“Keep quiet!” Marla hissed, waving the three children she had in tow to the ground. “There are aliens everywhere!”
“What do they look like?” one of the children — Janie — asked.
Marla rolled her eyes as if that was the stupidest question anyone had ever asked of her, but she answered it anyway. “They’re tall and black — head to toe — and they have knives for arms, sharper than any sword you’ve ever seen. They’ll eviscerate you if they find you, which is why we need to keep quiet just now!”
“What does ‘eviscerate’ mean?” Jonathan, all of four years old, asked.
Marla turned back from looking out the window, realizing that quiet was the last thing on these kids’ minds, at least until some of their questions were answered. Still, she hedged. “You know what, Jonathan? Hang onto that question for later, and I’ll try to give you answer that won’t scare you.” And even that answer was enough to scare the child, all of them, actually, because she could see their eyes widening, and Jonathan’s lower lip had started to tremble.
“Don’t worry about it,” Marla said, in hushed tones. “Because you know what? I’m not going to let them find you. Now get down and keep quiet for a few minutes.”
Marla looked back out the window. It was dark out, so there was very little she could see, especially since the aliens were already dark-colored themselves. They blended in with the night, so for as far as she knew, one could be just a few feet away from her and she’d never know it. She shuddered at the thought.
“How do you know the aliens would eviscerate us?” Jessica, the thirteen-year-old, asked. “Has anyone seen them doing that?”
Marla was trying her best to rein in her impatience. They were children, after all, but Jessica had just asked a good question. “I– I don’t know,” she found herself saying. “But what else would they use those awful, knife-like arms for?”
“Maybe they’re nice!” Janie suggested. “Maybe they just got lost on their way somewhere else!”
Marla thought that was a nice sentiment, but she was sure it was also wrong. The news she’d seen before the blackout was that thousands of ships had descended upon the Earth, and thousands more aliens had poured out from those ships. She had no idea what else had happened since because the blackout happened mere moments after that. She didn’t know if Earth’s militaries would have the power to organize in this chaos, let alone repel the invasion. She had a feeling the aliens were here to stay.
And she was going to do whatever she could to get these three children to safety. They just had to outlast the night so they’d be in a better position to keep an eye out for alien encounters.
She didn’t answer Janie’s optimistic comment, but she patted the little girl on the head and gave her a quick squeeze of the shoulder.
“I don’t see anything out there,” Marla said. “Why don’t you three hunker down and try to get some sleep, eh? It’ll be morning before you know it, and then we can see about getting somewhere else safer than this old house.” Janie and Jonathan already looked like they were about to fall asleep, so she knew they wouldn’t be awake much longer. Jessica clearly had a lot going on inside her head, but she helped arrange the two smaller children on the floor next to her. Soon their breathing slowed, and Marla could tell they were well on their way to dreamland.
“Will we really have a better chance in the daytime?” Jessica whispered.
Marla shook her head slowly, uncertainly. “Honestly, I don’t know. We’re away from the city, so maybe the aliens haven’t made it this far out yet. If that’s the case, then we’ll have an easier time of it. If they’re already here, well–” She let the thought hang in the air, and Jessica, even at thirteen, didn’t need Marla to finish the thought.
“Get some sleep, Jessica,” Marla said. “I’ll need your help with the other two once the sun is up.” Jessica nodded and curled up on the floor next to the others.
“What about you?” asked Jessica.
“I’m going to watch out for a bit longer,” Marla replied. “Just in case.”
“Just in case,” Jessica yawned, and a moment later she, too, was asleep.
“Sleep well, children,” Marla whispered. “And sweet dreams. Tomorrow we run.”