Story A:
Tabitha had just turned the key in the lock when her phone went off. Stepping inside, she dropped her heavy backpack with a sigh and thumbed the screen on.
MOM read the display, and she sighed again. "Another late night..."
"Hey Tabby honey, you done with practice?"
"Yeah Mom, just got home. What's up?"
"Well, it's going to be another late night for me. You aunt will bring Jakey by at 7:00. There's those pork chops in the fridge, just make something else to go with them and make sure he's in bed by 10:00."
"Sure Mom."
Tabitha wandered over to the kitchen, gazing vaguely around for 'something else'.
"Sasha said she's helping him with his homework so no worries about that. And sorry this is happening again, you know I'd be there if I could. There's just a lot going on right now and--"
Her mom went on apologetically while she selected a can of green beans and a pouch of instant potatoes from the pantry, and reached for the fridge door to see if that can of biscuits was still in there. It should be, not like Mom was doing a lot of cooking lately or around longer than it took to pound down three cups of coffee in the morning. Aunt Sasha had brought the pork chops over yesterday. They'd be tough when reheated.
It was then she saw the blue bag with its rhinestoned butterfly in the fridge and let out another sigh. "Mom, you forgot your shake again."
"I did?"
Tabitha tried to laugh as her mom let out a four letter word and immediately apologized again. "Yep, I'm looking right at them." Flipping up the flap revealed the expected heavy steel thermos sloshing with the terrifying mixture of organic wheat grass and whey and kale and god knew what else her mom put together every morning, and bag of baby carrots. She reflected that between the scatter brained, nervous energy and her diet her mom might as well be a very buff rabbit.
"Oh, gosh honey I hate to ask, but could you--"
"Yeah Mom, no problem. Fourth floor again?" They had had this exact same conversation Monday, or maybe it had been Tuesday. She thought with amusement that if she were a couple years older she could deliver for Uber and actually get paid for this, with all this experience.
"Yes, but just leave it at the desk. There's a meeting, I won't be able to see you and they don't want anyone wandering around, these special clients--well, I shouldn't say anything." Her mom fell into an awkward silence.
"Sure, I'll be there in half an hour." Tabitha said, pouring herself a glass of juice and grabbing for a box of cheese crackers and only half paying attention as they said their goodbyes.
A few minutes later she was back on her bike. This late in the year the sky was already darkening fast, not that it was any less humid, and it had been a warm day. No chance of a white Christmas here, she had missed those since they moved to the US. She knew everyone mourned differently, but packing up all three of their lives and moving them thousands of miles south had been a hell of a way for Mom to get over Dad. They had family here, she said, but it's not like she ever saw them anyway when all she did was work.
The first strings of lights were already up, and she had paused at a stop sign to observe Rudolph attending the birth of Christ when she noticed something in the sky up ahead, a powerful white light. Pedaling forward to get a quicker view in a gap between some buildings and trees, Tabitha saw the light, like a spotlight, centered on the hospital on the hill up ahead to her left. Several smaller likes zipped through the sky above it, which from the dim outline and sound even from this distance she recognized as helicopters. "What on Earth..."
This was a small town. The one hospital had one helicopter, that it used to take the seriously injured to a larger city. Though the hospital itself was kind of an oddity she knew, they did some kind of research and sometimes treated special, anonymous patients. Tabitha was very vague on the the details, and she only knew this much of course because her mom worked there. That's where she was headed now. But why the whole fleet, like something out of a movie?
There was no time to dwell on this thought though as in that moment, less than a minute after spotting the light, the streets around her went dark. The strings of Christmas lights winked off, and the street lights, and the lights in the windows of houses, office buildings, and shops.
A few cars honked, and only their beams in passing illuminated anything. With the exception of the hospital on the hill, where her mom was, still bathed in that steady spotlight from the circling chopper.
As she watched, several green blips flared up in the sky. There were not helicopters, from the erratic way they moved. One of them streaked down to the ground, and left an afterimage burned in her vision.
The rest of the ride there was eerie and surreal. An attempt to call her mom showed her phone had a dead signal, and the pitch dark streets lit only at random moments by passing cars seemed suddenly unfamiliar and threatening. From somewhere overhead there came a high pitched humming sound, almost a whistle, and dogs began to bark, and then to howl. Then it was gone as suddenly as it came.
Trying not to give in to her nerves, Tabitha made sure her light and reflectors were showing, and resecured her helmet, but when she arrived at the hospital, things got stranger still.
Barricades had been set up, but no one was guarding them on the side she approached from, so she easily threaded her bike through and began to pedal across the parking lot. From off in one direction she heard shouts, then the scattered staccato of what could only be gunfire, freezing her blood. There was another flash of that green light though, and then silence.
Tabitha's heart was pounding, but she knew she had to find her mom and make sure that she was safe. Shoving her bike in some bushes near the entrance, she began to run. The sliding doors didn't open with the power out, and she fought with them a minute in a panic of being spotted, seeing eerily elongated shadows moving along a wall. Trying the side doors until she found one that was open, she darted inside the eerily dark hospital. "What happened to the backup generator?" she mumbled to herself with a sense of dread. The power being for real out in a place like this was dangerous and bad, even more than whatever was going on outside. Patients hooked up to machines could die, and where was the staff?
In the dark she nearly tripped on the first body. The flashlight from her phone flicked on for a quick second revealed the old woman who usually sat at the reception desk, with a hole blown in her chest and a look of confusion and terror on her face. Others looked to be regular people, and one of the coffee shop staff was lying halfway in the door of the now dead elevator, shot in the back.
Tabitha felt sick to her stomach and struggled not to vomit as she made her way cautiously up the stairs, feeling her way in the pitch dark. Four stories of that, single minded in the thought of finding her mom, though it seemed like the opposite of an answered prayer when she heard a familiar shout. The voice undoubtedly belonged to her mom, but panicked and with an edge of fear to it that Tabitha had never heard before.
She charged up the last few steps and saw her mom struggling with a man in a military uniform. He carried a big gun, and hearing her footsteps he turned and half raised it, when her mom stabbed him with on his side with something in her hand. The bullets went wide and the man staggered back with an angry shout, and by that time Tabitha had closed the distance. She swung the blue bag first, feeling the heavy steel thermos inside make contact with his nose, and then she kicked him in the knee as hard as she could, feeling her foot make solid contact and hearing a satisfying crack.
The man fell backwards--into the open elevator shaft behind him, that Tabitha hadn't even noticed in her adrenaline rush. For a moment after hearing the thud she stared down into the dark pit, knowing he couldn't have survived. Then her mom was pulling her back and hugging her, crying. "I'm so glad you're okay, honey, thank God, I'm so glad you're okay!"
"I uh, I brought your shake," Tabitha said lamely. She'd probably dented it too, but to imagine she'd used to actually resent all that judo practice her mom made her do! "I was worried about you too, Mom. I saw the lights and--"
"Stop right there! Hands in the air or we'll shoot!" A man's voice bellowed, and Tabitha looked up to see two more men in uniforms, these with even bigger guns. There was an instant she was too scared to breath, and then two green flashes of light struck the men down. Crowding into the doorway for an instant then were strange, pale figures. Tabitha saw slender, elongated fingers and a face with only slits for nostrils and large, reptilian eyes. One of them looked directly at her and she stared back in disbelief, feeling a chill run up her spine. But then the creature made a sound at the others and they all moved on, leaving the doorway empty except for the bodies of the men.
"Mom, what is going ON here?" Tabitha managed to gasp out when she was able to speak again.
"Oh honey, I hardly even know where to start." Her mom's voice was strained and there were circles under her eyes. "The hospital has been researching these...these aliens, and we were contracted by the military to start surgically altering some of them to look more human, to help them blend in. I don't know why...they don't tell me that. But something went wrong, these men showed up today and just opened fire. Killing them and us too, and going room to room to take out our regular patients too. But the aliens have been fighting back."
"Those of us on staff who survived have been hiding out in the basement, but I went with one of the doctors to try and get the generator on. They shot him and I ran, and that one had just grabbed me when you showed up. Oh, you can't do anything like that again though, you could've been killed!"
Tabitha's head was spinning trying to process all this, when they heard the radio on one of the dead men's belt crackle to life. "The Reps have broken the perimeter, they're taking up position in the town. I need you all to pull out. Calling in the gassers, we need to purge the whole place--aliens, residents, everything. The President will blame it on a chemical spill. ETA 20 minutes, get out of there!"
Tabitha and her mom stared at each other a moment as that sunk in, then her mom was grabbing a gun from one of the fallen soldiers. "Get their gas masks!" she told her. Tabitha numbly moved to comply. "Sasha and Jakey will be at the house by now, we need to get them in the car and go!"
"But where will we go?"
"We are moving the fuck back to Canada, right now."
