When it all started, I worked the second shift as a security guard at the Avondale Farms fruit processing plant. I was one of six guards charged with keeping watch on the factory and the surrounding property. Most of the time I sat in a small lighted booth situated at the front gate. During the day it was left open to allow factory employees, visitors, and deliveries of damaged fruit and vegetables that local farms were unable to sell as whole produce. These rejects were ground into pulp and turned into juices, applesauce, baby carrots, and a variety of other processed plant-based food items that I generally avoided. Not because I am a health nut. I just hate the taste of most fruits and vegetables. And I know how these foods are made. But that’s a less important story for another time.

The second shift ran from three in the afternoon to midnight, with an hour break to eat what passed for lunch at that time in my life. Most days I ate some kind of processed meat on white bread with a side of chips. I was supposed to have a partner to share the responsibility of walking the perimeter to make sure the building was intact and secure. On that particular night, I was alone. The other guard – I can’t remember his name – was scheduled for the second shift, but had called in sick. And there was no one else that could fill in for him. I was okay with it. If I had my way I would have worked alone every day.

I had just returned from walking the perimeter at what should have been the end of my shift. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. The nights were still cold, despite the fact that the late spring sun warmed the days.

I unlocked the door to the booth, stepped inside, and locked it behind me. The small space heater I’d bought with my own money did a pretty good job of heating up the space. I sat in a ratty castaway office chair and held my hands over the heat emanating from the portable unit.

I looked at my watch. It was five past midnight and my relief was nowhere in sight. John was late more often than he was on time. Alicia was no better. Both of them were full of all kinds of excuses.

John worked another job during the day and had trouble waking up two hours after he’d fallen asleep. Alicia had three kids at home and couldn’t leave the house until her husband came home from his afternoon shift at the plastics plant. I sat back in the chair and sighed. It would have been nice if they came to work on time. I wanted to go home.

The phone in the security booth rang, startling me. I let it ring a second time before picking it up. "Avondale Farms. This is Alex. How can I help you?"

"Hi, Alex. It’s John. I overslept again. I’m sorry for being late and will get there as soon as I can."

Of course.

I inhaled deeply and pushed the air out through my nose, closing my eyes in an attempt to diffuse the annoyance I felt. Instead of telling him what I really thought, I just said, "It’s okay, John. Just get here when you can."

He thanked me and hung up. I could tell he felt bad for being late, and I couldn’t really blame him. He was trying to support his family, working two full-time jobs that did not equal the pay of the one full-time job he hoped to get after attending classes online.

The phone rang again.

"Avondale Farms. This is Alex. How can I help you?"

"Alex, it’s Alicia. Little Tommy is throwing up all over the place. I’m not going to be able to come in tonight. Is John there yet?”

I leaned my head back in the chair and closed my eyes. If I wasn’t so aggravated, I might have laughed. "No worries, Alicia. John’s not here yet. He called and said he’s on his way. Just take care of Tommy. I hope he feels better."

She thanked me just as profusely as John did. I returned the phone to the cradle and looked around the booth. The checklist that Prime Security insisted we complete for each shift hung on a nail next to the door. I pulled the clipboard off the wall and mindlessly checked off all the tasks. Most I had completed, and the ones I hadn’t didn’t matter anyway. No one was going to double check my work, and there was nothing at the factory to guard against anyway. The remote location, high fence and the presence of twenty-four-hour security kept away any vandals. There was no money kept on site, and no one in their right mind would want to steal fruits and vegetables that were deformed or near to inedible without all the crushing, squeezing, and pulverizing that they required.

Most of the time when I did the perimeter checks I saw nothing. Some nights brought scavengers like raccoons, coyotes, or an occasional deer. Once I saw a bear, but I have never seen anything warranting the level of security Avondale Farms required. Much of the reason my job existed was due to the fact that the property was fifteen miles from the very edge of suburban civilization. Avondale Farms itself sat about five miles closer to town and was where most of the more urban-minded folks went to experience a day in the country during the harvest season. No one came out to tour the plant.

When I looked at my watch again forty-five minutes had passed. I looked out the window of the booth, straining to see the familiar shine of headlights coming toward me. There was nothing but darkness in the distance both ways. I sat back down and realized that it was time to take another walk around the fence and building. I almost decided to skip it and simply mark it off the list. I sometimes wish I had done just that.

When I was about to stand up, the overhead fluorescent lights in the booth flickered and buzzed. As I lifted my head I saw a fast moving orange or pink light rush by in the strip of sky just above the tree line that was visible from the window of the security booth. I stood up fast from my seat and opened the door to try to catch sight of the strange lights before they faded into the night. A faint trail that could very well have been the afterglow of the white light burning at the back of my eyes from staring at the fluorescent lights streaked across my field of vision. I walked down a couple of steps.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, looking again. The sky was clear. There were no more orange or pink streaks. From the bottom step, I looked behind me at the booth and the lights inside had stopped their epileptic fit. It was probably nothing more than shoddy workmanship by some drunken electrician who figured his work was good enough.

I rushed back inside the booth, snatched my key ring off the hook, then locked and slammed the door behind me. I decided to go ahead and make a final sweep of the factory grounds. The walk was almost always the same. Scrub oaks, pine, and maple trees surrounded the property. They had just started sprouting new leaves and a light wind rustled them. The forest in that part of the county was deep and mostly undisturbed. I never considered myself an easily spooked person, but I rarely pointed the flashlight anywhere but straight ahead, especially on nights when I worked alone. I had no reason to go looking for trouble.

My hope was that John would be there to meet me when I returned. I was disappointed but not surprised to find that he was not there. It was turning into the kind of night where I’d end up working twelve hours instead of eight. I unlocked the door to the guard shack and stepped inside. I checked the phone to see if there were any waiting messages. If there were any, a bright red light would shine as bright as Rudolph’s nose. The phone was dark.

At quarter to two, I prepared myself mentally to make another short trip around the building. I thought about skipping it again, but decided I should do at least that much if I was unwilling to do every little thing suggested on the silly checklist. I rose from the chair and let a curse slip out as I snatched the flashlight from the desk. No one was around to hear me at that hour anyway, so what difference did it really make how I talked to myself?

I stepped outside and had just finished locking the door when I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. I stepped to the side of the booth so that I could get a good view of the road. Two headlights appeared as a vehicle crested a small hill in the distance. As the lights grew brighter, I became convinced that it was not John, but some other blue collar hero on the way home from a late shift at another factory, hospital, or security gig.

I waited by the side of the booth as the twin lights drew closer and slowed. A mid-sized sedan pulled up beneath the arc-sodium lights lining the entrance to the facility. I instinctively unlatched the holster attached to my belt and prepared to draw my revolver. The car stopped near the little gate to the side of the larger sliding gate. A car door opened.

John stepped out of the passenger side, looking disheveled. His jacket was torn and dirty and his blue dress shirt hung out of the bottom of one side. I heard him talking to the driver, but could not make out the specific words. He appeared apologetic and thankful at the same time, his usual look in those days. After a few more words to the unseen driver, he shut the door with a solid thunk. The car reversed, shifted into drive, and drove back the way it had come. I watched the red tail lights fade into the night until they disappeared past the small hill.

As John approached, I walked toward him and fought the urge to roll my eyes. He gave me an awkward smile before he fished his keys out of his pocket, unlocked the smaller gate and stepped inside. He gave me the same sorry look he’d given the unseen driver of the car. It would be easier to be mad at him if I didn’t know that he was sincere. Some people have all the bad luck.

"Alex, I am so sorry. My car broke down again and I had to walk back to my brother’s house to ask for a ride to work. I feel terrible for making you wait." He lifted his cap with the Prime Security logo emblazoned across the front panel and raked his hand through his buzzed blond hair before planting the cap back into place.

"It’s okay, John. Really. I wish you could have called me, but I understand. Things happen." They seemed to happen to John and Alicia all the time and to me almost never, I thought but did not say.

"Thanks, Buddy. I owe you one." He clapped me on the shoulder in a gesture of goodwill.

He owed me much more than just the one he claimed to owe me at that moment. Instead of calling him out and demanding payment for all the ones he owed me, I smiled back and let it slide. "No worries, John. Seriously."

He gave me an aw-shucks grin. "Thanks a lot, man. You really saved my butt today. I appreciate you covering for me."

"It’s what I do." I turned and walked back to the booth to put the flashlight back on the desk. It was time to go home.

After I’d walked through the little gate and waved goodbye to John, I climbed into my beat up Ford box truck. It was older than it had any right to be and always seemed to be on its last leg. Somehow it managed to keep chugging along, despite being well past its prime in years and mileage. John often joked that it would just disintegrate one day and I’d be left standing in a pile of rust and bolts. There was more than a nugget of truth in that statement. I thought about his words as I started the engine and put it in reverse. I smirked as I recalled that my vehicle was not the one that had broken down that night.

****

The way home was a twenty-mile drive further into the wilderness to the tiny village of Big River. The single gas station, bar, and greasy spoon that constituted the center of town never lived up to its namesake. It was so small that it didn’t even warrant a single flashing red light at the one four-way stop. Big River was cursed with being in between the way back and the road to nowhere. No one ever stopped long enough to pay it much attention.

I’d inherited the house I grew up in when my parents passed, along with the eighty acres they’d intended to make into a farm. It was a dream that never happened. At the beginning of their lives together, my mother struggled to have children. In time, she managed to crank out me and my little sister Lily. It had been months or possibly years since Lily had checked in to let me know how she was getting on. I hoped she was having the better life she dreamed of when she was growing up.

I was making good time on the drive home with no traffic in either direction. I’d left the window cracked to allow some of the cool night air to circulate through the cabin. It was brisk and refreshing. The radio in the truck had long since died and went without being replaced, and the rush of cool air on my face kept me alert as I scanned the road for deer or any other animals that might get the idea into their heads to cross the road.

The pale yellow headlights of the truck illuminated the tree line at the edges of both sides of the lonely, familiar road. I could have driven the route with my eyes closed, but more than one poor deer had met their demise with the last thing they ever saw being the dull chrome grill of my truck. They barely left a dent in the old beast.

I was just over halfway home when the truck started chugging and hitching like it was going to stall. It had never sputtered at any point in past, not even on the coldest of mornings, so this was odd behavior. I tramped the gas pedal in an attempt to flood the engine, maybe clear out the carburetor. The truck continued to struggle down the road but did not die.

"Come on girl. At least make it home."

I’d driven another mile when everything in the truck just quit. There were no idiot lights to warn me that anything was wrong. Everything just stopped working. The headlights went out. The engine was dead. I used what remaining forward motion I had to coast to the shoulder and eased as far onto the dirt as I could without slipping into the ditch with the half-light of the moon as my guide.

Acting on instinct, I pulled the switch to turn on the hazard lights. Nothing happened, of course, and I was confused for a second before realizing my stupidity. I turned the key back into the off position in the ignition and sat for a few seconds, considering my options. I was ten miles from home, ten miles from work, and twenty-five miles from the nearest moderately populated city. In short, I was stranded.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and turned around to climb onto the seat bench and reach behind it to retrieve my roadside emergency kit. It was one I put together myself with jumper cables, flares, a flashlight, a hammer, a couple of screwdrivers, a small first aid kit, and one of those reflective blankets.

I pulled the kit out from behind the seat, turned around to face forward, unzipped the thick canvas bag, and pulled out the flashlight. It was a cheap plastic one that I had bought at a dollar store for just this purpose. I turned it in my hands, found the switch, and moved it into the on position. Nothing happened. I smacked it against my other hand and tried again. Still nothing.

Frustrated, I unscrewed the top and confirmed that it had batteries. I already knew it did. I was meticulous about making sure my roadside emergency kit was well stocked and refreshed every six months. After all, the eventual demise of my battered truck could have come at any time. In a vain attempt to deny the deadness of the flashlight, I rearranged the order of the batteries, screwed the top back on, and flipped the switch again. Nothing.

I tossed the flashlight back into the bag and reached for a flare. I had one in my hand when the radio blared to life, spewing loud static. I froze in place, not registering what was happening. The face of the radio flickered with low yellow light. The static grew louder and ebbed and flowed, the sound oscillating back and forth between the speakers I thought were dead. No sound had come out of them for years. I dropped the unlit flare and reached to lock the driver side door, then leaned over and locked the passenger door. I swallowed a hard lump in my throat.

The static was infused with a high pitched whine that traveled across the audio field in a well-defined wave pattern. I could almost see a bump of water moving across the ocean toward the shore in my mind. The one thing I knew about waves was that they crested and broke.

The first flutters of anxiety attacked my stomach. I breathed faster as my eyes darted back and forth into the darkness, but there was nothing to see but trees and road. The radio grew louder, more insistent.

I had no plan, no idea about what I should do, so I did nothing. I sat behind the steering wheel and looked out the windshield. I turned my head left and right to look out the side windows as well as the window behind me. Something inexplicable was happening. The only piece of technology (if you could still call it that) that was working in my decrepit truck was something that hadn’t worked in years. True, the light coming from the face of the radio was low, but it was present. And it should not have been.

I was like a furtive animal, acting on instinct. And my instinct was to hide. The wave of static coming from the should-be-dead speakers became more pronounced. My heart responded by beating a little faster. A creeping feeling tickled my spine, persistent in a way that made me feel vulnerable. Having no experience with the supernatural, unnatural, strange, or bizarre, I wasn’t sure what horrors awaited me. I didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

The radio screeched and made a popping sound as it went dead. My ears rang with the absence of sound. The light of the half moon once again became the sole source of illumination in the cab of the truck. I reached into the bag for another flare, preparing myself to get out of the truck. There was no way I could stay locked in there all night. It was a long time until morning, and if the past ten minutes were any indication of coming events, I had no desire to stick around to see what happened next.

As I reached for the door handle a bright white light from above the truck filled the cabin and blinded me. My first thought was that it was a police helicopter like the ones I’d seen on TV chasing down criminals. But I’d never seen one out in the sticks. There was no need for that sort of equipment with so few people. We were lucky if the Forest County Sheriff’s Department could spare a deputy or two to do a drive by once or twice a week in a Crown Vic or an SUV that was nearly as old as my dilapidated truck.

I pulled my hand back from the door handle and pushed myself into the center of the bench seat. The light moved slowly from the driver’s side to the passenger side, then winked out. I was blinded again as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. All I could see for a few seconds were shadows. I reached for the roadside emergency kit.

I dropped the flare I still held in my hand as the light blazed bright once again. It seemed to be focused above the center of the truck cabin. I sat still, my eyes wide with fear. My stomach growled and I felt my bowels loosen. It was a bad time to have the sudden urge to take a crap. I leaned forward and tried to look up into the light. It was too bright, too strong for my eyes.

The spotlight winked out again, but I was not plunged into blindness or darkness. Instead, I saw a pattern of spinning lights reflected off the windshield. Orange, pink, and green swirled across the hood. I felt and heard a low humming, similar to the sensation of strong bass at a rock concert or from a tricked out car, but this was different. There was no thumping beat, just a steady low vibration that grew stronger with each passing second. The windows started to rattle in their tracks.

I decided to make a break for it. I didn’t know how to go about doing that sort of thing, but I’d seen enough movies to know that if the backcountry hick stays in his car in the middle of the woods while otherworldly things happen, he is bound to get kidnapped, killed, or both. Fighting my instinct to stay, I grabbed one of the flares I dropped on the floor, scooted back across the seat to the driver’s side, opened the door, and slid to the ground. Dust kicked back into my face.

The humming was more intense outside the truck and louder. With my face to the ground, I scooched myself under the truck. My shining moment bravery that prompted me to get out of the truck was gone, and I was again a frightened little rabbit hiding from the crafty fox. The lights flickered all around me. Orange, pink, and green rotated in a clockwise circle.

I was seized by the sudden urge to see the source of the lights, to confirm that it was more than my imagination. I cursed myself for my curiosity, knowing there was no way I could resist the urge to look. I rolled over onto my back and stared at the undercarriage of the truck for a few moments in an attempt to distract myself. My truck wasn’t one of those new low riders, so there was plenty of ground clearance underneath. I’d never needed any car jacks to do any repairs. Everything was rusty, but there were no leaks.

Taking a deep breath to steel myself, I scooted over toward the driver side, closer to the road. I positioned myself so that my head was the only thing that would stick out from the side of the truck. I figured that a smaller target would be harder to hit. Common sense told me to get back under the truck.

Unable to resist the magnetism of curiosity, I pulled myself by the frame of the truck until half of my head stuck out from the side. I kept my eyes closed until I saw the lights dancing on the back of my eyelids. I wasn’t ready to look. At least not yet. If I could just keep my eyes closed, I wouldn’t have to see whatever was out there to see. I found myself wishing I’d been born blind.

Disgusted by my cowardice, I gripped the side of the truck as hard as I could and forced my eyes open as wide as possible. What I saw took my breath away. Probably a hundred feet up in the air, a large disc hovered over the road, nearly silent except for the low-frequency hum I heard and felt deep in the marrow of my bones. The orange, pink, and green lights spun around the outside of the structure. Another set of softer white lights spun counterclockwise inside the colorful circle.

I was struck by the realization that the hum was the only sound I heard. The crickets, frogs, and other insects that were born like crazy in late spring were silent. They should have filled the night with their chaotic symphony. I strained to hear anything else aside from the low hum as I gazed into the dazzling display of lights. The silver colored metal I could see on the bottom of the craft gleamed dully with reflected glory. It was mesmerizing.

Scrounging up a bit more courage and casting ideas of self-preservation aside, I pulled myself out from under the truck and stumbled to my feet. I pressed my back into the driver side door, relieved to find it was still there and felt solid. It was real. My left hand brushed a piece of exposed rust on the body. I clutched it in my hand to keep my tenuous grip on reality firm. I closed my eyes and held tightly to those things within my immediate grasp. To think of anything else was too much for my mind to comprehend. It must have looked like I was performing some form of worship, stricken by a hypnotic spirit and staring into the face of my god.

I couldn’t bring myself to say the word spaceship or UFO, but that was exactly what hovered above me. My self-denial was always strong, and never more so that in the face of unknown situations. I wondered how long the object would stay suspended above my truck and part of me wanted to know what it was doing there. Why did it seem to be making me the focus of its attention? There was nothing special about me, nothing extraordinary.

I felt the hum grow weaker before I heard its volume drop. I snapped open my eyes and watched as a bright streak of light flamed out across the night sky. It looked like a shooting star or a meteorite, except without the long tail. It didn’t take long for the ball of light to disappear completely. I stayed glued to the side of the truck, staring into the sky, entranced by the spell of the special kind of magic I’d just experienced. I exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness, searching the shadows for some sort of explanation for what I had just seen. There was no physical evidence left behind that I could hold onto. There was nothing more than my experience of a metal disc in the sky and some spinning lights. And I couldn’t forget the low hum that penetrated through the core of my being and punched a hole in my soul. There was no other way to describe it.

I realized my right hand was still clutched around the flare when I turned to open the door to the truck. I moved it to my left hand and wrenched the door open. As I climbed in, I tossed the flare toward the direction of my makeshift roadside emergency kit on the bench seat. I reached in the dark for the flashlight. I grabbed it by the light end, turned it in my hand, and flicked the switch. Light so bright it made me wince filled the cabin. A feeling of tightness poked at my chest. I suddenly found it hard to breathe. And then I started shaking.

Desperate to regain control of the fragile tension in my own little world, I fumbled the key one notch forward in the ignition. The dashboard and headlights lit up, strong as ever. Air pumped out from the heater fan. I pressed the clutch to the floor and twisted the key further to start the engine. The truck roared to life. I shifted the car into neutral and pressed down on the brake. My body trembled harder and my pulse became erratic. It didn’t race. It skipped. It leapt. It jumped in its own kind of sporadic rhythm. My mouth felt dry, filled with an uncomfortable cottony sensation.

There was one more test of my sanity left. I reached over to the radio that suddenly came to life when everything else that had previously worked went dead. I pushed the power button on and waited for the wave-like static. Nothing happened.

That was all my mind could take. A rush of emotion that can only be described as complete unreleif coursed through my veins and I cried my first tears of fear and confusion. It was a dangerous mix of paralyzing emotion that came unbidden and seemed too terrible to bear. And it would not be the worst or even the last time I felt such a thing.