Thirty days.
The countdown has started, North America shivers under the shadow of a massive alien spacecraft, and humanity is hurtling toward an unknown future that lurks at the end of the timer. Somewhere, somehow, the heroes are making their plan...
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BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, NORTH CAROLINA, USA
August 21, 4:00 PM
"Dagnabbit! Those sons of a bee sting are still there!"
The cabin door slammed in her wake, as Henrietta Bowman marched outside toting her shotgun, fed up with that damned monstrosity in the sky. Thing had to be filled to the brim with Federals fixin' to cart her off to one of those nursing homes. No one was going to inject her with mind-controlling drugs and turn her into a drooling zombie. Her grandson, who was always on her about livin' alone, was behind the whole thing, she was certain. There ain't nothin' worse than bein' betrayed by your own kin.
"You'll never take me alive, dammit!" She shook her fist at the metallic eyesore. "You hearin' me?"
She hesitated, waiting a breath for it to move off in surrender, but all she heard was the whistling of the wind through the trees. The interloper didn't budge one iota. Same as the past three-and-a-half-weeks, the circles of light on the black hull just blinked at her in some government code. That contraption up there was near as big as an oil spill across Alabama, and it swallowed up the sky. Twenty-six days without the sun or the stars! Her vegetable garden was sulking almost as bad as she was. And the critters were damned near as discombobulated as the plants, with owls hooting at noon and robins hunting at midnight.
For days she'd yelled at those trespassers till her throat was hoarse. She even tried shining her flashlight at 'em in Morse code, demanding they get the hell off her property, but they stayed as closed up as a coffin. Lord knows, sometimes, the only way to get your point across is with the business end of a shotgun.
Still, Henrietta planned on goin' to heaven when the Almighty took her, so she'd offer them Federals one last chance. "I'll shoot," she warned. "You'd better be flyin' south for the winter now."
She hadn't expected a reply, and she didn't get one. Some people think they don't need to pay you no mind if yer eighty-seven, but a shotgun is the Lord's equalizer. No matter how old you are, it works just as good.
Before firing, for good luck, Henrietta spat into a clump of brush, then squinted, pointing the barrel toward the underbelly of the aeroplane. At least it was a big target. No way could she miss, even being halfway blind.
Henrietta started to squeeze the trigger, when a large black jumble of feathers streaked across the sky, inches from her face.
"Arrgghh!" she cried, her old heart racing. She dropped the shotgun and windmilled her arms. Despite her efforts, she fell backward on her nether cheeks, and with such a bony keister, it smarted all to hell. "Ol' Chester, what you think you're doin', you bird brain? I could've shot you dead."
"Caw," Ol' Chester the crow said, landing on one of the rusty old antennas in the field that had been left behind by Chester, her ex, Ol' Chester's namesake. (Ol' Chester was his name because he reminded Henrietta of her ex due to his uncommunicative nature, not because he introduced himself that way). The only thing Chester ever planted was that damned antenna farm, just so he could talk to strangers on his HAM radio. Maybe the crow wasn't much of a conversationalist, but he was a better listener than the human Chester.
