Author: T. Thornton Gray

I stopped wearing a mask. I don’t know if it was because I was used to the stench around me or if it was because decomposition was turning to mummification. My search to find canned food that is over a year old has become far more difficult. If I don’t find more, I will soon be rotting away like everyone else.

I suppose I was right. I was the one who figured it out. I could now say I told you so, to all those who mocked me and thought of me as some kind of nut. But I told you so doesn’t register on the ears of the dead.

No one believed in “UFOs”, or an invasion from another world. But there were so many clues. For centuries they have been coming. Looking over and lusting after our Earth. Abductions, cattle mutilations and crop circles. They were not some attempts to contact us, but to eradicate us. They now knew how our bodies worked, what it took for us to survive. They knew what we ate.

It was as if a switch was flipped. Our food, beef, poultry, fish and vegetables were suddenly genetically altered. What once sustained us had become like rat poison. We gobbled it up only to find ourselves screaming out our agonizing last breath. Most passed in one night. Some small groups lasted longer, weeks, even months, but pretty soon everyone just has to eat.

I’m certain that I am the last. Soon they will come. I see the strange lights even in the day. They hover in the sky like the stars they came from. They wait and watch. Soon they will come and take Earth, their conquered prize without so much as a fight.

They don’t know about me, that I still live.

I have my pick of guns. The one I chose is the old lever action rifle. One like John Wayne would have used. It just seemed right. I hold no expectations of winning any sort of fight. I just want to land one good punch and make them pay as dearly as possible for my life and home.

Even now the ships descend. They really do look like saucers. I hide amongst the corpses and abandoned cars on the road near the field as the ships soundlessly touch down. An opening appears as I draw a bead with my rifle. A tall slender being steps onto the grass, its gray skin gleams under the sun as its large almond shaped eyes are shielded from the light by three long slim fingers.

My finger squeezes ever so gently until the rifle kicks against my shoulder. The creature crumbles so easily.

“Hello from Earth you dirty sons of bitches.” I scream and work the lever again.

The flash from the ship is blinding…