As they both laughed, a loud shout of warning came from the east part of the field, followed immediately by a louder scream.

Startled, Joe sprang to his feet and rushed towards the source. Jenny stood rooted to spot, waiting for him to come back with an update. The scream had destroyed their merry mood, and both of them were nervous.

Joe proceeded forward for some distance, then he made a sharp turn back, and bolted towards Jenny. His wide eyes, raised eyebrows, and parted lips showed his panic.

“Run!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

It took Jenny some moments to register what he was warning her of, but then, she saw it.

Like a child devouring lollipops, the shrubs were sucked in one after another in the ground. The hole, it's circumference too perfectly round to be natural, precariously ate away at the land just beneath Joe as he darted away.

A low whimper escaped her as she turned and ran towards her car.

Joe’s shouts came directly from behind her, urging her to run faster.

Suddenly, the shouts stopped, but she didn’t dare to look behind.

She ran, her tight shoes exploding at the seams, yet she didn’t falter a single step. She ran to the other end of the farm where all the cars were parked.

She didn’t dare look behind her to check if Joe made it, or if the landfall had stopped.

Three times, she pulled her keys from her purse, only to have them slip through her fingers. When she finally had them, she fumbled uselessly with the keyhole of her car’s door.

Worse, the keys fell, and she had to bend down to get them.

As she bent she realized that the landfall stopped and that half of the house was gone. So was Joe.

She fell on the ground and started to cry hot, searing tears as she trembled while trying to hold the keys of her cars tight in her hand.

--

A man wearing an immaculate striped blue suit sat at a small wooden desk and held a phone handset next to his ear.

“Sir, no sir, they don’t know yet. Nobody does,” he said in a rigid tone.

He listened to somebody barking orders on the other side for a minute.

“We can isolate the opened portals within the week, sir. We are mobilizing an engineering unit to build a wall around the farms.”

He listened for a moment.

“We are not sure yet, could be hundreds of them out there. I will contact all our agents across the country to come back with the precise figures.”

He nodded as the person at the side barked some more orders.

“If there’s more than a single portal in any town, we will cordon the entire area. But you have to erase these towns from the map on your side. Label them military compounds. Civilians without any use should be sent to prison camps.”

He nodded twice, hung up, and stood.

On the other side of the room was a small locker. He opened it and reached inside to retrieve a Colonel’s uniform, and started to change out of his suit.