Like gargantuan windchimes distantly jangling from a skyscraper in a frigid breeze, the background clamor of alien speech suffused the otherwise familiar neighborhood with an unsettling auditory backdrop. Lamps lit the surrounding streets, revealing normal buildings seemingly untouched by the ongoing crisis. Except for the dread soundscape and lack of any human activity, everything seemed as if it were in pristine order.
Since the three of them had gathered, they had fallen into a silent, but uneasy focus as they traveled along. With very little desire to discuss what they had gone through, they were heading towards Lucas' parents home. It was, by sheer luck, the closest location they knew which might shelter them from the malicious darkness from which any number of hostile forces could spring. It would have been more relaxing had they not had to walk there, but sustained alarm was rather impossible to sustain as the minutes pressed on uneventfully.
Now at the final stretch of familiar roads and feeling more than ever that safety was quickly coming in reach, Lucas could feel his heightened state of tension easing. Striding along in the middle of the road, they still maintained a studious eye on their streetlamp-lit surroundings. Other than the relative silence in their immediate vicinity and the cold, something else seemed subtly out of place.
Ryan was the first to dare break the silence among them. "Hey, Lucas, isn't that your mom's car?"
Down the street, lit by a nearby streetlamp was an achingly familiar vehicle. Without a doubt, its orange body and contrasting yellow band along the back was quite distinctive in most environments. But parked within its expected area, it was definitive even from the distance they viewed it from. "Huh. Yeah. It is." Lucas spoke with mild bewilderment amidst a sudden silence.
The jingling, and surreal alien speech dropped into echoes of itself for a disquieting interval. Misting breath was lightly restrained and even Ryan's thoughts were held in reserve as their travel continued amid the absence of the peculiar white noise. Just as it seemed as if it was gone, a solitary fluting whistling signaled the beginning of a newly growing chaotic swell. Still faded from distance, the alien voices resumed whatever facsimile of meaning they ever resembled.
Lucas had grown somewhat accustomed to the erratic nature of the sound rising or falling in the background like a stormy ocean surface. But the troughs between peaks still came with a mindful awareness of their helpless vulnerability. It was amid this recent resurgence that he realized what seemed off about the neighborhood. Most places that would contain vehicles were empty. On a normal night, those cars not in garages would be parked in neighborhood driveways or the street.
"Maybe we can use the car?" Ryan resumed his thought. "Go back to the highway."
"Evan!" Jennifer whispered with sudden urgency. "He's going to drive right into that! Into.. Those things."
"The aliens, yeah. With a whole bus load of people."
"We shouldn't have left the freeway. We have to go back!" Jennifer replied with purpose replacing anxious fear. "We've got to warn them!"
Lucas kept up as the other two hastened their pace, despite already being right beside the house. He struggled to retrieve his keys for the front door. A growing panic overcame him, to think of something to justify denial of the growing notion between the other two. In his urgent alarm, he couldn't think of anything but a rather weak excuse. "They won't be able to get that bus around the cars. So they're not even going to be following the highway like we were."
"Then we should hurry to meet them back at the cars, before it's too late."
"I think there was enough space, though." Ryan trailed off. "I don't really remember very well. Something was really messed up and weird about that place."
Key in hand, Lucas worked the front door while the other two kept their attention focused on their immediate vicinity. He bit his lower lip, struggling to think of something plausible to halt their train of thought and redirect it into something more immediately useful. "I don't know..." ...if it's a good idea to go back there. Trailing off as he pushed open the door, he failed to complete his initial thought. He just couldn't think of a plausible excuse not to go back and do exactly what they wanted.
"Dude, we gotta do something."
"I'm not going to do nothing while Evan and everyone else runs into that without warning."
Flicking on the light in the entryway, Lucas paced inside uneasily, straining to think of an excuse to delay the urgency felt by the other two. Briefly glancing up the stairway to the second floor, he avoided looking at the set of keys that would be resting on the living room coffee table. Instead, he advanced further inside to near the kitchen side of the living room. He picked up the phone with inspired alacrity.
"There's a dial tone!" Lucas said as he looked back with some distress to see Ryan retrieve the keys on the table.
"I think these are the keys to that car." Ryan handed them off to Jennifer.
"Then let's get-"
"Guys, wait!" Lucas dropped the receiver and moved back towards the pair already out the door and walking through the yard. "There's a dial tone! We can call someone for help!"
Jennifer turned back to address him directly. "You do that, then. We'll be back after we-"
"No!" Lucas called. "We should all stay where it's safe, and call someone better prepared to handle this situation."
"There's no time! Evan's already-"
"He's not coming!" Lucas shouted out the door into the cold night air. He huffed out the cloud of vapor as the other two stood beside the car. "I lied about the bus, okay? There's no other cars. Nobody is following us! We're the only ones out here!" The shocked silence was only broken by the eerie distant babble floating in the breeze.
"What?" Jennifer replied after what felt like an eternity. She stared at him with either outrage or shock on a face clearly lit by a nearby neighborhood streetlight.
Ryan spoke only after Jennifer. "Whoa. That is- Are you serious, man?"
Lucas nervously adjusted his glasses, the alert awareness of their surroundings had been completely shattered. Both of the others were only focused on him. A zombie could- No. Lucas stopped that train of thought and spoke again. "Come back inside. It's not safe to be standing around in the open like that."
"Why did you lie about that? Was Evan killed?" Jennifer stared at him.
"No. He's... Alive-" Lucas hesitated, looking at the yard between him and the others. He knew his next words would be critically important. The shock of their abruptly halted escape and the urgency of their situation had left him without time to consider the scenario taking place. It was unexpected and happening too fast.
"Did Evan get trapped?" Ryan speculated.
"Why wasn't Evan with you?" Jennifer regarded him with sudden suspicion.
"Evan never would have agreed to leave." Lucas sighed. "But we needed to get somewhere safer."
"So what? You just abandoned him somewhere? Stole the car and made up a story about a bus so we'd go with you?"
"Evan's okay! You know he'll be fine on his own."
"You can't know that!" Jennifer shouted at him. Her voice echoed in their immediate vicinity, but didn't seem loud enough to overcome the volume of discordant, almost musical tones echoing from a great distance. "Where did you leave him?"
"Between the convention center and the mall. It was a parking garage. I don't know the street name or anything. But it was safe. We didn't see anything the whole time we were out there."
Jennifer opened the car door and slung the rifle she had into the back with an exasperated sigh.
"Wait!" Lucas lost his fear of outside as he bounded partway into the yard. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to try looking for Zack, then I'm going back to the others."
"Wait. You're not thinking clea-"
"Don't you dare start that." Jennifer pointed at him angrily. "You can shut up and come along, or you can stay right here. I'm not going to get lectured to by you about what's the smartest thing to do right now."
"No. Come on-" Lucas stared in disbelief at Jennifer as she slid into the driver's seat and closed the door, starting up the car without any hesitation. He refocused his attention on his other friend. "Ryan...?"
Ryan hesitated with the passenger door and shook his head. "Not cool, dude." He entered.
"But we- The phone-" Lucas stammered, bewildered at the sudden turn of events. "It's safe here! There's food and supplies."
"I don't want to be anywhere close to those freaky aliens." Ryan paused for a moment as if he expected Lucas to reply. "Are you coming?"
Lucas made a sound as if to speak, but didn't. Staying here for tonight seemed like it should have been self-evidently the most sensible choice. Even given that he had lied about the bus, he had no way of knowing their escape would have ended up as disastrous as it was. Here they had electricity and a working phone. They could get news from the outside world. Maybe once they calmed down a bit they would realize that they were acting stupid and come back. He shook his head. "I'm staying."
"Okay." Ryan paused for a moment to set his scavenged rifle and ammunition on the sidewalk beside the car, then closed the door. The vehicle moved along the street and turned out of sight.
The alien babble briefly halted again as Lucas nervously ventured to the sidewalk to retrieve the rifle then ran back inside and locked the door. Once he was inside, a piercing scream of a whistle indicated the return of the chiming babble. Muted by the interior, he could at least pretend it was something more mundane. He waited a few minutes in quiet solitude at the living room window, watching for the others to return. They did not.
