Eleanor grinned just thinking about besting her mother’s baking endeavors when she caught a glow out of the left side of her peripheral line of sight. She looked and saw a greenish light shaped like a cone hovering over the ocean. It was glowing, kind of like a radium watch.
“What?” She said this out loud, her breath catching.
Was this the beginning of an attack?
It did look a bit like something she’d seen in one of Frank’s comic books. . . .
She jerked her head around, back toward the direction of the tower, but it was too far away now, not even in her sight. Better to keep heading toward home. At least maybe she could get to her family in time, or to a neighbor’s bomb shelter. The Richardsons up the street had had one installed last year.
Eleanor pedaled faster as the object streaked across the sky from one point to the opposite end, as far as she could see. Traveling at a high speed. Eleanor couldn’t know for sure, but it seemed as fast as a jet plane.
Only there was no sound. Nothing except for her heavy breaths and the crunch of gravel beneath her tires. Strange, she thought. Why is it so quiet? Then the light just disappeared. The fact that it disappeared scared her more than the light itself. She stopped the bike, waited, watched above. The others had to be seeing this too. Didn’t they? After a few moments, the light popped up again, like it had made a jump in the dark sky.
Eleanor started pedaling again. She wanted to get home. Now. As she rode, she kept her eyes on the object, wondering what it could be. Was it a missile? Sent all the way from the USSR? The Reds finally delivering on their threats. She pedaled as fast as she could. She needed to get to her parents.
The object in the sky jerked one way and then the other, like it was caught on a string and some force was pulling it back. Then it just hovered over the trees. Just above the tops of the pines. As if it were going to land.
Eleanor strained to see it. The beautiful, terrifying bluish green. She couldn’t wait to tell Caroline about it.
She didn’t even see the car coming.
The driver, his eyes also not on the road, was trying to determine what the funny light in the sky was when suddenly he felt a huge thud and jolt against the front of his car. He bounced in his seat as his tires rolled over something. He slammed on the breaks, causing the car to spin 180 degrees and skid to the very edge of the cliff. Something caught underneath the car, scraping across the asphalt, sending the noise across the empty road.
When the car finally came to a stop, he peeled his hands off the steering wheel. Even in the twilight, he recognized blood on the windshield.
Damn deer, he thought.
He got out of the car, walked around to see the damage the animal had done. It would be the second one he had hit that year. Already he was calculating what to tell his wife.
But when he saw what was under the car, he drew his hand to his face in horror. The upper half of a girl’s body was still caught in the bike underneath. The lower half was twisted at an unnatural angle. He couldn’t see her face. He knew it was a girl, though, because of her flowered skirt. He turned and threw up the roast beef sandwich his wife had packed him for lunch.
Underneath the car, next to the left rear tire, Eleanor’s eyes remained open, staring up at, but not seeing, the now empty sky.
6
TEDDY
Teddy stared at the spot where the light went down. The others framed him within the doorway of the tower.
“What should we do?” Bunny whispered, close to his ear.
“I’ll call them back,” Caroline said. She hurried over to the phone and picked up the receiver. Then she swiveled around to face them. “There’s no signal.”
She held it out for Teddy. He put his ear up and confirmed.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
Teddy slowly panned the room and realized that all three of them were looking at him for answers, even Caroline, as if he had any.
“We don’t know anything yet. It could be a practice run like the one before. That’s what it probably is.” But Teddy’s mind raced. The light seemed so different, so not something he’d ever seen before. He remembered the article he’d just been reading. “Or . . .” He strode over to where the Life magazine lay, picked it up, and pointed to the cover.
“Marilyn Monroe? What’s she got to do with this?” Bunny said.
“No. No. This.” He opened the magazine and showed them the title inside. “‘Have We Visitors from Space?’”
“Extraterrestrials?” Caroline said. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I read it. The government has been investigating reports of sightings all over the country. Lights and spheres, exactly like what we just saw. And the military knows about it. They’ve got credible witnesses. Look.” He flipped to another page in the magazine and opened it to a picture of a drawing of a green fireball over the mountains. He placed it on the small table so they could all get a good look.
“That’s not exactly what we saw,” John said. “We didn’t see a sphere.”
“No, but it was a green light. The point is, the Air Force knows about them.” He turned the page. “Here, they list ten different UFO sightings, just like what we saw.”
“UFO?”
“Unidentified Flying Object,” Teddy said. “That’s what they’re calling them.”
The girls and John read over his shoulder, looked at the sketches in the magazine. Teddy already felt like they were wasting time. They needed to do something.
“But who knows if these sources are even credible? They’re all anonymous. Doesn’t that seem a little odd?” Caroline said.
“Maybe they’re afraid of the backlash,” said Teddy.
“Or being made fun of. Look, all we saw was a light. Could be a million things. And since when did you start believing in this stuff anyway?” said Caroline. “You sound like Frank and Oscar, right, John?”
John’s gaze shifted uncomfortably between her and Teddy. “I don’t even know what we saw.”
“Which is exactly what a UFO is, something unidentifiable,” said Teddy.
The others were not convinced.
“Look,” Teddy continued, “I’m not saying we saw a flying saucer, but we don’t know. What we do know is it landed out there—” He pointed toward the open door with the view of the forest. “And we are on duty, so I’d say it’s our responsibility as citizens to investigate. What if it is the Russians?”
“Oh, please.” Bunny had remained quiet until now. “You really think the Russians are going to pick our tiny town for the start of their invasion?” she asked.