kids were completely clueless and unconcerned about the fact that their parents were likely getting their brains sucked out by alien visitors less than three miles to the south.

I didn’t know what Jessica’s plan to get their attention would be. I thought she might yell, or whistle loudly.

Nope. She fired off a round from the shotgun. “Ok, people, listen up.” She yelled.

There were a few screams, followed by titters of laughter, and then the talking started full force once more.

“I SAID LISTEN UP!” She yelled, this time in a much more commanding tone.

Now, I didn’t pee myself, but I was close.

“I need everyone to listen closely.” At this point, everyone was listening closely, mostly in fright. “How many of you know who I am?”

A few nervous titters, and a lot of hands went up.

“What the heck, Jess?” A voice suddenly exclaimed. Andrea pushed her way out from a group of people and started marching toward her sister, her face a mask of anger. “What are you doing to my…”

“SHUT IT!” Jessica roared.

Jeb moaned in fear behind me, and I am pretty sure he peed right then.

Speaking loudly to the group, Jessica started pacing back and forth. “For those who do not know me, I am Sgt. Jessica Lynn, and the only reason that matters is because of the next thing I’m going to tell you.” She paused and looked at the group. “That big flash that happened a few minutes ago and knocked out the power—that wasn’t just a simple transformer blowing. There is a large alien ship sitting in the air just south of here, and it is attacking the city.”

There was silence for all of twelve seconds, and then the laughter started.

“Oh, come on…”

“Great joke…”

“…not even Halloween yet…”

The comments kept coming, and if they distressed Jessica in any way, it was just to make her mad.

Boom!

The shotgun roared again, effectively silencing the commentary.

“Just so you understand, this is not a joke, or a prank, or part of the party. We are going to quietly gather in the front driveway so you can see yourself.” She gestured toward us, “Nerd pack, stay with me.”

“What? Are the geeks with you now? Why are they even here?” Andrea whined—her mask of anger had given way to a mask of tears.

“They are my advisors for the moment, unless someone here is smarter than them.”

Of course, no one there was, so they filed past us heading for the driveway.

Jessica turned on us, “Transportation. What will run?”

“Since the EMP was strong enough to kill cellphones, I would say most modern cars will be dead as well. At least nothing with an electronic start.” I spoke first, mainly because Jeb and Gordon were still too scared to respond. “We might find a lawn mower or four-wheeler—anything with a pull start should work.” I looked at Gordon, “What year did they start putting computer chips in cars?”

“Umm… 1980?” He offered hesitantly.

I turned back to Jessica, “Ok, so a lot of vehicles made before 1980 would have a good chance of running as well.”

“Don’t think anyone has that old of a car here.” She gestured with the flashlight, “Ok, lets check on the kiddies.”

We moved around to the front of the house. About half of the partygoers were standing at the edge of the driveway staring at the spaceship. The rest were in different vehicles trying to start them.

But none of them would start.

“Alright, kiddies. As you can see, its not a joke. We don’t know what’s going on, but I need everyone who plans on hunkering down here to get into the house and lay low. I’m going down there to check things out.” She shined the light on me, Jeb, and Gordon. “While I’m gone, I’m leaving the nerd pack in charge.”

“I think that…” One of the jocks started to argue—I think he was the captain of the football team, but since I never went to games… who knows—but before he had three words out of his mouth, Jessica marched up to him and shone a light in his face,

“ARE YOU QUESTIONING ME?” She yelled, her face was fierce, daring him to say another word.

I’m pretty sure he peed because he shut his mouth and backed off really quick.

Jessica looked around slowly, “As I said, these two are in charge until I get back.”

Now, as soon as that left her mouth, I had to wonder what she meant—she said two, and not three—but I didn’t have long to wait, because as she started herding the kids back toward the house, she faced me and said, “Alright nerd. Let’s hit the garage.”

Now, I was hoping that I was just tagging along for technical advice, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. We stepped into that garage and shone the light on a small side by side.

“It’s a Trail Master. My dad bought this a few years ago. The person who owned it kept burning out the starter, so he took off all of the electronics and it runs on a regular pull-start motor.” She crossed over to it, “You have a choice. You want to drive or ride shotgun?”

I blinked at least three times before answering, “Um, how about shotgun?” I didn’t want to admit it, but at 16, I had never driven anything except the lawnmower—and our lawnmower was a push mower.

And I didn’t even play Mario Kart.

“Ok, nerd, that’s good.” She held out the shotgun.

I realized right then that when she said “ride shotgun” it included carrying a shotgun, and probably shooting one as well. I stared at that shotgun for about twelve seconds before I took a deep breath, “Actually, let me drive.”

We got the Trail Master out of the garage and got it started. Jessica had found a headlamp for me to wear while I was driving, so we pulled slowly down the side of the driveway past the cars and headed for the main road with nothing but the little spot of light to guide us.

The city was on fire. As we sped off down the hill toward the flaming town, I had no idea what we were heading in to. I had no idea what would happen. I had no idea if we would live or die.

And even though a girl had talked to me, and we had left the party together… I knew that this was not how I expected the party to end.