Young Writers Society

A storm was brewing over the summer fields of Iowa. Clouds boiled and writhed, rising and falling like the lungs of some unimaginably vast creature. Forks of lightning slashed through them, momentarily illuminating the darkened landscape. Each time the lightning flared, there was a snap and a low rumble.
Suddenly, another sound arose—it was not the deep, stern voice of thunder, but a high shrieking sound that seemed to reverberate in the air in the way the thunder could not. There was another flash of light in the sky, but this one held a spark of flame.
And when the ship fell to the earth, the air parted before it and screamed; the clouds curled angrily around the scar of its passage.
The ship struck the ground, slamming mercilessly into the soft earth, leaving a long gash in the long grass of the field. It skidded some hundred feet, twice bouncing like a flat rock skipped across the surface of a lake. Finally it shuddered to a halt and lay there like a dead thing. Its form had once been beautiful; a thin, sweeping battleaxe-shaped vessel that now lay burned and twisted on the ground.
Only then did it begin to rain. The sky, which had seemed to have held its breath from the shock of the ship’s passage, now released the building storm with a vengeance: rain swept down in thick sheets, and the wind howled in a manner not unlike the sound the wounded ship had made as it fell.
For a short while, the ship was completely still. Then, in a noticeably halting fashion and with an audible mechanical squeal, a door on the side slid upward. A ramp began to extend towards the ground. Had it reached it, it would have sat awkwardly due to the lopsided position of the ship itself. Instead, the ramp slid forward a foot or so and halted, made a thick grinding noise, and slid back into the doorway. It repeated this again and again, blindly stubborn to its own predicament.
There was a movement inside the ship, and this time the ramp did not extend itself again. A man appeared in the doorway. He recoiled momentarily, seemingly taken aback at the ferocity of the storm outside, but leaned forward again to look at the ground. It was a drop of perhaps five or six feet. He stepped to the edge of the doorway, moving with a slight limp, and leapt down to the ground, immediately crying out and clutching his injured left leg. He gritted his teeth against it and stood, rain streaming into his eyes, almost blinding him.
He looked down at his left leg, but he was not attending to his injury; his hands moved along a series of small cases and containers attached to his belt, including seven small, dark vials partially encased in metal. From one of the other containers he retrieved a small, flat, square device. He thumbed a button on one side, but the side facing him only flared brightly for a moment and winked out again. He shook his head, and placed the device back in his pocket.
The crash had shaken him, and he had been paying little attention to his surroundings for the last few minutes. Now, as the dumb shock of the impact faded, his head swung up to look beside him; there, in the distance—he squinted through the sheets of rain—there were lights. Artificial lights, not lightning. Bracing himself, he clutched his leg and began limping towards them.

. . .
“Hey, there,” said a voice as he entered through the glass door. He looked up, not understanding what was said but knowing that he had been spoken to. He saw a man sitting behind a low counter, reading a magazine with something illegible typed across the top of its cover in red lettering. The other man was older than he was, with glasses and a shining bald head. The man smiled at him out of friendliness and curiosity.
“Quite a storm out there,” the man continued. “Sure I heard a tornado earlier, by the sound it made. Nearly jumped out of my skin. We get plenty out here in Iowa, don’t you know,” he added, nodding at him.
Still not there. He had understood a few of the words, but he had no idea how to respond. He tried nodding back, and that seemed to satisfy the man behind the counter.
“My wife Bettie is still at home,” the man said. “She called me on the cell phone—” he pointed to a small, square device on the counter, “—and was all in a panic, thinking that the gas station had been torn down. She’s a good girl, but she worries too much, you know what I mean. Sorry, I’m rambling a bit. Anything I can help you with? Or do you just need a minute before heading back out into that mess?”
It clicked.
“Yes,” he said. “I think I’ve heard—hurt, my leg.” He pointed.
“My,” the man said. He set down the magazine (which now clearly proclaimed the word Times across its cover) and hurried out from behind the counter. A small, shiny badge on his chest read Barry. He looked at the crash survivor’s belt and asked, “Did you get hurt on a construction sight or something? Because—”
He moved quickly. As Barry leaned down to look at his leg, he seized one of the vials at his waist and swung it into the side of the man’s neck. There was a snapping sound and a hiss as the vial injected its contents into the man’s bloodstream. Barry leapt back with a yelping sound, more from surprise than pain.
“What in the hell was that for?” He bellowed. “What the hell did you do?”
The man didn’t bother answering him; in a few minutes, ‘Barry’ would be gone. He counted in his head. Three seconds…two…one…
Barry twitched. His eyes momentarily lost their focus. He remained like this for a few seconds, and then straightened up with a grunt. The man, still holding his injured leg, smiled.
“What was in that thing?” Barry said angrily, pointing to the vial still clutched in the man’s hand.
The smile disappeared instantly.
“You!” the man said in shock. “How did it not affect you? How did you resist us?” A sudden realization dawned in his eyes. “You are not one of the Ferri!”
Barry stared back at him, his mouth gaping. With a low, frightened squeal, he spun on his feet and ran towards the counter and the thing he had called a ‘cell phone’. Without thinking, the man drew his weapon and fired at Barry’s broad back. The gas station owner fell dead, a messy hole in his spine sizzling slightly.
The man stared at the body for a few moments. Then, he retrieved the small, square device from his pocket again, and turned it on. The screen’s image wavered, but remained on. He tapped at a few buttons that appeared on the screen, and began to speak.
“This is Infection Officer Sarazan. My original mission has been a failure. I have crashed on an unknown planet.” He glanced at the body and continued. “Indigenous population is Ferri-anatomy race. Organisms appear immune to immediate control. I repeat, organisms appear immune to immediate control.” He allowed his face to split in a wide grin. “I think we’ve found them.”