The Event

3.

                  

You would have expected an uproar of emotion.

All of us running around like chickens with our heads cut off, freaking out about what we should do, but we didn't. We all sat. Silently accepting the truth that had been weaseling its way down into the back corners of our brains. Of course we knew this was going to happen. Aliens come, people die. All that we had to do now was admit to ourselves the truth of it. We had to stop our brains from pepping us up and giving us false hope that would never become true, we had to believe this was the end, because all signs pointed to that being the real honest to god truth here.

"I don't believe this." Tommy said beside me, shivering in the windless night.

I nodded my head, pulling my hat down further over my ears. "I know." I mumbled.

Jeremy was staring blankly straight ahead, and Will was holding his head in his hands while he rocked back and forth slowly.

"Are they all dead?" Kaylin cried into her father's chest and he pulled her tighter to him, shushing her whimpers that broke through the eerie silence of the mountain.

Jeremy rocked back on the snow. "Mom, dammit." He cursed into his fist.

I nodded my head, looking away down the mountain. Mom was most likely dead, just like the rest of the world. "They shot down the planes so that they wouldn't be up above the reach of the dome." I said quietly. "None of us were supposed to survive that." I said pointing down at it. "We might just be the literal last survivors on this planet." I shook my head for voicing my thoughts out loud. I never do keep quiet when I should. Kaylin only cried harder and Will and Jeremy both shivered with my words.

The quirky guy and his wife looked hard at each other then they both turned to stare at Brent and Brock. "What is the plan?" The man asked.

Brent shrugged in his huge parka. "How the hell should we know?" He asked. "We know this mountain better than any other person." He said then titled his head. "Especially now." He muttered cryptically and I had to smile a little at it. I'd never noticed before that Brent was kind of a smart ass like me. "But I have no clue what we should do at this point." He shook his head.

Brock, who was kneeling down and going through the packs in front of him, shook his head too. "Nothing we can do." He said matter-of-factly. "We've got enough food and supplies to last us a few days at the most, but we won't be getting off this mountain as long as that is there." He clicked his tongue as he stared at the dome like the rest of us.

"We might be able to get by with that." The quirky man nodded, chewing his thin bottom lip and rubbing his gloves together. "If you look, you can tell, they blasted the vapor down to the earth and it then rose to fill the dome, remaining contained." He said as he shook his foot in the snow. "But look," He pointed even though we were already all looking. "The vapor, it is already beginning to disperse. It doesn't look like it is a gas that will linger too long. Why would they want it to? Looks like it will disappear soon, and without the gas, my guess is that they won't need the dome anymore. They'll expect that their human infestation has been cleaned up."

Kaylin's father snapped his eyes over to the man. "You sound like a damn scientist or something." He said.

The man nodded, but then bit his lip and shook his head. "I'm a biochemical engineer." He said proudly. "Well, was, anyway."

"Didn't know that." The man who had tagged along with their group shrugged.

"Well, I'd be willing to say that none of us know too much about each other." The quirky man's wife, Dani, smiled softly. "We should probably change that if we have to work together to get off of this mountain."