Way out in the bluffs, roughly a mile from where Jude sat, smoke, dust, and debris hovered almost cartoonishly in a bulbous cloud over where he presumed the object had crashed into the ground. It was far enough away that if he wanted, he could drive away and completely disavow himself from whatever the hell was going on, but on the other hand, he had just watched a mysterious space object blast a hole into the desert—or, well, he’d had his eyes closed, but there was no need to be pedantic—and who in their right mindwouldn’tgo look at something like that while they still had the chance? Sooner or later someone with more authority than him—the FBI, Homeland Security, the Men in Black, or all of the above—would arrive and secure the scene, and then he’d never know for sure what had happened, and all because he couldn’t convince himself to take one single risk for once in his stupid life.
Jude worried his lower lip between his teeth, stuck in a heated debate with himself.
Finally, he slid off the hood, pulled his keys from his pocket, and got into his car.
* * *
If you had asked Jude what he had been expecting to find before he actually found it, he would have guessed a satellite, or maybe an asteroid. He was an open-minded guy, but a rational one. The wildest theory he would have entertained was that an object no one could identify had crashed into the earth, and that it waspossiblyof alien origin.
What he wouldnothave guessed was that the object was an actual goddamn UFO.
Jude spied on the alien ship from a patch of prickly bushes, wincing as they poked his ankles where the cuffs of his jeans had ridden up. His car was nearby—he’d driven as close to the wreck as he could without popping his tires on the rough terrain—but as he stared at the sight before him, he couldn’t help but feel that the safety of his vehicle was much too far away. Sure, the ship was damaged, its metal exterior crushed and crumpled where it had struck the ground, but it was not as mangled as he’d thought it should be from how fast it had been moving, and still had some resemblance to its original shape—a large sphere the size of an SUV.
But the ship wasn’t really Jude’s main concern.
He was much more worried by what had just crawled out from inside.
“Humanoid” was the best word to describe it. Yes, it was definitely a mix of “vaguely human” and “not human enough to be remotely okay.” It was bipedal, with very thin legs that were longer than any human’s should be, and had two arms… with another two arms right below them. Outside of that, Jude didn’t know what it looked like, as its body was hidden inside what he could only assume was some kind of spacesuit. It was chrome colored and flexible, stretching and folding like fabric as the thing wearing it moved around on its spindly legs.
Jude, terrified but too enraptured to look away, watched as the alien—oh god, anactualalien— pressed a button on the side of its spaceship. A compartment opened with awhoosh!, and it reached inside with two of its four arms, searching frantically for something. A few moments later, it pulled out a cylindrical tube with a trigger.
Christ, it was a weapon. Jude had survived a potential flattening only to be taken out by an alien with a space gun. There was no way he was getting out of there. Who knew what kind of damage that thing could do?
Still, he cowered in the bushes, hoping to avoid detection as the alien placed a long finger on the trigger of the space gun and pulled. He winced, waiting for the explosion he knew was sure to come…
But it never did.
Instead, a blast of white foam propelled out of the top of the cylinder, the alien aimed it at the smoking spaceship, and—oh. It wasn’t a weapon. It was a fire extinguisher. The alien was using a fire extinguisher. One it had taken out of a compartment that—upon closer investigation—kind of looked like a trunk.
In only a handful of seconds, the fire was smothered. Once it was out, the alien tossed the extinguisher onto the ground and put all of its hands on what were probably its hips. It stood like that, staring at the wreckage of its spaceship, and shook its head in what Jude swore was resignation.
He would know—he found himself being resigned to things a lot.
Then, out of nowhere, the alien dropped its hands and began kicking the side of its spaceship. Strange noises came from it, and after listening for a moment, Jude concluded that the noises were some kind of language. It was not a language Jude had ever heard before—he wasn’t sure he’d even heardsoundslike that before—but regardless, as an individual in possession of a twenty-year-old car, he had a good idea of what they meant. On more than one occasion, while stranded on the side of the road with an ignition that refused to turn over, he himself had kicked the shit out of his car tires in frustration while muttering some variation of, “You stupid fucking piece of shit car, why can’t you fucking work for once?! Fuck!” until someone finally drove by and stopped to offer help.
The alien appeared to be expressing a similar sentiment toward its ship, and while Jude wasn’t ready to let his guard down by any means, he had to admit seeing the alien like that made it a whole lot less terrifying.
Eventually, the alien grew tired of literally kicking its spaceship while it was down and backed away, shoulders slumping in defeat. It reached up and fiddled with something on the collar of its spacesuit, and a second later its helmet opened like a convertible top.
Jude gasped.
He realized his mistake right away and clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. The alien heard him. It spun on its heels, looking around wildly until its eyes landed on Jude.
There were only two of them, which was comforting, but they were much larger than human eyes and had small slitted pupils and no visible whites. They caught the starlight strangely. If Jude hadn’t known better, he would have sworn they were changing color, but that couldn’t be right. It had to be the darkness playing tricks on him. There was no way something like that could be real.
The rest of the alien’s face was—thankfully—closer to the average human’s. Its nose was more or less a tiny nub and located where a human nose should be, and while its mouth was a little too wide with lips a little too thin, Jude recognized them for what they were straight away. It didn’t have ears or any hair that he could see, but as far as aliens went, it certainly wasn’t themostalien an alien could look.
But it wasn’t the least, either.
Jude held his breath as he and the alien stared each other down. Several seconds ticked by, maybe a full minute—he wasn’t sure. The only thing he was conscious of was the fact that there was a space alien within shouting distance from him, and it was aware of his existence.
Now would be a really good time to have a getaway car nearby,he thought to himself bitterly. Would it be worth it to make a run for it? The alien didn’t look like it was built for speed, but it was analien—anything was possible. If it couldn’t run, it could just as easily pull out a space gun—a real one this time—and vaporize Jude on the spot.
But before Jude could come to a decision about whether or not he should attempt to escape, the alien decided for him… although not in the way he expected. It didn’t annihilate him, or hiss and spit venom, or sprint straight for him with its teeth bared. In fact, it didn’t look angry or territorial at all.
It looked delighted.
It grinned a cheerful grin that took up way too much real estate on its face and raised its top two arms above its head, the bottom two following suit, although at a lesser angle.
