In the distance I start to hear a rhythmic thumping, the sound of foot falls of dozens of people running in step. It sounds like its coming from all directions, but swiveling my head around I can determine there isn’t any sound coming from the south. I run towards the side yard of the single-story ranch style house I'm in front of and use the trash cans and fence to boost myself onto the roof. Laying flat against the defilade of the roof from the street I wait till the sounds of foot falls grow louder then pass. I give it a good five count then poke my head up over the peak of the roof, I see a huge crowd of people standing near the car fire, each one with a lighting shining out of their mouths. Some are standing so close to the fire that they are starting to smoke.

I notice that most of them are partially or totally covered in blood. Some are missing one or both arms, a couple have holes through their heads or are missing parts of their faces. Its truly a grisly scene as they all stand there in silence for several minutes.

Maybe around a dozen people broke off and started preforming what looked like a search of the area, sweeping their flashlights over the surrounding houses. The majority of the group turned as one and start jogging north up the street back towards my house. Pairs of flashlight mouths picked up the bodies I left and start dragging them south, I’m not calling them zombies, I will freak out if I do that... but they definitely are not traditionally alive.

After the large group moves away the search team sweeps the area a few more times then they head north, where I can already hear gunfire picking back up. I climb up the house’s chimney for a better vantage point, the area is pretty flat so I can see for miles. The immediate area is all black except for the car fire I started. To the north I can see the glow from Houston, but every other direction is just darkness, except the south. It’s hard to judge the distance, but I think a light might be coming from the transformer station that I’ve passed a few times on my way to the gulf.

I debate my next move, I don’t have my phone, but I imagine that dozens of people have already called the police. It’s been a while since the power went out and I’m just now hearing sirens. Maybe they will earn my tax dollars this week, but hell if I’m letting them do all the work. I carefully climb off the roof and head south behind the pairs of flashlight mouths dragging bodies.

They are easy to follow, the light they give off warning me in advance of their movements, but the pairs never turn to the side or look around. Periodically I see a trio or pair of them running the opposite direction, but their lights give them away well in advance. It sounds like the firefight is heating up back there. It takes me an hour of slinking behind parked cars, between houses, and over fences, but I finally make it to a block from the power station. My lack of pants and shoes is starting to be detrimental; my feet are raw and my legs are covered in scratches where I pushed through bushes or vaulted over fences that caught my legs. I peak my head around the corner of the nearest house and immediately pull back, in addition to the ones I followed about twenty others, it looks like they are waiting in line by the gate to the transformer station. Some of them look like they are holding bags, others are holding electronic appliances, I see lap tops, TV’s, and that one is holding a toaster. I can’t see what's going on inside the power station, the chain link fence has those vertical plastic slats.

As I still haven’t seen any of these things look up, I decided to climb on the roof of the nearest house. What I see a thirty foot long, bean shaped silvery object, its just a little taller than the fence and the light is coming from an area on the outside where it is directly wired into the power station. It barely fits inside the power station and has a door directly facing the gate. I watch as the electronics are dropped into the slot next to the door and wince as an amazingly loud grinding sound starts. It sounds like a garbage disposal, but as loud as a jackhammer, at the same time electrical light illuminates the interior of the pod. Pod? Am I calling this a pod? Yes. This appears to be a pod.

I can see part of the floor of the pod through its door, because of this I notice that dozens of the disk like spiders start emerging out of the door like some sort of migration. I watch as they approach the dead bodies I made earlier, a spider each goes to the tall woman and half headed man and climb into their mouths. The old man gets more attention, as his body is covered in spiders again. I try to time how long it takes, its maybe thirty seconds from the time the spiders enter to the mouth till they start trying to stand up, both of them are on their feet within a minute. After about ten minutes the old man is back on his feet, wearing a fresh set of spider coveralls and looking just as large as before, but this time the disks also cover the back of his head and neck. He starts stomping his way north, the two former corpses keeping pace with him as they travel out of my line of sight. Whatever this is they have the ability to learn that their carrier assets are going to need an escort.

I stay in place on the roof for the next several hours, sipping from my canteens. I need to send a note to thank drunk me from last week for filling these with Jack Daniel’s instead of water. Enjoying snacks from my grenade snack pouches I observe the power station. I wait and watch as the team with the electronics take turns depositing their loot in the slot, each one sprinting off in different directions as soon as their arms are empty, periodically another will return with some different item taken from nearby homes. I need to wait for an opening, it looks like the same foragers, no new faces, so they are going to have to go further and further to search. Finally I establish a pattern, on average they are taking ten minutes to return, so I just need to wait for there to be none around.

Eventually it happens, the gaps between departures and returns have stretched out to fifteen minutes and I can’t see any of them in the immediate area right now. I drop down from the roof of the house and sprint into the pod. Having had some time to think about it, my plan relies on the spiders being controlled by a computer somewhere in that ship. I run past the gate, gravel further bruising my bare feet, and burst through the door on the side of the ship. The interior is dim, but I’ve kept my night vision fresh, I'm immediately confronted by a pair of flashlight mouths inside the doorway, one round of buckshot to each of them puts them down.

Inside the pod smells like burnt plastic and rancid meat. The interior of the pod is a large open area filled with loud grinding machinery along the left side of the space, the rest of the area is mostly empty with stacks of tan disks lining the walls, there must have been thousands in here. Tens of thousands. I watch as a mechanical arm unfolds from the wall and places another cylindrical stack of tan disks along the wall. This is some kind of factory. I load two slugs into my gun and then fire them into the wall the arm came out of, hoping to disable the machinery. I’m rewarded by sparks arching from the wall and the grinding banging sound slowing then stopping.

As I'm reloading, a 6 foot wide circular hole opens in the opposite wall and the smell of rancid meat intensifies.

Something like a hairy maggot the size of an adult anaconda crawled out into the room. About eight inches wide and maybe twelve feet long, it uncurled itself from a seat to writhe into the compartment. It had no eyes and I couldn’t determine where its mouth was. Its motions aren't urgent so I back away towards an empty area and watch as it wiggles past me. Its underside is covered in caterpillar like legs. When it reached the wall of machinery it started feeling its way along each component. Without being sure of the anatomy I need to make my shots do the most damage. I position myself behind it, crouch down, and unload one shell of buckshot up its ass equivalent. A slug and buckshot tear along its length and coats the machinery it was examining in brown and white fluid. The other end contorts silently for a moment then collapses and deflates.

Around the room, lights start turning on in the stacks of disks.

I need to find and deactivate that computer, I hurry through circular doorway into the next room, there’s chair, a panel with dials, knobs, and switches, one wall has a joystick looking device hanging out of it. I start firing slugs into anything that could be a computer, but the disks in the next room keep moving. Then I notice the chair the maggot was wrapped around has holes in it, holes the same shape as its legs. A lead slug doesn’t do anything to the integrity of the chair besides leave a dent and scuff the paint. I use my pocket knife and a fair amount of desperate strength to pry open the area around one of the divots. After a minute of work I’ve got something like a cover open a quarter of an inch and can see blinking lights inside. Looks like I found a computer. A glance back at the larger room informs me that my time is running out, hundreds of spiders are methodically crawling my direction, I only have minutes before they reach me.

This chair thing seems like a computer, and there's one sure way I know to destroy it without the time needed to crack it open. I need to get this thing wet, but my canteens are empty. I open my fly and answer the call of nature directly into the opening I made… not directly, but mostly…. At least half made it in. I am immediately rewarded my hissing and popping of shorting electronics. What lighting there was inside the ship has gone out, but everything is still well lit thanks to all the mechanical spiders still coming towards me.

At least any more wont be made, but my way out is through them, I'm running low on ammunition, but I hope a dozen shells of buckshot and a good run is enough. I use the buckshot like a broom to clear a path to the exit, down to six shells I make a sprint for it. The needle like appendages on the closest disks stab out towards and into my feet that instantly go numb. I manage to half fall, half lunge to the doorway, then crawl on my hands and knees out of the pod. I look up to see a wall of people with flashlights running towards me, all of them running in step.

I can't outrun them like this, so instead I scrape my hands and knees as I crawl around the other side of the pod. I can hear the spiders moving along behind me, I'm barely moving faster than them. When I make it to the side of the ship I use the chain link fence to get back on my feet, walking is difficult but I can limp my way to a transformer on the back side of the pod. There’s a ladder left propped against a transformer and I used it to climb on top of the cylinder to make my last stand. I pull the ladder up after and set it like a bridge between two transformers, hopefully the fiberglass will keep me from being electrocuted to death. Me verses hundreds flashlight mouths. What an Alamo.

I take aim as the first runner rounds the corner and drop him on my first shot, his body trips the next three around the corner, they don’t try to rise, they just lay flat to let the ones behind them step over. I continuously fire and reload, keeping up my rate of fire and killing four more, but I'm down to my last shells and they are climbing over a pile of bodies now to get around the ship. I want to save the last shell for myself and not be taken alive, but every moment I live means longer for a response to get organized. I lay down my shotgun and draw my knife.