I was outside with Susie when I heard the trucks.
Lauren had found some old seed packets, carrots and cucumber and tomato, hidden down in one corner of the cellar. The packets were ancient and yellowed, but the seeds might still be good. So we’d gone out and dug up a patch of ground in an area that would get the most light, and started planting them.
Chuck was inside, resting, and Lauren was making a fire to prepare some bark tea. Ellarose was lying in the grass on her back, staring up at the clouds in the sky and chewing on a twig Susie had given her. She looked like a hundred-year-old baby, shrunken and wrinkled, with red, peeling skin. She’d developed a fever and had been crying all night. Susie kept her close, always. It was heartbreaking.
We’d given Luke his own small trowel to use as a shovel, and he was industriously digging, smiling at me with every shovelful, when an alien growl floated up through the trees. A slight breeze ruffled the leaves, and I stopped what I was doing and listened hard.
“What is it?” asked Susie.
The wind died down, and there it was again—a low rumble, a mechanical rumble.
“Get the kids downstairs. Now!”
She heard the rumbling too, and she got up from her knees, grabbing Ellarose and then Luke. I ran to the house, jumping up onto the smashed back deck.
“Lauren, get down to the cellar!” I yelled as I entered through the back door. “Someone is coming! Get that fire out!”
She looked at me, shocked, and I grabbed a bottle of water from the counter and dumped it on the burning twigs in the fireplace.
“Who is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” I yelled as I ran upstairs to get Chuck. “Just get downstairs with the kids and Susie.”
Chuck was awake and already peering out the window. “Looks like army trucks,” he said as I entered his room. “I could just see them for a moment on the ridge lower down. They’ll be here in a minute.”
I helped him down the stairs, grabbing the rifle as we passed onto the front porch. We couldn’t see them, but we could hear them, and the sound was getting louder.
“Leave me here,” said Chuck. “I’ll talk to them, see what they want.”
I shook my head. “No, let’s get to the cellar. They can’t know we’re here. We’ll hide, try to see who it is.”
Chuck nodded and we made our way to the cellar. Susie had done a good job of rebuilding the doors from scrap plywood. Our wives stared up at us from the bottom of the stairs. Susie was holding a .38, and so was Lauren. We closed the doors behind us just as we heard trucks crunching on the gravel on the driveway. I mounted the stairs, trying to see what was happening outside through a crack.
“There are two trucks,” I whispered. We could hear the sound of feet hitting gravel as the truck doors thudded shut. It sounded like a lot of people.
“Is it our guys?” whispered Chuck urgently.
“What do they want?” asked Susie, holding Ellarose in her arms, trying to keep her calm.
I angled my head to get a view through the tiny crack. The men in the driveway were wearing khaki-colored uniforms, but that was no help. Then I saw a face—an Asian face—as the man it belonged to looked my way. I ducked down.
“It’s the Chinese,” I hissed, backing down the stairs.
I picked up my rifle and kneeled on the hard earth floor. We could hear muffled voices and boots walking around in the house above our heads.
Chuck squinted in the dim light, listening. “Is that Chinese?”
We heard someone going up the stairs and then back down and out onto the porch.
“Maybe they’re just having a look around?” said Lauren hopefully.
And then—
“Mike!” someone outside yelled.
Is he yelling my name? The voice seemed familiar. I frowned at Chuck and he shrugged back.
“Mike! Chuck! Are you guys here?” yelled the voice again.
I looked around the cellar at everyone. Is that Damon?
“We’re down here,” called out Susie.
“Shh,” I said angrily, but it was too late. Footsteps thumped across the grass, and then one of the cellar doors opened. Leaning back, squinting into the light, I pointed my gun at the door, just as Damon’s head appeared.