Invasion

4

10:45 P.M.

Charlie Arnold had been working for the University Medical Center for thirty-seven years, ever since his seventeenth birthday when he decided to drop out of school. He’d begun with the Building and Grounds Department, mowing lawns, pruning trees, and weeding the flower beds. Unfortunately an allergy to grass drove him out of that line of work. But since he was a valued hospital employee, the administration offered him a housekeeping position instead. Charlie had accepted and enjoyed the work. Particularly on hot days he enjoyed it more than being outside.

Charlie liked working on his own. The supervisor would give him a list of the rooms to clean, and off he’d go. On this particular night he had one more room to go: one of the student overnight rooms. They were always easier than a regular hospital room. In a regular room he never knew what he was going to run into. It depended on the illness of the previous occupant. Sometimes they could be pretty bad.

Whistling under his breath, Charlie cracked open the door, pushed in his mop bucket, and pulled in his cleaning cart. With his hands on his hips he surveyed the room. As he’d expected, it only needed a light disinfectant mopping and dusting. He walked over to the bathroom and glanced in there. It didn’t even look as if it had been used.

Charlie always started in the bathroom. After putting on his thick protective gloves, he scrubbed out the shower and the sink and disinfected the toilet. Then he mopped the floor.

Moving out into the room, he peeled off the bed linens and wiped down the mattress. He dusted all other horizontal surfaces, including the windowsill. He was about to start mopping when a glow caught his eye. Turning to face the bureau, he stared at the valuables safe. Although his mind told him it was preposterous, the box seemed to be glowing as if there was an enormously powerful light inside it. Of course that didn’t make any sense, since the box was made out of metal, so no matter how bright a light was, even if there was one inside, it wouldn’t shine through.

Charlie leaned his mop against the top edge of the bucket, and took a few steps toward the bureau, intending to open the door to the box. But he stopped about three feet away. The glow that surrounded the box had gotten brighter. Charlie even imagined he could feel a warmth on his face!

Charlie’s first thought was to get the hell out of the room, but he hesitated. It was a confusing spectacle and mildly frightening, yet curious at the same time.

Then to Charlie’s amazement a shower of sparks burst forth from the side of the box accompanied by a hissing sound similar to arc welding. Charlie’s hands reflexively shot up to protect his face from the sparks, but they stopped almost the moment they began. From the point of sparking a luminous red spinning disc the size of a silver dollar emerged. It had seared through the metal, leaving a smoking slit.

Completely stunned by this phenomenon, Charlie couldn’t move. The spinning disc slowly traveled laterally toward the window, coming within a foot of his arm. At the window it hovered as if it were appreciating the vista of the night sky. Then its color changed from red to white-hot and a corona appeared around it like a narrow halo.

Charlie’s curiosity propelled him closer to this mysterious object. He knew no one was going to believe him when he described it. Holding out his hand, palm down, he waved it back and forth over the object to make sure there wasn’t a wire or a string. He couldn’t understand how it was hanging in the air.

Sensing its warmth, Charlie cupped his hands and slowly brought them closer and closer to the object. It was a peculiar warmth that tingled his skin. When his hands got within the corona, the tingling magnified.

The object ignored Charlie until he inadvertently blocked the object’s view of the night sky. The moment he did so, the disc moved laterally, and before Charlie could react, it instantly and effortlessly burnt a hole through the center of his palm! Skin, bone, ligaments, nerves, and blood vessels were all vaporized.

Charlie let out a yelp more in surprise than pain. It had happened so quickly. He staggered back, gaping at his perforated hand in total disbelief and smelling the unmistakable aroma of burnt flesh. There was no bleeding since all the vessels had been heat-coagulated. In the next instant the corona around the luminous object expanded to a foot in diameter.

Before Charlie could react, a whooshing sound commenced and rapidly increased in volume until it was deafening. At the same time Charlie felt a force pulling him toward the window. Frantically he reached out with his good hand and grabbed the bed only to have his feet go out from underneath him. Gritting his teeth, he managed to hang on even though the bed itself moved. The violence of the sound and the movement lasted only seconds before being capped by a noise vaguely reminiscent of the closing of a central vac port.

Charlie let go of the bed and tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t. The muscles of his legs were like rubber. He knew something was horribly wrong and tried to cry out for help, but his voice was weak, and he was salivating so copiously that any speech was nearly impossible. Marshalling what strength he had, he attempted to crawl toward the door. But the effort was in vain. After moving only a few feet he started to retch. Moments later utter darkness descended as Charlie’s body was racked by a series of rapidly fatal grand mal seizures.