Alien Phobic

Chapter 2 Part 3

Captain Sam Mitchel’s living room was brightly lit with only the sofa to cast a shadow over his inch and a half thick sepia carpet. A stainless steel lamp with that was several wattages higher than was necessary for the room blasted light through the living room to the kitchen. The only other pieces in the living room was 65 inch Sony 4K Ultra HD television with speakers spread throughout the living room.

Sam got up from the sofa half listening to the TV commercial as the pondered what he was going to make for dinner. Steak? Naw, that’d take too long and I didn’t thaw anything? Spaghetti? Naw, not really in the mood for that. Frozen pizza and beer? Bingo!

Sam closed the fridge door and popped open the freezer door and looked at the frozen pizzas. More decisions. Screw it, Sam thought. He just grabbed the one on top and pulled off the plastic. He opened a cabnit next to the fridge and pulled out a pizza cooking tray and plopped the pizza on it. He set the stove to 400 degrees and walked back to the living room.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”, Sam said. He was looking forward to watching the Washington Redskins play against the Dallas Cowboys. He wasn’t a fan of the Redskins but he hated the Cowboys. How could they possibly claim to be “America’s Team”? He had to admit, their cheerleaders were always hot.

But now? Now, on one of his few days off…and one in which he couldn’t pull Julie away from her job…his game wasn’t going to be shown. At least at the moment. There were some talking heads talking about…a comet?

“This just in”, a pretty red head said trying to look serious. Sam couldn’t remember what her name was but she was a local tv reporter from the local Fox News channel. Footage was being shown of something falling out of the sky. Where was that? Was that falling here in town?

“NASA is unable to explain why there was no previous notice of this falling object that crashed just outside of town. NASA claims that it’s not one of theirs and they believe that it’s not one of China’s.”

The scene shifted suddenly to a NASA official. Someone by the name of Carmen Mathews. “We’ve checked our calculations and it’s nothing that we’ve tracked before.”

Suddenly there were a flurry of questions. Mathews pointed to one of the reporters. “Is it possible it’s a rogue asteroid or comet?”, a reporter from CBS asked.

“Of course that is possible, but we think it’s unlikely due to several changes in…” Mathews tried to finish but a NASA official suddenly placed his hand over the microphones and whispered something Mathews ear. Mathews whispered something back, but the NASA official shook his head no and backed away.

“I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but this interview is over”. The pretty red head appeared, “And that’s all we have from NASA so now we’ll take this up with our resident astronomer, Mike Stevens”.

The screen split in two so the red head could be seen along with Mike Stevens. Stevens appeared to be outside standing next to a large radio telescope.

“Mr. Stevens, who has a Saturday night program called, ‘Bright Skys’, is here with us to speculate as to what this object is. Mr. Stevens?”.

The screen suddenly filled with stars as Mr. Stevens image shrank to a small corner to give the appearance of him flying through space while on earth.

“While NASA doesn’t want to come out and admit to what has happened, I’ll tell you myself. The object appeared about three hours ago. We had just happened to be focused on that particular area of the sky when we actually detected two objects. They were moving very fast. That in itself is not shocking. What was shocking was that they changed directions several times as they circled each other and pulled away from each other. It was almost as if we were watching a aerial dog fight…but in outer-space.”

“Are you suggesting that they were space aliens?”, the red head asked.

“Yes, I would suggest that and I understand why NASA would not be so quick to admit it. Because if I am right, this is one of the most historical events in mankind since the birth of Christ.”

“Oh my”, the pretty red head managed to say. “So, you say you saw two of them…why did one crash?”.

“We believe that one ship destroyed the other ship. The winner seemed to be in pretty bad shape and we think that it was not able to escape the pull of the Earth’s gravity. We were able to detect and record the ship changing direction as it fell. Something in that ship was trying to find the best place to land.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stevens”, the red head said as the camera pulled up a map of the city. “This is where we believe the space craft crashed. There has been power outages in this area and cell-phones and land-line phones are not working.”

“Holy crap”, Sam said looking at the map. “That’s right next to Evergreen Assisted Living”. Shit.

“We have our ‘Eye in the Sky’ news helicopter in that area”, the red head said as the scene shifted to a woman sitting in a helicopter flying over the city. “Susan, what do you see?”.

“Thanks, Betty, we have just flown over Evergreen Assisted Living and the building is still intact but it looks like the back of the building took a massive beating that must have resulted from the blast of the ship crashing nearby.”

Video showed several places were parts of the wall fell and every window in the back was shattered.

“We are flying to were the ship appears to have crashed…about three miles from the nursing home facility.”

Video showed the swamp below with every tree uprooted away from the blast. The helicopter flew over what appeared to be a large structure sticking out of the swamp. The cameraman zoomed in on the image but it became unfocused.

“SNAKES!!!”, a voice on the helicopter screamed. The camera man pulled his camera away from the ground and focused on the pilot. The pilot yanked off his helmet and threw it at the controls. The copter suddenly veered to the right and back to the left. “SNAKES!!!”, the pilot yelled as he clawed at his head. The copter suddenly veered straight down. The camera suddenly went black.

The red head just looked straight ahead and said, “Umm”. A commercial suddenly came on.