Ben Wayland stepped out of the patrol car and felt the sweep of heat off the desert. Celeste pointed to a dark crevice between clusters of rocky foothills. The peculiar, inky shapes laced the hunger ache in his gut with unease.

“Animal attack happened up there.”

Sheriff Celeste only spoke when necessary. Approaching forty, pretty except she wore her black hair short and duty belt made her waistline imperceptible. Her soul-piercing gaze kept the local troublemakers in check.

Apparently, it didn’t work on animals.

Ben knew animals.

Humans baffled him. Especially the ones that lived in Artica. Something about the rural town left a distinct imprint on its inhabitants. They kept to themselves, lived simple lives, even had their own dialect. Everyone said Ine when they meant I mean.

There was a UFO spotting at least once a week and rumors swirled yearly about a secret military installation.

He wondered if he still reeked of small-town.

It disappointed him that Celeste stayed.

Ben hiked up to the attack scene behind her, navigating the rocks with ease. Being out here again reminded him of youthful hours seeking rattlesnakes and jackrabbits.

The moon and big dipper emerged overhead as they reached the scene. 

Wind lifted the police tape, its elastic bands contracted. With a tough and practical flick, Celeste moved the tape aside. Ben took two steps forward and the hole in his stomach lurched.

An itch under his lab coat drew goosebumps from his neck down his arms. He’d seen plenty of animal cadavers but the sight of a human one doused his romantic notions of police work.

The man was sprawled over a rock, mouth open, eyes struck wide. Sand covered his body like a fungus, clinging to the plaid shirt and flaking away from brittle, sun-scorched skin. His back arched over the boulder; exposed chest gouged with claw marks.

“I’d recognize a coyote attack.”

Officer Tacca scared the hell out of Ben.

He stood there, just a whiff of shadow in the dark. Tacca was in his late twenties, had a stalky build and thick brows always expressive beneath tan Stetson.

“What do you reckon did this?” Tacca asked.

Celeste flipped on a flashlight and directed the beam at the body.

Ben knelt. A breeze intensified the stench and he sank his nose into his shoulder.

The corpse belonged to Old Fred, a friend of his last relative in Artica, Aunt Bobbie.

Flies buzzed over the gashes in his chest. Each mark left a pristine trail as if surgically inscribed. Ben slapped on the latex and touched the mucus that coagulated around each cut.

He undid Old Fred’s buttons to get a better look. Unease deepened with each new inch of exposed skin.

“Cougar maybe?” Tacca said.

Ben glanced up at the sheriff.

He knew she was thinking about Aunt Bobbie’s chickens.

Two months ago, Bobbie called him and rambled on about an animal stalking her chicken coops.

“Ine, I’m not complaining,” she told him, obviously intending to do just that, “but my chickens have gone bonkers. Six times as many eggs now, all in the dead of night. When I go to collect them in the morning there isn’t a one! Celeste is coming out to investigate.”

At first, he thought it was Bobbie’s attempt to coax him out for a visit so she could play match-maker. She acted as if her night chickens deserved the attention the town usually reserved for unmarked military vehicles and spontaneous meteor showers.

Celeste never called him which confirmed his suspicion that Aunt Bobbie was just being paranoid. Ben ignored her but Old Fred wouldn’t have. Old Fred was twice as paranoid and believed everything Aunt Bobbie said.

Looked like he found the animal in question.

Ben tugged at the buttons—the last two popped off—sufficient to peel away the cloth. Not a lot of blood for an animal attack. Protected by the latex gloves, Ben touched the clear ooze seeping from Fred’s chest.

The frigid temperature of the ooze was the first in a string of anomalies. Fred hadn’t been gnawed on. The dust Ben thought was sand turned out to be a million microscopic flakes of flesh.

He pushed against the chest cavity and the skin contracted just enough to expose a half-inch hole drilled directly to the heart.

Ben skipped dinner to drive out to Artica. He was glad he did.

He bit back the dry heaves, tossed the shirt back over Old Fred’s chest and coughed into his shoulder.

 “Claw marks are way too big for a prairie dog. Wouldn’t attack a man anyway,” Tacca said.

A far-off, still sleeping dread shrouded Ben.

“An animal couldn’t have done this.”

Tacca put a hand to the back of his neck.

“That your official veterinary opinion?”

Ben nodded.

“So, what? We’re looking at murder?”

“Can’t say for sure without an autopsy. You need to call the state coroner. This is out of my field.”

“I’ll get on the horn.” Tacca’s eager footfalls started down the cliff.

“No,” Celeste said.

Tacca stopped.

Her soft but firm tone solicited obedience in just about everyone Ben knew.

“No outsiders. I trust Ben. No one else.” She looked at him. He refused to fall prey to her will like all the other saps in town. “Call it in as an accidental fall. We’ll hold the body locally and Dr. Wayland will do the autopsy.”

Ben stared at her; hoped she would see the error of her ways so he wouldn’t have to argue.

Tacca moved toward the path.

“You can’t,” Ben said.

“I can and I will.”

“That’s not like you. What is going on?”

 Celeste draped her hand over gun hoist, silent and still, deep in thought. In her expression, a longing for trust that drew him closer.

“I’ve seen this kind of attack before. When I was a rookie. Sheriff Wan called it in, and then he and half the town disappeared.”

“They moved, boss. You know that,” Tacca said.

The whites of her eyes narrowed to cat slits.

“We were told they moved,” she said to Ben.

Her suspicions pumped panic into the hot air. Ben’s already upset gut growled. 

Tacca swallowed, visible even in the dark.

Twenty seconds later, Ben found himself helping the two cops as they tugged and twisted Old Fred off the rock.

Tacca yelped and let go of Fred’s ankles. Celeste lost her grip and the body slipped from its perch. Ben saw the unholy writing revealed beneath, etched on the boulder.

Fred’s last word, EVIL, accompanied an arrow that pointed into the bowels of the mountain.

“Subtle,” Ben said.

“Boss, I gotta call this in.”

Celeste unbuttoned the latch over her gun.

“I said no. We deal with this.”

She climbed up the steep incline in the direction of the arrow.

Tacca exchanged a glance with Ben and they both followed.

Dusk vanished and full darkness closed around them. Tacca’s flashlight illuminated five steps ahead and was swallowed down the mouth of the canyon. In the shrinking confines of the trail, Ben’s sleeping dread developed a scent. The smell intensified the higher they climbed. He tasted it faintly on his lips, a sulfur tang with a whiff of rotten egg. He looked up at the sky, crisp and filled with stars. A rim of light shimmered over the top of the nearest cliff.

Ben clawed his way up the steepest path yet and stood at the edge of open desert. Flanked by the sheriff and deputy, he looked down into an oasis of man-made structures. Electricity spasmed across power lines and sputtered light from parking lot lamps. Windows along the sides of a dozen futuristic buildings fluttered with shadows. 

“What in the Sam-hill?” Tacca asked.

Celeste descended with impressive skill even with the bulky belt around her middle. Ben followed, slid on his side, lab coat covered in dust by the time he reached the bottom.

He brushed off what he could and looked up. Found himself at the base of a twenty-foot fence comprised of hundreds of crisscrossed wires and capped by a tangle of barbs. Three yards down, a piece of broken fence pipe stuck out of the ground like some ancient warning spike.

Fence wire covered the earth, torn from the center of the barricade. A gaping hole wide enough for a horse tempted entry to the well-fortified facility.

Tufts of animal hair stuck in the wires—-plucked from whatever hide they belonged to by mangled chain–link—drew Ben closer. The coarse hair reminded him of the pet pig Aunt Bobbie gave him for his tenth birthday.

“What you think was trying to get in?” Tacca asked.

Celeste trespassed through the breach and said, “or get out.”

“Not a good idea, boss.”

“My town. My jurisdiction. Secret military base, my ass.”

Tacca adjusted the duty belt over the roll at the base of his button-down shirt. His cowboy boots scuffed dust as he trailed after his boss. He passed Ben and they shared a glance. Undertone said they both thought Celeste charged foolhardy where she didn’t belong.

Ben hesitated. This wasn’t like speeding down a deserted highway. He’d already broken a dozen laws. If he crossed the threshold there was no turning back.

Silhouettes of his friends merged with the darkness.

The rumble of hunger returned.

He tugged at the annoying collar of his lab coat.

To hell with it.

He stripped off the coat, tossed it in the dirt behind him and climbed through the fence. 

He jogged across the concrete parking lot. Passed rows of cars, all with doors swinging open.

Something crunched under his Oxfords.

Two more crunches.

He stopped.

Waited until the light flickered.

Hollow chicken eggs surrounded his feet. A minefield of shells stretched the breadth of the parking lot.

He picked one up and discovered a hole in the top through which the contents must have been drained.

“Ine, it’s freaking weird, right?”

Ben crushed the eggshell in his hand, surprised by Tacca again.

“You really have to stop doing that.”

“You know what else is weird?” Tacca crunched across the lot, arms spread. “There’s no one here.”

Something needled Ben in the aftermath of Tacca’s shouting. He saw a shadow move in the crevices between forsaken cars. Paranoia worthy of Aunt Bobbie.

Ben listened.

No crunching.

No movement.

Empty cars and shells around him, nothing else.

The rotten egg stench overpowered his other senses.

Across the egg field, Celeste shoved her shoulder against the door of the most impenetrable looking of the buildings.

The wall, a concrete slab, had no windows. A pin-pad with a high-tech lock barred entry to the single steel door.

Typical Celeste, thinking she could bulldoze through.

Ben inched toward her, stepped around pieces of shell.

Licked his lips but still felt parched.

A crackle spoiled his bid for perfect silence. Tacca tromped along with a recklessness Ben envied.

There’s no one here, Ben repeated to himself.

Superficially empty.

He crept up beside Celeste.

“Guess we know what happened to my aunt’s eggs.”

Wires spilled from gouges in the panel beneath the security lock. Slashed at like Old Fred’s chest.

Ben popped the panel off and studied the connections.

He could do this. Undergrad he switched from electrical engineering to veterinary medicine because the thought of work in a cold, sterile environment without the joy of an animal made him shudder.

Celeste fished a pocket knife from her belt and handed it to him.

He cut green wires and twisted them around the exposed copper of the blue ones. The electronic display, cracked down the center, flashed Access Denied.

Ben clipped the ends from the white wires and connected what he hoped was the security override.

The steel groaned behind concrete. The door unlatched.

Celeste looked at him, eyes mirthful.  

“You also the car-jacker we’ve been after?”

“I used to dabble in electronics.”

Damn, he sounded like a geek.

She swung open the door, drew her gun and went in.

A blast of dank air swept over him.

Shadows swayed over objects inside the room, lit by the glow from several monitors on the far wall. The screens churned with static, secured above a console that looked like something fit for NASA.

Three lab tables filled with beakers and empty cages ran the length of the adjacent room, visible through panes of thick glass. Shards from a broken window mixed with the eggshells strewn about the tile. Chairs were overturned and a large section of the console was missing. Ripped out, nothing left but dangling cables and shredded metal.

Ben up-righted a chair and his fingers itched to touch the computer keys. He glanced at the sheriff for permission.

“Please, dabble.”

Ben snuggled up to the console and searched the desktop. He clicked a folder labeled Lab Data. Inside, more folders, each numerical. He scrolled to the last one, Experiment #218 Video Logs. He clicked play all and leaned back in the chair.   

The lab appeared on the monitors.

Clean.

Halogen lights intact and radiant.

Cages of rats filled the tables.

A man, possibly in his fifties, leaned toward the camera and adjusted bottle cap eyeglasses.

“DNA reconstruction attempt two eighteen is complete. We will now begin live specimen testing.”

The scientist tweaked the camera and technicians holding long syringes came into view. Focus zoomed in on a lab worker as she stuck the needle into a squealing rodent.

Bawk, bawk.

Something pecked Ben’s ankle. He looked down.

A chicken cocked its head, comb straight up, waddles wagging.

They examined each other.

“Guys?”

Celeste thumbed through a file cabinet in a shadowy corner across the room and Tacca rummaged cupboards.

The chicken dropped an egg. It lost interest in Ben and bobbed away. A trail of eggs dribbled behind. Ben knew animals. Chickens, especially. This was not normal.

He followed the click of chicken feet into a corridor. Passed the faint outline of a stairwell and the door to another lab.

He lingered a few steps behind the chicken. Every few feet another egg rolled across the floor, no apparent distress to the hen.  

From around a bend in the corridor, he heard noises. A choir of squawks. He skipped past the hen, the red flash of a faded alarm light streaking across his vision.

A fire door torn from its hinges had fallen sideways against the wall. Ben glanced over his shoulder, wondered if he should go back for the sheriff.

The noise drew him across the threshold.

He kept quiet but stealth wasn’t necessary. The deafening clack of birds flapped against his eardrums.

Ben no longer stood in an abandoned lab but in a factory of chickens producing so violently, he half expected to see the hens explode.

The hen cages, each too small for its occupant, reached up to the ceiling around all sides of a rotunda. Thin trays beneath each cage dropped the eggs into an impressive labyrinth of runways until they vanished into pressurized tubes.

He leaned over the railing. Looked down. The original floor had been ripped out and cages plunged down the rotunda into an endless black pit.

It was like an egg factory for the end of the world. 

A clammy hand touched his arm.

He swung around.

Tacca jolted, surprised.

“Stop doing that!” He yelled over the clucking.

“The videos mentioned a main lab, this way,” Celeste said. She surveyed the chicken room in one sweep, and Ben knew her mind locked in every detail.

They traveled away from the noise and Tacca asked, “why would scientists need that many eggs?”

Ben glanced at Celeste.

He waited for her to say they wouldn’t.

Silent, she threaded her way down the corridor until they exited the complex and stepped into a courtyard.

Beyond the expanse of pathways and grass, they found another larger building. Above the roof, a spire reached to the sky, originating from somewhere inside. Its metallic hull reflected light and shadow from below. Humming vibrated through the ground and tingled Ben’s toes. 

Celeste steered straight for the alien tower.

Tacca followed.

The thought of entering the main lab and into the center of whatever strange experiments existed here slowed Ben down.

He took sluggish steps.

Glanced over his shoulder.

The alternative, facing the distant shrieks of chickens alone and unarmed gave exploration of a probably radioactive-secret-missile-tower some appeal. 

Celeste took deliberate and intense strides, glanced up to the spire and then around them, gun drawn. Ben focused on her instead of his growing fear. That almost sexy figure helped him forget the throbbing, frothy beat of blood through his body. 

The door of the main lab had been tossed aside; wires of the security pad slashed like the other.

They entered a hanger the size of a football field. Huge computers reared from the shadows, an amalgamation of wires and monitors forming monstrous machines of unfamiliar technology. Through a serrated hole in the ceiling, moonlight glided down between engines that rumbled with such force the metal plating quivered. Up through the ceiling, the pillar stabbed the stars, the point at the end thicker around than a four-door sedan.

The metal coating rippled when Ben neared.

Next to the console was a pitcher half full of eggs. Shells were scattered over the ground.

Ben stopped at the console and studied the strange letters on the keyboard. He tapped the keys until data displayed on the screen. The action left his fingers coated in slime, same texture as the stuff oozing from Old Fred’s corpse.

He wiped the slime on his pants. Missed his lab coat.

Schematics lit up the monitor. Ben couldn’t read the writing but the numbers told him one thing.

“The pillar is locked on the sun.”

Celeste leaned over his shoulder, her fresh scent a respite from rotten eggs.

Something clicked across the floor. Ben darted behind one of the generators, Celeste close on his heels. Tacca hid below a desk across the room. The young deputy peered around the side and Celeste shook her head.

Bawk, bawk, bawk.

Tacca left the safety of cover, said, “just another stupid chicken.”

Ben came out of hiding after the all clear nod from Celeste. She still had her gun drawn.

Tacca scuttled after the hen. He scooped it up on the other side of the pillar. Stroked the feathers and the hen clucked and an egg splattered over his boot.

“These things could solve world hunger.”

Ben was looking down at Tacca’s shoes when he heard it. The unmistakable slice of a scalpel through flesh.

Tacca gurgled. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Moonlight reflected off the needle blade stuck through his chest. 

He dropped the hen.

His limbs quivered and he fell hard on his knees.

Celeste aimed the gun into the darkness. Ben scanned for a target.

Tacca fell face first to the ground.

Ben felt the impact in his gut, the dull ache of remorse.       

The blade lingered in the air and then retracted into the snout of the unnatural.

Ben backpedaled when the animal lifted to its hindquarters. It was at least eight feet, muscular body transparent enough to see veins of green. Grated light illuminated its form as it advanced, the elongated skull dipping toward a bony torso covered in tufts of hair. There were no eyes, no ears. A tiny round hole was embedded at the end of its snout. It dropped to all fours; talons of its changeable bi-pedal hand drummed across the tiled floor. 

Even Celeste hesitated at the sight.

Then, two shots fired.

The animal took the bullets in the chest and emitted a high-pitched shriek. Its muscles trembled but it hurled forward, hands collapsing mid-lunge. It skidded across the floor on its stomach.

Ben shut out everything–the lingering ring of gunfire, the howling monster, the humming pillar–grabbed Celeste by the wrist and tore toward the exit.

The hulking mass of another creature filled the doorway. Celeste shot at it but this creature sidestepped the blast. The beast jumped, its trajectory dead set on them. Ben pivoted the other direction. He jumped over the body of the first monster and spotted another door across the room.

Celeste ran faster than he did. She dropped to one knee near the door and shot cover fire while he slipped through the opening. He stumbled on the sidewalk, scraped his arms as he fell. Over his shoulder, he saw Celeste slam and lock the door before both creatures burst through.

“It got up? You shot it in the chest!”

Celeste bent over, taking in penetrating breaths.

“Run.”

He obeyed. They sprinted across another parking lot, hot pavement morphing into crunchy grass.

Ben’s hamstrings screamed at the pace. He wished he had upped his treadmill game.

Celeste stopped and took shelter behind a building. Ben gulped down air and his blurred vision cleared. The building came into focus. Not a lab, a home with a porch and pink flamingos staked in the yard. Down a rolling hill, Ben spotted a swing set, chains creaking in the midnight breeze.           

“Is it just me or is this the creepiest place on the planet?”

Celeste didn’t look at him. She used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes. The sight made him swallow down a lump.

He squeezed her shoulder.

“You saved my life.” He hoped that offered her some solace.

Her jaw locked.

“Not yet.”

They were moving again. Up the residential street toward the looming black mass of a fifty-foot wall. No way they could scale that. They were trapped just like whoever had lived here. If they tried to climb, they’d be easy prey for the monsters.

Mailboxes escorted them down the street, each stamped with block letters. Johnson. Foster. Wan.

Ben winced.

“Is this where the town moved?”

Celeste ran her fingers over the W in Wan.  

“Or forced relocation.”

“You think they knew about those things?”

“Maybe. Whoever built this prison thought they knew too much.”

She moved to someone’s garage door and used the butt of her gun to break the lock. He watched her rummage around inside and took a step back when she emerged. She carried a red gasoline tank in one hand and an arm full of fireworks.

“We’ll double back and hope we can get through. If not, I’m taking a few of them with me.”

Ben stuffed the fireworks in his pockets.

Celeste cut through the Foster’s yard.

Ben followed her down the fence line keenly aware of all noises in the night.

They re-entered the main lab through an unlocked side door.

No sign of the monsters.

Celeste stormed down the corridor. Ben matched pace but stubbed his toes on debris barely visible in the partial light. She stopped at the threshold of an open door.

A phone rang.

Celeste bent, one eye peering around the doorframe. Ben leaned over her balanced against the wall so he could see inside too.

Human bodies floated in containers of translucent slime like the stuff that still coated his fingers. He swallowed, unconsciously put his hand over Celeste’s shoulder.

In the nearest container, he recognized Sheriff Wan, ridged body unblemished save for the small, round hole in his chest.

The phone rang again and snapped Ben out of a horror induced trance.

Someone answered.

“Yes, it’s me.”

Ben scanned down the row of bodies for the source of the voice.

“How many times must I assure you? The base is functioning normally.”

Ben knew that voice.

It was the scientist from the video. Ben located his body, six from the end. A monster extended its massive hand into the slime of the container, its thumb resting on the scientist’s Adam’s apple. Its other hand awkwardly clutched the phone and somehow the beast projected the human voice into the receiver.

Celeste darted across the open threshold. Ben tried to follow but stumbled and fell over. He landed in the middle of the open door; frozen in plain sight of the monster only twenty feet away.

The beast concentrated on the phone.

Ben panicked, paralyzed for a heart-stopping instant.

Celeste grabbed him by the sleeve and he scrambled to the safety of the other side.

Her eyes scolded him, then they closed and she pressed her forehead to his. He took in a long breath, relished the intimate moment. Braced for more running.

They arrived back at the strange machine room a few minutes later. Three monsters huddled together to the right of the escape door.

“We need a diversion,” Celeste whispered.

Ben didn’t volunteer to be the bait.

“I have an idea,” she said. She opened the gun casing, checked the remaining bullets and flipped it shut. “Do you think you can find the controls for the chicken cages?”

Ben grinned.

“Can I.”

Celeste covered him as he stole through the shadows and up to a control panel. Luck was on his side. The keyboard was in English and he navigated a cyber world somewhere between the familiar and the alien.

Not only could he open the cages, he located the ventilation system that fed air up the deep rotunda.

He glanced at Celeste.

A monster stalked across the space between them. Ben backed into the dark corner and lost sight of the sheriff.

The monster cradled a bucket of eggs in its arm. A sharp blade emerged from its snout and pierced the top of an egg, sucked up the raw yolk. The creature devoured the entire bucket and flipped the empty shells carelessly across the room.

Ben scanned the dark and saw Celeste crouched beside a thumping machine. She poured out the gas over the floor, looked up and nodded.

His heart skipped.

He knew what he had to do.

The monster turned its back and Ben took advantage. He returned to the console. His fingers swept across the damp keys as he triggered the cages to open and cranked the air vent to full blast. Chickens would soon be flying everywhere.

He arranged all of the fireworks under the spire controls. Hoped it was enough.

An alarm rattled the machines.

The monsters shrieked, dropped to all fours and bounded out the door.

He waited for Celeste.

Together they raced away from the spire. Gasoline chugged out of the tank as they moved across the courtyard.

One building to go.

Celeste dropped the gas can and handed Ben a lighter. Gun in hand, she went to the door while Ben snapped the flame to life.

The gas ignited in an intense burst. Fire shot across the courtyard and into the main lab.

“Come on. It’s clear.”

Ben was dreaming about the speed of the patrol car when a thousand chickens burst out of the door. The chaos didn’t slow Celeste. She charged into the flurry of feathers.

Beaks and talons scratched Ben as he shoved through the brood. Heard an explosion behind him.

He cupped his hand over his eyes, unable to see more than a few inches ahead. He found Celeste’s hand and held tight. She didn’t know animals as he did and the swarm slowed her down. He pulled her along, used the wall of the corridor as a guide. The talons of the monsters clicked against metal but he didn’t know if they were yards away or right next to him.

His hand felt a doorknob. Turned it and fell inside, Celeste right on top of him. Together they forced the door shut. He heard voices.

Monitors in the first room they found were still playing videos from the experiments. 

Celeste was covered in chicken crap. Blood glistened from cuts on her face and neck. Ben looked down and found himself in the same state, shoes covered in egg yolk.

“Today really sucks,” she said and shook feces from her hands.

If she wasn’t so right, he might have laughed.

They passed between the tables, avoided the empty cages and a few stray chickens. The exit door appeared and Ben exhaled the breath held since they entered.

“We tried to terminate the experiment,” the scientist said.

Ben glanced over his shoulder at the screens. The bottle-cap glasses of the scientist, broken, hung crooked on his nose. The camera auto-focused on him, hair in a fizz and forehead smeared with blood.

“DNA reconstructed from the deceased extra-terrestrial has consumed the rats at an exponential rate.”

The camera bobbed as the scientist ran down the hallway. The video deteriorated and Ben only caught fragments.

“…highly intelligent…”

“…another breech in containment…”

The picture flickered with static.

“…to colonize…”

The scientist screamed and the camera tumbled to the floor. At the skewed angle, Ben saw a rat monster, poised in stillness in the top left corner of the screen. Looking more human than alien, it sat upright, basked in the computer light as if its eyeless face could absorb data. It turned its elongated skull to the camera and its talons flashed. The screen went blank.

Ben refocused on the exit and stepped out of the building behind Celeste. He wished he hadn’t destroyed the pin-pad lock.

His feet crunched shells as they tore across the parking lot. Traces of egg coated his shoes and he skated over pavement.

The fence appeared twenty feet ahead, jagged hole inside offering escape to the desert.

Beyond, at least a mile of wilderness still separated them from Celeste’s patrol car.

His muscles ached at the reality of more hard running.

Celeste crouched, moved forward.

Talons slashed the air in front of him.

He backed away, slipped but stayed upright.

The thing lunged at him.

A shot fired. Knocked the monster off course enough for Ben to dodge the attack.

Lightning reflexes whacked the gun from Celeste’s hand and the weapon sailed over the desert. She cried out as its fingers crushed around her waist and tossed her against the fence like a rag doll. Dragging up dust, the creature crawled over her and aimed its snout at her heart.

Ben charged to save Celeste. To save his quirky small town and the people in it. People he loved.

The demon whirled at him. Its razor tongue cut the air and missed Ben’s chest by inches. His actions gave Celeste time to escape. 

The ill-conceived charge brought him too close to the alien.

Powerful limbs slammed him against the chain-link, lifted his feet off the ground. It had no teeth but the low growl from its throat was primal. Slime dripped from its face and hands and coagulated the dust at its feet into a pool of mud. Ben squeezed his eyes shut, prepared for the pain of a final strike. Regret at his failure to protect his aunt and the town from the dark menace abducted his last thoughts.

The creature reared; head cocked back in wild victory.

Against the backdrop of a starry sky, Ben saw Celeste jump onto the alien. She stabbed its long skull with her pocket knife. Rather than delivering lethal blows, she only enraged the animal.

The muscular arm knocked her away and she landed on her back with a groan. 

Ben dropped into the dust. His fingers caught hold of a jagged rock. He found his baseball stance. Snapped back his arm, aimed the rock at the monster’s snout and let go.

Direct hit.

The alien staggered backward, stunned, and allowed Ben a chance to drive forward.

His fingers sunk into the coat of slime as he made contact and pushed. The alien stumbled backward, angled by Ben over the piece of broken fence piping. The weight of its eight-foot hide slammed onto the pipe, enough to drive the metal through its heart.

Payback for Tacca.

It made no sound as it died. Ben waited, tasted blood in his mouth but didn’t move until the alien limbs stopped twitching. He dropped to his knees beside Celeste.

She looked dead.

“You alright?”

“No.” She choked on the word. Ben touched her side; she winced. Possible cracked rips.

“We have to go.”

She nodded, sat up and gasped. Ben lifted her up. Tried not to cause her more pain. They hobbled together through the fence. Ben stepped on a stray chicken and drew an angry squawk.

They climbed back up the steep cliff. Two shadows galloped across the parking lot below in hot pursuit.

Down the narrow cliff trails, they struggled for footing.

Ben lost his grip and Celeste groaned when she bumped against the rocky cliff. He put his fingers to his lips. She stilled.

The husk of deep breathing filled the darkness nearby. Ben wondered if it had a sense of smell.

Celeste’s body quivered; the first signs of shock. They needed a hospital.

Beams of moonlight passed over the ravine and flashed over the colored plastic of the police siren. The lapse in clouds revealed the passenger door was open.

Distant explosions preceded a billow of smoke over the mountain.

Heavy steps sounded up the trail.

Ben grabbed Celeste and chanced it.

He sprinted, steadied the sheriff while they gained downward speed.

Eight feet to the car. The wedge of pain in his back was numbed by adrenaline. 

Twenty feet, another explosion in the distance.

Celeste jabbed a hand into her pocket.

Ben dropped her onto the hood, arms shaking.

She fumbled with the keys. They slipped between her slathered hands. The clink reverberated for miles.

Ben glared at her.

She held her breath.

They waited.

A long howl drifted on the hot breeze. Ben turned up to the ravine. The monster sprinted down the cliff on all fours, signs of morning sun drawing up behind it.

“Shit.” Celeste tossed Ben the keys and then plunged through the open passenger door.

Ben climbed into the driver side, shoved the keys in the ignition.

Celeste pulled on her door but it caught on a thrashing talon.

He turned the key.

Nothing.

Below the steering wheel, wires brushed his legs.

This is why the car door was open; why the doors of all the abandon cars were swinging freely. The wires had been slashed to shreds by the creatures.

Highly intelligent.

He looked at Celeste.

They both knew it was over.

He helped her fend off the alien and they pulled the passenger door shut together.

The alien pummeled the glass, fist over fist. A spiral of cracks cascaded down the windshield. Four more creatures poured down from the red cliffs in a frenzied flood.

The tongue blade shot from the alien snout and broke through the glass on the driver side windshield. Ben hunkered, arms over head, to avoid the flying shards.

“Are there any guns in here?”

The car rocked under the weight of the attackers. Ben’s head crashed into the roof.

“A shotgun in the trunk.”

Not accessible.

Ben grabbed her hand.

Prepared for death.

Life-giving sun peaked over the mountain pass. Ben heard something like the sizzle of eggs in a frying pan. The car stopped bucking.

The aliens scattered away, trail of slime behind them.

Ben narrowed his eyes, unsure if he was really seeing a retreat.

Two of the beasts were already up the ravine. A third panted behind. Direct sunlight hit the porous green skin and the coat of slime evaporated in a thick cloud of smoke. Tufts of hair caught fire. Spontaneous combustion consumed alien flesh.

Ben felt a chill in the hot air as he understood for the first time why the alien spire was aimed at the sun.

To colonize.

“They couldn’t get Old Fred before the sun came up,” Ben said. He looked over at Celeste. Pale, covered in blood and manure, with her hand clutching her side she was undeniably beautiful.

“You look like crap.”

She shifted with effort and glared.

“So do you.”

Ben grabbed the palm mic from the radio.

Still working.

 “Please tell me you are good with me calling this in.”

“Call everyone.”