• ***

    It started on a cloudy day. It always does. The sky was a pale blue streaked with gray. To the west sat a giant bank of dark clouds, looking as if there were a creature rising from the mountains. Everything had a sort of morbidity to it, the early morning sun covered by the cumulonimbus formation. Even though there was no lighting, no rain, no wind, the clouds were moving rather fast across the sky and every now and then there was the sound of thunder, a grating sound like a poorly oiled car.

    People moved slowly, as if the lack of sunlight had some affect on them. Even cars seemed to have a lagging pace. Where was a the buzz of traffic, the bustling crowds surging along the sidewalk? Even for an Saturday morning, things were strangely slow.

    One exception was Alexandra Cole. She made her way through the streets with long strides and an obvious purpose. Her light blue eyes matched the drab sky and her mousey hair was struggling to escape from the tight up-do it had been forced into. Make-up had been plastered onto her pale, oval shaped face and she was wearing a big maroon sweatshirt and dark jeans.

    The fifteen year-old seemed much more energetic and happier than everyone else too. Alexandra was untouchable. Her grades were better than ever, her job at the local electronics store was going great, and she was dating the amazingly cute Hank Williams.

    Actually, she was going to meet Hank right then. At the mall. As cliché as that was, it was because the book store was right next door. While he was good looking, he was a complete nerd. Saying ‘Meet me at the book store’ just didn’t sound as good as ‘Meet me at the mall’.

    As Alexandra walked, she noticed how slow and tired everyone seemed. She frowned and scanned the blank faces. Only one or two other people were acting more normally like her. Shaking it off, the teenager just kept walking.
    After about five minutes of walking, the large mall complex came into view. It was a looming gray building with bright signs on the outside. It dwarfed the used and new book store that squatted off to the side.

    Insistent chiming caused Alexandra to stop mid-stride. “What the hell is it now?” she grumbled, whipping out her cell phone. A little envelope flashed on the screen and she opened the text message.

    Don’t feel good. Can’t come 2 the mall. C u later. Sorry.

    What!? Since when was Hank sick? She had just talked to him an hour ago and he had been fine, just a little sleepy. She didn’t know whether to be mad, disappointed, or indifferent. Probably not the latter.

    Sighing heavily she replied to his text with a quick ‘ok’. Stuffing her phone into her pocket again, she turned and began walking back home. Now her mood had worsened but she quickly recovered. She was being petty. He had blown her off for a meeting at the mall. And it was because he didn’t feel good. No problem.

    Alexandra winced as she heard a loud, growling clap of thunder and she glanced over at the clouds. They had been hanging there for an entire day, seeming to grow larger and darker. “Unpredictable weather. Unpredictable boyfriend,” she muttered to herself. All right, so maybe she was just the tiniest bit upset. The lack of sunshine was starting to get to her and finally dampen her mood.

    Still, she seemed more life-like than half the people walking the streets. Weird. Brushing it off, the girl just kept walking home.
    ***
    A week later, the clouds looming on the horizon had spread to cover the entire western potion of the sky, not longer gray but an inky black. The metallic groans and snarls had grown louder and more frequent. Yet there was no rain, no lightning, no wind. The air, normally quite humid, had grown dry.
    To make things all the stranger, everyone seemed to be growing even less energetic. Things slowed down, people were late, and nobody appeared to give a damn. A few individuals looked like death itself.

    Even Alexandra began to feel the wear. Once a straight A student, she had stopped doing her work. She was struggling to make the simplest coherent thoughts and perform basic tasks. Still, she was doing better than others.
    One day, she had walked downstairs to see her father laying on the couch, dead asleep. He wasn’t even snoring which was like hearing a dead person talk. He remained sleeping in that position for over twenty four hours.

    That was on a Saturday. When Monday rolled around, Alexandra was feeling a little better. Some kind of bug had to be going around. She walked to school with a bit more spirit, starting to really be able to take in her surroundings. The plants were dying all around. Trees had lost their leaves even though it was Spring and looked dry and pained. Flowers, grass, bushes, it was all wilting miserably.

    And everywhere she went there seemed to be a dog barking or a bristling cat snarling. At the sky. Noses pointed towards the west. Even Alexandra’s bird had constantly begun chirping and fluttering around its cage in an insane manner. Maybe there was a hurricane coming!

    “Hey Alex,” a male voice murmured blandly.

    Alexandra’s head jerked up and she grinned at her boyfriend. Hank was tall, a few inches taller than her, with a nice muscular build. His ashen hair was normally perfect yet still looking effortless, but today it was just messy. Mossy eyes were dull and seemed to stare off into space, flickering around constantly. The teenage boy’s flawless skin was strangely pale and he looked thinner than normal.

    “What’s up Hank? Feeling any better?” she asked, cocking her head curiously. Hank had been complaining about feeling horrible and lately, he looked pretty bad too.

    The bell rang and both kids walked inside. Only about half the student body was actually there and about a quarter of the faculty. No that anyone was really complaining. The only one of Alexandra’s teachers that had showed up was the rodent-like AP English teacher Miss Spencer. Her skin was swallow and she looked like she had been through a war. The only thing they did in class was sit there and read, though most of the class ended up just staring at the ceiling.

    The school day finally concluded and Alexandra trudged home. She was so tired… Walking through the halls had taken a lot out of her. Her backpack was slung over one shoulder and when she finally got home she just plopped down on the couch. Her mom and dad were actually at work that day so the house was quiet. Well, aside from the insane twittering of her little multi-colored lorikeet. The bird had been freaking out lately. She ended up actually walking over to throw the cover over the bird’s cage.

    Her parents got home around five and they silently ate pizza and Chinese food leftovers before everyone went to bed. That was at seven. In twelve quick hours, everything would change drastically.
    ***
    Grrrrr…

    That was the painful noise that woke Alexandra up early the next morning. It was like a giant dog snarling. A dog the size of a small jet. Grumbling angrily, she hauled herself out of bed and shuffled over to her window, poking her head out of it. The dark clouds… They were breaking apart. Just not to show blue sky. Now revealed was the metallic, silver underbelly of some strangely shaped aircraft.

    “Mom! Dad! Come outside!” the girl called before running outside herself, fatigue and morning stupor completely forgotten.

    When she got outside she saw all the other neighbors standing outside too, pointing up at the sky. As the clouds continued to break up, the silver mass seemed to move. And as it moved, the hideous grating noises got louder and more frequent, accompanied by booms and crashes.

    Mrs. and Mr. Cole soon ran out to stand next to their daughter, all three gaping openly at the western hemisphere of the sky.

    The clouds that had plagued the town for so long were dissipating like some deadly vapor chased away by the antidote. More and more of the craft was slowly revealed. The thing was so large that it dwarfed the mountains it hovered over with a smooth, flawless, silvery exterior. Only a few strange disc shaped objects spattered the surface. It had a long bullet shape and sunlight, finally allowed to shine down, made the object sparkle as it moved across the sky.

    Suddenly, whatever energy she had gained, Alexandra lost. She gasped and fell to the ground, struggling to just keep her eyes open. All the other people on her street had crumpled too.

    Looking up, Alexandra’s eyes managed to widen when she saw the UFO again. It was literally glowing, bathed in a bright yellow tinted light. The discs were swirling and lit up brightest of all. That was when things began to click together.

    The whole town had gotten so tired, animals had started freaking out, the plants had been dying this way and that. A group of five young adults, the oldest no more than thirty years old, had gone hiking in the mountains, the ones in the west, had mysteriously died for no apparent reason. They all had looked to be sleeping.

    Somebody, or something, was manning that ship. And Alexandra could only think of one name for the creatures up there.

    Energy vampires.

    And then she passed out, swimming in darkness.