Thirty days.
The countdown has started, North America shivers under the shadow of a massive alien spacecraft, and humanity is hurtling toward an unknown future that lurks at the end of the timer. Somewhere, somehow, the heroes are making their plan...
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HARRISONBURG, VIRGINIA, USA
JULY 27, 3:14 AM
"What the fuck is that?" Harlan Withers shrieked, finger pointed directly up at the sky above.
He was lying on his back, smoking a joint on the roof of the Waffle House where he worked, so there was no one else around to shriek at, but when things just appear out of nowhere, sometimes a man's got to shriek.
His finger should have been pointed at something in the night sky, but while that was technically what it was doing, what was going on was a hell of a lot more complicated than Harlan's brain was currently equipped to handle.
The wide open sky was gone.The splash of stars that Harlan enjoyed watching the hell out of every night was now obscured by something impossibly huge. Distant circles of blinking red and blue lights were scattered across a black, unmoving expanse that seemed to go on forever in all directions, all the way to the horizon. The night sky had been obstructed in the blink of an eye as if it had never existed.
Harlan dragged his gaze from the thing high above, over to the half-smoked blunt in his hand. It was his nightly mid-shift treat, and while it gave him a decent buzz to get through the next couple of hours until the morning crew arrived, it had never given him hallucinations before. His gaze returned to the sky, where his finger was still pointing, and then the enormity of exactly what he was seeing hit him all at once: it was a fucking U.F.O.
A gust of wind struck him, plastering his hands down at his sides, the gravel on the roof biting into his exposed skin. No dammit, he didn't want to die like this, lying on his back on the roof of the Waffle House. It wasn't fair! He hadn't even finished his joint, and that shit was expensive–
Two seconds later, the wind died out. Harlan swore he heard the rattle of cars and trees getting the shit shaken out of them, but at that point, all he could think of was getting the hell off the roof. He needed to tell someone right now!
"MARIA! CALL NINE-ONE-ONE!" Harlan screamed as adrenaline, fear, and absolute-fucking-panic kicked in with a vengeance. Maria probably couldn't hear him from inside the kitchen, but Harlan had left the back door propped open with a cinder block, so there was hope. His phone was nothing but a brick since a customer had thrown it at the wall last week, and he still had to get a new one.
He crawled to the top of the roof access ladder. This wasn't the wisest move on Harlan's part since he was nice and properly stoned, adrenaline or not, and he stumbled to catch his balance. He swayed for a long moment on one leg, then grabbed the metal handles.
He caught a glimpse of the closeby I-81, headlights becoming taillights and vice-versa as the occasional car sped on into the night, somehow oblivious to the monstrosity above them.
