“Absolutely not! You are not going anywhere tonight!” Sams mom stood about a foot and a half shorter than him but somehow still towered over the overweight 28 year old.
“The news is saying that NO ONE knows whats going to happen tonight and you want to go meet with your friends, your family needs you here!” Sams mom started to get teary eyed and Sam immediately knew what that meant.
“Okay ma, don’t cry don’t cry” he hugged his mother “fine, I wont go alright I will stay here, Im sorry I even thought about it” Sam could never stand seeing his mother crying specially if he was the cause of it.
“Just go to sleep and I will be in the living room watching this stuff on the news with Carm, I promise” Sams mom was already getting tired, he didn’t think she slept at all in the last couple of days, she could usually go for another 15 minutes of yelling when she was this angry but she cooled down quickly and went to bed soon after.
He went to go sit down on the couch next to his older sister. She wasn’t on her phone tonight, it was the first time since the announcement that Sam had seen his sister without her head glued to her iphone and right now she sat there without the her phone even in the room. It looked like she was staring blankly into space.
“Hey Carm, you doing alright?” He placed his hand on her knee, it seemed to startle her a bit.
“Oh, hey Sammy” she looked at Samuel in his eyes and placed a hand on his cheek, he couldn’t remember the last time she called him Sammy.
“Do you remember when we all went to Disney Land, I think you were 6 or 7” he was surprised by her question.
“umm, yeah I remember bits of it here and there, not sure If I actually remember it or if I am creating the memories from pictures and the VHS dad made of the trip” he smiled while memories of the trip started to populate in his mind.
“I remember the trip like it happened yesterday, do you know why we went to Disney Land in the first place?” Carm tapped on the couch so Sam would sit next to her.
“no, I think it was your birthday or something”
“Yeah dad said it was for my birthday but he really wanted us to have a chance to go to there before we moved to Texas in a few months, him and mom had already made the decision to move and they wanted us all to experience Disney Land. I had fun but I didn’t realize it was going to be the last birthday I would have with dad” Carms voice softened.
“You know when dad died later that year I spent months trying to remember everything about the Disney Land trip, I asked mom to sit with me and walk me through the whole 2 days we spent there. There was soo much I had forgotten about the trip after less than a year, I forgot that dad sat on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich after you moved it and he didn’t notice” Carm started smiling and she was almost laughing but her eyes seemed saddened and started to swell with tears.
“I had forgotten how mom got nauseous after the tea cup ride and then dad started gagging after she started gagging and then you started too” tears were coming down her eyes.
“Carm, whats this about? I don’t want you to worry about all this stuff” Sam tried to console his sister.
“You know you are just like dad, did I ever tell you that?”
“Mom always mentions how I look like him” he shrugged
“Yeah but its more than looks, you walk like dad did, you stand like him, your strong and kind and you speak like dad did. He was always making things sound less worse than they were and he did it so that people didn’t worry. We could be stuck in the middle of the highway with two flat tires and a hundred cars whizzing by us and he would smile and joke that I would have to push the car or something”
Sam smiled, Carm would only talk about their dad on birthdays or holidays, usually to mention how he would have loved the party.
“why are you thinking about Dad right now?” Sam was genuinely curious.
“Because he was the only person in the world who could have made me feel safe during a time like this Sam and right now I’m really scared and I just wish my daddy was here” Carm broke down into tears.
She was 14 when their dad died in the car accident. Everyone was devastated but Carm wasn’t the same for a long time. Sams mom once mentioned to him how the first few weeks after the funeral Carm couldn’t sleep, she would have frequent nightmares and started to suffer from depression. The move to Texas combined with their Dads death was the hardest thing that Carm had dealth with, Sam vauguely remembered that time. He wasn’t sure if he blocked out the sadness or if his mom and older sister protected him from the reality of death.
Sam hugged his sister and held on until she pulled away and sat down, he didn’t know what to say and he didn’t want to say anything dumb or silly at this time so he just sat down quietly with his sister. After a few seconds he spoke up.
“thanks Carm”
“what for?” she replied.
“thanks for saying that I’m like dad” Carm smiled and laid her head on Sams shoulder, after a few seconds he could hear her snoring.
“damn its already 3:15AM:” Sam thought to himself, he had already checked in on his mom and sisters, they were all completely out. The aliens could have landed in their backyard and his sisters would have slept through it.
Stolen story; please report.
“I will be back before they even notice im gone” that was all the convincing he needed to leave. Sam was careful not to make any noise when sneaking out, he had become an expert at sneaking out since he was 15 and his craft only got better with age.
As soon as he hit the highway he noticed just how many cars were still out, he had to double check to make sure he was heading to the right location. The Weatherford Alkii Meetup group or WAM as they declared themselves on facebook was sitting at over 300 people strong by the day of the Arrival. When he arrived at the shopping center lot there were closer to a thousand people out there. Mostly young men, there were some women out there but in the group that Jackson was with it was a pretty solid sausage fest. As soon as he found Jackson he walked over to say hi.
“hey whats up Jackson?” Jackson was fiddling with the white and black projector trying to find a setting to make the big screen look a little less distorted.
“you need some help” Jackson looked a little flustered.
“have you ever messed with one of these before?”
“yeah, maybe not that specific model but I know how to work with projectors, let me take a look at it” Sam stood in front of Jackson and navigated through the menus after about 2 minutes the screen was adjusted and looking good.
“what the heck? Dude Ive been messing with that for like 20 minutes” Jackson looked relieved.
“Thanks soo much! only two of the organizers showed up and we have about 3 times the turnout so I am stressing man” Sam smiled, he could tell that this was much more than what Jackson had intended.
“what else can I do?” Jackson hugged Sam and quickly pointed to several coolers on the back of a pickup at the edge of the parking lot.
“if you can get everything from the back of that truck to the table over there near the tent, then id owe you forever!”
“you got it!” Sam started walking to the truck being careful not to jog, he was okay with walking but as soon as his body detected any form of mild cardio it would sweat like he was on mile 20 of the boston marathon.
He arrived at what he assumed was Jacksons truck and started to grab the closest cooler to him when he heard a voice cut across the lot.
“hey shithead! we already said the drinks are on hold until we unload them!” he put the cooler down and turned to see who said that to him when he was doing a very anti-shithead thing.
He locked eyes with a woman making a b line to him, she had a beer in one hand was making a balled up fist with the other. Her hair was dirty blonde and her face was sweaty and frowning, she must have been in her early 30s, maybe a bit younger. He immediately noticed her green eyes, even from several feet away they stood out, she was nearly as tall as him but it was all in the legs. He wondered how he didn’t notice this girl when he first arrived onsite, she was exactly his type. She was wearing a black tank top and dark blue denim shorts; each step she took toward Sam looked to provide her with more momentum if that was possible before he could say a word in response she was a few feet away from him.
“Are you a drunk?” she asked.
“what?” he responded
“Are you a drunk? An alcoholic?” she repeated sounding more condescending and making a drinking gesture with her pinkly an thumb.
“no.. I don’t think so” he wasn’t sure why he added the second part to his response, he knows for sure he is not an alcoholic but this woman was making him question it all. He was pretty sure that he should be pissed off at how shes approaching him but he was feeling more attracted than agitated.
“Then why cant you wait for us to put the beer out like we said we would before you go stealing from the communal beer?” she stood there with her hands on her hips waiting for a response.
“Jackson asked me to put the coolers out by the tent” he pointed in the general direction of the parking lot but could not find himself able to take his eyes off of hers.
“Jackson!” she yelled and half the attendees stopped talking and turned to look at her, apparently this girl had done some yelling already.
“whats up!” Jackson responded, he was under a table messing with some speakers.
“this big guy with you?” her voice did not drop a single octave. A few of the people chuckled.
“that’s Sam! Leave him alone!” he ducked back under the table.
“Alright then Samblurgar, you’re in the clear.” She gave him one hard tap on the shoulder and turned around. Sam was stirred awake and it took everything for him to not stare while she walked away.
“Samblurgar?” he said”
She turned her head and said “Yeah cause yore name is Sam and your Hamblurgaring the beer” she turned back and started to walk again, she got five feet away before Sam spoke again.
“But I wasn’t hamblurgaring the beer though!” she stopped again.
“Yeah I know, it was a joke Sampleton” he was ninety nine percent sure she was making another joke but he couldn’t help himself.
“That was Sam and Simpleton right?!” the girl kept walking her head turned slightly and he could see the edge of her smile.
“yeah see, Im no Sampleton I can understand jokes! Im actually more of a Samwise myself!” he waited a few seconds before he thought to himself why the fuck did a make a Lord of the Rings reference.
By the time Jackson and his mysterious organizer partner finished setting everything up it was about 10 minutes to the announcement. The crowd started to cool down, a few people started to leave maybe they figured that they should be with loved ones right now. Sam was checking his phone every minute for any message from his family, he was worried that they may have woken up and noticed that he left in the middle of the night.
There were five minutes left now and the Anxiety and excitement began to creep in deeper, he looked around and could see that almost everyone was quiet, except for a few murmurs here and there most people were glued to the big screen, even Jackson stopped fiddling with cables and equipment and just sat quietly. Still no messages from his family.
In the last minute before the Arrival, the live feed of the Nevada Dessert became silent, the announcers who were non stop commentating for the last few hours waited patiently now with the rest of the world. Sam could feel the tension everywhere around him, this was about to become the most important event in human history, and only 11 days after the last most important event in human history.
In the last few seconds before the Arrival the earth stood still, no one dared to even blink just in case they missed what would happen. As the countdown on the livestream reached zero something changed in the screen, everyone saw it but no one saw it coming.
“whoah what in the fuck is that” Jackson pointed at the large black prism that everyone else saw. It floated about 10 feet from the ground it was shaped like a giant pyramid it was hard to gage the size of the damn thing, the pointy end of the pyramid was at a forty five degree angle pointing toward the ground. It looked like the pyramid or ship or whatever it was teleported to the Arrival site but there was loud cracking noise that immediately followed the appearance of the pyramid, dust and sand were blown out of the way. The mini explosion would have probably hurt any humans near the landing location but the closest humans were 10 miles away according to the news. The remote cameras that captured the live stream were still rattling a bit only settling down after a few more seconds along with other dirt and debris that was kicked up violently. After the dust settled and the pyramid did nothing more, an announcer finally spoke.
“they have arrived.”